Hedgehog's Belly - Chapter 63

Yan Qingzhu lifted her head slightly, the delicate scent of bitter orange leaf diffusing between her breaths—a hint of cunning, a touch of arrogance.

She brushed away the stray hairs from Luo Mu’s eyes: “How could I?”

“You’re lying.”

Luo Mu showed no sign of weakness. Her gaze was resolute as she pressed her fingertip against Yan Qingzhu’s soft lips.

You’re lying.

Yan Qingzhu’s smile deepened. Even without alcohol, she experienced the illusion of a drunken loss of focus. Her reason was gnarled and tangled; she wanted nothing more than to drown in this old dream named “Luo Mu.”

For a lifetime, for eight hundred lifetimes.

Until death do us part.

“Sister’s secrets—only I know them.”

Yan Qingzhu leaned forward, lightly biting Luo Mu’s earlobe. Like an ungrateful predator that had voluntarily retracted its fangs: “Don’t let Yan Qingzhu know.”

Luo Mu thought to herself that this woman truly understood how to play the game of “hard to get.”

“That Yan Qingzhu is a bad woman. Unlike me—I’m very well-behaved.”

Yan Qingzhu talked nonsense to herself, her thumb resting on the other’s jaw, listening to the sound of their shared breathing.

It coaxed a trace of a smile to the corners of Luo Mu’s mouth. Her nose grazed Yan Qingzhu’s neck. A sparse numbness spread along her nerves to her brain, like a firework that kept rising but refused to explode.

A repeated torture of the spirit.

“Then I’ll only be good to you, and not to her, okay?” Luo Mu couldn’t help but tease.

Truly a farce.

“Okay.”

Yan Qingzhu answered crisply: “But won’t Sister Yan Qingzhu get angry?”

Luo Mu’s lips ground against Yan Qingzhu’s skin as she took the bait, intentionally speaking boldly.

“Does Yan Qingzhu’s feelings… really matter?”

Does it matter?

The air instantly dropped to freezing point, turning eerily silent.

The next second acted like a fuse, igniting a faint, acrid, stinging scent of gunpowder.

Yan Qingzhu froze for a long moment, her smile turning a bit stagnant. Her brows knitted slightly before slowly smoothing out.

It didn’t sound like a joke.

This joke wasn’t funny at all.

“Is Yan Qingzhu… an insignificant person to Sister?”

Yan Qingzhu spat these words out with feigned indifference.

Even a fool could see the bone-chilling edge beneath them.

Luo Mu’s breathing grew hurried as her gaze collided with the other’s eyes once more. In the swaying light and shadow, those pupils were clear—as tragically beautiful as autumn leaves falling onto a pond’s surface—hiding things that could not be voiced.

Like a bound soul unable to plead, waiting for a given answer.

The banter of drawing blades had been started by Yan Qingzhu, yet in the end, she had to admit defeat herself.

“Fine, fine, fine. I surrender.”

Yan Qingzhu automatically raised the white flag. In this second, she admitted her heart had softened: “Don’t be like this, Muzi-jie.”

“Don’t be like this…”

Yan Qingzhu quickly pulled Luo Mu into her arms, her voice turning soft as she retracted her sharp edges. She patted the other’s back carefully, as if soothing a child.

It was as if the one truly frightened was the girl before her, who was only a month older than her.

But for a fleeting moment, Luo Mu’s eyes grew dark. For some reason, her mind replayed the scene of the two of them at the Lingyang temple for the first time.

— “Then what about Yan Qingzhu?”

— “Is there no Yan Qingzhu in Muzi-jie’s wish?”

In truth, no one ever cared about what would happen to Yan Qingzhu. Yan Qingzhu’s feelings were, in fact, not important at all.

Over the years, everyone knew the eldest daughter of the Yan family never lacked for gazes of attention or admiration. They knew the momentum provided by her parents’ power behind her, so the outcome would never be too ugly.

Even if she truly lived alone with her sister, her starting point was much higher than that of ordinary people.

