Chapter 40.1: You can have whatever you want.

That night, Lin Yujing had a dream.

It was midnight and pitch-black. With a blood-red full moon in the sky, crows passed through the shadows of the trees and landed on the dry branches.

Half of Shen Juan’s face was bathed in the light from ice-blue fireworks. His black vertical pupils were long and narrow, his eyes fixed on her. Like a demon who could bewitch the heart, his voice was slow and lingering, “I want you.”

His needle-sharp fangs pressed against his lower lip. A fingertip traced a line from behind her ear to her neck, down along her artery and over her collarbone, stopping at her chest. Leaning his head slightly to one side, he approached the edge of her ear. “Your body and mind, will you dedicate them all to me?”

When he exhaled, his warm, moist breath wrapped around the tips of her ears and spread along her nerve endings, gentle and ambiguous.

Lin Yujing froze in place, unable to speak.

The next second, the scene was forcibly cut off. Shen Juan grabbed a young man by the collar and slammed him against the wall with a bang. His expression was cold and violent, as if formed from ice. “Who let you come here?”

He lowered his gaze. The corners of his eyes were faintly red, the muscles on the back of the hand holding the boy’s collar protruded, and his knuckles had turned white. “Didn’t I tell you not to let me see you again?”

The following parts of the text will be scrambled to prevent theft from aggregators and unauthorized epub making. Please support our translators by reading on secondlifetranslations (dot) com. If you are currently on the site and and you are seeing this, please clear your cache.

Nkd Zwfkdt pweeldzu srldle bla lulp.

Gqvla y qlo plnsdep sq pkzldnl pbl alyzkgle vbyv pbl’e clld bszekdt bla calyvb, yde kv xyel bla wdnsxqsavyczl.

Ebld pbl nyxl vs bla pldplp pbl zlv swv y zsdt calyvb yde pyv wr, zlydkdt ytykdpv vbl blye sq vbl cle qsa y obkzl kd y eygl. Fbl qlzv qaktbvldle.

Nkd Zwfkdt vswnble bla lyap pwcnsdpnkswpzu, vbld vswnble bla dlnj qasx bla vbasyv vs bla nszzyacsdl. Tla pzktbvzu nssz qkdtlavkrp zlqv y qllzkdt sq oyaxvb sd bla pjkd, tkhkdt bla vbl kzzwpksd vbyv vbl vbkdtp kd bla ealyx alyzzu byrrldle.

Fbl alpvle bla qkdtlap sd bla dlnj ytykd, yde nswze lhld qllz vbl clyvkdt sq vbl yavlaklp wdela bla vbkd pjkd.

Nkd Zwfkdt okvbealo bla byde ycawrvzu, pvwqqle kv kdvs vbl cle, yde ralpple kv wdela bla vbktb. Tla lulp okeldle pkzldvzu.

Fs obyv oyp vbkp ealyx?

Ebu oswze pbl byhl pwnb y nbysvkn, pvaydtl, wdprlyjyczl ealyx?

After about five or six minutes Lin Yujing came to her senses again, only to realize that there was something fluffy in her left hand.

She turned her head and saw the big teddy bear in the green sweater. She’d put it next to her bed before going to sleep last night.

The bedroom was dark, the light completely blocked by the thick, ornate blackout curtains, and the plush outline of the teddy bear was indistinct in the darkness.

Lin Yujing suddenly remembered Shen Juan standing by the side of the road with little red devil horns on his head, hitting balloons.

Kind of cute.

But before that, the way he grabbed the boy’s neck made her feel chills all over.

 She remembered that when school first started, Li Lin said, “Shen Juan committed a crime when he was a sophomore in high school. He almost beat his deskmate to death. His deskmate was carried out covered in blood. Many of his classmates saw him, and at that time his eyes and aura were said to be terrifying.”

Lin Yujing shook her head, not wanting to think about it anymore. She found her phone on the bedside table and tapped the screen to check the time. It was 4:30 in the morning.

She’d only gotten four hours of sleep.

She rubbed her sore eyes, set an alarm for 7:15, and lay down under the quilt again, preparing to go back to sleep.

She never slept in when she went back to the Fu family’s house on weekends, although she didn’t know whether the house was considered to be the Fu family’s or the Guan family’s.

Lin Yujing actually preferred the surname Fu since it was Fu Mingxiu’s surname, which should be the same as his father’s, unlike Lin Yujing. Years ago Meng Weiguo joined the Lin family, so Lin Yujing got Lin Zhi’s surname, and used to call her maternal grandmother and grandfather “yeye” and “nainai” instead of “waigong” and “waipo.” [1] 

The doors and windows in the room were closed and the air conditioner was always on, so the temperature was very low. The remote control was on the dressing table by the door and Lin Yujing didn’t want to get it, so she pulled up the edge of the quilt to cover half of her head and fell into a deep sleep. 

She woke up again to the sound of her alarm. At 7:15, Lin Yujing got up from the bed and felt a dry cold in the bedroom. Shivering from the cold, she walked to the door to turn up the temperature, then turned around and went to the bathroom to take a fifteen-minute combat shower.

As soon as she opened the door she saw Fu Mingxiu, who had just come out as well.

According to Lin Yujing’s previous observations, when Young Master Fu was at home and didn’t have classes he would usually sleep in. He would wake up to have breakfast at ten o’clock, and then go upstairs without making any noise. Even if he saw her he would treat her as air, as if he hadn’t seen her.

Although recently the relationship between the two has begun to ease. Last week, Fu Mingxiu even gave her an orange.

An orange!

This was big progress!

……Hey.

Oh right, where was her orange?

Lin Yujing tried her best to recall that night. Fu Mingxiu threw her an orange and she took it upstairs. She had an unpleasant dinner with Guan Xiangmei, then she was scolded by Meng Weiguo, and then she went to Shen Juan’s studio.

She didn’t come back that night. When she did come back in the morning she grabbed her school bag like a thief and went to school, and she didn’t think about the orange.

Lin Yujing and Fu Mingxiu stood at the doors of their respective bedrooms, in the hallway on the second floor. She looked at him and suddenly felt guilty.

—

[1] “外公” “外婆” “爷爷” “奶奶” – “waigong,” “waipo,” “yeye,” and “nainai,” respectively. Typically, one’s maternal grandfather and grandmother are “waigong” and “waipo.” The “外” character used for both means “outside” or “external.” The paternal grandfather and grandmother are “yeye” and “nainai,” and the child will take the paternal surname as the mother was considered to have “married into” the father’s family. Because Lin Yujing’s father (Meng Weiguo) “married into” her mother’s (Lin Zhi’s) family and Lin Yujing got the “Lin” surname, she calls her mother’s parents “yeye” and “nainai.” There is little room for ambiguity in the Chinese kinship system.

Edited By: ceres