Chapter 1566: The Second Time
"There's another one after all."
It wasn't until her head heavily hit the stone pavement that she realized who had said those words.
That was the last thing Qiao Yuansi heard that evening. After that, everything turned into a silent pantomime. In the distance, sitting in the audience, was a world with deformed faces.
Fragments that were still remembered played in her memory so slowly that they seemed unreal.
Qiao Yuansi's foot kicked into the air, soundlessly striking the female staff member in the red uniform; a pair of hands fell and choked her neck, pressing her to the ground, immobilizing her; someone's high heels brutally and silently stepped into her stomach; her foot was held down, and heavy fingers forcibly pried open her eyelids.
That day was the first snowfall.
From the gloomy blue-grey sky, flakes of snow slowly swirled down. From the indiscernible tiny white dots high in the sky, they turned into increasingly large, blurred snow clumps; initially greyish white, they became orange under the streetlights, and finally deep blood-red in her eyes.
Jin Yan seemed to stumble and run away as they surged forward. When Qiao Yuansi managed to get up from the ground, coughing, the park was only her and the growing snow, and the increasingly deafening silence.
Her resistance had infuriated those people, turning the infection process into a prolonged, unnecessary beating and torture. Struggling to stand in her dizziness, Qiao Yuansi dragged her feet across her own trail of blood, step by step toward the park's exit, each step sending a pain like a spike into her tear glands.
The pedestrians she encountered on the way saw not her wounds but only glanced at her face; once they saw what they wanted, they turned and walked away.
Qiao Yuansi didn't even know how she made it home. She left her car outside the park, slowly dragging her body through the snow, and by the time she got home, her hands and feet were frozen like dead meat, as if they would break off if touched by anything warm.
Her hands had turned into two frozen pieces of dead flesh; she couldn't even pull out a book or hold a pen steadily. Yet, she struggled, piling up all the books she had read, all the objects she had used, all the records she had heard since her last recovery, on the dark red Persian carpet in the living room.
Though the most important one was missing.
Qiao Yuansi stumbled and fell to the ground, frantically turning over the pile of books, as snow, dirt, blood, and tears soaked the paper covers. That night, she passed out on the carpet, the pile of things like a bonfire of hope in the cold night, gradually extinguishing as the night deepened.
When she woke up the next afternoon, she sat on the carpet in a daze for a while, and besides the pain all over her body, that feeling of utter despair, like falling straight into hell, had vanished.
In the following two days, she had to take leave to recuperate at home; but that pile of records and books on the carpet, she didn't even touch them.
After a few days, Qiao Yuansi began to seriously consider the person, Shoreis.
Of course, she hadn't forgotten him, the posthuman from another apocalyptic world; she also knew that he did have some special means—last time, wasn't it because of him that she suffered so much unnecessary torment?
What if he comes back? After all, he still has eleven months left here. Judging from their previous time together, there's no guarantee he won't come back to see her before leaving.
If they just sit down and talk, she could still pretend to fool him, but Qiao Yuansi is not foolish—she can sense that if Shoreis finally can't resist coming back to see her after so long, it might be more than just a glance.
No, even if it's just a meal's time, she can't pretend for that long without exposing herself.
So, Qiao Yuansi specifically took out a day, prepared a notebook and pen, and sat down by the dining table. "Ah, I had just been infected at that time, and if I didn't quickly jot down those feelings, thoughts, and notes, I was afraid that I would forget them after a while. Even forgetting the details would be bad, because now if you ask me to mimic them, I can't say those words anymore."
Qiao Yuansi leaned on the arm of the sofa, laughter bubbling up in her chest like a series of bubbles, "gurgling" up. She had to suppress it hard to continue speaking.
"Speaking of which, you can only blame yourself," she said, tilting her head and sighing contentedly. "If you didn't come back, would you be in this mess?"
Shoreis supported himself on the table with both hands, still maintaining the same posture, staring straight at her. His face gradually turned whiter, as if snow fog had settled and accumulated on his skin, making the red at the corners of his eyes more and more thrilling.
He wanted to say something, but seemed to forget as his lips parted slightly. He raised his hand, his trembling fingertips slowly touching his eyes, nose, cheeks, and lower lip, as if trying to find those traces of blood through his sense of touch.
