Did I Succeed in Redeeming the Villain Today? - Chapter 76

Chapter 76: “Do You Want It?”

The kitten innocently blinked her golden-orange eyes, unexpectedly dropping a time bomb on Lu Ning.

The question was lethal. Under the scorching noon sun, it exploded in Lu Ning’s head with a deafening boom.

What “like”?!

She had just shared a kiss with Mu Qiuyu—and it wasn’t even her own initiative—so how did they skip straight to the topic of whether she liked her? Besides, wasn’t the sequence of events wrong? Usually, one confirms their feelings before kissing, right?

Then why did Mu Qiuyu say at first that she had “never kissed herself,” but later tell her she “knew exactly who she was kissing”? So, was Mu Qiuyu kissing herself, or was she kissing Lu Ning…

“Why do you think that?” Lu Ning asked.

Her brain, bombarded by the kitten’s words, was ringing with high-decibel alarms; her thoughts were a chaotic mess. But as the saying goes, the bystander sees most clearly. While Lu Ning was used to using questions as a shield, she also hoped to use the kitten’s eyes to help find her own answer.

—Did she like Mu Qiuyu?

“Because you stopped being a cat for that person,” the kitten replied dissatisfaction.

This answer was clearly not what Lu Ning expected, leaving her stunned and embarrassed. She had thought she had exposed something in her behavior or words, but she didn’t realize that the very fact she was questioning it meant her feelings for Mu Qiuyu were already blurred.

While they were whispering, the group began moving toward the venue. The man-made glass filtered out the harsh glare. As Shi Jin carried the kitten inside, the kitten tilted her head, observing Lu Ning’s unusually pensive expression.

“Great Cat Immortal, was I wrong?” the kitten asked.

“Not quite,” Lu Ning shook her head. “I didn’t stop being a cat for her. I wasn’t a cat to begin with.”

As she spoke, Lu Ning looked ahead at Mu Qiuyu, who was being pulled along by Li Xiang’s incessant chatter. Perhaps it was because the indoor lighting was so soft, but Mu Qiuyu’s inscrutable eyes seemed to have grown warmer. “You don’t understand. I am your deity, but she… she is my deity.”

The kitten couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of Lu Ning’s words. She listened thoughtfully and then said, “So that’s why you have that person’s scent on you, right?”

“Meow! (So that’s it!)”

The kitten rolled over in Shi Jin’s arms. In the most relaxed, innocent tone, she uttered words that made Lu Ning’s face turn beet red: “So you guys weren’t doing that ‘daytime debauchery’ thing just now! I thought you turned into a human just so you could do shameful things with that person!”

Before Lu Ning could react, Li Xiang, walking ahead, called out: “Qiuyu, what’s wrong?”

For some reason, Mu Qiuyu had nearly tripped over a small step. Fortunately, Li Xiang caught her in time, or she would have scraped her knee.

“Are you nervous?” Li Xiang looked back at the step, feeling it shouldn’t have been enough to trip her.

“A little. It’s fine,” Mu Qiuyu waved it off and continued walking calmly.

“If you ask me, don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Look, you dominated everyone and made the finals today even while you’re sick. Tomorrow, when you’re fully recovered, you’ll be even more amazing!” Li Xiang patted Mu Qiuyu’s shoulder to relax her.

“Mhm,” Mu Qiuyu nodded, adding pointedly, “As long as no one messes around.”

Lu Ning, listening from the side, felt terrible. She had forgotten that Mu Qiuyu could hear her mental conversations with the kitten. So, everything they discussed—the “liking,” the “daytime debauchery”—Mu Qiuyu had heard it all.

Looking at the kitten innocently yawning, Lu Ning sincerely felt that being a cat was great. After all, no one blames a kitten for saying the wrong thing.

“Mu Qiuyu, the kitten misunderstood about the ‘daytime debauchery,’ but she knows the truth now,” Lu Ning clarified solemnly in her mind.

“I heard,” Mu Qiuyu replied flatly.

For some reason, Lu Ning felt the atmosphere around Mu Qiuyu was a bit chilly. She brushed her hair back and joked, “It’s actually quite funny when you think about it. How could you do… that… in the middle of the day, right? Haha, the kitten’s logic is just bizarre.”

“And what if I would?”

The words were neither heavy nor light, floating like an invisible mist. Mu Qiuyu turned her head to look at Lu Ning, who had walked up beside her. The girl’s pupils were dark and deep. Bathed in the corridor’s sunlight, her usual coldness lost some of its distance, yet she remained unreadable.