But the eldest daughter cannot be weak. She cannot show eyes that thirst for pity. She cannot let her inner thoughts be guessed.

For so many years, even Yan Qingzhu herself felt this way.

It was even more impossible for her to bow her head like a wet stray cat staying in a damp, dark corner, waiting to be rescued. Yet she still cradled that person carefully in her arms, lowering her voice to mimic her sister’s tone, calling the other “Sister.”

It was as if by saying “Sister,” she could abandon all defenses and receive protection.

Luo Mu’s head was pressed against Yan Qingzhu’s shoulder. Knuckles and hair tangled; a faint woody scent mixed with jasmine, interlacing perfectly with the bitter orange.

From her vantage point, Luo Mu could not see the slight redness at the corners of Yan Qingzhu’s eyes.

They knew each other too well; they knew exactly where the blade would make the other suffocate.

But Luo Mu couldn’t bear to test their love on the edge of a knife.

Yan Qingzhu called her name softly, with a hint of a tremble: “Sister.”

Luo Mu replied: “Mm.”

“Sunday… do you want to go meet the parents with me?”

Yan Qingzhu spoke nonchalantly, but Luo Mu sat up straight instantly, her face full of disbelief.

“Meet… who?” Luo Mu stumbled, her words stiff.

“My father. Though, in a way, he’s Yan Yu’s father.” Yan Qingzhu paused slightly, though she didn’t seem aggrieved.

She was speaking the truth; she should have admitted it long ago.

Luo Mu propped her arms on Yan Qingzhu’s shoulders, puzzled: “Is Yan Yu going?”

Yan Qingzhu was silent for a while, then smiled and explained calmly, her eyes gradually growing tender: “I did bring her to see Father once, but the child has had a psychological stress response ever since. After that, only I could go.”

“The Yan Yu you see now wasn’t like this at all before. Ever since the parents’ divorce, she doesn’t allow any outsiders in the house. Not even a domestic helper.”

Back then, Yan Yu throwing things when angry was a small matter; the moment she saw a strange face in the house, she would act like a ferocious little beast, frequently biting the domestic staff.

It was as if in her worldview, the synonym for “Adult” was “Dangerous Good.”

Later, Yan Qingzhu followed her sister’s wishes, picking up the household chores bit by bit on her own.

Yan Qingzhu’s voice was low as she half-closed her eyes: “All that screaming and crying back then… it was all too normal.”

But the sister still chose the Eldest Sister.

Because she was the eldest, because she had to shoulder the responsibility of the home.

Luo Mu finally realized that back in high school, when she thought Yan Qingzhu was joking about doing housework, those words had now become needles dipped in poison.

Bit by bit, they pricked Luo Mu until she ached.

“I’m sorry.” Luo Mu lowered her eyes, her pupils glistening as she whispered: “Azhu, it must have been very hard.”

“What?” Yan Qingzhu paused.

“All these years,” Luo Mu sighed, unable to bear continuing the topic: “Learning to act like an adult, taking care of your sister, managing the emotions of both parents, and dealing with all the miserable crap of life.”

Some bitterness is destined to never be perfectly empathized with.

It was just that Luo Mu felt a tearing pain in her heart. Bringing her sister home only served to remind Yan Qingzhu that she herself didn’t have a home.

But Yan Qingzhu suddenly changed her expression, looking at Luo Mu with a mischievous grin: “So, you agree?”

Luo Mu realized she had been baited.

“Just my father, no one else.” Yan Qingzhu explained, rubbing Luo Mu’s furrowed brow: “As Yan Qingzhu’s girlfriend… how about it?”

“Won’t your dad object?” Luo Mu murmured.

As… a girlfriend?

Until now, besides Yan Yu and their close friends, it seemed no one knew what the relationship between Luo Mu and Yan Qingzhu was.

Luo Mu also knew very well that not everyone could accept such a reality.

But Yan Qingzhu just smiled faintly and teased: “Didn’t you say the gods and Buddhas told you to rest easy?”

