The Woman I Was Flirting With Turned Out To Be A Chaebol Heiress - Chapter 1
At three in the morning, the sound of plastic rain boots on the wet road was jarringly loud, causing Li Nianyi to instinctively lighten her steps.
The fine drizzle made a pleasant rustling sound on her umbrella, and the air was thick with the scent of rain.
But for some reason, Li Nianyi felt a faint unease. She tightened her grip on the plastic bag; the oden in the paper bowl was still steaming, making the skin on her knuckles slightly warm.
She felt her heart rate quicken. The subtle terror that had seized her when she was woken up from a nightmare half an hour ago began to creep up her scalp again. Yet, the more tense the moment, the more prone she was to letting her mind wander.
Li Nianyi couldn’t help but recall the dream she’d just had. It was a little hazy, but she vaguely remembered it involved being chased. Perhaps it was due to recent stress, but she remembered every muscle in her body being taut, running forward desperately as if her life depended on it, fearing she would be torn apart and devoured by some nameless beast or grabbed by the hair by a terrifying serial killer the next second…
Once her thoughts started to scatter, they wouldn’t stop. In the pitch black of the night, the tiny streetlights were refracted by the rain into blurry halos, and the water hitting the manhole cover strangely gave the illusion of footsteps…
Weather like this, combined with the time of night, made it all too easy to conjure up scenes from horror novels or movies. In certain moments, frames from American Psycho flashed through her mind.
Lost in thought, her rented small apartment building slowly came into view, and the tension in Li Nianyi’s heart eased slightly. She began to think she should have bought a bottle of ice-cold coke just now.
But the next moment, a heavy thud exploded behind her, shattering her brief moment of calm, and instantly, water splashed everywhere.
Before her brain could even register it, her body rigidly spun around. The person lying on the ground stared blankly with wide, lifeless eyes. The familiar pale face and dark red bl00d stabbed at Li Nianyi’s nerves.
BOOM!!!
Some kind of unspeakable horror exploded in fireworks of chaos within Li Nianyi’s mind.
The slight drizzle of the early morning hours was subtly turning into a heavier rain without her noticing.
Instinctively, she looked up. The rain blurred Li Nianyi’s eyes, but she still caught sight of a vanishing black shadow by the railing on the seventh floor. A silver-white accessory on that person’s neck glinted conspicuously twice in the dark.
Li Nianyi used all her strength to suppress a scream. She dragged her semi-paralyzed limbs and turned to run frantically back towards the twenty-four-hour convenience store she had just left.
The killer was still in the apartment building!
Her mind was blank, a reaction born of pure survival instinct. The convenience store was only across a not-too-wide road from the apartment. The will to survive drove her to an astonishing speed. Her heart pounded like a drum, each beat violently hitting her eardrums. Fear surged over her heart like the rising tide.
Calm down, calm down…
Li Nianyi repeatedly tried to stabilize her scattered thoughts, like splashing water. Finally, the faint light source grew closer and closer.
The convenience store’s glass door slid open automatically upon sensing someone approaching. The clerk sitting behind the counter, stifling a yawn, looked up in confusion when she saw the person rushing in.
“Li, why are you back again… Eh? Did something happen? What…”
“Hurry! Lock the door!”
Li Nianyi had never thought her voice could be so sharp. She knew without looking how distorted her face must be. Her long hair, soaked by the rain, clung haphazardly to her cheeks, making her look like a water ghost tangled in seaweed.
The clerk was startled awake by her hysterical appearance. But before the person could react, the frantic Li Nianyi dashed behind the counter, snatched the key for the automatic door from the drawer, vaulted over the counter, and with trembling hands, jammed the key into the lock to secure the door.
Having done all this, Li Nianyi collapsed weakly onto the floor. Only then did she finally taste a hint of metallic sweetness in her mouth. Sometime during the chaos, she had bitten her lower lip raw.
“Li, what on earth happened?!”
The clerk was a little overwhelmed; Li Nianyi’s state was genuinely terrifying.
“Call the police! Hurry, call the police! I just saw… saw someone fall from a building.”
For some reason, the word “murder” went through a circuit in Li Nianyi’s mouth before she uttered a different term.
She looked up at the glass door. The reflections of the brightly lit signs outside, shimmering in the pooled water, were chopped into fragmented bloodstains by the fine rain, briefly seeming to merge with the corpse she had just seen.
The clerk immediately realized the gravity of the situation and nervously called the police.
But suddenly, Li Nianyi realized she had just made a fatal mistake. Instantly, the hairs on her body stood on end.
Through the curtain of rain, a woman in a black plastic raincoat slowly walked down to the ground floor.
Her gaze swept over the scattered oden and the overturned cheap transparent umbrella on the ground, before she walked straight towards the body on the floor. She crouched down and searched the corpse for a few moments. Seemingly not finding what she wanted, she then vanished into the night as if a ghost, all in a matter of minutes.
The three AM rain had no color, until it washed away the bl00d under the body.
When Li Nianyi emerged from the police station, she was still in a daze. She felt everything that night had been as absurd as a dream. The clerk who had accompanied her to give her statement patted Li Nianyi’s shoulder:
“Li, you’re not looking well. Why don’t you go back and rest? Take the afternoon shift off, or adjust your schedule with the manager.”
