Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 27

Chapter 27: The Lighter’s Owner

“I can grant you anything.”

The words sent a cold shiver down Shen Yiyi’s spine.

It was true. Qin Luo used to be able to grant her anything.

She had mentioned wanting to eat green beans the night before, and Qin Luo had gone to the market to buy them at noon. If she wanted to go home halfway through a walk, she could just leave her. Every meeting time was decided by her. Even a frown would make Qin Luo on the side proactively fall silent.

Shen Yiyi was stunned.

The question that had puzzled Guo Rui, she suddenly couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to tonight.

What if they hadn’t broken up back then?

She thought, if she hadn’t rejected Qin Luo back then, then tonight it would have been her cooking. She would have fed Qin Luo that grape, and they wouldn’t have had to discuss which side of the bed she should sleep on.

Qin Luo’s body would be filled with her scent.

“You can just use my blanket,” Qin Luo said.

“Thanks.”

“You go to sleep first. I’ll sleep after I’m done with work.”

Qin Luo turned and said softly, pressing the air conditioner panel a couple of times. She lowered the room temperature, then pressed the curtain switch.

Shen Yiyi walked toward the inside of the bed. The river view outside the balcony was slowly covered by the smart curtains, leaving only a beam of warm light from the overhead lamp.

She glanced at Qin Luo’s bedside. A few books were stacked on the nightstand, the top one being the one Qin Luo hadn’t finished reading.

Qin Luo was the same as before, always loving to read in bed before sleeping.

This was bad for her eyes.

Just as Shen Yiyi, with her memories, lifted the blanket and lay down, the disappeared Qin Luo walked back into the bedroom with a new blanket.

Qin Luo placed the new blanket on the outer side of the bed. After she had laid it out, she said to Shen Yiyi, “Good night.”

Shen Yiyi closed her eyes in frustration. The bedding was filled with Qin Luo’s magnolia scent, wrapping around her tightly. She didn’t answer.

Qin Luo walked to the door and turned off the light. The room was left with only a faint glimmer of light. Then she reached out and closed the door. The room slowly slid into a state of decline, sinking into darkness.

Shen Yiyi didn’t suffer from insomnia.

Since she was nine, she had only ever had light sleep.

Her ears could hear the sounds outside the door while she slept, so she could be prepared for any unexpected arrivals. Whether it was the cat meowing downstairs, her father getting up in the middle of the night, or Lu Shimao waking up hungry and looking for something to eat, she could hear it all clearly.

So she liked to stay up late, until she could fall into a deep sleep.

For example, that day when she had stayed up until six in the morning and went back to the station, the two hours on the hard plank bed could put her in a coma-like state. She could apologize without worry, not hear the disturbances, not see any dreams.

Shen Yiyi turned over in the darkness.

The blackout curtains in Qin Luo’s house were of too good quality. The room was pitch black. It was the same whether she opened or closed her eyes. Her mind was only filled with Qin Luo’s breath.

Qin Luo had said she could grant her any request.

Two in the morning.

Shen Yiyi felt as if she had been cursed. She walked through the dim hallway with her hands hanging by her sides, through the study window, and stared blankly at Qin Luo, who was sitting on the balcony, smoking and lost in thought.

The balcony light was not on. Qin Luo looked at the other side of the river, her toned arm holding a thin cigarette, lost in thought for a long time before she brought it to her lips and took a drag.

“Qin Luo, I can’t sleep.”

The owner of the lighter was caught red-handed. Qin Luo trembled slightly in her lounge chair, the ash falling and almost burning her thigh.

Qin Luo patted her heart and turned to complain, “Do you walk without making a sound?”

Shen Yiyi walked through the living room and stood at the balcony door with her hands in her pockets. “You just didn’t hear me.”

Qin Luo’s guilt about smoking was not because of her image, but because she was afraid the mysophobe in front of her would be disgusted by the smell of tobacco.

She looked down and away, throwing the cigarette butt into a disposable paper cup. “Can’t sleep because you’re in a new place?”

Shen Yiyi said, “Since you’re not working, you should go to sleep.”

Qin Luo swirled the paper cup in her hand. She watched the water quickly turn yellow from the cigarette butt, the tar spreading in the ripples. “You go to sleep first. I haven’t showered yet.”

“I’m okay with the smell of smoke,” Shen Yiyi said proactively. “There are a lot of colleagues who smoke at the station.”

Qin Luo explained, “I only smoke occasionally.”

“I know.”

“You know again?” Qin Luo smiled.

“You can burn half a cigarette with one drag. And in that cigarette pack…” Shen Yiyi looked carefully at the cigarette pack on the glass coffee table again. “You’ve barely smoked any.”