"If you didn't come back, we wouldn't cross paths again. You'd leave, and I wouldn't go looking for you. Who told you to come back? Come back, and you're likely to find something wrong with me... You threatened me yourself, saying that if I changed, you'd kill me." Qiao Yuansi snorted through her nose, still not losing her laughter. "Even this method was told by you. I acted in self-defense; you can understand, right?"
She paused, playing with a strand of her hair and smiling. "No more wandering in the future; it's a good thing for you. Besides... you're not at a loss."
Just as these words left her mouth, she saw a flash before her eyes—the chandelier on the living room ceiling was smashed, and the tiny shards of glass, like ice crystals, were swept into the storm, striking her body along with that figure.
Qiao Yuansi's head was "thunked" against the sofa, her throat tightly clamped by iron-like fingers; her oxygen was cut off in a blink of an eye, her blood vessels desperately expanding without nourishment—she struggled to push, but Shoreis' hand didn't budge.
What he was doing at this moment seemed like he wanted to kill her in anger, but he was utterly silent, without a trace of killing intent.
"You want to kill me?" Her broken, disjointed words were hard to hear clearly, "You... next, alone... I want to stay, be with you..."
Shoreis heard her clearly. His fingers heavily pressed on her trachea for several seconds; perhaps even he didn't realize that they were slowly loosening.
He lowered his head, his black hair hanging down messily, and his breath, like a curtain, enveloped her, separating her from the world outside. Blood was slowly leaking from the corners of his eyes, making him look as if he were crying.
"This sentence is also written in your notebook, isn't it?"
Indeed, it was.
After being infected, even without making any effort, there was a 24-hour period when one's thoughts wouldn't change much. Qiao Yuansi had to consider what she would do if she found out she was infected, what she—or the person she was a few days ago—would say to make Shoreis spare her life.
"It doesn't matter; I don't care if all the words you say now are pre-written lines," he said, pressing on her like a brewing storm. With just a little more force, her throat would break. But he didn't.
He was the type who seemed strong, powerful, and capable but in reality would quickly accept and silently endure.
Shoreis let go of her, standing up straight.
Qiao Yuansi coughed desperately, half genuinely uncomfortable, half pretending to be so in order to gain his sympathy. After all, what's done is done, and he'll have to live in this world from now on, so why make things difficult for her, right?
The reason she hadn't taken off her face was that she didn't want to scare him yet. She needed him to still have affection and fantasies about her for the time being. In time, he would change as well.
Shoreis picked up his T-shirt from the floor, silently put it on, and pulled his black hair back, revealing those eyes that were as red as blood, looking at her for a while.
"Come with me to the bathroom."
Huh? This command was unexpected to Qiao Yuansi. Why go to the bathroom at this time? Many thoughts crossed her mind, but she never imagined Shoreis' second command would be, "Sit in the bathtub."
There was no choice but to comply.
"What are you doing?" Qiao Yuansi asked, turning her head to look pitiful, only to have her wrist yanked by him. Before she could react, he quickly handcuffed her right wrist to the bathtub's faucet with a chain-style handcuff.
"This is also my Special Item; feel free to try and break free if you're bored. See if you can get out," Shoreis said without looking at her, as if this was just a necessary formality.
Qiao Yuansi became frantic. "Wait, what are you going to do?"
Shoreis didn't make a sound and turned to leave the bathroom. "If I don't go to work, they'll come looking for me!" she shouted at his retreating figure but received no response.
Was he going to leave her here to starve to death?
From outside came Shoreis' footsteps — heavy, not like him at all — along with the sound of rummaging and things falling. Qiao Yuansi, despite her transformation, was still sharp-minded and understood immediately: he was looking for the books used to restore her.
Oh no, she hadn't gotten rid of those things! Qiao Yuansi thought as she tugged hard at her wrist. Other than causing herself immense pain, the chain didn't budge, quashing even the slightest hope.
The bathroom was the most soundproofed room in her house, and outside was a green belt; no one would hear her cries for help. And Shoreis, it seemed, remembered even that!
"You're already too infected!" she yelled in frustration at the door. "It's useless. Even if you can slow down the transformation, you still—"
Shoreis' tall, slender shadow stepped into the doorway, cutting off her words. His hands were empty, probably having stuffed whatever he found into his ring.
As he walked in, the wind blew his bangs for a moment, a tear of blood briefly visible before vanishing. He then knelt down, the salty, ocean-like scent from his loose T-shirt startling Qiao Yuansi.
"Wait for me here," he said hoarsely, not looking at her, gently inserting his fingers into her hair. "I'll save this world if it means bringing you back."