The Cold, Aloof Dominatrix After Parasitically Entering a Rich Family - Chapter 55

Chapter 55: The Ugly Doll: “Ah!!! Monster!!!”

It was 11 PM in Z City. Neon lights blurred into hazy circles in the damp, cold air. The colorful night lights of the bar street still flashed wildly.

Deafening electronic music pulsed intermittently through the door seams onto the street, mixing with the smells of alcohol and perfume. Lightly-dressed men and women stood on the roadside, laughing loudly and waiting for taxis.

Tu Si thought their sequined mini-skirts under their coats were pretty, but at the moment, she had no patience to look at them again.

The navigation app had taken her back and forth on this street three times. Due to the weather, the bare trees by the road had entered dormancy, and the little grasses that weren’t frozen to death were just barely clinging to life. They certainly didn’t have the leisure to help her find someone!

For the first time, the Cuscuta spirit was alone among a crowd of people without the company of plants. Relying on this retarded navigation app, which she barely understood, she repeatedly got lost in the same concrete jungle.

Finally, a vendor selling stuffed dolls by the bar entrance couldn’t stand it anymore. She came over and peered at Tu Si’s screen.

“Sis, your navigation is set for driving!” The vendor looked at Tu Si as if she were simple-minded. “You’re on a skateboard now; you should switch to walking mode. Click here… Yes, yes, yes!”

Ah!

The navigation finally zoomed out, and Tu Si could precisely see the little blue arrow representing herself.

She bowed to the vendor in thanks.

Seeing this, the vendor confirmed again that the young woman wasn’t quite right in the head and grabbed her arm: “Look at this doll. She really likes you, and she can even play the violin. Do you want to take her with you?”

Tu Si’s eyes widened in disbelief: “I can?”

Although Jie-jie told me not to randomly accept gifts from others, this doll really seems to want to come with me! If I take it back and then give it to Gong Shayu, doesn’t that mean I haven’t accepted a gift from anyone?

Jie-jie accepted it.

Vendor: “Of course.”

“Okay, thank you.” Without another word, Tu Si hugged the ugly-cute doll and whirled away like a gust of wind.

The vendor, left in disarray in the cold wind: “…………”

…

The biting autumn wind howled past, slicing over Gong Shayu’s cheeks like a knife. Her thick black hair whipped wildly in the wind, revealing the dark red beneath.

In the massive square, Gong Shayu’s black silhouette was even colder than the statue in front of her.

She sat quietly on the steps, her head slightly tilted back. Only the tiny patch of crimson at her fingertips reminded Tu Si that this was a living being.

Tu Si’s heart involuntarily slowed by two beats. Half a beat was due to the joy of finally finding Gong Shayu, and a beat and a half was because of the deadly silence radiating from her back.

“Jie-jie?” Tu Si called out softly from behind. Before the wind could scatter her voice, she added: “Wife!”

The word “Wife” was completely instinctual for the Cuscuta spirit. She felt that the current Gong Shayu needed that address.

Gong Shayu turned around. Seeing Tu Si, she was visibly stunned for a moment, though no one saw it in the dim night.

“Why are you here?” Gong Shayu asked, her tone flat.

Tu Si pushed her skateboard forward: “Came on my skateboard.”

Gong Shayu looked down at the worn board with its childish cartoon stickers—

For some reason, that familiar, righteously silly demeanor was like a warm current. Her body, which had been frozen by the cold wind, felt a corner of itself silently melting.

She didn’t correct her: “The driving instructor is booked for tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

Tu Si nodded and asked: “Jie-jie, why aren’t you going home?”

Gong Shayu’s breath hitched. Tu Si saw it clearly this time.

“Jie-jie, why aren’t you going home?”

Ten years ago, Gong Shayu had asked Gong Yinxue the very same question.

She swallowed and uttered the exact same words Gong Yinxue had used back then: “I heard the music fountain turns on at midnight. I wanted to see it.”

“Really?” Tu Si’s eyes suddenly lit up. She walked around the statue: “Jie-jie, this looks like a girl playing the violin.”

“But why is she covering her eyes?”

“Because… only that way can she truly be herself.” Gong Shayu’s gaze returned to the statue’s violin. “Tu Si, do you know whose broken-stringed violin that is in the living room?”

Tu Si tilted her head, thought for a moment, and her gaze shifted from the statue back to Gong Shayu’s face: “It’s yours.”

“!” Gong Shayu was shocked: “How do you know?”

Tu Si looked at Gong Shayu with the same look the vendor had given her and smiled: “Because that’s your house.”

Gong Shayu: “…”

It sounds right, somehow.

Tu Si’s thought process was always clean. Her ideas were untainted by worldly pollution. She seemed capable of seeing the essence of any problem from the simplest perspective.

At the same time, she possessed both a genuine naivety and an easy contentment. Simply put, even when she frankly expressed her materialistic side, Gong Shayu didn’t dislike it, but instead wanted to preserve that innocence.

“I used to not hate the violin,” Gong Shayu added.

Tu Si: “I know that too. Humans have a phrase called ‘saying one thing but meaning another’. That must be what Jie-jie looks like.”

