Escaping from the Yandere Young Heiress - Chapter 16

The afternoon sun cast a warm glow, yet it couldn’t dispel the dry, cool sensation that lingered on Jian Anji’s fingertips as she touched the leather-bound ledger.

Her gaze lingered on the deep brown ledger for a moment before shifting away.

She couldn’t hesitate; hesitation itself would betray her.

First, she picked up the two thinner ledgers, cradling them securely in her arms.

Then, she reached for the thickest one.

Her fingers gripped the spine, and she lifted with more force than she’d anticipated.

As the ledger left the table, she instinctively held her breath, as if afraid to disturb the secrets slumbering within.

Nothing happened.

No slips of paper slid out.

The ledger lay quietly in her arms, stacked with the other two, merely an old object needing to be returned to its place.

She moved to the corner and set up the lightweight aluminum ladder again.

Sunlight streamed in from the side, casting distorted, magnified shadows of the ladder and herself across the floor.

Clutching the ledgers, she climbed rung by rung.

The height made her slightly dizzy, and the wound on her back stretched with each movement, sending sharp stabs of pain through her. She gritted her teeth.

The top shelf loomed before her.

Dust motes danced in the sunlight, betraying the traces of her cleaning from the day before, though fresh particles had already begun to settle.

Carefully, she returned the ledgers to their original positions, placing them against the window in the order she remembered.

First, she placed the two thin ledgers back. Last came the thick, dark brown one.

At the very last moment, as she pushed it back into place, her fingertips trembled slightly. She almost opened it again to check if the sketch was still there.

But she resisted.

Her movements had to be smooth, natural.

The ledger’s spine aligned with the others, making a soft scraping sound.

Done.

She quickly climbed down the ladder, folded it, and put it back in the corner.

The whole process took less than five minutes.

Everything in the study was as it had been: sunlight, dust motes, silent bookshelves. It was as if nothing had happened.

She stood before the bookshelf, looking up at the three old ledgers she had just returned to the top shelf.

They were once again hidden in the shadows and light, like three silent guardians forgotten by time.

The little girl named Tantan was locked away in the past with them.

But was this truly the end?

Or had she merely buried a seed of unease deeper in the soil?

She turned to leave the study.

Her gaze drifted across the wide desk where the ledgers had been yesterday. Now it was empty, only a patch of dark wood gleaming in the sunlight and nearly invisible dust motes still settling in the air.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something on the carpet near the inner edge of the desk. It was a tiny, pale speck that didn’t quite match the dark carpet.

She froze.

Her heart clenched.

It wasn’t dust. Dust wouldn’t be in that spot, and it wouldn’t have that… papery texture.

Slowly, painfully bending over, she leaned closer to get a better look.

It was a tiny, irregular scrap of thin, yellowed paper.

Smaller than her pinky nail, it looked like it had been accidentally torn or worn off and fallen.

The texture… it felt a lot like the sketch paper she’d touched yesterday.

Lying quietly among the dark wool carpet fibers, it was almost invisible, yet it stood out like a drop of ink on snow.

Had it been torn off when she hastily shoved the ledger back yesterday, caught between the cover or pages?

Or had it been there longer, just an ordinary scrap of old paper unrelated to the sketch?

She couldn’t be sure.

But its presence felt like a tiny, unhealing crack in the peace of mind she’d just achieved, having put everything “perfectly back in place.”

If Leng Tan came in, and if her eyes were sharp enough, would she see it? And if she did, what would she think?

Jian Anji stared at the scrap of paper, her mind blank for a few seconds.

Then, almost instinctively, she reached out and carefully picked it up with her fingertips.

The scrap of paper, light as a feather, trembled slightly between her fingertips.

She straightened up and glanced around the study.

The room remained silent, save for the shifting patterns of sunlight.

A faint hum drifted in from the city outside the window.

She quickly walked to the nearest trash can—a leather-covered bin hidden under the desk.

Lifting the lid, she found it nearly empty.

She released the tiny scrap of paper, watching it flutter down to the bottom of the bin, disappearing from sight.

She closed the lid.

Only then did she realize her palms were damp with a thin layer of sweat.

The wound on her back, aggravated by the bending and tension, began to ache faintly again.

She looked up at the top shelf of the bookcase.

The ledgers stood silently.

The scrap of paper was gone.

But some things, once seen, can never truly be erased.

Whether it’s a bruise on the skin, the memory of a smile on a swing, or the subtle yet persistent unease in her heart, the fear of being discovered.

She took a deep breath, smoothed her clothes, and left the study.

The door closed softly behind her, sealing away the cleaned-up “perfection” and any hidden dangers that might lurk beneath.

In the hallway, the afternoon light stretched long and slanted.

She didn’t know where Leng Tan was or what she was doing.

All she knew was that the next command, or the next blank period requiring her to “arrange things herself,” would arrive soon.

In the meantime, that discarded scrap of paper and the sketch that might still exist deep within the ledger were like two invisible thorns buried beneath her seemingly calm steps.

