Regret. Nothing but regret. She never should have dragged Shao Yu into that game.
Compared to Song Yingqiu, whose face was clouded with frustration and remorse, several girls had shed their earlier shyness upon hearing the rules and were thrilled.
“Who’s the 6 of Hearts? Trade with me, I want to eat the snack.”
“Who’s the lucky one?”
But after a long search, no one claimed the 6 of Hearts. Zong Qiang had everyone reveal their cards. Still nothing.
Shao Yu had kept a blank face all this while; now her eyes shifted slightly toward the last face-down card in front of Zong Qiang.
Zong Qiang realized it too: one number card was still unturned. She flipped over the King’s number card and cried out, “Sister Yingqiu, you’re the 6 of Hearts!”
Song Yingqiu: ?
What were the odds?
Before she could say anything, Shao Yu abruptly stood. “Can we be excused from it?”
“Huh?”
If it were Song Yingqiu refusing, everyone would tease her for being a sore loser.
But Doctor Shao was far too upright and buttoned-up; her distaste for anything with a suggestive edge was perfectly understandable.
For a moment everyone traded glances, not quite daring to push.
But if you were chasing thrills, how could you let Doctor Shao slip away!
The mischievous schemers didn’t dare offend Doctor Shao, so they redirected the pressure to Song Yingqiu, who always played along:
“You’re really not doing it? That was the deal.”
“You two are so close, it’s fine, right?”
“What, even Sister Yingqiu doesn’t dare play?”
Song Yingqiu sighed softly and looked at Shao Yu.
Shao Yu knew her far too well; she caught the signal instantly and went on alert. “I’m not doing it.”
As if she hadn’t heard, Song Yingqiu leaned in, the white musk of her perfume growing more intoxicating, and Shao Yu’s breath caught for a beat.
With Shao Yu, Song Yingqiu always had endless patience. “You have to. Those are the rules.”
She rarely went back on her word, and it was the classic trick of demanding to tear the roof off so that opening a window seems reasonable. If the game had asked this of her and Shao Yu from the very start, she never would have accepted.
But compared to Shao Yu sharing snacks with someone else… wasn’t her doing it with Shao Yu herself the best possible outcome?
Song Yingqiu paused, then added, “And it’s with me. What are you afraid of?”
What is she afraid of?
The only thing that could ever scare her is you.
When the snack game was first proposed, Shao Yu hadn’t reacted much; as long as she was careful not to actually touch, it meant nothing.
But swap in Song Yingqiu, and she couldn’t sit still.
She had just resolved to be family to Song Yingqiu and nothing more, to stop entertaining the possibilities she shouldn’t. And now Song Yingqiu had ensnared them both with one little maneuver?
At this distance, the faint current of air stirred by Song Yingqiu’s words swirled between them, her moist, alluring red lips opening and closing.
That alone was enough to leave Shao Yu’s mouth dry. She stole a sidelong glance at the snack, her mind painting the image of the two of them biting down on it together…
The hotter Shao Yu’s ears burned beneath her long hair, the more frozen her face became. “No.”
She leaned back against the sofa, putting distance between them, her refusal unmistakable.
Shao Yu’s icy expression was intimidating enough that no one dared jeer anymore.
But Song Yingqiu wasn’t scared.
She treated the refusal as mere notification received, fished a snack out of the plate, caught half of it between her lips, knelt astride Shao Yu’s legs, and pressed in.
The sofa back and Song Yingqiu’s body walled off a tiny world, enclosing Shao Yu within.
Song Yingqiu was bewitchingly soft; Shao Yu sat rigid as a Buddha.
Song Yingqiu’s hair spilled down from above onto Shao Yu’s shoulder, and as Song Yingqiu bent closer, it brushed across her collarbone, nearly sliding along that cool white skin into the open collar of her shirt.
Their pose was far too suggestive to look at, drawing a chorus of screams. Even the Werewolf game at the other end of the room ground to a halt as people crowded over to heckle.
Someone had switched off the main lights; the small lamps left the room in deep, wavering shadows, dimmed to the bare minimum of visibility, a sight that set imaginations running wild.
Truthfully, Song Yingqiu wasn’t quite comfortable. Messing around with other people was nothing. But with Shao Yu…
She remembered that Shao Yu disliked her frivolity; she just wanted to get through the game quickly and have it all over with.
Without a sound, she lowered her head, the snack between her lips, seeking Shao Yu’s mouth, and unexpectedly met Shao Yu’s eyes.
In the dim light, before Song Yingqiu could see anything clearly, Shao Yu wrenched her head sharply away.
