The Female Lead of the Abusive Novel Can Hear My Heart's Voice - Chapter 26

Late at night at the Xia family villa, the front door opened a crack and a man in black, blending into the darkness, slipped inside.

He moved quickly into the master bedroom and, without turning on the lights, easily avoided obstacles like the TV and sofa.

He took off his baseball cap anyone watching might think he’d just been out playing late and was sneaking home but that wasn’t the case. He was disguising himself so no one would see him.

The moment he gently shut the bedroom door, a woman’s anxious voice rang in his ear.

“How did the fortune teller put it?”

Bright light revealed every emotion on his face whatever he tried to hide was plain to see.

“The fortune teller said what we suspected Xia Chi is bad luck for Caicai. Caicai can’t be with her.”

When those words came out, the wealthy madam stepped back several paces. It wasn’t fear on her face but the dawning clarity of finally understanding the truth.

“I told you she’s a fox spirit reborn. Ever since Caicai was with her she’s been getting sick for no reason.” The madam’s features hardened with cruelty. “That wicked woman I’ll make her pay!”

Mr. Xia stopped her, catching her arms. Bound tightly, she struggled.

“Let go of me I’ll kill that fox spirit!”

“Madam, calm down.” Mr. Xia’s eyes were murderous too; his hands trembled with rage. Yet reason stayed in control, and from his throat he forced out words, one measured syllable at a time.

“She is, after all, our biological daughter. She’s bound for the Teng family we shouldn’t delay the wedding. Rather than letting her off cheaply, let’s use whatever value she has left.”

“But Caicai and that fox spirit are so close. If she marries over there, Caicai will surely keep coming back to her.”

Mr. Xia’s dark eyes were impenetrable, like a bottomless pool; the surface was black. Those who believed he was indifferent and had no secrets were wrong there were far nastier thoughts buried deep beneath.

“We should solve the problem at its root. If the fox spirit doesn’t want Caicai near her, we’ll make sure she dares not approach Caicai.”

Mrs. Xia looked up at her husband, puzzled. “Honey, what do you mean?”

A villainous smile carved his square face he could play a TV drama antagonist with ease.

“Madam, don’t you see? We’ll make Caicai the villain. Make the fox spirit fear her, hate her then she won’t come near Caicai.”

The idea cleared the fog and lit the woman up; she understood immediately. She calmed and leaned like a bird against her husband’s shoulder.

“Honey, how will you make the fox spirit hate Caicai? That won’t be easy.”

To have become a company chairman is never simple he knew strategy.

He wrapped his arm around his wife’s waist and smiled sinisterly.

“That orphanage is the best place to start. Only Caicai knows how important that orphanage is to the fox spirit; we didn’t even know.”

At that the wealthy madam smiled, her eyes sharp. Beneath her pretty face, she looked like a white-boned demon.

They were in perfect accord. “Strike at the snake’s seven spots,” she said. “If we want the fox spirit to stay away from Caicai, this is how it has to be done.”

Xia Mucai (Caicai) had no idea her father and mother were plotting this. If she did know, she would faint at once.

Did they not consider their own daughter a daughter at all?

The heroine who’s been unreasonably unloved she struggles on our sympathy and yet people, under the guise of doing what’s best for her, plan to hurt the woman she cares about.

After returning from the hospital, Xia Mucai lay in bed and did nothing for several days. Then a few peaceful days passed.

At midnight she couldn’t sleep. Worried the male lead might go mad and set the orphanage on fire, she picked up her phone and called Tang Mingming.

The call connected quickly the voice on the other end was hoarse, as if just awakened.

“Hello, Sister Xia? What’s up?”

Xia Mucai was wide awake by midnight and even more energetic after 12 AM, lying on her back and swinging her legs.

“Mingming, be mindful of the orphanage’s fire safety over the next few days. Do several evacuation drills with the children.”

Her voice was warm; she felt a little bad about disturbing someone’s sleep so late.

“Okay” came the immediate, cheerful reply no grumpiness at being awakened.

Tang Mingming owed Xia Mucai a favor. Even a late-night call asking her to come now and help would get a quick yes.

“Got it, Sister Xia. Don’t worry I’ll have the children do the drills tomorrow.”

“Anything else?”

Xia Mucai stopped twirling her hair, turned onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Contentment had replaced much of her anxiety.

“No, nothing. Go to sleep.” She said briefly, then hung up.

On the other end Tang Mingming said “Mm” and they disconnected.

Xia Mucai stretched out in the soft bed and exhaled slowly.

“I don’t know when Teng Jingsi will burn the orphanage down, I’m so worried.” She muttered.

“Can I not be the villain?” she wondered aloud.

Apparently she could not.

In the past few days she’d sneakily sent someone into Teng’s company to plant crude notes outside Teng Jingsi’s office exposing Xia Chi’s weak points. It was a low level prank Xia Mucai hoped Teng Jingsi would see it and maybe not believe it.

“If he doesn’t believe it, maybe the orphanage won’t be burned…” She yawned and a few tears shone at the corners of her eyes. “This way I’ll have done my duty and preserved Xia Chi’s true home.”

Her eyes grew heavy as if filled with lead. She obediently closed them and fell into a deep, steady sleep.

Her room was the far right on the second floor; Xia Chi’s was the far left.