Qin Luo got up from the lounge chair, waved at Shen Yiyi, and said, “Go to sleep,” then walked into the restroom.

When Qin Luo walked into the bedroom, Shen Yiyi was lying flat on her back, her hands on her stomach, her eyes closed tightly. She lay down on the edge of the bed, took off her glasses and placed them on the nightstand, and reached out to turn off the light.

Qin Luo lay flat on her back and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Her cervical spine had been strained from years of writing, and she couldn’t take too much cold wind.

“When did you start smoking?”

Shen Yiyi’s question was very abrupt and startled Qin Luo again.

She turned over to face Shen Yiyi.

Her short hair from the past could now cover the entire pillow. Qin Luo was a little unaccustomed to the darkness. “Are you asking about the first one?”

“Yes.”

“After I graduated from college.”

Qin Luo closed her eyes and thought back carefully.

It should have been the day her father was critically ill. She had rushed back from out of town and stayed with him at the hospital all night. The next morning, she had walked home.

The city center of Fengjiang was so small. As she walked, she ended up at the entrance of Fengjiang High School. She had bought a pack of cigarettes at a shop at the crossroads. After she tore open the pack and took out a cigarette, she remembered that she hadn’t bought a lighter. So she had asked the owner of a nearly bankrupt pool hall for a light.

The owner had given her a steel-wheeled lighter. Qin Luo had never smoked before and had rubbed her thumb raw without being able to light it. In the end, it was the owner who had shielded the wind and lit it for her.

That day, the owner had also asked her if it was her first time.

Qin Luo thought for a moment.

Maybe when she was seven or eight, she had curiously gone through her dad’s pockets, taken a cigarette from the pack and put it in her mouth, imitating his lazy posture on the sofa, thinking how good it was to be a man, sloppy and smelly, but not having to care about what others thought.

Qin Minghui often sent Qin Luo to buy cigarettes, especially in the middle of a meal when he would take out twenty yuan from his pocket and send her to buy a pack of cigarettes for eighteen or nineteen yuan, with the rest as her allowance. She had been buying them since she was seven or eight, and now she had personally sent him to the hospital.

Throat cancer. It was a problem he had earned himself.

Qin Luo hadn’t choked on her first cigarette. She thought it might be because she was used to her dad’s secondhand smoke. She took a drag and asked the pool hall owner with a smile where the yellow-haired boy who used to work there had gone.

The owner asked which one.

Qin Luo mentioned the boy’s past story, the one who had had a knife held to his throat in high school and had been expelled in the end.

The owner laughed and said, “Oh, that bastard. He got an excavator license and went to dig sand.”

She had said goodbye to the owner, walked a few more steps, and thrown the remaining cigarette butt at the entrance of the KTV, stomping on it twice. Qin Luo let out a deep breath, as if to expel the bitterness from her chest. She was not used to the ravages of nicotine. Her head felt light as she walked home.

That day, her mom had smelled the smoke on her, but she hadn’t said a word.

“I smoked more when I was first serialized in the literary digest.” Qin Luo said, muffled in her blanket. “It’s better now. I can take it or leave it.”

“You and Liu Jia should smoke less.”

“I know.”

Shen Yiyi was annoyed. She turned over with her back to Qin Luo. “You’ve really changed so much.”

“Thanks.” Qin Luo was sleepy, her voice weak and her breathing slow. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Qin Luo had been waiting for this compliment for a long time, but after hearing Shen Yiyi say it, she wasn’t as happy as she had imagined. The huge rock she had been holding up in her heart was thrown into the sea, sinking silently, with no response, no victory, no strange illusion of conquest.

She even felt tired because of it, so she also turned over with her back to Shen Yiyi.

“Since you lived together, why did you break up in the end?”

“I don’t know why. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say…”

Shen Yiyi hugged her blanket, her head slightly turned, trying to hear what the person behind her would say next.

“Who can say for sure about love? I originally thought that as long as two people’s hearts were together, they could work toward the same goal. I could go to the city she wanted to go to, I could support her dreams. But love always goes against one’s wishes. Some people are just as hard as iron and stone. She doesn’t need you, so she will never need you at any time.”

Shen Yiyi felt suffocated. “It sounds like you had a very rough relationship.”

“So-so… not a big rise and fall, no twists and turns, just a nightmare of adolescence.”

…

Shen Yiyi didn’t move, just turned her head back. “What do you mean?”

Qin Luo’s budding sleepiness was woken up by Shen Yiyi’s voice. “I don’t mean anything. I’m talking about you. Can’t you tell?”