At this second, there was less than half an arm’s length between her and Lu Ning. If she wanted to, she could grab Lu Ning’s hand at any moment, just like she had in the emergency exit.

In reality, Mu Qiuyu’s friends were all present; she couldn’t possibly be so reckless. But Lu Ning still swallowed hard.

Because of Mu Qiuyu’s words. Because, in a certain sense, she had just engaged in a form of “daytime debauchery” with her. And if Mu Qiuyu really “would” next time… would she actually accept it? Lu Ning asked herself, her heart hammering against her throat.

As Lu Ning’s thoughts drifted further afield, she heard Mu Qiuyu’s voice in her ear: “Lu Ling, I will definitely give you an answer.”

Mu Qiuyu felt as if a piece of her heart had gone hollow when she heard the kitten’s words. She didn’t know what kind of mood drove her to say “What if I would?” Such impulsive desires used to be ranked at the very bottom of her life’s priorities. She realized that none of her familiar emotions could describe this feeling. She even felt uneasy because of it, wanting to discover exactly what this emotion was.

Suppressed for too long, she had to learn even how to love someone from scratch.

The group entered the bustling venue. The audience kept making noise to “rush” the shooters—an old tradition in shooting competitions. Referees allowed it specifically to test the athletes’ mental fortitude.

“Wow, it’s really noisy,” Li Xiang covered her ears.

Shi Jin, holding the cat, sat grandly in her VIP seat. “This is a tradition, okay?”

“As if I didn’t know? Yinyue told me,” Li Xiang shot back. She had heard of it, but hadn’t expected it to be this loud. She looked worriedly at Pei Yinyue, who was currently competing. Pei was aiming her rifle, earplugs firmly in place. The surrounding noise didn’t seem to affect her much.

Satisfied, Li Xiang relaxed and scanned the line of shooters. Noticing they all wore earplugs, she turned to Mu Qiuyu. “Qiuyu, do you wear those when you shoot?”

Lu Ning answered for her: “She doesn’t use those.”

Lu Ning had witnessed this when she was impersonating Mu Qiuyu earlier. Mu Qiuyu was one of those naturally gifted shooters who didn’t wear earplugs, which had led to Lu Ning being tortured by the noise.

Mu Qiuyu sensed a hint of a “complaint” in Lu Ning’s words. But Li Xiang laughed meaningfully: “Sister, you really understand Qiuyu.”

“Of course,” Lu Ning accepted the compliment without hesitation. She even liked the feeling of “deserving” it, because Mu Qiuyu had just told her that she ranked first. Therefore, she could naturally assume that no one else knew Mu Qiuyu as well as she did.

On the range, Pei Yinyue fired a 10.7. The noise in the hall hushed for a second, leaving only Lu Ning’s words in Mu Qiuyu’s ears. For some reason, watching Lu Ning’s proud expression gave Mu Qiuyu a sense of satisfaction—even though she usually hated being seen through.

“Li Xiang,” Mu Qiuyu spoke amidst the renewed noise.

“Yeah?” It wasn’t Pei Yinyue’s turn yet, so Li Xiang turned to her.

Mu Qiuyu hesitated. Seeing Lu Ning focused on the match, she lowered her voice: “Is there anything you hate?”

“Of course!” Li Xiang nodded.

“Then… have you ever accepted something you hate?” Mu Qiuyu asked cryptically. It was ironic; in two lifetimes, the only people around her who understood emotional issues were the two friends Lu Ning had brought into her life.

Li Xiang thought seriously and nodded. “Yes. When I was little, I hated celery. Later, the girl I liked loved celery, so I tried it.” She laughed sheepishly. “Turns out I still hate celery, but I don’t hate eating it with her.”

“If you can’t accept the thing itself, why say you like it?” Mu Qiuyu was puzzled.

“Because I like her,” Li Xiang said simply and sincerely, her eyes sparkling as she looked at the range. “I’m willing to try things she likes, and I like seeing her happy because of me.” She summarized it in four words: “Love me, love my dog”.

Li Xiang finally realized why Mu Qiuyu was asking. In her mind, Mu Qiuyu wouldn’t ask this because she liked “someone else”—after all, the connection between her and “Sister Lu Ling” was so obvious. Besides, she couldn’t imagine anyone else suiting Mu Qiuyu better. But their relationship…

Li Xiang felt a wave of worry. She pretended not to see the elephant in the room and joked: “Oh, what I said isn’t universal. Just take it as a story. Everyone is different, right?”

“Perhaps,” Mu Qiuyu replied ambiguously. The noisy atmosphere was impossible to ignore; the rhythmic drumming in her heart felt like popping candy, catalyzing the answer she had just received.

