A heavy fog rose over Floating City at night. A strand of moonlight barely pierced through the clouds and mist to touch her skin, thin as a needle.
Yu Ruoyin gripped her phone tightly and moved forward by its faint light.
The weak glow could not tear through the thick fog surrounding her. She still could not make out the direction.
She had failed to find the road using the phone’s light. Instead, she clearly saw the notification for an important date reminder—her eighteenth birthday stood out glaringly.
Yu Ruoyin glanced at the dwindling battery and deeply eyed the increasingly gathering fog. Suppressing her fear, she turned off the phone, hiding her clear and pale face in the darkness. A silent sigh echoed in her heart.
It was like this again.
Last year on her birthday, she had been just as unlucky.
Not just last year—in truth, she was extraordinarily unlucky every birthday, and it always carried a strange air. For instance, today she had clearly gone out in the morning for an interview, but she had only stayed a short while in that shop before it grew dark. Then, a thick fog thick enough to block all sight suddenly appeared, trapping her on this road.
Yu Ruoyin barely took two more steps forward. The foot she stepped out landed on something hard, and her whole body fell face-first to the ground.
She did not even have a moment to react before she slammed heavily onto the ground.
Her arm, which hit first, scraped forward a good distance on the ground. Intense pain spread out—she knew without looking that it was bleeding.
Yu Ruoyin did not get up at the fastest speed. She considered whether to just lie there for a while.
Based on her eighteen years of experience, the chance of falling again after getting up was high, and it would hurt even more.
Perhaps she should not have gone out today, but she was in a hurry.
Yu Ruoyin did not rise. Her hand reached into her bag.
The bag only held a few sheets of paper—her resume.
Yu Ruoyin was an orphan. Her father had died unexpectedly on her eighth birthday, her mother had overdosed on pills from grief on her tenth birthday, and the grandmother who had depended on her had suddenly vanished on her fifteenth birthday. She was left alone to guard the empty, rundown house. At a young age, she had learned to earn money.
Her grandmother had left her some money. She did not spend much usually and had learned early to earn in her spare time outside of studies. She had some savings originally, but she was unlucky. Last year on her birthday, she broke her leg, and the hospitalization depleted her savings.
She had to hurry to earn money, to cover the tuition and living expenses she lacked during this summer vacation. Otherwise, she could not step into university.
That shop in the morning offered generous pay, which was why she had gone for the interview despite knowing today would be unlucky.
Of course, even staying home, she would face other troubles—not necessarily better than now.
A soft sigh drifted through the fog, but the worry weighing on her heart only grew heavier.
In another four hours, she would survive her birthday.
Tomorrow… tomorrow should be better.
Of course, in these few hours, she absolutely could not get injured again. That would delay her job hunt.
She desperately needed a job. If it included food and lodging, that would be even better, saving her on meals and transport.
As Yu Ruoyin pondered, a thick bloody stench suddenly drifted into her nostrils, like the smell of blood.
Her injury should not have been severe, but the bloody smell was strong.
Yu Ruoyin covered her nose, suppressing her breathing that grew rough from fear. She widened her eyes, straining to discern movements in the darkness.
It was too dark.
Yu Ruoyin not only saw no one but felt her heart leap to her throat from the excessive dimness.
Her calves trembled uncontrollably. Earlier, she had not wanted to get up; now, she could not stand.
She crawled forward a bit, and the worst possibilities flooded her mind.
There might be a corpse nearby—perhaps more than one—and the killer might not have left.
Yu Ruoyin crawled forward on all fours, enduring her fear, keeping her breathing light and slow.
Suddenly, her back sank under a weight.
Yu Ruoyin whipped her head back. In the pitch black, she saw nothing, only felt a force pressing her down harder, forcing her arched waist to collapse and her arms to fully flatten against the ground.
It was like a stone was pinning her, the growing weight about to crush her into the mud.
“No…” A cry of resistance escaped her throat.
She had just uttered one word when her open mouth filled with a gust of icy wind carrying shards of ice, blocking her mouth.
The ice shards melted in her mouth and flowed into her body as she swallowed.
Her limbs instantly turned ice-cold, her body temperature dropping lower and lower. Her tongue froze to her teeth.
The air in her chest grew scarcer. Yu Ruoyin desperately sniffed through her nose but caught no lifesaving breath. Her breathing was cut off as if by a hand.
Yu Ruoyin struggled to move her fingers, slowly inching them toward her chest.
She had not yet found her missing grandmother, had not grown up properly, and did not want to die.
Her fading consciousness could no longer support thought. Her increasingly heavy eyelids warned that life was slipping away. In her daze, she heard a clear, cold female voice: “Disperse.”
The single short word seemed to float from the horizon. Yu Ruoyin wondered if she had misheard, but at that instant, the thick fog truly began to dissipate, and the force on her back gradually lessened.