The hallway light stretched long and slanted, the setting sun streaming through the window at the end gilding everything with a fragile, golden edge.

Jian Anji stood outside the study door, her back to the newly closed door that seemed to seal away a tiny but crucial piece of evidence. Her heart still pounded in her chest.

Her fingertips still seemed to retain the faint, brittle feel of the old paper she had crumpled.

She needed to leave this place, to escape this eerily quiet hallway that seemed to amplify every nervous breath.

Her feet instinctively turned toward the living room.

The open space there would at least offer a less claustrophobic view.

The moment she stepped into the living room, she saw Leng Tan sitting in the same armchair she’d occupied that morning, facing the floor-to-ceiling window.

But she wasn’t just sitting there. She was turned slightly to the side, holding a white ceramic coffee cup. No steam rose from the rim; the coffee had clearly gone cold.

Her gaze was fixed on the view outside. The setting sun cast a soft glow on her profile, yet the backlighting deepened her silhouette, making her seem even more enigmatic.

Leng Tan didn’t seem to hear Jian Anji’s footsteps, or perhaps she simply didn’t care.

She remained motionless, staring out the window at the city skyline, now ablaze with sunset hues before sinking into twilight. Her posture radiated an almost frozen intensity.

Her expression wasn’t one of admiration for the scenery. It was more like scrutiny, or perhaps deep contemplation of some impossibly complex problem, as if she had temporarily shut out the world around her.

Jian Anji froze in place, caught between advancing and retreating.

She didn’t want to disturb Leng Tan, let alone draw her attention at a moment like this.

Holding her breath, she tried to move silently, planning to slip out quietly, perhaps get a glass of water in the kitchen, or simply return to her guest room.

Just as Jian Anji was about to turn away, Leng Tan spoke.

Her voice wasn’t loud, almost a whisper, as if talking to herself, yet it carried clearly across the room.

“The sunset today is very intense.”

It wasn’t directed at Jian Anji, more like an objective observation of the scene before her.

But in the space where only the two of them were present, the words naturally served as a wedge to break the silence.

Jian Anji could no longer pretend she wasn’t there.

She stopped, standing rooted to the spot, her gaze fixed on Leng Tan’s silhouette outlined by the setting sun. She replied softly, “…Yes.”

Leng Tan didn’t turn around or acknowledge her response in any way.

She continued gazing out the window, silent for a moment. The only sounds in the living room were their barely audible breathing and the distant, eternal hum of the city.

Then Leng Tan spoke again, this time with a faint, almost imperceptible something in her tone.

Not weariness, not sentimentality, but something more like… a distant affirmation.

“Like blood.”

The two words fell lightly, landing on the thick carpeted floor as if they weighed a thousand pounds.

Like blood.

Jian Anji’s breath caught in her throat.

She stared at Leng Tan’s back, at the silhouette completely bathed in the blood-red sunset, a chill creeping up her spine.

The sudden, almost violent metaphor clashed horribly with Leng Tan’s calm profile and the exquisitely cold living room.

Was she talking about the sunset, or something else entirely?

Was it a casual impression, or some deeper, more hidden projection of her inner self?

Jian Anji didn’t dare respond, nor could she.

She stood there, feeling the faint ache of the bruises on her back flare up the moment those two words reached her ears, as if resonating with the blood-red sunset outside the window in some eerie, unsettling way.

After uttering those two words, Leng Tan fell silent.

She gently placed the now-cold coffee cup on the side table, the porcelain clinking against the glass with a crisp, almost piercingly clear sound.

Then, she slowly rose to her feet.

The dark green velvet gown draped around her, its deep, muted sheen shimmering in the fading sunlight.

She still didn’t look at Jian Anji, as if the words had truly been spoken only to the sky outside the window.

She turned and walked toward the master bedroom, her steps steady, her back straight, once again donning the calm, self-possessed facade she wore during the day.

The setting sun cast a long, dark shadow behind her, so dense it seemed to cling to the floor. As she moved, the shadow slowly swept across the expensive carpet, brushed past Jian Anji’s frozen feet, and finally vanished into the dimness of the hallway.

In the living room, Jian Anji was left alone with the increasingly thick, darkening, blood-red glow of the sunset, as if the light itself were congealing.

The faint, bitter aroma of coffee still lingered in the air, mingling with the illusory warmth of the sunset to create a suffocating scent.

She moved slowly, almost shuffling, to the sofa opposite where Leng Tan had been sitting, but she didn’t sit down.

Instead, she stood there, gazing out the window at the sky, its vibrant colors rapidly fading as it sank into an iron-gray twilight.

The words “like blood” echoed repeatedly in her mind, like a curse. They intertwined with the smile in the ledger, the whip’s crack through the air, and the icy coolness of the ointment, casting an even deeper, more indelible shadow over her heart.

Night was about to fall again.

Support Escaping from the Yandere Young Heiress