With Shao Yu refusing to cooperate, Song Yingqiu grew anxious, mumbling around the snack, “Shao Yu, hurry, it’s going soft.”
The snack was thin to begin with, pointed at both ends; once it went soft it would be even harder to hold, raising the difficulty.
Her words blurred, her voice lower and more lingering than usual, and Shao Yu’s gaze drifted instinctively toward her waist before reason forcibly stopped it.
The hooting grew louder; someone was whistling.
The outside noise rolled back and forth like distant surf. All Shao Yu could truly feel was a little boat named Song Yingqiu, scented with white musk, leaving her flustered and unmoored.
As if patience had run out in the waiting, a hand came to rest under her jaw, gentle but firm, drawing her back beneath Song Yingqiu’s face.
Before Shao Yu could see clearly, a shadow fell swiftly over her.
Song Yingqiu’s lips were searching for hers.
Like a keen, agile hunter, even as Shao Yu’s heartbeat threatened to stall, Song Yingqiu held her face steadily, arranging her into a posture of complete surrender, and then, lightly, she landed on her lips.
“They kissed! Did they actually kiss?!”
“God, Sister is such a good kisser. Can I trade places with Doctor Shao?”
“Nope. Just barely missed.”
“Ah.”
The atmosphere of the moment was so charged that quite a few people had been holding their breath.
Once the excitement died down and people leaned in for a closer look, a sliver of space remained between two beautifully shaped lips, revealing a short segment of the snack.
They hadn’t actually kissed after all. Disappointed sighs rose from all around.
Zong Qiang had her phone out recording from the very start. Now she held it up and said, “We need the full three minutes. What if someone accidentally moves? Who’s timing?”
The words reached Song Yingqiu’s ears and deepened her regret.
Three minutes… Today she had well and truly screwed both herself and Shao Yu over.
At first Song Yingqiu kept her eyes open. This close, she couldn’t see anything anyway; all she felt was their lashes about to tangle.
Later, maybe because they’d held the position too long, she started feeling strange inside and simply closed her eyes.
But the world behind her closed eyes was no quieter.
It was as if all the noise around them had walled them into a vacuum. She could hear Shao Yu breathing, feel her body rising and falling gently with each breath, so unlike her usual cool bearing, warm and pure.
Was three minutes simply too long? Or perhaps holding the same pose had stiffened her body; either way, Song Yingqiu grew more and more uncomfortable.
She sensed Shao Yu felt the same, maybe even more so…
Perhaps she was imagining it, but Shao Yu’s breath seemed to be scorching. It must be her imagination.
The snack was all but dissolving between their mouths, and Song Yingqiu did her best to hurry the others along with her eyes.
Why wasn’t it over yet? They weren’t dragging it out on purpose, were they?
“Why is no one pushing their heads together?”
“Wen Xinxian, would you dare? I wouldn’t.”
“Almost, almost! Thirty seconds left on the countdown. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…”
Who knew how many people were secretly hoping the two would slip and actually kiss. When the countdown hit thirteen seconds, Song Yingqiu really did sway, her lips stirring slightly, but it was a false alarm.
Until the countdown ended, the two of them kept that thin line of distance between them.
At “zero,” Song Yingqiu bit through the snack at once.
It had gone so soft it didn’t need biting; “splitting it between them” was the more accurate description.
Song Yingqiu climbed off, and Shao Yu left the private room without a word.
Chewing the tasteless remainder, Song Yingqiu made a small sound of surprise. “Is my baby upset?”
Zong Qiang was laughing too hard to speak straight. “Your baby, Doctor Shao, is embarrassed.”
Hm? Song Yingqiu’s chewing stopped.
Zong Qiang handed her the phone.
She dragged the progress bar to the end: Shao Yu, rising to leave, cheeks flushed, her eyes brimming with a fine shimmer of moisture, like a frigid snow mountain washed in ink-pink dawn clouds. A sight rarely seen, devastatingly beautiful.
Song Yingqiu said nothing; Zong Qiang chattered on. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d have thought you really did kiss her for three minutes, that this is what Sister’s kisses do to a person.”
She clicked her tongue, savoring it. “Doctor Shao is honestly irresistible. So repressed, so repre— Hey, why are you deleting it!”
Ignoring Zong Qiang’s wail of despair, Song Yingqiu deleted the video without hesitation.
She tossed the phone back to Zong Qiang, returned to her seat, and drained the last of her wine.
The cold liquor slid down her throat, pressing down a strange, unnameable flutter in Song Yingqiu’s heart.
