After Becoming a Cannon-Fodder Lackey, I Swore to Protect the Young Lady to the Death - Chapter 16

Li Gangjiao turned the earring over and over in her hand, her grin stretching so wide it practically reached her ears. She couldn’t bring herself to put it down.

“Is that a ‘J’ engraved on the bottom?” she asked, holding the gem up toward the light. She thought she could just make out the faint outline of a letter.

“Mhm. Based on your personality, I thought it would take you forever to notice,” Lu Jiaoyue replied with a nod.

“Wait, really? Does it have a special meaning?” Li Gangjiao looked at Lu Jiaoyue excitedly, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.

“Both ‘Jiao’ and ‘Jiaoyue’ start with J. I am yours, and you are mine. Do you understand?” Lu Jiaoyue walked over, resting her hands on Li Gangjiao’s waist and naturally leaning her head against her shoulder.

Li Gangjiao beamed. She carefully tucked the gemstone back into its box and slid it into her pocket, patting it to make sure it was secure before nuzzling back against Lu Jiaoyue like a happy puppy.

“Ugh, Jiao Jiao, I love you! Truly, ‘as the mouse loves the rice’!!” Li Gangjiao declared her devotion with a classic, cheesy line.

Lu Jiaoyue: “…”

“Hehe! I’m going to wear it every single day!” Li Gangjiao promised.

“I’m sure it’ll look beautiful on you. It’s just… I realized I don’t even know what you used to look like.”

I cannot see the shape of your soul, but I suspect its colors would rival even the finest Taaffeite.

“Can you tell me? About your past?” Lu Jiaoyue’s eyes were filled with an earnest, quiet plea. She wanted to peer into her lover’s history, as if by doing so, she could claim a part of the life she hadn’t shared.

“My past? Well… I grew up in a casino on the border, spent two years in prison, and then moved to the big city to work on an assembly line,” Li Gangjiao said with a nonchalant grin.

“…” Lu Jiaoyue froze. She felt as though she shouldn’t have asked, her hands twisting together in a moment of uncertainty.

“Back then, I thought I’d be fighting in underground matches forever. Then I thought I’d be on the factory floor forever. But a ‘lifetime’ is a long time, and it turns out there are a lot of variables…”

As she spoke, Li Gangjiao’s expression remained perfectly calm. She spoke about her life with the same casual tone someone might use to discuss what they wanted for breakfast.

“Fighting matches like that… it’s easy to get hurt,” Lu Jiaoyue murmured, a pang of sympathy tightening her chest.

“Oh, definitely. Some of the spectators lived for the blood. If you wanted to win, you couldn’t show a shred of mercy…” Li Gangjiao recounted the memories truthfully.

“Then you must have been incredible,” Lu Jiaoyue said, sensing the shift in mood and trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“You bet! Honestly, except for my senior brother who I could never beat. Nobody else stood a chance against me.” A flicker of pride lit up Li Gangjiao’s eyes. In a place like that, surviving long enough to be proud was an achievement in itself.

“You had a senior brother?” Lu Jiaoyue asked, surprised.

“Of course! All us kids were bought by the casino… or, more accurately, we were collateral for debts. We all trained in boxing. If you were good, you got to fight in the ring. Master said my senior and I were the most talented, but I always thought he was a step above me.”

“Hey… what if I sent you to study sports?” Lu Jiaoyue suggested suddenly, her eyes drifting toward Li Gangjiao’s disastrous math and English homework.

“Huh?” Li Gangjiao looked completely lost. Having never received a formal education, she had no concept of being a “student-athlete.”

“It means you balance your academics with sports training, and then you take the athletic route for the college entrance exams. With your current grades, you’d barely make it into a second-tier university, but if you have an athletic advantage, you could get into a top-tier program within that bracket.” Lu Jiaoyue carefully laid out the benefits.

“Is that really an option?” Li Gangjiao felt as if a new door had swung open. She could already see herself waving a joyous goodbye to the horrors of calculus and grammar.

“But you still have to raise your math and English scores! Don’t think for a second that doing sports means you can slack off on your core subjects!” Watching the goofy grin spread across Li Gangjiao’s face, Lu Jiaoyue saw right through her and ruthlessly crushed the fantasy.

Li Gangjiao’s grin vanished instantly. If she had a tail, it would have gone from wagging excitedly to drooping between her legs.

Ultimately, Lu Jiaoyue spent the evening organizing case files that had already passed their statutes of limitations, while Li Gangjiao was forced back to the desk to wage war against her math book.

Li Gangjiao: Alas, the path of learning is steep! Solving math is harder than scaling the heavens! Algebra and Geometry even Euclid would be bewildered!

The equations on the page began to blur, doubling before her eyes. Li Gangjiao’s head started to “nod” lower and lower until she finally collapsed onto the book and fell fast asleep.

By the time Lu Jiaoyue finished organizing the data for her lawyer, it was midnight. After a quick wash, she realized Li Gangjiao was still out cold at the desk. She gently woke her, telling her to move to the bed.

Drowning in sleep, Li Gangjiao stumbled toward the bed and was back in dreamland the second her head hit the pillow. Lu Jiaoyue tucked her in, then took her laptop and documents to the guest room next door. She had a few more things to discuss with the lawyer and didn’t want to risk waking her.

******

The moon was still on duty, casting a grey, hazy light over the city, and even the clouds seemed stained with a dark tint.

Ring! Ring!

The alarm they had set the night before blared. While their school wasn’t overly strict with curriculum, the 7:20 AM morning study session was mandatory.

Still exhausted from the previous day, Lu Jiaoyue took a few minutes to steady herself before heading to the bathroom. In the mirror, her hair was a mess and her eyes were half-closed, but even with a sleepy scowl, her beauty was undeniable. If Li Gangjiao had seen her looking this languid yet elegant, she would have spent at least thirty seconds mentally swooning.

Once she had changed into her uniform, Lu Jiaoyue stepped out, intending to wake Li Gangjiao, but instead found her in the living room, frantically dabbing at her ear with a tissue.

Li Gangjiao looked normal enough in her uniform, but the way she was picking at her ear was strange. Suddenly, the tissue turned crimson.

Lu Jiaoyue rushed over and pulled the tissue away, revealing Li Gangjiao’s swollen, red earlobe. The blood-stained earring was the very one she had gifted her.

“What are you doing?! Why would you do it like that?” Lu Jiaoyue cried out, her voice sharp with worry as she scrambled to find the first-aid kit under the coffee table.

Li Gangjiao looked at the angry Lu Jiaoyue with wide, bewildered eyes. She didn’t understand what she had done wrong. Back at the casino, the girls had always just shoved the earrings they liked straight through their ears.

In her world, there was no “correct” way. There was only the way things were done.

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