What did it mean, “Love me, love my dog”? What is love?

As she pondered, Pei Yinyue’s match ended. She qualified for the finals in third place.

“Wow! Yinyue!” The noise turned into applause. Li Xiang stood up and, with surprising courage, vaulted over the stands onto the field.

Mu Qiuyu saw Pei Yinyue wave at her. The next second, Pei was swept up into a tight hug by Li Xiang. They were too far away for Mu Qiuyu to hear them, but she didn’t need to. She saw the big hug Li Xiang gave Pei Yinyue, and she found herself wanting to give Lu Ning one after her own match.

“Do you want it?” Mu Qiuyu turned to Lu Ning, having realized something.

“Huh?” Lu Ning was still in shock from Li Xiang’s vault. She thought Mu Qiuyu was talking about the shooting competition. She felt that experiencing the pressure of the audience once was enough; she definitely didn’t want a second time. She shook her head like a rattle and laughed. “I’ll just sit here and watch your final this afternoon.”

“Don’t sit here,” Mu Qiuyu said, looking at the two-meter drop between the stands and the floor. “Go sit in my rest area.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?” Lu Ning was surprised.

“No,” Mu Qiuyu said firmly. Faced with such a rare opportunity, Lu Ning didn’t refuse. In the noisy crowd of the dismissal, her voice was joyful: “Okay!”

The Youth Championship schedule was packed: preliminaries in the morning, finals in the afternoon. Thus, in the same venue, Lu Ning’s seat moved from the stands to the team benches.

The air pistol event was a fierce competition between No. 1 Middle School and Guanghua. The atmosphere was much more serious than in the morning. Everyone was analyzing scores. Sitting on the edge, Lu Ning felt far less comfortable than when she was impersonating Mu Qiuyu.

“As expected, they were eliminated.”

“Who’s left?”

“Only Sister Mu.”

“Sister Mu should be fine.”

“But her performance this morning wasn’t stable enough…”

Hearing the whispers, Lu Ning focused her gaze even more on Mu Qiuyu. Mu Qiuyu still wasn’t wearing earplugs. Her profile on the big screen was as cool and calm as a blank sheet of paper. No matter how chaotic the noise became, her expression didn’t change—just like during training.

Although Lu Ning had no doubt Mu Qiuyu would win, she still felt nervous for her. Because she cared too much, she didn’t want to bet on even a one-in-a-million chance of failure.

“BANG!” 10.9

“BANG!” 10.8

“BANG!” 10.8

“BANG!” 10.9

Before the audience could even finish their five-second “rush,” Mu Qiuyu pulled the trigger repeatedly. After four shots, she had opened a 10.9-point lead over second place. There was only one shot left. Unless she missed the target entirely, the gold medal was hers.

“It’s settled.”

“Amazing, as expected of Sister Mu.”

“Terrifyingly good.”

The atmosphere at the team bench finally returned to normal. Everyone sighed in relief, and even the coach had a rare smile. Only Lu Ning kept staring at Mu Qiuyu’s back, as if she didn’t want to miss a single second.

“BANG!” 5.2

Just as everyone assumed the gold was locked, Mu Qiuyu’s final shot seemed to be a complete relaxation. A lonely 5.2 appeared among the string of high scores. Perhaps she found her own final shot amusing, because on the big screen, Mu Qiuyu’s lips curled into a faint smile as she put down the gun.

She removed her gear and turned toward the team bench. Lu Ning was sitting right there. The impulsive urge she had felt watching Li Xiang hug Pei Yinyue surged into her chest again. For the first time, she didn’t restrain it, letting her heart race wildly along with the audience’s cheers.

It was so strange. She wanted to hug that person so badly.

“Congratulations, Qiuyu!”

“So good!”

“You’ve brought honor to our school.”

Walking through the congratulations, Mu Qiuyu stood before Lu Ning. She couldn’t yet bring herself to be as impulsive as Li Xiang, so she simply opened her arms. “A hug. I won.”

In her mind, these were two unrelated facts, but her nervousness made her link them incorrectly. It sounded as if she were demanding a reward for winning. But at the root of it, she had won the match specifically to have an excuse to hug Lu Ning.

The overhead lights traced her silhouette as she opened her arms. Lu Ning stared at the image, her memory recording it a thousand times over. The sound of her heart threatened to drown out the high-load processing of her CPU.

“Mhm. Hug.”

Lu Ning reached out. Like a child who had just learned to walk, she slowly and awkwardly took the Mu Qiuyu who was asking for a hug into her arms. That moment felt a thousand times better than the kiss in the emergency exit. Openly, yet with their own private intentions, they hugged in front of everyone.

