Love For You - Chapter 31

Chapter 31: The Hour of the Demon

It was a peculiar family dynamic: two people, similar in age, with a loose connection. In truth, there had been very little warmth between them over the past few years. It wasn’t that they didn’t crave it; rather, their lives were too barren, leaving them incapable of knowing how to respond to such feelings.

Miao Jing clutched her pillow, cold and solitary, her face bearing the expression of a little girl.

In foreign movies, you often see scenes like this: pillow fights, an inability to sleep, fear of thunder, or when it's simply too cold or one feels unwell, creating a desire for closeness.

Chen Yi waged a mental war with himself, finally lowering his eyes: "Come in."

The two lay on the bed with some stiffness. Miao Jing, feeling flustered, tucked in her hands and feet. In this season, her room was already using a thin quilt, but his bed remained bare.

"You sleep where I was." He rose, the spot where he had been lying still warm from his body heat. He rummaged through the cabinet, pulled out an air-conditioning blanket, and shook it open.

It was like a secret paradise.

The room hadn’t been lit; only a sliver of faint light seeped through the curtains. Their pillows touched. They lay flat, saying nothing. After such a rainy night, what should they say? What should they do?

Chen Yi closed his eyes, his mind blank, lying in a proper, upright manner. Miao Jing gripped the corner of the quilt. In truth, she was tired and sleepy; she wanted to rest.

Just as silence bordered on sleep, she spoke softly.

"When we were kids, we also slept in the same room."

He gave a faint, muffled hum.

Strictly speaking, they weren't that young—she was eight, and he was ten. They had slept in the guest bedroom next door for over two years.

Miao Jing recalled those days, staring at the ceiling: "Sometimes I’d see you sleeping through the crack in the curtain and think you were a demon who would kill me in the middle of the night."

He grinned: "Back then, I had those thoughts, too. I wanted to bite everyone who came near me, bite their throats, leaving them drenched in blood, their skin torn apart."

The bad kid used his small fists to bully the good kid. She hid as far away as possible. She didn't know when it started, but she gradually grew less afraid of him and eventually began to walk alongside him.

"So violent," she murmured, biting her lip. "It’s a good thing you went off to junior high..."

"I was young then and didn't know how to control that... emotion that had nowhere to go." He opened his eyes, turning his head to gaze at her tranquil profile. "A man's fists should not be directed at the weak."

He didn't know if he should be relieved that Chen Libin had died so early.

Chen Yi rolled over, turning to face her, and said slowly: "My mother was a very gentle woman."

"Do you still remember your mother?" Her voice was extremely faint.

He blinked very slowly, his tone flat: "I don't remember. She abandoned me."

Miao Jing felt a lump rise in her throat.

Late night is not the time for baring one's soul or whispering sweet nothings; it is a time for bitter thoughts to ferment in silence, casting a decisive influence on the future. Just as both seemed about to drift off, Chen Yi sprawled his limbs and brushed against her cold body.

"Are you still cold?"

"A little." Her voice was soft and muffled. "I soaked in the water too long; my leg cramped up earlier."

He looked at her in silence, moving his body a bit closer, tucking some of the blanket between their legs, and hesitated before speaking: "Miao Jing, we’ve known each other for nearly ten years. For the time being, I am your brother."

"Mm."

Their bodies pressed close. Chen Yi clumsily gathered her into his arms. She was half-curled, her back against his chest. There was only a gap of a few centimeters between them, but the transfer of breath and warmth was unimpeded. His body was a few degrees hotter than warm, enveloping her in a thick, heady scent. Miao Jing felt both peaceful and comfortable.

"Is this okay?"

"It's fine."

Her steady, shallow breathing filled the room as she drifted into a peaceful sleep, her elegant, fragrant body finding rest. Yet, the restless desire of a young man rose like thick smoke from a furnace. He felt a faint, stinging pain from the restraint. He wanted to push her hair aside, bury his face in the nape of her neck, pull his arms in tight to embed her into his own body, and find a powerful, binding rope to tie them together, leaving no seam between them.

The wrists he used to wring in nervous tension as a child, the beautiful and pitiable back of her adolescence, the sunken, haggard eye sockets during her lonely times, her thin, stubborn face, her faint, beautiful smile, and her fresh, soft lips—from the malice of two separate beds to the eeriness of one, he didn't know how it had fermented into this, but he knew one thing clearly: she was the person who had given him the most profound and strange emotional experience in his nineteen years of life.

Everyone's childhood wish was simply to have someone to sleep beside them.

Rain at night, dew in the morning. That night was full of strange dreams, yet deep in his heart, there was a hidden sense of solace. As the dark, thick night transitioned to the first ray of dawn leaping onto the horizon, at that half-lit moment of daybreak, the two young bodies on the bed stirred. They woke almost simultaneously, their sleepy, chaotic gazes colliding, and for a moment, they were both slightly stunned.

At such a quiet, peaceful hour, even the birds outside the window had not yet stirred.

The man who had suffered through half the night finally broke his resolve. He leaned in gently, his body pulsing with the urge for a kiss. She twisted slightly, greeting him openly.

Their lips met. They deliberately feigned a muddled, ignorant confusion, drifting and pecking, again and again, until they froze in place.

Chen Yi suddenly threw off the quilt and stood up, his movements stiff as he went into the bathroom. Miao Jing sat holding her knees, her face slightly flushed. Hearing the water running in the shower, she lowered her head, grabbed her pillow, and returned to her own room.