After all, anyone who had witnessed such an event probably wouldn’t be in the right frame of mind to go to work.
Li Nianyi leaned on the clerk and steadied herself.
“I’m fine, you go on ahead.”
She reassured the concerned young woman repeatedly that she would take care of herself before finally seeing her off.
She squeezed her dry eyes shut, but the sight of Kazuko Suzuki’s wide, dead eyes, when she met her tragic end, stubbornly refused to leave her mind.
Yes, the girl who died this morning was someone Li Nianyi knew.
She was Li Nianyi’s senior in her program, Kazuko Suzuki.
As the sole witness to the victim’s fall and someone considered a “close” member of the deceased’s social circle, Li Nianyi was thoroughly embroiled in a homicide case.
Heaven knows, Li Nianyi was the kind of person who feared trouble the most, yet she had stumbled upon the most troublesome thing imaginable. Moreover, being a witness didn’t sound like a role with a long life expectancy.
Especially since the police officer had explicitly stated that because the case involved murder, she might be questioned again at any time for details, or even asked to participate in a crime scene reconstruction. Her life was unlikely to be peaceful going forward.
The apartment where a murder had just occurred was definitely uninhabitable for the time being. Lost and forlorn, she checked into a small hotel nearby.
Fortunately, it was the weekend. Although she had a part-time job, at least she didn’t have to return to the lab to organize data or attend meetings. Thinking this, even Li Nianyi herself felt her fate was miserable.
Inside the hotel room, Li Nianyi lay on the dry, soft bed. As her tightly wound nerves slowly relaxed, sleepiness washed over her. She struggled to peel off her sweat-soaked white T-shirt and then drowsily burrowed under the covers.
If not for the sudden event that day, she would have been enjoying a luxurious second sleep after her late-night snack… Her consciousness blurred further the more she thought about it. The bright white ceiling slowly shrank to a sliver and quickly disappeared.
In a trance, Li Nianyi seemed to open her eyes again, but everything was covered in a veil, making it impossible to see clearly.
“Name?”
“…Li Nianyi.”
“Age?”
“23.”
“Address?”
“4-chome, Hakusan, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo.”
“You knew the deceased?”
“Yes, Suzuki was my senior. We were both students in Professor Tanaka’s Social Psychology lab…”
Li Nianyi realized she was dreaming. She was back in the police station being questioned.
Actually, at first, she hadn’t wanted to disclose that she had also seen a third person at the scene. Li Nianyi only wanted to spend her two years in Japan peacefully, avoiding getting involved in trouble, especially this kind of thing the less involvement, the better.
However, the situation when she fled was too urgent; the oden and the umbrella in her hand had been dropped in her haste. The killer must have known someone witnessed the act, and might even be able to pinpoint her residence.
In this situation, she could only feel safe if the killer was caught.
Thus, the falling accident escalated into a murder case.
The female officer in front of her repeatedly inquired about every detail, forcing Li Nianyi’s mind to be pulled back to that moment over and over again. Across the height of seven floors and the blurry rain, she continuously zoomed in on the frozen image in her mind.
“The person was wearing a raincoat, the hood was very large, and they were probably wearing a mask; I couldn’t see their face clearly. They were quite tall, the tall and slender type, but not frail looking… Oh, right, they were wearing a necklace around their neck, it looked like it was made of metal…”
Li Nianyi was slightly nearsighted, but she had gone out hastily and wasn’t wearing her glasses or contacts. Looking back, she was surprised that she remembered so many details.
Suddenly, Li Nianyi felt an inexplicable coldness. She pulled out of her memory and, looking up, found that the female officer had disappeared. The small witness interrogation room was suddenly much wider. The walls dissolved and disintegrated as she looked around, replaced by the chilling apartment building in the night and the corpse with its eyes wide open in death at her feet.
The black shadow in the raincoat was still indistinct, even more blurred, but Li Nianyi could feel that person looking at her, a cold, slimy, snake like gaze fixed on her.
Move! Move!
Li Nianyi screamed internally, but her feet were nailed to the floor. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move an inch. She could only watch helplessly as the black mass slowly descended the stairs, while she stood rooted to the spot like a captive, unable even to close her eyes.
Closer, and closer.
Li Nianyi thought she heard the sound of water droplets sliding off the person’s raincoat and dropping at her feet. She widened her eyes, desperately trying to see the person’s face, but the mist filling her vision obstructed her view, leaving only the cold gleam flickering at the person’s neck.
Gasp, gasp…
Li Nianyi felt the oxygen in her chest rapidly depleting. Her heart pounded faster and faster. The black shadow kept walking towards her until it was almost touching her skin.
Between the crushing weight and the terror, Li Nianyi suddenly struggled out of the nightmare.
She opened her weary eyes, her heart pounding violently, a thin layer of sweat covering her body. This sleep was worse than none; she felt more tired after waking up. Li Nianyi tried to empty her mind and relax her taut body, granting herself a moment of reprieve.
Reaching out, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table and checked the time. It was already noon, but she could still make it to her afternoon shift at the convenience store.
Li Nianyi decided not to ask for time off. She still needed to earn money and eat. Dragging her heavy body out of bed, she grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed to the convenience store, only to be utterly shocked with the result: she was being fired.
“Why?!!”