Once her limbs could move, Yu Ruoyin instinctively reached back.
She wanted to find whoever had harmed her, but she grasped only air.
No one?
The pressure on her spine had not fully vanished. Could it be… not human?
Yu Ruoyin did not quite believe in ghosts and gods, but after eighteen years of misfortune, she somewhat believed in fate.
She had seen some horror movies. In that instant, scenes from them flashed in her mind.
Her body stiffened in place. A chill seeped into her collar, making her shudder uncontrollably.
As Yu Ruoyin panicked from her suspicions, a voice suddenly broke the silence: “Are you alright?”
The soft, gentle tone hooked her ears.
Yu Ruoyin’s eyes seemed pulled by fine threads from her ears, slowly turning toward the source.
She first saw a section of fair, slender ankle. The fog had just cleared somewhat, the environment still dim, but that patch of fairness stood out clearly, imprinting deeply in her eyes.
Yu Ruoyin had never seen skin so white and soft like jade. Just looking made her fingertips itch to touch it, as if bewitched.
Bewitched!
Yu Ruoyin startled. A sensitive string in her heart was yanked hard.
Deep night, thick bloody smell, eerie voice, a woman appearing suddenly—these could paint a horror short film.
Yu Ruoyin suddenly recalled another important thing: the thick bloody stench that had nearly engulfed her had vanished.
This was not something natural conditions could achieve.
The heavy night grew chilly. It was clearly midsummer’s heat, yet her body hair stood on end from the chill.
Yu Ruoyin’s pupils contracted sharply, her neck stiffening.
She dared not move or investigate the woman’s identity.
Yu Ruoyin hesitated for a long while before steeling her resolve.
She suddenly buried her head low, lips nearly kissing the ground. With palms pressed down, she slowly turned her head in the opposite direction from the woman and crawled away.
Yu Ruoyin had not crawled far when a pair of hands pulled her up, followed by an anxious voice of concern: “You’re injured?”
The hands on her wrists were careful, using almost no force as if afraid to hurt her.
Strangely, though Yu Ruoyin struggled with force, she could not shake them off. She instinctively looked at the hand trapping her.
The woman’s hand was beautiful, with distinct bones, fine, white, and tender.
But the fingertips had a faint red, like deliberately applied rouge or bloodstains.
Blood! It must be blood!!!
Yu Ruoyin screamed inwardly. Her face turned deathly pale, nearly fainting with eyes rolling back.
From fear, her steps staggered uncontrollably.
The woman drew closer and caught her in an embrace.
Warmth seeped through the fabric onto her skin.
Yu Ruoyin froze momentarily, then instinctively gripped the woman’s wrist.
That wrist was slender and soft, seemingly without much strength—completely unlike the force that had pulled her up.
But that was not the point. The point was the skin on her wrist was warm.
Ghosts shouldn’t have temperature, right?
Yu Ruoyin rummaged through horror movie plots in her memory. Before she could relax, the voice sounded again: “Are you injured? Does it hurt?”
The woman’s voice was truly pleasant, but what gripped Yu Ruoyin’s ears more was the urgency and worry in it.
Yu Ruoyin’s gaze lifted uncontrollably, and the instant she saw the woman’s face, her heart clenched.
It was no horror scene but an exceedingly beautiful face.
She was not very young, with a few curled black strands falling from her updo, exuding mature charm everywhere.
Her eyes, darker than ink, shimmered with appealing moisture like black crystal beads soaked in water—monochrome yet dazzling.
Yu Ruoyin stared at those eyes in a daze. Only after a long moment did she notice the small red mole at the outer corner of the woman’s left eye.
Looking closer, beneath that red mole was a pink six-petaled flower.
The woman’s skin was like white jade, but the skin at her eye corner had a few small patches of pinkish hue.
The pink was faint, only visible up close, but beautiful, arranged intriguingly.
The pink patches perfectly resembled petals pieced together into a flower, with the little red mole right at the flower’s heart.
She did not look like a ghost; she looked like a sprite.
Though Yu Ruoyin had never seen a ghost or a sprite.
While Yu Ruoyin was lost in thought, the woman had already felt over her entire arm: “Why aren’t you speaking? Is it too painful?”
Yu Ruoyin did not like being too close to strangers. Unexpectedly, she did not mind the woman near her much—perhaps that was the sprite’s power.
Yu Ruoyin tended to overthink anyway, and with the eerie atmosphere and the woman’s overly friendly attitude, the voices in her head were numerous enough for a brawl.
She still did not answer. She shrank her neck, her eyes circling the surroundings repeatedly. Her intent to slip away was too obvious. The woman frowned deeply: “You’re afraid of me.”
The tone was too affirmative, not a question.
