CH 9

Lowering his head, he lightly sniffed it

Yu Xing stared at Wen Qing’s face. He only saw his eyelashes trembled slightly and his expression freeze for a second, before he returned to his original appearance.

Not surprised nor scared.

Wen Qing pursed his lips, and told Yu Xing. “Don’t do this anymore.”

“You, have you heard the story of the wolf is coming?”

Yu Xing curved his lips, and pretended not to understand. “Huh? What did I do?”

Wen Qing frowned. “You clearly aren’t the guide, why do you always need to stir muddy waters?”

“If you tell a lot of lies, everyone will stop believing you.”

He paused, and said, “If the votes for you are a lot, you will have to open the door.”

Someone who wasn’t the guide would surely die if they opened the door.

Wen Qing thought about reasoning with Yu Xing so he would stop stirring muddy waters. He didn’t expect, after hearing his words, Yu Xing’s mouth would curve higher, and his eyes would bend with laughter. 

Yu Xing grinningly asked, “I don’t seem like the guide?”

“Or… you don’t want me to be the guide?”

“……”

Wen Qing realised that it didn’t make sense to reason with Yu Zing.

After a moment of silence, he asked back, “What about you?”

“Do you think I’m the guide?”

Yu Xing shook his head. “I don’t.”

Wen Qing raised his eyes and stared into his bottomless eyes. “Then why do you keep on pestering me?”

Yu Xing shook his head again. “No I don’t.”

Wen Qing: ???

Doesn’t this count as pestering?!

You clearly keep on pestering me!

The shock on his face must’ve been too obvious. Yu Xing lightly chuckled, and casually said, “I’m not pestering you.”

“I’m seducing you.”

Wen Qing: “……”

Several footsteps sounded from the corridor. Someone had arrived.

Wen Qing turned his head. Zhou Zhou, Gong Yunyun and Li Si Wen had arrived.

The three simultaneously stared at Wen Qing and Yu Xing in the study.

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The two of them stood very close. Yu Xing leaned against the bookshelf as if he didn’t have bones. His pure black bathrobe was slack and loose. Wen Qing stood beside Yu Xing, his toes pressed against each other. His clothes were pure white. At first glance, the two people were a little harmonious.

Some found it harmonious, some found it unpleasant.

Zhou Zhou’s face cooled. He strode towards Wen Qing, dragged him to himself, and stared deeply at Yu Xing.

Seeing that, Yu Xing stared back with a smile.

Their eyes met, pair to pair, yet they didn’t utter a single word to each other.

Wen Qing blinked. He took advantage of the situation to reach out his hand, and took the “Western Myths and Legends” that was in Yu Xing’s hand.

When his hand touched the book, Yu Xing turned his head over.

But this time, Yu Xing didn’t stop Wen Qing. He released his hand, and let Wen Qing take the book.

Wen Qing subconsciously said, “Thank, thank you.”

He regretted it when he finished speaking. It was clearly Yu Xing who snatched his book, why did he still have to say thank you after he took it back!

Yu Xing laughed, and bent down and picked up the discarded “Greek Mythology” on the ground. He patted off the dust on it, foisted it with Wen Qing, and hummed a little tune as he left the study.

Wen Qing hugged the two thick and heavy books, and watched Yu Xing’s back. He scolded the primary school chicken again in his heart.

A weird primary school chicken.

When Yu Xing left, Zhou Zhou lowly asked, “What happened just now?”

Wen Qing whispered, “I was looking for a book to read. He snatched my book, and I wanted to snatch it back……”

He lifted his eyes and looked at Zhou Zhou, only to see Zhou Zhou staring straight at his chest with dark pupils, seeming to not hear what he was saying.

Wen Qing suddenly felt a little scared of this kind of Zhou Zhou, and carefully asked, “What, what’s wrong?”

After a long time, Zhou Zhou came back to his senses, and hoarsely said, “It’s nothing, your shirt is a little dirty.”

He pointed to Wen Qing’s right shoulder. The pure white shirt was stained by a few drops of the medicinal wine.

