Escaping from the Yandere Young Heiress - Chapter 14

The sound of water in the bathroom stopped.

A moment later, the door opened, and Leng Tan emerged.

She held a soft, dry cloth in her hand, slowly wiping her fingers. Her gaze swept over Jian Anji, who was still standing in place, but lingered only briefly, as if Jian Anji were merely an object temporarily left there.

“You may leave now,” Leng Tan said, tossing the cloth aside and walking toward the large, cold bed. Her tone was as flat as ever, devoid of emotion, like she was concluding a scheduled task.

“Yes, Master,” Jian Anji replied softly, turning to leave.

Her steps felt unsteady, and the ointment and bandages on her back rubbed uncomfortably with each movement.

As her hand touched the cold doorknob, Leng Tan’s voice came from behind, low but clear, cutting through the silence of the room: “Tomorrow morning at eight, bring me the filing records from the study.”

Another command.

This added today’s work to the scope of scrutiny and set the agenda for tomorrow.

“…Yes.”

She opened the door, stepped out, and gently closed it behind her.

The heavy door shut out the air in the master bedroom, thick with the scent of ointment, cold perfume, and absolute authority. The corridor lights were softer, but they couldn’t dispel the gloom in her heart.

Back in her own room, if “own” still meant anything here, she locked the door behind her. She knew the lock was useless against Leng Tan, but the small act at least offered a symbolic mental barrier.

The room was pitch-black.

She didn’t turn on the light, instead feeling her way to the bed by the faint glow of the city’s never-sleeping neon signs outside the window. She sat down.

Exhaustion surged over her like a rising tide, not just physical weariness but a bone-deep weariness that seeped from the depths of her soul.

The ointment on her back felt even colder in the silence, locked in a persistent tug-of-war with the dull ache beneath her skin.

She didn’t lie down right away.

She just sat there in the dark, listening to her slow, heavy heartbeat.

Fragments flashed uncontrollably through her mind: the red welts left by the whip, the cold, sticky ointment, the childish “Tantan” in the ledger, the silent gaze across the dining table, and the precise, cold touch during the recent ointment application…

These images tangled and collided, all pointing to the same source—the woman in the master bedroom just beyond the wall.

Who was she really?

A ruthless manipulator, or the girl on the swing?

Perhaps she was both.

And it was this possibility of a split, more than the image of a simple tyrant, that sent a chill deep into her bones.

A tyrant’s rules are clear, but a ruler who might harbor hidden vulnerabilities deep within her heart is far more unpredictable. Her control is also more… all-encompassing.

Jian Anji slowly lay down, moving with extreme caution to avoid putting pressure on her back.

The cool silk sheets enveloped her once more.

She lay on her side, facing the window.

Outside, the city lights still blazed brilliantly, like a false, never-falling starry sky.

Yet that light couldn’t penetrate this room, nor could it reach the depths of her heart.

Darkness and silence wrapped around her like a heavy cocoon.

Her body was utterly exhausted, but her mind remained unnaturally alert.

The pain in her back, the coolness of the ointment, and the friction of the gauze all conspired to keep her awake.

Deeper still lay an empty, aimless feeling.

Tomorrow at eight, she had to submit the archived records.

And then what?

A new task?

A new punishment?

Or would this suspended, meticulously planned routine continue?

Time flowed silently through the darkness.

She wasn’t sure how long had passed when, just as her consciousness began to blur with exhaustion, she heard a faint, brief sound through the wall, like a hallucination.

It sounded like… something falling onto a soft carpet.

From the direction of the master bedroom.

Then came an even longer, deathly silence.

Jian Anji instinctively held her breath.

Was Leng Tan still awake?

Or was it…?

The faint sound was like a hook, yanking her back from the edge of unconsciousness into sharp wakefulness.

Every sense tensed again as she strained to listen.

But all she heard was her own heart pounding louder and louder.

The room next door seemed to have become a black hole, swallowing all sound.

Had she imagined it?

Or was it…?

She didn’t dare think further, curling up tighter and burying herself deeper into the cold sheets and the deeper darkness.

The ointment on her back seemed to grow colder in the silence.

Yet in this icy darkness and silent suspicion, the sketch of the little girl on the swing emerged with unnatural clarity, its cruel innocence staring back at her.

That phantom-like sound, like a pebble dropped into a deep pool, sent ripples that refused to fade.

Jian Anji lay wide-eyed in the dark, every sense focused on the wall separating the two spaces.

But all she heard was the rush of her own blood against her eardrums.