“…” Gong Shayu didn’t bother correcting her on the ‘human’ terminology, merely asking in surprise, “Where did you learn that?”

Tu Si: “Jie-jie must really like the violin. Otherwise, even though the violin is broken and damaged, Jie-jie still treats it like a treasure and puts it in a glass case.”

“!!!”

Gong Shayu froze, as if struck by lightning.

The few broken strings on the violin—they had been like a nightmare, intertwining in the deepest part of her memory for years. They were a warning, a spur, a coercion. She had to cut herself off from her past!

In her dreams of the old banyan tree, she always saw herself playing the violin. If she hadn’t spent all her time in the music room, she surely would have discovered the abnormality at home earlier. If she had come home just an hour earlier every day, maybe her mother and sister wouldn’t have met with disaster.

So, Gong Shayu hung that broken-stringed violin where she could see it the moment she opened her eyes, precisely to let those grotesque wounds tear open and remind her, day and night.

They would transform into fierce whips in the darkness, lashing her soul. In the daylight, they would turn into a belief, granting her infinite power.

She herself had never realized that her past self had loved the violin.

Until today’s encounter with Xu Zhixia!

Heaven knows how much effort it took for her to control her facial expression when she saw the other person stand before her and say: If you hadn’t given up the violin back then…

Yes… who would care about the Gong Shayu who only knew how to foolishly play the violin.

“Tu Si, many things in this world, you can’t have just because you like them.” Gong Shayu smiled at Tu Si. She suddenly didn’t want to go for a follow-up check-up next week.

Tu Si smiled back. As their eyes met, she raised her hand and stroked Gong Shayu’s side profile, which was covered in red hair: “You can. I like Jie-jie, and I have her now.”

The tone was so certain that Gong Shayu couldn’t find a reason to refute her. Only one thought occupied her blank mind: To hell with the follow-up check-up!

Suddenly, several beams of bright light swept over them, followed by a burst of passionate violin music that interrupted the restless night.

Midnight had arrived.

“The music fountain really turned on!!!” Tu Si’s naive excitement infected Gong Shayu, making her heartbeat follow the rhythm of the music.

“Jie-jie, here you go.” Tu Si handed the ugly-cute doll she had just gotten to Gong Shayu. “From now on, her name is Violin. Try her tone.”

Gong Shayu: “…”

I won’t do something so silly.

“No one’s here, Jie-jie. Don’t worry, I won’t laugh at you,” Tu Si said. Undeterred by the cold wind, she darted into the fountain to play in the water.

Gong Shayu froze in place: “…………”

She’s crazy!

The gray clown doll squinted at Gong Shayu. Looking closely, she noticed a small, dark-red, misshapen violin sewn onto the doll’s shoulder.

Gong Shayu ran her fingertip over it. The fountain music stopped at that moment. Her hand was still resting on the strings, and a new melody abruptly began.

It was her favorite piece of music. Gong Shayu drew back her hand in surprise. Perhaps due to the fountain’s old speakers or some other reason, the violin music also stopped immediately.

“Jie-jie, why did you stop? That was beautiful!” Tu Si’s hands, cupping the water column, also froze, the water droplets trickling through her fingers. “Keep playing! That was amazing!”

Gong Shayu, as if possessed, reached out and gently rubbed the little violin on the doll’s shoulder twice. The fountain music also emitted two low, deep sounds.

“Jie-jie, try again. She listens to you.” Tu Si, who had approached at some point, looked at Gong Shayu with encouraging eyes.

Miss Gong later recalled that she must have been frozen senseless that night, as she was genuinely encouraged. She touched the doll again, her fingers trembling, as if she were touching the strings for the very first time.

She didn’t notice that behind the light, a golden-yellow vine had silently climbed along the old speaker and reached its control panel.

Tu Si, slipping and sliding, ran wildly in the fountain. She had originally planned to take off her clothes and secretly stretch her true form, but remembering that Gong Shayu might stop her before the first step, she ran in the water in her sweater instead.

The broken violin in the living room had been repaired at some unknown point. It seemed to have grown wings, flying to Gong Shayu’s shoulder, merging with Miss Gong as it had countless times before.

Gong Shayu closed her eyes, her body swaying gently with the notes. Unfamiliar, familiar, long-ago, long-missed… a melody flowed little by little from her fingertips.

Tu Si, who had been circling the fountain, switched to circling Gong Shayu.

The Cuscuta spirit was utterly mesmerized by Gong Shayu.

Excluding those on TV, she had seen many human skins recently, including the refreshing and refined Peony spirit and the charming Peacock spirit. But so far, none were as beautiful and sexy as Gong Shayu at this moment.

The multi-colored lights flickered over her. The statue of the beauty on her back dissolved into a blur. Gong Shayu’s innate elegance stripped the entire world of its color.

Tu Si held her breath and slowly wrapped her arms around Gong Shayu’s waist from behind. The golden Joy Vine silently crept up Gong Shayu’s ankle, which was adorned with the diamond chain.

Her face slowly pressed against Gong Shayu’s back, her body swaying left and right with the person in her arms and the music.

Suddenly, a sharp soprano voice tore through the beautiful scene: “Ah!!! Monster!!!”