Wen Qing nodded. “I’ll go back to the room and change.”

When he finished speaking, he hugged the books and left the study in quick steps.

Only when he returned to the bedroom and closed the door, did Wen Qing breathe out a sigh of relief.

He sat down on the carpet and thought, the pressure must be too big, so their moods were a little not quite right.

After a while, Wen Qing changed his clothes and began reading.

When he opened the directory of “Western Myths and Legends”, Wen Qing was startled.

This book wasn’t about myths and legends. It was about the history of the development of  myths and legends. Strictly speaking, it was about how Western political changes affected the development of myths and legends.

After reading two pages, Wen Qing put this book aside, and looked at the other book.

The book that Yu Xing foisted to him were really telling fairytales instead.

Wen Qing found the stories related to the three-headed dog very quickly.

The three-headed dog in ancient Greek mythology was called Cerberus. Like Gong Yunyun said, it was responsible for guarding the gate of the underworld. The legend said that a hero played the musical instrument he was skilled at in order to take his dead wife away from the underworld. The nursery rhyme put Cerberus to sleep, and he was able to leave the underworld.

Wen Qing stared at the words ‘musical instrument’ and ‘nursery rhyme’, and his mind began to remember the nursery rhyme Finding a Friend.

【 Looking, looking, looking for a friend

I found a very good friend

Saluting and shaking hands with them

You are my very good friend. 】

Could it be that the clue was in this song?

What meaning did this song have?

Wen Qing thought for a long time, but he didn’t have any leads.

He rose and wanted to go to the study to let everyone know about this, but there was nobody in the study.

Wen Qing jogged downstairs. There was only Ji Yu in the living room. There were three dishes and one soup placed in front of him. They emitted steam, and the alluring fragrance hit him in the face. 

“Gulu——”

His stomach called out.

The grumble was very light, but it was amplified several times in the silent living room. It was deafening.

Wen Qing blushed in embarrassment.

Ji Yu laughed, and warmly said, “Sit down and eat.”

There weren’t many dishes. Wen Qing was too embarrassed to eat, and was about to refuse. Ji Yu seemed to know what he was going to say, and then said, “Cooking helps me adjust my mood and organise my logic.”

“If you don’t eat those dishes,” Ji Yu paused, and said regrettably, “Then they can only be thrown away.”

Wen Qing hurriedly said, “I’ll eat.”

“Throwing it away would be too wasteful.”

Ji Yu smiled, and personally went to the kitchen to serve him a bowl of rice. Then, he sat in front of Wen Qing and watched him eat with a smile.

Wen Qing ate quickly, eating the meals with big mouthfuls. His cheeks were slightly bulging.

Ji Yu gently asked, “Is it delicious?”

Wen Qing nodded. Three dishes and one soup, it was all finished by him alone before five minutes.

Ji Yu couldn’t resist laughing. “How long were you hungry for?” 

Wen Qing’s cheeks were slightly red, and he whispered, “I, I eat very quickly.”

When he was in high school, he was very nervous, and he somewhat couldn’t keep up with the teachers’ pace, so he could only frantically find time. Three meals a day were all finished with the quickest time. Three years later, he had gotten into this habit of eating quickly.

Ji Yu’s eyes were half-closed, and he lightly said, “When I was in high school, in order to not waste time, my eating speed was also very quick.” 

Wen Qing blankly said, “Me, me too.”

Ji Yu laughed. “How clever.”

Wen Qing nodded. After a few simple conversations, his distance with Teacher Ji suddenly grew closer.

“This sort of habit isn’t good for the body.”

Ji Yu slowly got up, and told him, “I like cooking, but I don’t like to wash the dishes.”

“Could I trouble you to wash the dishes?”

After eating people’s dishes, Wen Qing definitely wouldn’t turn down such a trivial thing like washing the dishes.

He put the empty plates into the sink, and he had just turned on the faucet, when there was suddenly a lot more pink in front of his eyes.

Ji Yu held a pink apron in his hand, and gestured for him to put it on.

Wen Qing hurriedly said, “It’s fine, it’ll be cleaned soon.”

