Fang Qian’an abruptly grabbed the cup of milk tea and took several sips. His Adam’s apple rolled each time he swallowed.

Li Xiu glanced at him in astonishment.

“…..Be careful not to burn yourself.”

Fang Qian’an gave an “mm,” trying to keep his faces expressionless, and then put down his cup.

The boy’s neck was still red. After a glance at Li Xiu, he lowered his head and took out his cell phone, seeming to concentrate on reading it.

Li Xiu said nothing more. He just sat with Fang Qian’an for a long while in the milk tea shop, their knees touching awkwardly.

After finishing the cup of hot chocolate, Li Xiu was in a daze and began to speak in a low voice about what they had previously encountered in the haunted house.

“…..I saw Ouyang in a group photo.” The boy’s fingertips unconsciously tapped the milk tea cup. “I don’t know if it was a hallucination or not. But the reason for him appearing in our nightmares likely has something to do with the Xiao family villa.”

As Li Xiu spoke, Fang Qian’an could no longer concentrate on his cell phone.

When he heard what happened to Li Xiu, his brow knitted together tightly, and there was a trace of anger in his eyes that even he didn’t recognize.

“Don’t think about that guy anymore. That scumbag is dead, anyway,” Fang Qian’an said. “And that Teacher Xu also doesn’t want you to think about this stuff anymore.”

Li Xiu was taken aback for a moment, and met Fang Qian’an’s eyes.

“I know.” His voice weakened incrementally. “I don’t know why, but I just worry about it a little. You know? I never actually believed in this stuff, but what happened there was really…..”

Even when being held down and bullied by a group of people, the feeble boy never showed any signs of weakness. And right now next to Fang Qian’an, he revealed an ice-thin fragility.

“Fang Qian’an, what…..did you see in the villa?”

“……”

Fang Qian’an was silent for a few seconds.

“I sprinkled salt and glutinous rice in the room, and in the blink of an eye, you were gone.” Recalling that scene in the haunted house, Fang Qian’an clenched his fists unconsciously. “It took me by surprise. Right then, I caught a glimpse of a white form floating outside the door and thought it was you, so I chased it out…..”

In Fang Qian’an’s memory, the sound of rushing footsteps could be heard from time to time in the huge abandoned villa.

Normally, Fang Qian’an would find those footsteps creepy and terrifying, but that time, he no longer cared so much. He was thoroughly panicked that a living person like Li Xiu could vanish out of thin air.

He followed the shadow similar to Li Xiu up and down the haunted house several times, but was never actually able to find him.

Until he heard Li Xiu’s voice coming from far away at the end of the upstairs corridor.

“…..When I ran up to the second floor, I saw you standing in that room, mumbling to an, uh, shadow-like thing. I was almost scared out of my mind, so I shouted to you.”

Fang Qian’an’s expression turned ugly when he said this.

“As soon as you turned around, I saw something wrapped around you, and the door was also moving like it was about to close. It seemed like that thing was going to drag you away. I was almost scared to death at that time, but I couldn’t care less. I rushed over and blocked the door, then dragged you out of the room. What kind of monster was that thing? It was really powerful.”

Fang Qian’an hunched his shoulders when he spoke.

Due to the movement, the injury on his shoulder flared up and he couldn’t help but gasp.

“I hit the door with my shoulder, and it still hurts now. Hiss—”

Li Xiu looked at Fang Qian’an in pain and felt a little restless: “I’m sorry.”

Because of his body and background, Li Xiu had always been proficient at processing all kinds of difficulties and discrimination brought on him by others. However, when all kinds of mocking and exclusion turned into care and kindness, Li Xiu’s reaction was particularly stiff.

He had never been good at dealing with such unfamiliar emotions.

Fang Qian’an paused, glancing sideways at the confusion on the face of the young man beside him. A certain school bully raised his eyebrows.

“Say, ah, didn’t you seem to be number one in the grade in Chinese Language last time? Why do you only say ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ when you’re with me now?”

The boy’s seemingly arrogant complaint instantly broke the unnatural atmosphere lingering between the two.

Li Xiu said to him subconsciously: “What else do you want to hear? Could it be that you want me to say, ‘I can’t repay you with my life, so it’s better to repay you with my body?’”

In fact, this was just an enigmatic saying that Li Xiu blurted out, but when Fang Qian’an heard it, he was stuck in place with his mouth open silently.

Li Xiu stared at the blushing Fang Qian’an and felt that something wasn’t right.

The hot chocolate continued to radiate heat in his stomach, and Li Xiu’s face also felt a little hot.

After a long while, Fang Qian’an finally came to his senses and responded dryly: “I-It’s a difficult job, but not impossible.”

Li Xiu: “…..Ha, in your dreams.”