Yu Ruoyin looked over following the voice and caught the loneliness in those eyes. Her heart trembled for no reason: “No, I’m not.”
She denied the woman’s query, but the woman did not grow happy—though she did not press further either.
Yu Ruoyin planned her escape route, but she could not break free from the woman’s palm. The woman neither harmed her nor released her.
They stalemated in the darkness. Suddenly, the woman gave her a kind smile: “You seem to need a job.”
“?” The seemingly kind smile chilled Yu Ruoyin to the bone. This woman seemed to know quite a bit about her.
The woman ignored Yu Ruoyin’s wary eyes and smiled faintly: “I’m Jiang Huaining. I’m neither a ghost nor a sprite. I might be your boss next.”
She!
She seemed able to hear her thoughts.
Yu Ruoyin looked at Jiang Huaining in terror. She instinctively yanked her hand back hard. A flash of dimness in Jiang Huaining’s eyes—unexpectedly, she did not hold on and let go as Yu Ruoyin struggled.
Yu Ruoyin quickly withdrew her wrist completely and bolted without hesitation in the escape direction she had chosen. She had just taken one step when blue flames erupted at the spot on her wrist where Jiang Huaining had gripped it.
Eerie blue flames clung to her wrist, burning away her entire sleeve in an instant. Strangely, her arm felt no heat—only cold, the chill seeping into her bones, forcing her steps to halt.
This sensation was familiar; she had just felt it moments ago.
Before Yu Ruoyin could think of a way to extinguish the flames, Jiang Huaining reached out and gripped her wrist again.
Surprisingly, once Jiang Huaining held her, the flames vanished, the chill dispersed, replaced by an undeniable warmth.
If not for the remnant scrap of sleeve fabric hanging from her shoulder, she might have convinced herself it was all an illusion, but…
Yu Ruoyin hurriedly glanced at Jiang Huaining and nervously swallowed.
Though Jiang Huaining denied it, if she was neither sprite nor ghost, how to explain all this?
Jiang Huaining could fool her ears, but not her eyes.
She was neither blind nor foolish.
“I didn’t think you were silly.” Yu Ruoyin’s thoughts were interrupted as Jiang Huaining tilted her head and stared up into her eyes.
Yu Ruoyin could even see her own reflection in Jiang Huaining’s pupils, and she could see the pleasure at the bottom of her eyes. Compared to Jiang Huaining’s good mood, Yu Ruoyin’s mood was a bit less wonderful. She looked at Jiang Huaining in astonishment. “You, you know what I was thinking?”
Jiang Huaining neither admitted nor denied it.
She smiled at Yu Ruoyin, picked up the bag that Yu Ruoyin had just dropped on the ground, and looked at the resume peeking out from the corner. “I can really give you a job.”
Yu Ruoyin didn’t dare make a sound.
She didn’t know why Jiang Huaining had sought her out, but she knew Jiang Huaining didn’t seem human.
The two words “non-human” were enough to make her feel fear.
She should escape, but where could she run to?
Jiang Huaining seemed truly able to read hearts. As soon as the thought arose in Yu Ruoyin’s mind, Jiang Huaining’s voice followed. “Since you think I’m not human, then the smart you should know it’s hard for you to run away.”
She was still smiling, a kind smile, plus that unreasonably beautiful face.
Normally, she might have secretly looked a few more times, but on this extremely eerie night, Yu Ruoyin only wanted to flee.
But Jiang Huaining was right.
If she really was some kind of sprite, it would be hard for her to escape.
Jiang Huaining read her thoughts again. She handed the bag back to Yu Ruoyin, and with the now-free hand, she patted Yu Ruoyin’s head. “Be good. I won’t harm you.”
Yu Ruoyin noticed that the bright red on Jiang Huaining’s ten fingers was slowly fading. It didn’t seem to be blood.
Jiang Huaining’s hand was still on her head, and Yu Ruoyin subconsciously sniffed. Sure enough, there was no bloody smell.
Was it a bit too far away?
Yu Ruoyin tilted her head up, tiptoed slightly, and her nose tip chased after the hand that Jiang Huaining had lifted, almost touching Jiang Huaining’s fingertip.
Jiang Huaining watched her actions, her brow arching up slightly as her fingertip smoothly slid over Yu Ruoyin’s delicate nose tip.
It tickled, and it was slightly cool.
Clearly, the hand Jiang Huaining had placed on her wrist was very warm, the heat climbing into her skin and driving out the lingering chill.
As if possessed by a ghost, Yu Ruoyin chased after her fingertip and pressed against it again, trying to feel the temperature of Jiang Huaining’s fingertip with her nose tip.
Jiang Huaining was stunned for an instant, then laughed again, her soft murmur drifting to her ear. “Little dog.”
