To Covet (GL) - Chapter 8

“Let’s talk outside,” Yu Zhouwan stood still, the tone of her voice softening. She lightly pushed Feng Jia’s shoulder, “Don’t stand in the draft.”

Feng Jia, sensing my “abrupt” presence, raised her eyebrows and glanced at me expressionlessly, her fingertips casually fiddling with the silver chain hanging on her wrist. When she sat there, the tips of her hair just brushed her shoulders, and the water droplets on her glasses reflected light, making it impossible for me to see where her gaze was focused.

My gaze followed Yu Zhouwan from the living room to the entrance, my feet rooted to the spot, unable to move.

She had a very blunt temperament. The female teachers I had encountered from childhood to adulthood all had a sharp light in their eyes, giving the impression that they were shrewd and capable, and could make decisions at any time. But Feng Jia was now facing her incompatibility head-on, and showing her helplessness so thoroughly.

They went into the elevator together and went downstairs, as seen through the peephole. I held my breath and pushed the door open.

The corridor was very quiet. I leaned on the handrail at the second floor entrance and watched their movements.

Yu Zhouwan looked up at the rain, and Feng Jia took out an umbrella from her bag, signaling her to walk with her.

“Let’s talk here,” Yu Zhouwan sighed, “The rain is too heavy.”

“I drove here.”

“My mom will be back in a while. It’s not good if she sees us.”

I regretted not taking an umbrella from the shoe cabinet before going out. After hesitating for a moment, I didn’t have the courage to face the torrential rain head-on.

When I came downstairs with an umbrella, the two people in the corridor had disappeared.

I wandered along the open-air parking space, my ankles inevitably stained with mud.

“I can’t do it.”

Hearing a familiar voice, I immediately squatted down like a mushroom, hiding between two cars.

“You’ve done what you should do, Feng Jia, you don’t need to apologize,” Yu Zhouwan leaned against the car door, “I’ve said I don’t like that. Give me some time, I’ll figure out what I want, let’s both calm down.”

I was confused. Just as I was trying to piece together the context, a pair of shoes and their reflection suddenly appeared in the small puddle on the ground.

“Why did you come down?”

“To bring you an umbrella.” My hand reacted faster than my brain. Before I finished speaking, an umbrella was already over her head. Although it didn’t help much, she had been drenched by the rain while leaning against the car door to talk.

I affectionately grabbed her and tidied the hair that covered her eyes, glancing at Feng Jia, who was chasing after her with an umbrella, deliberately ignoring her.

Yu Zhouwan tightened my hand, and I sensibly tilted the umbrella towards her, playing the role of a caring sister.

When I came out of the shower, the takeout food was already cold. She didn’t like the pungent seasoning, so she got up and went to the kitchen to take a few slices of pork floss toast from the refrigerator and put them in the microwave.

After Feng Jia left, a low air pressure always permeated between Yu Zhouwan and me. Before clearing the table and eating, neither of us found a topic to break the oppressive atmosphere.

“Yu Keyi, you still haven’t answered me, what did you go downstairs for just now?”

“I was afraid you’d be bullied,” I propped my chin with my left hand, a disposable chopstick in my mouth, “She looked fierce, I thought she was coming to get revenge.”

She ignored my joke.

“So who is she?”

“One of my former teachers.” Yu Zhouwan was in a bad mood, “Did you hear me talking to her?”

“Hear what?” I carried out the act of playing dumb to the end, “When I came down, I saw you standing in the rain. I didn’t dare to interrupt you.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’ve been very unhappy just now.” Ignorance was the best probe at this moment.

“It’s hard to be happy when there are problems that can’t be solved.”

“So Teacher Feng was paying a home visit?”

I was almost disgusted by my feigned stupidity, and I shivered unconsciously, moving my shoulders.

“No, it’s a personal matter.”

She washed an apple and cut it in half, always absent-mindedly trying to avoid the question. Even when I asked about other things, she still answered perfunctorily, her eyes occasionally drifting towards the entrance. Feng Jia took her thoughts away when she slammed the door and left.

“You said that if I helped you lie, you would tell me,” I pouted, picking up the last thin slice of meat from the rice noodles in front of me.

Yu Zhouwan chewed on the dry bread and pushed her bowl of curry chicken and the apple in front of me.

Compared to her, I was like a garbage can that accepted everything.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“The seasoning is too strong, I don’t like it.” She wrinkled her nose, “Yu Keyi, if you once thought you had a good relationship with someone, and then found out she wasn’t the person you knew, what would you do?”

“If you don’t have common topics, you have to separate. People always change.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she shook her head in denial, “Maybe you don’t understand, it’s probably… You know, people can’t look at things without subjectivity. The world you know can’t be the same as the real one, and it’s the same with people. There will always be a gap between the person you have in mind and the real person.”

