Chapter 93: Bite

“So, why did it have to be me you called over?”

Liu Xu sat on the stairs painted with pale blue paint, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. He had just lit it when Qi Ran’s outstretched hand snuffed it out.

“When did you learn to smoke?” Qi Ran asked quietly. A few specks of ash slipped from between her fingers. “Numbing your nerves with tobacco and alcohol is what cowards do. That was your own edgelord declaration once. Forgotten?”

“Don’t talk like you know me so well,” Liu Xu put the cigarette pack away.

“But I do know you well,” Qi Ran sat against the wall on the other side of the staircase. She shaped her fingers into a mock pistol and fired a make-believe shot at Liu Xu. “The girl we’re going to see next, she knows you well too. No matter how much you want to deny it, it’s a fact. All those inexplicable things in your head are real, Mr. One Thousand Nine.”

Upon hearing that address, Liu Xu’s expression still showed no significant change. He merely rubbed the cigarette pack between his fingertips, the slightly rigid corner digging into the soft flesh of his fingertip. The subtle pain replaced the nicotine, soothing the restlessness in his mental lake.

“…So, what happened?”

Qi Ran asked, slowing her speaking pace.

“Dreams.”

Liu Xu paused, pressing his right hand against his forehead. His voice was quite deep and low. “It probably started around September. I keep having the same dream… Or rather, I dream of another version of myself. The kind that makes you envious. Sometimes I dream I’m in class, sometimes taking an exam, sometimes…”

He hesitated for a moment before continuing, “I dream Father is still here, sitting on the balcony chatting with me. He’d repeat his same old broken-record philosophies over and over… and brew tea, very bitter tea.”

“And scalding hot,” Qi Ran chuckled softly. “When we’d say it was hot, he’d say we just didn’t understand how to drink tea… That’s when Auntie would tell us not to pick up his habits, warning that drinking tea like that would eventually cause esophageal cancer.”

She had already vaguely guessed why Liu Xu’s demeanor had changed so drastically. Because not every seventeen-year-old youth can accept their life being flipped upside down in an instant, going from privileged comfort to having nothing at all.

Liu Xu was silent for a long time, leaning against the railing, his right hand covering his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re crying, Mr. One Thousand Nine,” Qi Ran tilted her upper body down slightly, peering up at him from below. “Real tears or fake?”

“Don’t be childish. What are you, a middle school boy?” Liu Xu replied, somewhat annoyed. He waved a hand and, after a brief pause, asked, “Is this how we used to get along?”

“More or less,” Qi Ran leaned against the wall, her tone a bit casual.

As the back of her head touched the cold, hard wall, she suddenly realized the scene before her was deeply familiar — back when they were still in school, she, Xu Yan, and Liu Xu would often sit like this on the stairs of the seldom-used teaching building to eat lunch. They’d eat and chat, rambling boundlessly, their topics jumping everywhere.

Many things had changed, utterly transformed in a very short time. But some things would never change.

“That sounds nice,” Liu Xu murmured. “If everything happening now is the mistake, does that mean there’s a way to fix it, to go back?”

“Hard to say,” Qi Ran didn’t offer pretty words, just spoke frankly. “We can only look for a way. What I told that man, Xie Liusheng, earlier was the truth. He and the people behind him know more than I do.”

She paused, then shifted the topic: “What do you know about Xie Liusheng?”

“Not much,” Liu Xu shook his head. “I only met him less than a month before you did.”

“What do you know so far?” Qi Ran asked.

“If I had to describe it, he’s religious… Actually, saying he’s religious isn’t entirely right, because he’s not a true believer. The feeling he gives me is more like he simply enjoys the sensation of piety,” Liu Xu mused. “Sometimes he acts very devout, going to church for services. But other times, he acts very… It’s hard to put into words. In his eyes, religion is probably just a prop for his amusement.”

He paused, adding, “It’s like how some people think believing in Buddha is trendy, so they specifically go to temples to pray and draw lots, maybe even buy some incense ash or something. Xie Liusheng is probably like that, just a level deeper, somewhere between chasing a fad and being a true believer.”

“Religious?”

“Yes,” Liu Xu nodded. “I don’t understand religion, but he has a Bible, so should it be Judaism or Christianity?”

Qi Ran’s brows furrowed tightly. This detail gave her a slight, creeping sense of unease.