“Do you want to go back to my Inner World for a bit?”

Mu Qiuyu’s voice drifted against Lu Ning’s ear during the hug. Lu Ning was stunned. After what happened in the morning, she had planned to go back anyway. But she hadn’t expected Mu Qiuyu to offer the chance herself.

Confused, she looked at the woman who usually hated her going back. “Why are you suddenly willing to let me go back?”

“I feel like my Inner World needs you,” Mu Qiuyu said softly, her chin rubbing against Lu Ning’s shoulder. She still disliked the idea of her Inner World, but she felt a sense of low-spiritedness in her own heart. It made her mood poor. She remembered the flowers Lu Ning had shown her—the ones Lu Ning had poured her heart into. “Maybe those flowers are about to finish blooming.”

Hearing the first part, Lu Ning had a realization. She sensed that Mu Qiuyu and Wutong could, under certain circumstances, share emotions. They were one. Mu Qiuyu could have Wutong’s gentleness, and Wutong could display Mu Qiuyu’s violence. If Mu Qiuyu said this, it meant Wutong’s state in the Inner World wasn’t good.

Thinking of the look in Wutong’s eyes when she left, Lu Ning hurried to go back. “Then I’ll head back for a bit.”

“Come back soon,” Mu Qiuyu said, squeezing Lu Ning’s hand before letting her go.

The familiar long corridor, the familiar door. Lu Ning crossed the path lined with poppies and found her way to Wutong’s white zone. This time, she noticed she had to cross a thicket that hadn’t been there before. The sharp branches scratched her calves, leaving red marks.

She scrambled over and saw Wutong sitting alone under the tree. Upon seeing her, Wutong awkwardly looked away and took a sip of wine from a bottle beside her.

“You can even manifest wine?” Lu Ning knew Wutong was angry. She walked over to strike up a conversation.

As Lu Ning approached, Wutong made a choice to ignore her, but couldn’t help a childish retort: “Hmph, I can manifest all kinds of wine. I’m much more amazing than that person who only knows how to shoot a gun.”

“Let me see,” Lu Ning said, squatting down in front of Wutong.

The scent of alcohol drifted on the wind. Wutong turned her head to look at Lu Ning, a thought flashing in her gentle eyes. She smiled slightly. “Then come closer, and I’ll show you.”

“Okay.” Lu Ning, off-guard, moved closer.

In that instant, Wutong suddenly leaned forward. She wasn’t without her own calculations; just like Mu Qiuyu, she grabbed Lu Ning’s wrist in a firm grip. On the pure white ground, Wutong pinned Lu Ning down, holding her in a prisoner-like embrace.

The heavy scent of wine overpowered her usual faint fragrance. The alcohol, like her movements, poured into Lu Ning’s nose without reason, along with her words: “A-Ning… don’t go. Stay and stay with me.”

Lu Ning’s head buzzed. Her first thought was Mu Qiuyu. She wanted Mu Qiuyu to trigger the “Forced Wake-up” function to pull her out.

But at that moment, Mu Qiuyu could no longer receive any signals from Lu Ning. She had just finished changing in the locker room when she saw a figure at the corner that looked exactly like her father.

In disbelief, she chased after him. This time, she caught up. Looking at the tall, upright figure, she was almost certain the man was her father, Su Qinghang.

Confused, she walked faster, about to call out to him. But before she could make a sound, a cry of “Daddy!” came from the other side of the corridor. A little girl with twin ponytails ran out. She looked young, clutching a medal from a race in her small hand.

The man looked at the little girl with immense love and picked her up. “Let Daddy see what this is!”

In that moment, the sunlight seemed to tear apart, stinging Mu Qiuyu’s eyes. She listened in disbelief as another woman walked over. This woman had the same gentle appearance as Mu Qiuyu’s mother. With a low bun and a smile, she said to the man: “Nannan just took first place in the race and got this medal. I said I’d hang it up at home, but she insisted on running over to show Daddy first.”

“Our Nannan loves Daddy that much?”

“Yes!”

The little girl’s voice was full of pride and joy—she had clearly grown up surrounded by love. Mu Qiuyu watched the man holding his daughter, with the woman smiling gently beside them. It was a beautiful family of three—if only this man weren’t her father, who had been declared dead.

It was as if things Mu Qiuyu had missed in her previous life were slowly unfolding. Her mind quickly connected the dots, and she felt a surge of fury. Just as she was about to step forward to see clearly, a pair of hands covered her eyes from behind.

Mu Jingqin appeared out of nowhere and whispered in Mu Qiuyu’s ear: “Don’t look.”

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