It’s not your fault.
However, Xie Qiaoqiao still finished eating it.
The crust of the pineapple bun tends to flake easily, but Xie Qiaoqiao ate very carefully, so none of it fell to the floor. When she was done, she folded up the wax paper and tossed it into the trash can.
Zhang Xueji stared at her in a daze, his mind unable to catch up.
She just… finished eating it?
That pineapple bun… even though he hadn’t eaten much, he had taken a couple of bites, after all. But Xie Qiaoqiao didn’t seem to mind at all—was it just that one pineapple bun wasn’t enough to fill her?
Carrying the now lukewarm mango pomelo sago, Zhang Xueji headed home, his head still dizzy and throbbing.
Maybe it was the coffee; he just couldn’t sleep at all—but sitting in front of the computer, Zhang Xueji found he didn’t have the heart to write his thesis, either.
That nightmare was too vivid, just like the pool maze he had dreamed about a couple of days ago… No, the hand that crawled out of the box was even more real, even more terrifying than the pool maze.
He typed a few words, deleted them again, scratched his hair, and went into the bathroom to turn on the faucet and splash his face with cold water.
When he looked up, Zhang Xueji was startled by his reflection in the mirror; he hadn’t expected his own face to look so bad, pale as if he’d just been pulled from a morgue.
He quickly slapped his face twice, forcing the skin to flush red with blood, so he finally looked a little more alive.
At the same time, Zhang Xueji noticed a stain under the left armpit of his shirt. Frowning, he lowered his head and twisted his shirt to look—and saw a patch of dried, blood-red.
A sense of dread washed over him. Zhang Xueji immediately took off his shirt—when he spread it flat on the floor, that bloodstain became much clearer.
It was a handprint.
Zhang Xueji held his hand up to it for comparison; it was much smaller than his own hand.
About the same size as Xie Qiaoqiao’s hand.
From the direction of the fingers, it looked like someone had grabbed him from behind.
The huge cardboard box, the blood trail left by the rollers, the bloody hand tearing through the tape to break free… and finally, his memory stopped at Xie Qiaoqiao’s emotionless face.
That wasn’t a nightmare!
Sometimes, reality is just as terrifying as a nightmare—Xie Qiaoqiao stood in the kitchen doorway, staring at the bloody mess on the floor, thinking this.
It was obvious the mop alone couldn’t clean up all the pooled blood, and besides, Xie Qiaoqiao had no experience dealing with so much blood.
And you couldn’t just call housekeeping for this sort of thing—if Auntie saw it, she’d probably call the police right away.
…Forget it, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
She muttered to herself, dragged the cart into the living room, and opened the box—the outside of the box was already soft from soaking in blood, but the body inside still looked relatively fresh.
Aside from the arm whose mouth Xie Qiaoqiao had crushed earlier, now a lifeless gray-white, the rest of the body still had the color of living skin.
She dumped the corpse out and arranged the pieces neatly on the floor, then opened her phone gallery, found the original photos she’d taken, and compared them to the corpse in front of her.
From the condition of the flesh, an ordinary human corpse couldn’t possibly look like this—the change was because there was a Monster Core inside the body, right?
Or maybe ‘Ruan Shiting’s’ body was special in the first place, which was why a Monster targeted her?
Was ‘Ruan Shiting’ the same as her…
A knocking at the door interrupted Xie Qiaoqiao’s thoughts. She looked up toward the entryway. After a moment, the knocking didn’t stop.
She had no choice but to go over and peek through the peephole, only to find, unexpectedly, that Zhang Xueji was standing outside—the skin on his face and neck looked damp, and he seemed anxious.
“Qiaoqiao, are you home?” After knocking several times with no reply, Zhang Xueji’s voice came through the door, sounding a little forced.
Xie Qiaoqiao glanced back at the neatly arranged corpse in the living room, was silent for a few seconds, then decided to answer honestly, “I’m here.”
Zhang Xueji: “I have something I need to talk to you about, can you let me in?”
Xie Qiaoqiao: “I can, but you’ll have to wait a bit.”
She put the corpse back into the box, then pushed the now soggy box back into the kitchen.
There was no time to mop up the blood on the floor, so Xie Qiaoqiao pulled the sofa cover off and spread it over the stains, gave it a quick wipe, then stuffed it under the sofa.
After all that, there was still a heavy smell of blood and corpses lingering in the living room.