“Me?!…”

Shen Yiyi sat up abruptly. She didn’t believe it. “I was asking about cohabitation…”

The adult kind of cohabitation.

Qin Luo remained on her side. “Didn’t we sleep together every day back then?”

“…”

Shen Yiyi stammered, “I was asking if you’ve been in a relationship since then.”

Qin Luo was calm and composed, using a rhetorical question to defeat her enemy. “What about you?”

“How could I have time for a relationship? I…” Shen Yiyi lifted the blanket and lay back down, staring at the ceiling. “Didn’t I tell you…”

“Yes, I know. I understand.” Qin Luo gently brushed it off. “Then let’s go to sleep early.”

Shen Yiyi didn’t dare to make another sound.

***

Qin Luo still had seafood porridge on her mind.

When she had something on her mind, she didn’t like to sleep in. Her eyes opened earlier than her alarm.

When she had bought the blackout curtains, she had chosen them for a long time. The blackout effect was very good. In the early morning, only a little weak light squeezed in through the cracks.

Qin Luo had severe astigmatism. As long as she wasn’t wearing her glasses, the world two meters away was a blur.

But she could still see Shen Yiyi clearly.

She didn’t know how this person had managed to wriggle her way across the entire bed.

Shen Yiyi’s head was resting on her arm, her body curled up in a ball. The air conditioning blanket was on her waist, and her upper body was not covered at all. She had even stuck her feet into her blanket.

From this angle… Qin Luo couldn’t see the contents of the large V-neck, only Shen Yiyi’s prominent nose and fair shoulders.

She didn’t know how her cervical spine could take a whole night of cold wind.

Qin Luo wanted to cover Shen Yiyi with the blanket, but she was afraid of disturbing her good sleep. It was still early before work. The more she could sleep, the better.

She got out of bed, put on her glasses, and checked her phone. Liu Jia hadn’t said anything more since she had sent her the “not worth it” message last night.

The company was fine, the production was fine, Shen Yiyi was fine in her home. Only those few crab legs were not properly handled.

After quickly washing up, Qin Luo went into the kitchen.

Last night, while Shen Yiyi was sleeping, she had prepared the shrimp and abalone. Now, she just had to heat up a pan and pour in the porridge, and Shen Yiyi could have a full breakfast.

At this thought, she held the spatula and smiled wryly at the pan.

Yes, the magic was gone.

No crush could withstand the fatigue of three meals a day. If she had to wake up early every day to cook for Shen Yiyi like this, no matter how much her heart fluttered, she would be unable to love.

“Are you making breakfast?”

Just as Qin Luo had put the ginger slices in the hot pan, she heard a sound behind her. Shen Yiyi stood in the living room with a dazed expression, her hair a mess, and looked at her, rubbing her nose.

“What are you making? It smells so good.”

Qin Luo was busy frying the shrimp oil. She glanced back and couldn’t help but smile.

Alright, alright.

If Shen Yiyi appeared behind her like this every morning and complimented her on her cooking, then making three meals a day wouldn’t be a punishment.

Cooking for love should not be an obligation, but an achievement.

It was a projection of some strange need in her spirit.

“Why are you up so early?” Qin Luo pressed the shrimp heads into the oil with the spatula until the oil at the bottom of the pan turned golden. “It’s still early before work. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

Shen Yiyi hadn’t had breakfast at home in a long time. She was attracted by the aroma and walked up the steps, approaching Qin Luo.

She wanted to poke her head in, but she thought the stove was not clean. She gently tugged at the corner of Qin Luo’s clothes and leaned in to look.

“Seafood porridge.”

“Yes.”

“You put in shiitake mushrooms.” Shen Yiyi’s eyes lit up.

Qin Luo poured the cold porridge in and threw in the vegetables. “Don’t you like them? I’ll put some in for you. Go wash up. Your clothes from yesterday are folded and in the restroom. Your laptop bag is in the study. You can pack it yourself. Come and eat when you’re done. I’ll take you to work after breakfast.”

Shen Yiyi said, “Oh,” let go of her hand, and then scurried back to the bedroom.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the spot on the bed where she had woken up this morning, then at her hands, then at her muted phone, and at the shiitake mushroom slices in the seafood porridge.

Ah?!

She had just realized that this was just a special night.

After she finished eating, Qin Luo would have to take her to work.

She would have to leave Qin Luo’s house.

She lay back on the bed and turned on her side, trying to call it out.

“Hey!”

The shadow ignored her.

Shen Yiyi hugged the blanket Qin Luo had slept in last night and buried her head in it. Fear crawled up her spine to her head.

What should she do? She was already starting to fear the relapse.