This was easy to understand, so I nodded and waited for her to continue.

But Yu Zhouwan suddenly stopped talking.

“So you and Feng Jia quarreled… because you felt that the person you knew was different from her real inner self?”

I put down my chopsticks, moved closer, and leaned my upper body towards her.

“Alas, forget it, I need to think about it myself,” Yu Zhouwan immediately got up and walked to the bedroom, “I’ve been under a lot of pressure recently, I’m overreacting.”

I narrowed my eyes and stood up as well.

Yu Zhouwan hurriedly finished washing up. Seeing me standing still by the bed, she softly urged me to go to sleep, then turned her back to me and lay down on the bed.

The extent to which the mattress sank under the weight of her body meant that another person had broken into this territory.

“What are you doing?”

Yu Zhouwan suddenly woke up. By the time she turned her head, I was already lying behind her—less than a shoulder’s width away.

“Go back to your own room to sleep.” The hair tie holding her ponytail slipped down, less than ten centimeters from the tip, hanging precariously.

The guess that began to arise from her sudden avoidance was confirmed at this moment.

“Don’t touch me.” She raised her arm to cover her waist.

“Why?” I sat sideways with my legs stretched out casually.

“I don’t like being too close to someone when I sleep.”

She wasn’t satisfied with her excuse, but the words had already been spoken, and there was no way to take them back.

“Forget it, I’ll go to your room.”

“I want to talk to you.” I grabbed her hand.

Yu Zhouwan returned to her gentle and amiable appearance as a sister, tidying the broken hair in front of my forehead: “Tell me, what do you want to talk about?”

“Is she very strict with you?”

“Who?”

“Aunt Shi.”

This strange address made Yu Zhouwan take a few seconds to react.

“It’s okay,” she shook out the crumpled quilt and turned off the light, “Do you think it’s very strict? Maybe I’m used to it, I don’t feel it.”

“So where do you go every night?” I rubbed my itchy nose, “Can I know? You promised me, and I promised you I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Sometimes blunt innocence is a weapon.

“There’s nothing to be curious about, it’s just my own private matter.” Yu Zhouwan closed her eyes and lay down, very impatient with the repeated inquiries.

“Is it related to Teacher Feng?”

Even though directly revealing the secret would make the other person fall into unbearable embarrassment and pain, I still took a detour.

Before I finished speaking, Yu Zhouwan suddenly sat up. We looked at each other, sitting still for a long time, and she lay back on the pillow.

“Maybe.” She almost murmured, “You… forget it, if you really want to know, promise me not to tell anyone.”

I turned over and faced the wall.

Yu Zhouwan was silent. When I turned to look again, she was once again motionless with her back to me, not knowing whether she was asleep or awake.

I held my breath and slowly raised a hand to rest on her waist. A faint light leaked through the curtains, making the dark part of the shadow deeper and the bright part blurry to the point of being negligible.

Yu Zhouwan’s body trembled, and I took advantage of her hesitation to tighten the restraint of my arms, trapping her in the tight, seamless net between skin and skin.

Her breathing suddenly became clear, trying to delineate the boundary between the two of us on the bed.

I pressed my face against her back shoulder, my lips against the thin pajamas and fragrant hair.

Yu Zhouwan put her hand on my wrist, and her other hand grabbed my fingers, desperately trying to shake them off like tearing apart a dried piece of glue.

“Yu Keyi!” Her anxiety and the dead silence of the night were so incompatible, “Let go!”

The way she tried to hide her secrets, pushing people away, was so annoying. The way she lost her composure and panicked—like a prey trapped in a trap, the constant resistance made people feel pity, but even more so, they wanted to inflict torment on her, to see her struggle with all her might.

“Yu Zhouwan.”

While she was sitting there propped up on her hands, my hands had already formed a complete rope around her waist and abdomen, firmly trapping her in place, and tightening more and more.

I couldn’t see how she interpreted her panicked expression, I could only feel the frequency of breathing in the soft abdomen that was close to my arms gradually decreasing, but the amplitude of the rise and fall was getting bigger and bigger, like the prelude to oxygen deprivation.

“Yu Zhouwan, I know, you like Feng Jia, you’re dating her, aren’t you?”

My nose rubbed against the skin of her neck, and fine beads of sweat kept seeping out from there.

Yu Zhouwan was a person who cherished her image very much, but at this moment she was kneeling in front of me, her nightgown rolled up to the root of her thighs, but she didn’t have time to tidy it up.

I really wanted to do it for her, to experience the tactile sensation of that fair skin that revealed red bl00d streaks, but I finally held back the thought of continuing to provoke her, because Yu Zhouwan’s body was completely stiff, and the sweat made her body temperature drop sharply.

“I know, you like women, don’t you?” I resisted the urge to bite her shoulder blade, and simply rubbed my cheek against it.