Could the people who instigated Greasepaint and the others be connected to the forces behind Xie Liusheng? Moreover, the image of Xie Liusheng that Liu Xu described sounded eerily familiar, as if she had encountered it somewhere before… Qi Ran slowly pondered, then suddenly stiffened. Of course, she had seen someone like that. Wasn’t it that young man, Xie Liang, who had died on the second floor of the shop, in front of the spider cocoon?

Xie (Thank), similar to ‘Release’ (Release), and ‘Liusheng’ (Life Retention), meaning ‘to retain a sliver of life’.

Could there be a connection between Xie Liusheng and that young man?

“Xie Liusheng — can you be sure that’s his real name?” Qi Ran asked in a low voice. “I encountered someone before, someone remarkably similar to Xie Liusheng… His name was Xie Liang. I met Xie Liusheng right after seeing his corpse. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“You mean to say Xie Liusheng might be a false name?” Liu Xu frowned, then shook his head. “I can’t confirm his name. Only he himself has ever said his name is Xie Liusheng.”

“We can only take it slowly,” Qi Ran said. “We can’t trust him.”

Liu Xu nodded, just about to say more, when the door at the top of the stairs was suddenly pushed open.

He frowned slightly, stopping the words he was about to speak, and turned his head back. Before he could see clearly who it was, a slender finger was already pointed at his forehead.

“Liu Xu.”

The owner of the finger, Qi Xin, said calmly:

“Say my name.”

A flicker of disorientation passed through the depths of Liu Xu’s eyes. Just a moment later, clarity returned.

“You are Qi Xin,” he murmured.

“Very good. Good child,” Qi Xin withdrew her finger and lowered her eyelids. “Go find that girl, Xu Yan. I have something to discuss with Qi Ran. Please allow us some privacy…”

She paused, looking down at her collar being gripped. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Qi Ran suppressed the anger in her tone, catching a glimpse of Liu Xu opening the door and leaving from the corner of her eye. “What did you do?”

Qi Xin didn’t speak, just looked at her. Qi Ran met her gaze directly, unflinchingly.

Both their clear, limpid pupils were like two pristine mirrors reflecting each other. Every trace of emotional change was laid utterly bare.

Qi Xin frowned slightly, her expression holding a hint of puzzlement. She reached out her hand. This time, she didn’t press it on the forehead, but placed it on Qi Ran’s lips instead, sliding inside. Her fingertip first met the hard sensation of teeth, then a soft tongue. Probing further up, she pressed against the hard palate. The direction of the fingertip pointed towards the brainstem; her neatly trimmed nails were not sharp.

This was the place closest to the brainstem, also the most suitable location for cutting the lake.

Insane.

Qi Ran simply looked at Qi Xin, whose face was identical to her own, truly unable to fathom what was going on in the other’s mind. The sensation was strange. She even felt as if the tip of her tongue could sense the ridges of the skin on that finger.

Compared to the warm oral cavity, the finger felt slightly cool. Qi Ran wasn’t surprised by this, as her own hands and feet were the same — never warm, even when it wasn’t winter, her fingers would be icy cold, devoid of any warmth.

She had endured enough, she thought. It was time to end this absurd situation.

So, she bit down with slight force on the end of that finger, her teeth sinking in faintly.

“That hurts,” Qi Xin’s voice was level. “Let go.”

Strange to say, logically, teeth shouldn’t have a sense of touch. But when Qi Ran bit down, she truly felt the soft texture of the skin. She bit a little harder. The sensation was peculiar, yet unexpectedly addictive. Gauging the right force was difficult — it was like gnawing on soft yet resilient rubber.

She was just about to continue applying force when she felt a hand press against her forehead, covering her sight. The grip was so tight the hand trembled slightly.

“I said it hurts. Stop,” Qi Xin lowered her voice. Qi Ran could hear that her voice had become slightly hoarse, like melted chocolate congealing into a sticky mess. “This is an order from your elder sister. Be obedient, Qi Ran.”

Qi Ran tasted a faint sweetness and metallic tang on the tip of her tongue, which involuntarily made her loosen her teeth slightly.

Qi Xin didn’t speak. Her expression didn’t change much. She just withdrew her hand, taking out tissues and wrapping them layer by layer around the slender finger.

The stark crimson soaked slightly into the pallid paper, piercingly red against the white.

In the deathly silent stairwell, the two girls with identical faces simply stood facing each other, neither saying a word. It was like a game where the first to speak would lose.