The conversation between the two finally returned to normal, but when they inadvertently met eyes, Fang Qian’an and Li Xiu would still look away and feign casualness as they played on their phones.

After a lengthy stalemate, Fang Qian’an’s phone buzzed. He turned the phone to take a look, and a chill streaked across his originally rosy cheeks.

When Fang Qian’an pressed the call button in the next second, that call reminded Li Xiu that they had been unknowingly sitting in the milk tea shop for a long time.

“It’s so late, I need to get back.”

Li Xiu glanced at the time, then grabbed his school bag and stood up.

Just as he was about to leave, he felt a tug on his clothes.

A wide-eyed Fang Qian’an asked anxiously: “You’re just leaving? Do you plan to go home alone?”

Li Xiu stared blankly for a moment: “What else? I have some papers to do in the evening.”

Because of the so-called ghost incident, he was unable to concentrate on his studies for several days.

Now that he had made up his mind to have nothing to do with these strange things, what he should do now was go home quickly and study hard.

…..It was impossible to hide in a crowded milk tea shop for the rest of his life, right?

Hearing Li Xiu’s response, Fang Qian’an seemed to come back to himself.

“Oh.”

The tall boy released his grip.

“Then, aren’t you afraid to go back alone?”

Li Xiu lowered his eyes.

“Didn’t Teacher Xu say? The more afraid you are, the more unstable you will become. It’ll be fine if I don’t think about it.” As he spoke, Li Xiu looked at Fang Qian’an thoughtfully. “Are you afraid? I still have several comprehensive essay collections in my bag. I can give you a few.”

Fang Qian’an sat up right and raised his voice: “Ha? If you’re not afraid, what can I be afraid of? I’m just worried about you.”

Li Xiu stared at the boy who was strong in appearance but weak in reality, a bit of inexplicable worry in his heart.

However, Li Xiu thought that with Fang Qian’an’s identity, if he really didn’t want to be alone, there should be many people fighting to spend time with him, right?

“Don’t worry about me. Um, I’m leaving,” Li Xiu whispered, turning to leave the milk tea shop.

But as he was waiting for the bus at the roadside, Li Xiu still felt Fang Qian’an’s eyes glued on him from behind.

That person was still watching him?

Li Xiu turned his head to look through the clean, bright floor-to-ceiling windows of the shopping mall toward where he and Fang Qian’an had been sitting before, only to find that Fang Qian’an had disappeared.

*

Because he had skipped class in the afternoon, Li Xiu got home much earlier this time.

When Li Xiu opened the door, he set aside the ladies’ high heels as usual. As he was looking for the key, he heard a loud bang from inside the house.

Li Xiu was startled. He opened the door quickly and rushed in.

His grandmother was standing in the living room, her entire body trembling. She had her hands up in front of her as she looked around in a panic, as if afraid of something.

“Grandmother?!”

Li Xiu staggered to his grandmother and found that the old woman’s eyes were empty, her wandering gaze not focused at all.

“What’s wrong? Grandmother?”

Li Xiu called to her for a long time until she seemed to finally notice his arrival. A hand like a dead branch instantly grabbed Li Xiu’s arm with force. The old woman stared at him, two lines of tears falling from her cloudy eyes.

“A-Xiu…..grandmother was wrong…..grandmother did something wrong…..wuwuwu…..”

His grandmother continued to mutter incoherently. No matter how Li Xiu asked her what had happened, the old woman just kept repeating the same sentences.

Li Xiu glanced at the shrine where his grandmother always entertained guests.

The table was empty. No one was there.

The whole house was still as dark as ever, and his grandmother’s fearful sobs echoed in the shadows that were filled with the scent of inferior sandalwood. Li Xiu frowned, faintly aware that something was wrong. But his grandmother’s abnormality took up all of his attention at the moment, and he didn’t have time to think much about it.

Li Xiu hurried to comfort his agitated grandmother, and it was with great difficulty that he got her to sit on the sofa to calm down.

He half knelt on the floor and asked cautiously: “Grandmother, what’s going on? What happened?”

One of his hands pressed comfortingly to his grandmother’s back, and he distinctly felt how she trembled upon hearing these words.

The next second, his grandmother suddenly turned her head, her gray eyes quivering slightly.

She stared straight at Li Xiu.

“Shh…..”

The old woman raised a finger and kept her voice very low.

“Don’t let him find out,” his grandmother said.

“Who? Don’t let who find out?” Li Xiu didn’t understand.

“Xiao Yu…..” The old woman breathed heavily, and then a look of horror appeared on her face again. “N-no, not Xiao Yu. I made a mistake…..I really made a mistake…..”

“The one I brought back is not that child at all.”

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Chapter 33 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 35