A subtle shift had occurred in their relationship, causing the atmosphere in the house to become bizarre to the extreme—Chen Yi dared to walk around the house shirtless in a pair of shorts, and Miao Jing’s loungewear was no longer overly conservative. There was a new sense of ease in their daily interactions. What was strange was that their dynamic had become mysteriously inscrutable—at times dodging and avoiding each other, at times cold, at times agitated, and at times ignoring one another completely.

On Chen Yi’s birthday, the nightclub gave him a ten-thousand-yuan bonus, per Zhang Shi’s wishes. Chen Yi used this money to rent a private room and treat his brothers to food and drink. He was a low-level henchman, and he had a group of younger brothers who had grown up with him—Daomao, Bozai, and Dayong, all around twenty years old—trailing him and killing time at the bathhouse. They loved to boast about Chen Yi’s embarrassing exploits from junior high and vocational school. Zhang Shi had heard a few stories and was quite interested in how Chen Yi had smuggled and resold Swiss Army knives back in middle school. He sized Chen Yi up and said that if he had been born twenty years earlier, he would have had the makings of an arms dealer.

Chen Yi knew that Zhang Shi was Zhai Fengmao's right-hand man and his enforcer in Teng City. Chen Yi had heard about Zhai Fengmao’s rise to power: fighting in gangs in Hong Kong during the nineties, rumored to have started with a military factory in Myanmar before washing his hands of the business and transitioning into a Hong Kong investor. The only visible thread of that past remaining was the nightclub; as with anyone in the underworld, everything was linked to vice.

During that period, an incident occurred. A local food processing company ran into financial trouble and couldn't borrow money from the bank. Through an intermediary, they borrowed ten million in high-interest loans from Zhai Fengmao. Through the principal and interest of this loan, Zhai eventually took control of the company, driving all the old shareholders out of management. Zhai didn't attend the shareholders' meeting himself; Chen Yi drove Zhang Shi and the partners to the event. That day, all the employees protested, but Chen Yi was sharp—he sensed the trouble ahead of time and avoided the major conflict. This earned him Zhang Shi’s favor, and he was praised significantly for his foresight.

The birthday party lasted until two or three in the morning. Chen Yi was drunk, carried up to the guest room by Dayong and Daomao. He kept shouting that he wanted to go home. By daybreak, he finally managed to stumble home. When he knocked, he was met with Miao Jing’s ice-cold expression. She frowned, allowing Dayong to drop Chen Yi on the sofa, refusing to let him into her room. If he threw up, she would be the one to clean it. Throughout the whole ordeal, she didn't lift a finger to help, not even bothering to offer a cup of hot tea.

Dayong and Daomao chatted awkwardly for a moment. Seeing that the two of them still had lipstick stains on their faces, Miao Jing sent them off with a frigid look and slammed the door shut.

Dayong nudged Daomao with his elbow.

"You think Brother Yi has a masochistic streak? Providing for his sister with good food and drink, only to get this treatment—she won't even let him on the bed. If this were my girl, I’d have slapped her."

"She’s an honor student, after all. They’re all arrogant; they look down on people like us."

Miao Jing didn't go to school that morning. She sat beside the sofa, placing a wet towel on Chen Yi’s face, rubbing away the cake frosting and glitter from the party poppers. Chen Yi furrowed his brow, groggily opening his eyes. Under his thick lashes, a pair of deep, scorching pupils stared straight at her. Then, he suddenly leaned in. Miao Jing turned her head to dodge, just barely avoiding his move.

Some things were unspoken, whether through mutual understanding or mutual denial. That veil had not yet been pierced. Perhaps they automatically attributed it to a muddled brain or bodily instinct. What was standing between them?

"Not going to school?"

"Resting today."

"I need to pay the tutoring fees tomorrow. There are only five and a half months left until the college entrance exam, and the school has switched to a half-day rest per week."

"Mm." His voice was hoarse. "What school do you want to get into for the entrance exam?"

"What do you think?"

"Didn't your head teacher say you could get into a good university? Where do you want to go?"

"Nothing more than those first or second-tier cities." She pondered. "Chen Yi, don't you want to sign up for the adult college entrance exam? There are plenty of opportunities to study."

"I don't want to."

He sprawled across the sofa, eyes closed, full of ambition: "Stay in Teng City. In a few years, there will be a time for me, Chen Yi, to spread my wings."

She turned her head to ask him: "How will you spread your wings?"

"Become a boss, make big money." A piercing light shone in his eyes. "Do you know how many assets that Boss Zhai I follow has? Total assets of over two billion, dozens of companies under him. Everyone in Teng City has to show him respect. All I lack is opportunity and luck... and now the opportunity is here..."

Miao Jing bit her lip: "Collecting high-interest debts or forcing evictions? Being a thug or planting wiretaps?"

"I have my own limits." Chen Yi’s gaze was dark and fierce: "Society needs people like you who follow the rules, but it also needs people like me who have no scruples."

When two people don't see eye to eye, half a sentence is too much. This topic was always a point of contention.

"You go to the big city, go to your university, and see the world." He propped his legs on the coffee table and calmly took out a cigarette pack. Now he always carried a pack of premium cigarettes in his pocket, occasionally enjoying one himself. He lowered his head to light it, the mellow scent of tobacco diffusing into the living room. "I’ll stay in Teng City and struggle through my own days."

Miao Jing’s gaze asked him: And then?

Chen Yi held the smoke in his mouth, then slowly exhaled: "Things for the future... let’s talk about that in three or five years."

With his slender fingers dangling, Chen Yi flicked the ash away. Three or five years—that was all. He could absolutely foresee his own future. He would climb up using Zhai Fengmao as his backer and stir up some waves. By the time that moment came—

He would drive a luxury car, live in a mansion, and go personally to bring her home.