“Baiting me again,” Luo Mu said crossly.

Perhaps she should go. Go to a banquet with her lover and face the public opinion of the world together.

If that person was Yan Qingzhu, then Luo Mu wasn’t afraid.

“Then what should I bring for your father?” Luo Mu stood up and turned down the volume of the TV: “I can’t exactly go empty-handed, can I?”

She paused for a few seconds: “Otherwise… should I give the old gentleman two pieces of gold?”

Yan Qingzhu burst out laughing: “Don’t worry about that. I’ll have my father’s confidant prepare it.”

Luo Mu’s voice turned hoarse in her daze: “Then I…”

“You don’t need to prepare anything right now. Just rest well these next few days.” Yan Qingzhu’s thumb brushed over the faint, barely noticeable dark circles under Luo Mu’s eyes.

She had actually noticed them a long time ago.

The faint red veins in her eyes showed the exhaustion she was carrying.

“Don’t overthink things at night; get a good sleep.” Yan Qingzhu softened her tone, cupping Luo Mu’s face with both hands like she was soothing a child, the smile never leaving her lips.

Luo Mu found it rare. She hooked her arms around Yan Qingzhu’s neck and asked difficultly: “Guess what I’ll be thinking about?”

If Yan Qingzhu could guess, it might alleviate Luo Mu’s own guilt.

She wanted her to guess; she wanted her not to.

On the TV screen, the female protagonists’ reunion flickered—the tearful rain curtain was like a reflected old film, recalling past ambiguities and eavesdropping on each other’s secrets.

From sparse, brief Japanese greetings to eventually having nothing left to say.

Yan Qingzhu’s gaze was clear and swaying. At this moment, it felt exceptionally absurd, and she didn’t know how to respond.

Should she really guess?

The torture of a thousand ants eating at her heart was worse than being a bit muddled, a fool who understood nothing.

Luo Mu thought she didn’t know; she also wanted to pretend she knew nothing.

“If it’s an uncertain answer, then I don’t want to guess,” Yan Qingzhu said softly, her voice slightly raspy as she left a kiss on Luo Mu’s forehead.

“I want to wait for you to tell me yourself.”

Luo Mu’s pupils shifted—it was a blatant provocation: “What if I never tell you?”

Yan Qingzhu watched her calmly: “…You will.”

Her thumb rubbed lightly against Luo Mu’s thin lips, plain yet sincere: “One day, you will tell me yourself what it is you want.”

Will that day come?

It will.

If a person keeps deceiving themselves like this until they even succeed in fooling themselves… in a way, perhaps it is an illusion of happiness.

So fake that it made her mistakenly believe she was finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Yan Qingzhu had once thought that as long as there were moments of warmth and pleasure, it would be enough to preserve the beautiful things.

For someone with her background, this much was enough.

But her lover before her insisted on tearing this lie to shreds. Like the reality of a primordial boulder, dragging them both down into an abyss where no light could be seen.

Luo Mu’s eyelashes fluttered with her breath. She suddenly grabbed Yan Qingzhu’s wrists and pulled her hands away from her face.

In a daze, she stood on her tiptoes and forcefully pulled Yan Qingzhu’s collar down. As their lips touched, a ripple rose in her heart—complex emotions like a whale stranded on the shore, or fireworks that refused to explode.

On the boundary of death, yet still looking back.

The warm, ambiguous breath disturbed the workings of the world. They no longer needed to guess each other’s thoughts.

Was it that she couldn’t guess, or that she didn’t want to?

Yan Qingzhu put her arms around her waist, letting her body tilt slowly. She wanted to mix love and hate together and swallow them in one gulp.

“But Azhu,”

Luo Mu looked up to stare at her, the corners of her eyes tinged with red, her breath shallow: “What I want… you can’t give me.”

The clear wind circled the forest, yet someone whispered in the wind that the word “Love” was too heavy.

Because love cannot just be love.