But there was nothing Xie Qiaoqiao could do about it—there’s no point worrying about things you can’t fix, so she acted as if nothing was wrong and went over to open the door for Zhang Xueji.
The bright overhead light inside crossed with the dim light outside at the entryway, casting shadows on Xie Qiaoqiao’s face, while her jet-black hair gleamed.
Her face was still expressionless. In her dark pupils, Zhang Xueji saw his own reflection.
Even though the door wasn’t fully open, the smell inside the apartment was impossible to cover up, confirming Zhang Xueji’s suspicions—his face lost the last bit of color, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
Xie Qiaoqiao tilted her face up slightly, “What did you want to say?”
Zhang Xueji looked about ready to faint, teetering on his feet, and had to grab the door frame to steady himself.
Xie Qiaoqiao hesitated for a moment, then finally reached out to steady his arm.
He was wearing short sleeves, so her palm touched his bare skin directly—smooth, supple skin, underlying muscles and veins, and it was hot.
Much hotter than normal body temperature.
Xie Qiaoqiao touched his arm and stated flatly, “Zhang Xueji, you have a fever.”
“I have a fever?” Zhang Xueji muttered, raising his hand to feel his forehead.
His palm was also burning hot, pressed to his equally hot forehead, he couldn’t tell a thing.
Xie Qiaoqiao opened the door fully and stepped aside, making room for Zhang Xueji to come in. “Never mind, come inside first.”
Leaving a feverish neighbor at the door would only make them feel worse.
Xie Qiaoqiao didn’t want Zhang Xueji to suffer; they’d known each other for a while now, and Zhang Xueji had always been good to her, taking care of her whenever they went out.
She was well aware of all this. She just wasn’t very emotional, but that didn’t mean she was stupid.
But for some reason, even after she’d stepped aside, Zhang Xueji didn’t come in. He just stood there, dazed, his lower arm beading with cold sweat, making Xie Qiaoqiao’s palm feel damp.
His drifting gaze swept past the top of Xie Qiaoqiao’s head, around her living room: he saw the floor stained with blood, the sofa cover stuffed under the couch, the pale arm sticking out by the coffee table.
Zhang Xueji’s face instantly turned as pale as that arm, and his gaze trembled back to Xie Qiaoqiao.
Their eyes met. Xie Qiaoqiao was confused. “What’s wrong?”
Zhang Xueji spoke, his voice hoarse, “Are you really going to let me in?”
Xie Qiaoqiao nodded. “It’s late, and it’s hard to find a delivery runner, but I have fever medicine at home. You can take some first.”
Xie Qiaoqiao thought Zhang Xueji had come because his fever was unbearable and he couldn’t find any medicine at home, so he came to her.
She didn’t consider the possibility that Zhang Xueji had already realized the nightmare was real.
Zhang Xueji glanced at the end of the hallway, at the public surveillance camera by the elevator. He took a deep breath, looking like he was going to his execution, walked in, and closed the door behind him.
Before coming here, Zhang Xueji had spent a long time psyching himself up, even searching online for how many years accidental manslaughter would get, and under what circumstances accidental manslaughter might result in no conviction—he never even considered the possibility of intentional murder; he thought Xie Qiaoqiao was a good person.
They hadn’t even known each other before, but Xie Qiaoqiao had been willing to help him get rid of the Clinical Ghost.
Even though she didn’t like him, she still agreed to let him pursue her, and when it rained, she’d sit by the river catching squirrels with him instead of going home… She even installed surveillance in someone else’s house just because she didn’t know it was illegal!
After she found out, she apologized! She even took the cameras down herself!
How could such a kind girl possibly kill someone on purpose!
Maybe the other party was a fugitive, a robber, an evil sorcerer who raised ghosts for nefarious deeds or something—
Xie Qiaoqiao let Zhang Xueji sit on a chair in the living room and was about to get the fever medicine, when Zhang Xueji suddenly grabbed her wrist.
His hand wrapped around Xie Qiaoqiao’s wrist, leaving plenty of space.
The thought of Xie Qiaoqiao using these skinny arms, struggling to haul a corpse home by herself and worrying about being discovered along the way, hit him.
She only had a small high-rise apartment, no basement to hide the body, no car, no trunk to transport it—did she do all the packing by herself, too? It must have been so hard for her!
His nose tingled, and tears suddenly overflowed, dropping onto Xie Qiaoqiao’s hand.