Chapter 9

Lu Li had been quiet and reserved from the time she was little. Yu Ling could no longer remember the exact circumstances of their first meeting.

She vaguely remembered crying as she reached for Lu Li’s hand. Lu Li had said nothing, simply hiding her hand behind her back and silently refusing.

So Yu Ling had thrown herself on the ground and rolled around until she got her way.

Yu Ling had been four then, healthy and full of energy.

After an accident, her world had shrunk to the confines of a hospital room.

And Lu Li, whom she’d always dragged around by the hand, became the one who held on to her and refused to let go.

Lu Li was still taciturn, but she would sit quietly beside Yu Ling’s bed, flipping through thick fairy-tale books and reading them to her page by page.

Back then, Lu Li’s personality had been perfectly normal. She was just more reserved than the other children. When had Lu Li started growing so gloomy?

Yu Ling thought for a moment. It must have been when she was ten.

A lot seemed to have happened that year.

Yu Lingyi became her younger sister and began being groomed as the heir, so Mother visited even less often.

The head of the Lu family died suddenly in a car crash. Lu Lin—Lu Li’s mother, who’d been away from the Lu family for ten years—returned and promptly took sole control of the family.

Things were peaceful in the Qi family. Qi Jinyu was its only daughter, and her status as heir was beyond question.

But that was also the year Qi Jinyu first came onto Yu Ling’s radar.

At the time, Yu Ling had been fretting. Ten years had gone by, and she still hadn’t seen a sign of the other conquest target. In her current condition, she had no chance of taking the initiative. Was she just going to have to wait forever?

Unexpectedly, not long after Yu Lingyi appeared, Qi Jinyu came to visit her, claiming she wanted to look after the younger sister of one of her mother’s friends.

Qi Jinyu didn’t visit often, but she always stayed for a long time—nearly half a day each time. She fussed over Yu Ling without the slightest impatience, feeding her medicine, chatting with her, and showing her the gifts she’d brought.

She and Yu Lingyi crossed paths now and then, but she and Lu Li, who visited more often, always seemed to deliberately miss each other.

Until one day, the two of them finally ran into each other in Yu Ling’s hospital room.

Their first meeting there was hardly a harmonious one.

At twelve, Qi Jinyu was already beautiful, with a perfectly measured smile always playing at her lips. She was gentle and composed in everything she did. Not long after arriving, she gave Yu Ling a big jar of candy.

Yu Ling’s head was spinning, her body limp. She gave a lazy little response, then closed her eyes again, letting Qi Jinyu wander around the room.

She heard the soft crinkle of candy wrappers, the burbling sound of water being poured from a kettle, and the click of the window opening. Then Qi Jinyu gently helped her sit up.

Slender fingers tipped up Yu Ling’s chin, applying just enough pressure. The touch was gentle, but firm enough to brook no refusal. Yu Ling reluctantly opened her mouth and drank some warm water.

A peach-flavored gummy followed. Qi Jinyu’s fingertip paused against Yu Ling’s lips, brushing them softly, as though checking that she’d really swallowed.

Cheeks puffed as she chewed, Yu Ling made a few disgruntled little noises.

Where had a twelve-year-old young lady learned to take such good care of someone? And how had she gotten so good at it?

A moment later, the warm back of a hand rested lightly against Yu Ling’s forehead. Heat spread from where their skin touched, rippling through her body.

“Little Ling, you have a fever,” Qi Jinyu murmured.

Yu Ling nodded vaguely, stopping Qi Jinyu from calling a nurse. “They know.”

The nurse had given her medicine just before Qi Jinyu arrived. Yu Ling had lain down for a while, then woken again, but the fever still hadn’t gone down.

Maybe her voice had been too weak, because Qi Jinyu leaned close to her. Her big amber eyes blinked as she stared at Yu Ling, so near that Yu Ling could see her own reflection in them. Their noses almost touched.

Just then, the hospital-room door opened, and Lu Li came in carrying a huge bouquet of white daisies.

Looking back now, what had happened a month ago was almost an exact replay of that scene.

Lu Li rushed forward, trying to pull Qi Jinyu away from Yu Ling’s bedside. But she was only ten, and couldn’t match the strength of twelve-year-old Qi Jinyu. She tugged several times, but couldn’t budge her.

Ten-year-old Lu Li’s face went pale with anger. Her brows drew together, and her voice carried a child’s tightly suppressed fury as she coldly demanded to know what Qi Jinyu was doing.

Even then, Lu Li already looked a little like the woman she would become. Her features were striking, her eyelashes long, her skin pale as porcelain. There was something cool and fine-boned about her face; when she was expressionless, she already had an almost inhuman air of distance.

Qi Jinyu had always loved to smile. At Lu Li’s words, she simply offered her a gentle, reassuring smile. “A-Li, did you come to visit Little Ling too? What a coincidence. So did I.”

Lu Li’s expression only grew colder. She fixed Qi Jinyu with an icy stare. Maybe she was too young to know how to hide her feelings. Or perhaps the upheaval in the Lu family had left her unusually quick to anger. Either way, she didn’t bother with another word. She pressed the call button and announced, “There’s an intruder in the hospital room!”

Naturally, that didn’t work. Qi Jinyu hadn’t visited as often as Lu Li, but the nurses knew her too.

Lu Li had no choice but to accept it. She was unusually quiet that day, keeping a wary eye on Qi Jinyu as if she were a little beast guarding her own territory.

When she put the daisies in a vase, she removed the flower that hadn’t yet wilted—the one Yu Lingyi had brought a few days earlier.

Lu Li came to Yu Ling’s bedside, took her hand, and asked in a low voice, “Yu Ling, did you invite Qi Jinyu here?”

