Song Yingqiu was still chatting with Zong Qiang when the driver sent to take her home pulled up.
Behind the car, another figure was walking straight toward her.
Her smile faded as she looked the approaching Song Youting up and down.
Song Youting had always been on decent terms with her nominal stepmother, so her appearance here wasn’t strange.
Song Yingqiu had no interest in any dealings with her and moved to get in the car as though she hadn’t seen her, but Song Youting called out:
“Song Yingqiu.”
Song Youting never once called her “big sister.” To Song Yingqiu, that was a childish provocation, a deliberate slight.
She couldn’t even be bothered to turn around, pausing only to wait out the theatrics.
“I know everything now.”
“Hm?”
“You and that female doctor, Shao Yu. Your relationship really isn’t ordinary, is it? You even let her live in your house.”
Song Yingqiu listened with boredom.
She had never hidden any of this; it wouldn’t have been hard for Song Youting to find out. But to bring it up to her face…
Song Youting circled around in front of her, her pretty face sharpening into something ugly with aggression.
“You’re living together, aren’t you?”
Song Yingqiu crossed her arms, her bag hanging at her wrist, swaying lightly at her waist with her slight lean, an indolent, provocative grace.
“That’s right, living together. So what? Song Youting, three strikes and you’re out. Let me hear one more word of you prying into me and her, and your easy days are over.”
The beautiful face looming close was near unearthly in the dim moonlight, her pond-black pupils all but capable of stealing souls.
Song Youting stood rooted to the spot, like a wooden puppet that had forgotten how to breathe.
At last, Song Yingqiu raised a hand and tapped Song Youting’s ear, utterly offhand.
“You understand me, don’t you?”
Song Youting said nothing, a flush racing from her ear all the way to her face, fury written across every feature.
Poor command of her own temper, that one.
Song Yingqiu looked away in disdain and walked off.
Song Youting failed at everything. Nothing like her at all. Compared to her, Shao Yu might as well be her true little sister by blood. Or rather, next to her own Little Yu, Song Youting fell short on every single count.
At the thought of Shao Yu, Song Yingqiu’s step toward the car quickened slightly, yet the moment she ducked inside, the world spun.
She sagged unsteadily into the seat. The driver asked hurriedly, “Miss, are you feeling unwell?”
Song Yingqiu shook her head, but the dizziness wouldn’t fade.
A guess surfaced from the depths of her mind, and she urged, “Something’s come up. Uncle Chen, drive faster.”
She texted Shao Yu on the way home, but the message sank without a trace.
The car ran smooth and steady, yet drowsiness crept over her all the same, her eyelids beginning their battle.
Now she didn’t need Shao Yu’s proof. Song Yingqiu confirmed it herself: Shao Yu had definitely been drinking at that dinner.
Their body swaps had stabilized in recent years, but they were not fully controllable.
At certain moments, say when consciousness grew murky, the two of them were very likely to trade places.
And Shao Yu was a textbook one-glass lightweight.
By the time she got home, Song Yingqiu tossed aside her bag and heels and, propping up her flagging spirits, went to Shao Yu’s bedroom.
The door was unlocked. She pushed it open, the hallway light spilling in and cutting a triangle at her feet, the room beyond sunk in darkness.
Her hand went to the light switch, then drifted away. In her silent house slippers, she tiptoed in, quiet as a cat.
On the bed, Shao Yu slept deeply.
She lay on her side, curves rising in graceful lines. Perhaps because of the banquet, she was still in formal wear, the suit jacket tossed carelessly across a hanger, the white shirt wrapped around her creased and rumpled. Below her pure black trousers, a pair of feet showed stark white, toes burrowed outside the covers, tinged with pale pink.
Song Yingqiu’s gaze locked onto Shao Yu’s fair ankles for a good three or four seconds.
She didn’t know that the gaze she cast carried a scorching heat, raising a slow burn across Shao Yu’s body.
Shao Yu controlled each breath, straining not to give herself away.
She had been awake since the moment Song Yingqiu pushed open the door. She knew she was lying crooked in bed, yet by some devil’s whim, she hadn’t opened her eyes.
Having missed the best moment to “wake,” she could only keep them closed.
Listening to footsteps nearly too soft to hear, breathing in the faint fragrance drifting to her nose, Shao Yu knew Song Yingqiu was at the bedside, right in front of her.
In the darkness, no further sound came.
Perhaps through some uncanny resonance of soul born of the body swap, Shao Yu somehow knew, without being told, that Song Yingqiu was looking at her.
Those amorous peach-blossom eyes were resting on her body right now.
The mere thought sent the leftover alcohol burning through Shao Yu’s every limb.
Her usually calm, steady nerves prickled with a shivery numbness, laced through with thread after thread of embarrassment, pinning her helpless beneath the eyes of the woman she loved, unable to move.
What would Song Yingqiu think? What would she do next? Shao Yu couldn’t stop herself from wondering.
She began worrying whether her clothes were decent and clean, then realized: the only skin bared to Song Yingqiu’s eyes was her feet.
Then Shao Yu suddenly remembered: once, when she had swapped into Song Yingqiu’s body and the two of them shared one body with two souls, Song Yingqiu had been flipping through a magazine and remarked, apropos of nothing, that a model’s foot arch in its pages was beautiful.
Probably just an adolescent fascination with the body. Later, Song Yingqiu had said with a distinctly sour edge, “Your arches are prettier than mine.”
Faced with a young miss who polished herself to perfection down to her very heels, Shao Yu back then had been left entirely speechless.
But after falling for Song Yingqiu, with Song Yingqiu’s eyes resting on her now, Shao Yu couldn’t help wondering…
Am I beautiful?
Does Song Yingqiu find me beautiful?
Would Song Yingqiu finally stop seeing me as a little sister—
Abruptly, a soft, heavy weight pressed down over her, tucking her in from waist to toes, completely, thoroughly.
Shao Yu’s thoughts cut off dead.
She heard Song Yingqiu murmuring to herself, every word steeped in a big sister’s endless fretting.
“All grown up and still forgetting to cover yourself with the blanket. What would you do without me looking after you, honestly. And she still wants to move out on her own. Thank goodness for me…”
Shao Yu: “…”
Song Yingqiu leaned closer.
“Shao Yu? Wake up, go wash up before you sleep properly… Shao Yu?”
Song Yingqiu’s breath fanned the side of Shao Yu’s neck, nearly close enough to touch.
Shao Yu lay rigid as a board, no longer caring whether the pounding of her heart would betray the secret.
Fine. Her heart had been smothered dead under a blanket.