Ji Yu lightly said, “You’ve just changed your clothes, it would be bad if they became dirty.”

Wen Qing was stunned. He had changed a T-shirt, but the one on his body was the exact same as the one from before, and there was no difference.

In the split second while he was dazed, Ji Yu put an apron on him. 

“Done,” Ji Yu said.

The kitchen was eerily silent, save for the murmur of water.

Wen Qing lowered his head to wash the dishes, and saw the floral pink apron on himself. It was a little strange, he had never seen this apron in the kitchen before.

“Teacher Ji, where did you find this apron?

Ji Yu: “It was hung beside the fridge.”

Wen Qing’s motions suddenly stopped. He had been here in the morning, and he remembered very clearly. There was no apron nor any other clothes beside the fridge.

Suddenly, he remembered the underwear in his closet that had vanished into thin air.

Why did the underwear in his bedroom suddenly disappear? Why did the apron in the kitchen suddenly appear?

Wen Qing nervously swallowed his saliva, feeling that the apron on his body was a little chilly.

Ji Yu continued to look at him. He saw Wen Qing’s face suddenly turn white, and lowly asked, “What’s wrong?”

Wen Qing stammeringly asked, “Te, teacher, you think this, this place shouldn’t have ghosts, right?” 

Ji Yu’s lips curved up. “I don’t know either.”

Wen Qing felt an inexplicable chill emerge in his back. His hands shook, not holding the plate steadily.

The plate fell and broke on the marble countertop, and there were broken pieces of porcelain everywhere.

Ji Yu gently sighed. “Your courage is so small, what will you do in the future?”

Wen Qing’s mind thought of ghostly things at this moment. After hearing Ji Yu’s words, he blurted out, “What next? Will ghosts appear in the future?”

Ji Yu shook his head. “Yesterday we abstained, and the three-headed dog appeared.”

“Tonight, if we make a mistake…… who knows what sort of ghostly thing will appear.”

Wen Qing shuddered, and the ghosts of all the horror movies he had watched before appeared one after another.

He hastily shook his head, telling himself to not think nonsense.

Voting wrongly might just release normal clues……

Wen Qing used a towel to wrap his hands, and concentrated on picking up the broken pieces of porcelain from the countertop.

Ji Yu stepped forward. “Let me.”

“No need, it’s fine.”

Wen Qing shook his head and took one step to the side. His left elbow hit the countertop, and a broken piece of porcelain sank into his skin.

His eyes reddened, and tears immediately flowed out.

“Don’t move,” Ji Yu held his wrist, and lowered his eyes to look at the wound.

The porcelain piece didn’t sink in deeply, but the wound was three or four centimetres deep. Blood quickly stained the white porcelain piece red, followed the side of the porcelain piece and slowly dripped down.

“The wound is a little long,” Ji Yu curved his lips, his tone rising.

With tears in his eyes, Wen Qing tilted his head.

Why did teacher sound like he was in a good mood?

Was it his delusion?

Wen Qing blinked away the tears in his eyes, and his vision cleared.

Ji Yu held tweezers, and carefully pulled out the broken pieces of porcelain.

Wen Qing had just exhaled, when the wound on his elbow was slightly torn open by Ji Yu, revealing a bit of bright red flesh, which made his face turn white in pain.

Ji Yu explained: “Bear with it, there’s still a small one inside.”

The fragment was very small, and it was inevitable that the pointed end of the tweezers would hit the wound’s flesh.

To Wen Qing, those short few seconds felt extremely long. The loose hairs on his forehead were drenched with sweat.

His black hair stuck firmly against his pale face. His lips were tightly pressed, without even a little bit of redness.

Pitiful yet adorable.

Ji Yu admired it for a while, before pulling out small fragments, applying medicine and wrapping it up.

“It’s done, go and rest.”

Wen Qing tried hard to resist the desire to cry. He choked out an answer through sobs, and walked out of the kitchen with weak feet. 

Ji Yu stood in place. He slowly lifted his hand and looked at the beads of dark red blood on the back of his hand. Lowering his head, he lightly sniffed it.