Yu Ling didn’t care what the two of them did in her room. Her head hurt too much to talk, and all she felt was irritation. She wanted to bundle both of them up and send them packing.

She gave a little snort and turned her back, refusing to answer.

The room fell silent. A long while passed. Yu Ling thought they’d both left, but then Lu Li’s voice drifted over from behind her, low and eerie.

“No, Yu Ling.”

“Only I get to come here.”

A child’s stubborn voice, young but unyielding.

Back then, Lu Li had been much more forthright than she was now. At least she’d stated plainly what she wanted.

Then came Qi Jinyu’s soft laugh. She seemed to find the scene childish and funny, and her voice held the faintest hint of mockery.

“Only little kids ask for candy.”

Though their first meeting had been so unpleasant, for some reason, after that the two seemed to reach an unspoken agreement, visiting Yu Ling at different times.

As they grew older, they stopped being so openly hostile and grew closer—or at least, that was how it looked to Yu Ling.

She’d slept straight through the day and into the night. When she woke, her head was still foggy.

Yu Ling rubbed her temples and pressed the remote. The curtains slid open, revealing nothing but darkness beyond the windows. Only then did she realize how long she’d slept.

A bad feeling came over her. She hurriedly opened her phone, and a notification appeared: more than a dozen unread messages.

She opened the newest chat. It was from her mother, with messages sent at intervals from two hours ago until ten minutes ago.

[Mom: Congratulations on taking second place, Little Ling. I’m genuinely proud of you.]

[Mom: Yu Lingyi and I are in the living room. Come straight down when you wake up. We’re waiting for you.]

[Mom: Little Ling, I’m so sorry. An urgent meeting came up, and I have to leave first. Can we make up our family dinner another time?]

The messages stopped there.

Yu Ling’s lashes fluttered as she let out a silent sigh. She could only blame herself for missing the time they’d agreed on.

She swiped to the next chat. This one was from Qi Jinyu.

[Qi Jinyu: Message me when you wake up tomorrow. I’ll take you somewhere fun, Little Ling.]

Below it was a red fox sticker with a smile, its tail held high.

[Qi Jinyu: You’re not going to turn me down, are you, Little Ling?]

Yu Ling replied with a blank expression.

[Yu Ling: Of course. 🙂]

She sent it with the system’s default yellow smiley face.

The next chat was Lu Li’s.

There was only one message.

[Lu Li: Open the door.]

It had been sent half an hour ago.

Yu Ling’s eyes shifted. She pressed the call button. A few minutes later, the housekeeper came up to the second floor and helped her change. Then Yu Ling took the elevator down to the living room.

Ding. The elevator doors opened, and she nearly collided with Lu Li around the corner.

Yu Ling hadn’t even managed to get a complaint out before the sight of Lu Li made her freeze, eyes widening in disbelief.

Lu Li stepped back, putting some distance between them. When she saw Yu Ling’s expression, she frowned. “You didn’t think I’d been standing out here like an idiot for half an hour, did you?”

Yu Ling’s mouth opened and closed. At last, she managed to say, “Lu Li, did you run away from home?”

Lu Li’s expression turned even colder. Her features seemed to freeze over like ice.

Yu Ling wasn’t making that up. Lu Li looked completely unlike herself—an absolute mess.

She looked as though she’d only just gotten out of bed, her black hair hanging loose and disheveled around her shoulders. She wore only a thin black pajama shirt, its collar hanging open to reveal the pale line of her collarbones.

She was tall, but at that moment she looked especially thin, like a slender bamboo stalk swaying in the wind.

Her expression was blank, the corners of her mouth turned down. Her brows were pinched, dark circles shadowed her eyes, and she looked utterly drained.

“Do you need me to call Aunt Lu? If you really did run away from home…” Yu Ling hesitated, then spoke with reluctant generosity. “I suppose you could stay at my place for a while.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt a weight settle against her.

Without warning, Lu Li stepped forward and hugged her. She was careful not to put all her weight on Yu Ling.

Lu Li was already several inches taller than Yu Ling, and though she was lean, her embrace came naturally around her. As she held Yu Ling, her black hair spilled over Yu Ling’s shoulder, soft strands brushing her cheek and neck with a faint chill.

There was no way for Yu Ling to resist the embrace. She could only endure it, feeling Lu Li’s body heat through the thin fabric of her clothes. Lu Li was cold as early-winter snow.

“Would that be okay?” Lu Li’s voice was clear and cool, like shattered jade, but there was a trace of weariness in it.

“Not if you didn’t run away from home,” Yu Ling said. “Then, of course, you can’t.”

“Then could you…” Lu Li’s voice turned hoarse. “Get in bed with me…”

Yu Ling’s pupils contracted, panic flashing in her eyes. “Hey! Lu Li, what are you talking about—”

“…to sleep,” Lu Li finished, her voice low. To Yu Ling’s surprise, she could hear a hint of hurt in it.

“I can’t sleep. I can only fall asleep when you’re beside me.” Lu Li pressed her face into the hollow of Yu Ling’s neck and repeated the words.

Yu Ling was already wavering, thinking she’d been a little too harsh earlier. Now, with Lu Li holding her, her heart had softened. She was just about to agree—

Knock, knock.

Yu Ling looked toward the sound and saw a slender figure leaning against the wall.

Yu Lingyi stood there in a pale yellow dress, her eyes curved in a bright smile.

“Big Sister, you finally came down. I’ve been waiting for you forever.” Her voice was soft and sweet, almost like a coaxing whine.

So Yu Lingyi hadn’t left with Mother after all?