The master bedroom fell into an even deeper silence, as if the faint sound had never occurred, or as if whatever made the noise had been swiftly swallowed by the stillness.

Time crawled by, stretched taut by her nerves and the dull ache in her back.

Outside the window, neon lights shifted silently through the gaps in the curtains, like a silent pantomime playing out in another dimension.

Exhaustion repeatedly tried to drag her into sleep, but each time she neared the edge, a strange alertness and the lingering coolness of the ointment on her skin pulled her back.

After what felt like an eternity, her consciousness began to fray, the boundaries of reality blurring.

Before she completely sank into the chaotic dreamscape, her last lingering thought was the rough texture of the leather-bound ledger and the fragile, yellowed scrap of paper inside.

A swing swayed in the void, Tantan’s smile melting into the fathomless darkness…

When she regained consciousness, it was dawn.

She hadn’t woken naturally, but had been startled awake by a familiar, piercingly cold presence and a gaze fixed on her face.

Jian Anji’s eyes snapped open.

Leng Tan stood by the bed.

She was already dressed, wearing a sharply tailored dark gray pantsuit. Her long hair was neatly pulled back, and her face wore a light layer of makeup. Her expression remained as calm and composed as ever, even carrying a hint of morning’s crisp, sharp energy.

She held a file in her hand, likely a briefing that had just been delivered.

Standing there, she looked down at Jian Anji, who had just woken up, still groggy with sleep.

No knock. No warning.

She had simply walked in, as if entering her own territory.

What time is it?

The thought flashed through Jian Anji’s hazy mind.

The dim gray light filtering through the curtains made it clear it wasn’t eight o’clock yet.

“Awake?” Leng Tan asked, her voice cold and devoid of warmth, not expecting an answer.

“Bring the records to the study by eight. Now,” she glanced at Jian Anji’s rumpled pajamas and disheveled hair, “you have forty-seven minutes.”

With that, she turned and left the guest room, the door closing silently behind her.

It was like a cold wind had swept through, leaving behind a room filled with chill and a suddenly racing heartbeat.

Jian Anji pushed herself up to sit on the bed. The pain in her back, despite a night of rest (if you could call it that), hadn’t eased much. In fact, it felt stiffer and more achy as morning broke.

The gauze rubbed against her skin, and most of the ointment seemed to have been absorbed, leaving only a dry, tight sensation.

Forty-seven minutes.

She threw back the covers and stepped out of bed, her bare feet landing on the icy floor. The cold shock instantly cleared her head.

There was no time to dwell on the chaos of the previous night’s thoughts or her physical discomfort.

The instructions were clear, the time precise.

She washed up and changed. Leng Tan had already laid out another set of clothes on the bench at the foot of the bed: a shirt and pants of understated elegance, the fabric clearly high-quality.

She moved quickly, though every lift of her arm and bend of her waist tugged at the wound on her back.

Her face in the mirror remained pale, with faint dark circles under her eyes. But her gaze had already been forcibly injected with the numb focus of daylight, the detached concentration required for carrying out her mission.

She hastily tied her long hair into a low ponytail and glanced at the clock. Less than half an hour remained.

She left the guest room.

The apartment was silent, save for the low hum of the central air conditioning.

Leng Tan wasn’t in the living room or the dining area.

The study door was closed.

Jian Anji walked straight to the study and pushed the door open.

Morning light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the room and revealing dust motes dancing in the sunbeams.

The blue folders she had organized yesterday were neatly stacked on one side of the desk.

She walked over and quickly checked the classifications and labels, confirming everything was in order.

Next, she needed to write a brief record outlining the scope and contents of the archived materials.

She sat down at the desk and pulled open a drawer to find paper and a pen. Her fingertips brushed against cold metal and smooth wood.

Just as she was about to grab a notepad and fountain pen, her gaze drifted across the desk.

The three old ledgers remained exactly where she had left them yesterday, showing no signs of having been moved.

The dark brown ledger on top lay quietly in the morning light, its cover tightly closed, as if the heart-stopping discovery and frantic cover-up of the previous night had been nothing more than a dream.

Jian Anji’s fingers froze.

Had Leng Tan seen them?

Had she noticed the sketch that shouldn’t have been there?

Had “Tantan” ever been revisited and stared at by the Master of this study in the quiet of the night?

There were no answers.

The ledgers remained silent, like a Pandora’s box forgotten yet always on the verge of being reopened.

Forcing herself to look away, she picked up the fountain pen and began to focus on writing the archiving record.

The pen scratched across the paper, its sound unusually clear and lonely in the quiet morning study.

The hands of the antique wall clock slowly ticked toward eight o’clock.

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