The Ferrari stopped at a red light.
Pedestrians nearby couldn’t help but glance over repeatedly.
That flamboyant color and low-slung body were really hard to ignore.
Faced with their gazes, Jiang Yueming’s hand that wanted to roll down the window to get some air stopped mid-motion.
He suddenly realized that if he rolled down the window now, those pedestrians’ gazes would shift from the car to his face.
When they saw an ordinary boy in a school uniform sitting inside, he didn’t know what kind of expression they would make.
Su Xiaoyue sat in the driver’s seat waiting for the light.
She scrolled on her phone for a while, then suddenly spoke to Jiang Yueming.
“Why haven’t you accepted my friend request yet?”
Jiang Yueming pulled his gaze back from outside the window.
He took out his phone and looked. The screen was black. The phone had automatically shut down from low battery.
“It’s out of power,” he said. “I’ll charge it when I get home and accept it then.”
Su Xiaoyue glanced at the pitch-black screen in his hand.
She reached over and opened the armrest compartment, then took out a white charging cable from inside.
“Here. Charge it now.”
Jiang Yueming took the charging cable.
After plugging in his phone, he placed it on the armrest compartment.
The light turned green.
The Ferrari restarted and drove off into the distance under everyone’s watchful eyes.
“Does your head still hurt?”
“Not anymore,” Jiang Yueming reached up and scratched the wound. “It’s just a little itchy.”
“That’s new skin growing. Don’t scratch it.”
“Oh.”
The car fell quiet.
Only the low hum of the engine and the warm air from the air conditioner remained.
The newly charged phone quickly lit up its screen.
After a short boot animation, the delayed message notifications began ringing out one after another like an alarm clock.
The sound was especially harsh in the quiet car.
Su Xiaoyue glanced at the phone but didn’t say anything.
Jiang Yueming picked up his phone.
With just one look, he was startled.
The WeChat icon showed 99+ unread messages.
There were also more than ten missed calls.
He opened WeChat.
The first thing that appeared was Xia He’s messages.
She had started sending them right after school in the afternoon.
One after another, densely packed.
“Where are you?”
“Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“Jiang Yueming???”
“Reply to me when you see this.”
“Are you with someone?”
“I’m angry.”
“Jiang Yueming!”
“Where exactly are you?”
“……”
“Okay. You’re really something.”
“Jiang Yueming, you’d better give me an explanation.”
The time between each message ranged from a few minutes to more than ten minutes.
From initial confusion, to later anxiety, to faint anger at the end.
The change in emotion was clear.
The last message had been sent ten minutes ago.
“I’m going to your house to find you. If you’re not home, you’re done for.”
Jiang Yueming stared at that line of text.
It was as if he could see Xia He’s unfriendly expression on the other side of the phone.
But ten minutes ago, he had been trapped in school by Lu Renjia and couldn’t even look at his phone.
Besides Xia He’s messages, there were also messages from Wen Xiaoyue.
Wen Xiaoyue hadn’t sent many.
Only a few sparse lines, with long gaps between each one.
“Are you still coming for today’s tutoring?” (5:43 PM)
“I waited for you until six.” (6:00 PM)
“I’m leaving first.” (6:32 PM)
Then there was one message sent more than an hour later:
“Did you get home?” (8:07 PM)
The last one had just been sent:
“Be careful.”
Jiang Yueming looked at those four words.
A strange feeling suddenly rose in his heart.
He noticed one detail.
The time of Wen Xiaoyue’s last message and the time of Xia He’s last message were only two minutes apart.
They had sent him messages almost at the same time.
One was questioning where he was.
The other was reminding him to be careful.
Jiang Yueming held his phone.
His fingers hovered above the screen.
He didn’t know who he should reply to first.
“You’re quite popular.”
Su Xiaoyue’s teasing voice came from the driver’s seat.
Jiang Yueming felt a headache coming on.
He looked at Xia He’s message about going to his house and said to Su Xiaoyue, “I don’t need to go to the hospital for this small wound. Just take me home first.”
Su Xiaoyue glanced at him. “No.”
Jiang Yueming looked at her in confusion.
Su Xiaoyue’s tone left no room for argument.
“If the wound isn’t treated properly, it’ll leave a scar.”
“A scar is fine,” Jiang Yueming said indifferently. “I’m a grown man. What am I afraid of?”
“That won’t do either.”
Su Xiaoyue took one hand off the steering wheel and reached over to press down on the phone screen where he was about to type a reply.
Jiang Yueming froze.
“What are you doing?”
Su Xiaoyue turned the wheel.
The Ferrari veered off the main road and slowly drove toward the side.
Finally, it stopped under a parasol tree.
The engine shut off.
Su Xiaoyue let go of the steering wheel and turned to face him directly.
The light from the streetlamp shone in through the car window and landed on her face, making her eyes look especially bright.
“Jiang Yueming,” she said. “Actually, even if I hadn’t come to save you tonight, you wouldn’t have been in any real danger.”
Jiang Yueming didn’t understand what she was trying to say.
“What are you talking about?”
Su Xiaoyue ignored his confusion and continued speaking on her own.
“Do you still remember that book? The one you were reading when we first met in the bookstore.”
“Human Chair?”
“That’s right. That’s the one,” Su Xiaoyue said. “The craftsman sewed himself into the chair just to spy on and monitor the female lead’s life.”
Jiang Yueming was completely lost.
He was getting a little anxious.
Xia He’s messages looked like something urgent had happened, yet Su Xiaoyue didn’t care at all.
“I want to ask,” Su Xiaoyue’s gaze fell on the cup holder in the car. A stainless steel thermos sat there. “If you were that craftsman, and you weren’t just hiding inside a chair, but everywhere — cabinets, the ceiling, under the bed —”
Jiang Yueming’s voice already carried a trace of impatience.
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
Su Xiaoyue paid no attention to his irritation. Her tone remained calm.
“—Would you let the person you love get hurt in a world completely under your control?”
Jiang Yueming answered without thinking. “No.”
The corner of Su Xiaoyue’s mouth curved slightly.
“That’s what she thinks too.”
As her words fell, that fair hand reached toward the cup holder and firmly grasped the stainless steel thermos.
Jiang Yueming’s gaze followed that hand.
A wave of indescribable unease suddenly surged in his heart.
He couldn’t say exactly what was wrong, but his body reacted faster than his brain.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up one by one.
Something dangerous was approaching.
“Su Xiaoyue, you—”
That hand suddenly swung upward.
The stainless steel thermos drew a silver-gray arc through the air.
The hard bottom of the bottle shot straight toward Jiang Yueming’s widened pupils.
Time seemed to stretch.
Jiang Yueming could see the fine patterns on the thermos surface and the circular indentation on the bottom aimed directly at the center of his forehead.
Closer and closer.
He could even clearly see Su Xiaoyue’s knuckles turning slightly white from the force, and the calm, almost indifferent expression on her face.
She wants to kill me!
This thought split through his brain like lightning.
He didn’t have time to raise his hand to block.
He could only watch helplessly as that silver-gray shadow rapidly enlarged in his vision.
In the next second, something terrible was about to happen to his face.
[Ding—— Host is about to receive harm. Hazard assessment: Level 2. Emergency Protection Protocol activated.]
Bang!
The sound of metal colliding.
The steel bottle struck Jiang Yueming’s skin, yet he felt no pain and it could go no further.
His hand had been grabbed by Su Xiaoyue.
At their wrists, the bright red strings were pressed tightly together.
The moment the red strings touched, a voice that did not belong to this world rang in Jiang Yueming’s ears for the first time.
[Emergency Protection Protocol executed. Harm avoided. Host is safe.]