The whole villa seemed asleep, quiet except for tiny breathing sounds. Moonlight dimly brightened the dark house. The far-left bedroom door opened and Xia Chi stepped out wearing a black hoodie that blended with the night, dark jeans below a petite figure that would look great in street-style photos.

She closed the bedroom door gently, tiptoed down the stairs and glanced at each room upstairs. Her eyes landed on the far-right door. A little wooden cat-shaped sign hung there with “Do Not Enter” scrawled in red marker.

For some reason she felt uneasy; she had a sense that this glance might be the last.

“Xia Mucai, I’m leaving now. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Xia Chi said, as if she could see right through the door into the sleeping person.

She steeled herself and turned away. “I can’t delay the director’s condition is serious.”

She wanted to hurry back to see the old director one last time he was dying.

After Xia Chi left, the master bedroom downstairs slowly opened. The light inside made the outside seem especially bright. A square-faced man walked out, followed by a woman in purple velvet sleepwear who murmured, “She’s gone. She won’t know how desperate she is once she knows the truth.”

The man agreed. “If it gets Caicai away from us, it’s worth it.”

Confirming that Xia Chi wouldn’t return, he shut the bedroom door. “Madam, go to bed. Tomorrow we’ll see the news about the old, decrepit orphanage ‘accidentally’ catching fire.”

The next day Xia Mucai woke up just before noon. The curtains blocked most of the sunlight and the sky was overcast; she thought at first it was only dawn.

Stretching, she looked at the clock and sighed, “I haven’t slept in like this in ages.”

It was odd Xia Chi would normally call her at eight or nine to wake her for breakfast. Now it was eleven.

Her foster mother came upstairs in a cheerful mood and knocked on her door.

Knock-knock-knock. “Caicai, come down for breakfast!”

Startled, she took her eyes off the clock and hurriedly answered, “Oh okay.”

She could hear the happiness in her foster mother’s voice. For some reason the morning felt unusually upbeat had Mrs. Fu won the lottery? Was Mr. Xia taking her out to a candlelit dinner?

She smoothed her bed-tousled hair, changed clothes, and headed downstairs.

Usually she would spot Xia Chi in the open kitchen prepping food, but today only her foster mother stood at the stove. She pouted slightly and asked on the stairs, “Mom, where’s Xia Chi? Why didn’t she wake me up today?”

Her foster mother didn’t answer immediately. Calm on the surface, she stirred ingredients with a spatula at the stove.

When Xia Mucai reached the bottom, her eyes were drawn to the news channel Mr. Xia liked to watch. Large headlines read: “Tang Family Orphanage Erupts in Flames Deep in the Night Orphanage Reduced to Ashes Overnight.”

She blinked, thinking she’d misread. The image shown was the orphanage gate; the huge ginkgo tree that symbolized it had been burned to a stump in the picture.

Xia Mucai stepped back a pace and nearly lost her balance.

Everything had happened too fast. Last night she’d worried aloud when Teng Jingsi might set the orphanage on fire; this morning she woke to see that very headline.

Her breath seemed to stop. Her legs trembled as she descended the stairs.

The news reported that the injured were still being rescued, and that the elderly director in his seventies had died.

Thunder crashed outside, rattling the sky. A flash of lightning lit the windows and the dim villa brightened and then went dark again. It felt like a haunted mansion in a horror story; the crystal chandelier was faulty that day and flickered across the room.

Xia Mucai’s heart shattered under the thunderclap.

“The director’s dead…” she murmured, her mind blank.

In the original story the elderly director also died, but she felt this loss as though it were her fault.

“The director’s dead… I killed him…”

Understanding what had happened, panic distorted her features. Her heartbeat had no rhythm, no pattern.

“I caused the director’s death!” After a moment of stunned disbelief, her legs gave out as if all strength had been sucked from them.

With a thud she fell to her knees on the landing at the largest turn of the spiral staircase.

She felt like a maneki-neko a lucky, fortune-bringing cat that had caused the death of a good elder who spent his life doing good works.

Her foster mother’s voice blurred in her ears; all she made out were a few words: Xia Chi will not be coming back today.

Crack she heard the sound of the figurine kept in a box splitting. The wounds on her body opened again with that sudden noise and brilliant golden light began to seep and drift out from the crevice.

The crisp sound drew the foster parents’ attention. Mrs. Fu saw her kneeling and shivering, panic flaring across her face as she rushed over.

“Caicai, my Caicai, what’s wrong?” Her foster mother set the spatula down and hurried to help.

Xia Mucai was limp and weak; she leaned on Mrs. Fu’s shoulder, eyes vacant.

Mr. Xia, who had been lounging on the sofa, put his legs down and rushed over in a panic.

The couple exchanged a look and seemed to realize that Xia Mucai had discovered that Xia Chi hated her.

Mrs. Fu stroked Xia Mucai’s soft hair. “Caicai, what happened between you and Xia Chi? She said this morning she never wants to see you again. What did you do to upset your sister?”

“Never want to see you again…”

The shattered heart took another blow. A mouthful of blood choked in Xia Mucai’s throat and her eyes filled with tears, which trembled at the edges.

As if she had heard Xia Chi say explicitly, “You brought this on yourself. From now on we have nothing to do with each other I will kill you for revenge.”

Xia Mucai struggled for breath and fainted.