Mistakenly Marked – Chapter 6
by Little PandaNightmare
“Let’s meet.”
Prone to the occasional migraine, Xu Jialuo disliked harsh light, so every lamp in the apartment glowed soft and low.
Her phone screen dimmed itself automatically to match.
Xu Jialuo looked away — then, frowning, looked back.
She was not the least bit nearsighted, and yet she brought the phone a little closer.
She confirmed she hadn’t misread it.
The next second, her fingertip flicked once, and the friend request was deleted outright.
She killed the screen and tossed the phone carelessly aside.
Xu Jialuo shook out the black-and-white checkered throw on the sofa, lay down on her side with her back against the sofa back, and pulled the throw over herself.
Eyes closed, she was asleep within moments.
A narrow lane.
Dark, damp, stretching on as if it would never end.
The mud underfoot clung like melting cream; every step sank and pulled free with a murky, sucking squelch.
But louder still was the ragged breathing she couldn’t control as her chest heaved.
Fist clamped tight around the sharp shard already slick and sticky with crimson, she ran faster and faster, the abandoned houses on either side falling away behind her, swallowed whole by the dark.
So tired.
But she couldn’t stop.
Or else… she would be caught at once.
Her exhausted, aching legs slowly lost all feeling, reduced to a numb, mechanical swinging that carried on by instinct alone.
Just as she neared her limit, a faint sound of passing traffic reached her ears.
She rounded the corner — and there, at last, a broad road opened before her.
Her chest, aching from over-breathing, flooded in an instant with joy and hope. Her body mustered its final burst of strength and surged toward it in huge strides.
Fifty meters. Ten. Five.
One.
The instant before she could break free of the winding lane, a hand struck from behind.
Her mid-stride arm was seized in a death grip, and her body was flung down, slamming hard into the ground.
A foot came down on her hand, strung taut and trembling, grinding the blood-caked bones of her fingers beneath it — and the bloodied glass shard she had clutched for so long fell to the ground.
When she struggled to lift her head, she saw it: the villain’s blood-drenched face from the nightmare of her memory, ghastly and twisted.
A sharp, heavy object swung down—
—and struck the back of her neck.
The smell of dust and earth rose off the ground, mingling with the reek of blood, surging into her nostrils like a choking tide.
Pain.
Every sensation vanished together in that moment, leaving only a terrifying, crushing pain that swept through every cell in her body.
…
—”Luoluo, Luoluo! How did this happen… how could she be hurt this badly?!”
—”The assailant has already been taken back to the police station. Don’t be alarmed, Madam — the doctor will be right there…”
—”The patient has a mild fracture of the right thumb, with multiple contusions across her body.
“The most serious injury is at the nape of the neck; it has already been sutured in surgery.
“But the wound was too deep. It reached the scent glands before they had fully developed, leaving them gravely damaged. So the patient… will never differentiate normally.
“In other words… it is equivalent to becoming a beta.”
…
“Bzzt—bzzzt—”
Xu Jialuo’s eyes snapped open amid the phone’s buzzing.
A trembling hand rose and pressed against her face, as if to confirm her own existence — and came away slick with sweat.
She drew the hand back, clutched the blanket tight, and slowly curled in on herself. In through the nose, out through the mouth — fighting with everything she had to steady her chaotic breathing.
It had been so long… so very long since she’d dreamed that dream.
It must have been because of what she’d seen at the villa that time — the bloodstained porcelain shard in that omega’s hand.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then felt along the sofa’s corner for the phone as it buzzed to life once more.
The screen showed a call from an unknown number — not flagged as spam.
Xu Jialuo’s fingertip slid across the answer key. “…Hello?”
The word was out before she realized how frighteningly hoarse her voice was, the tail end of it trembling beyond her control.
A few seconds of silence on the other end. Xu Jialuo sat up, one hand kneading her throbbing temple, and cleared her throat before the somatic reaction could set in. “Who is this?”
After a brief pause, an answer came through the receiver.
The voice was soft and fine as snow, carrying that familiar cool aloofness, and it rang crisp against her ear. “Bo Suiqing.”
…
Xu Jialuo’s temple-massaging hand stilled.
Hearing that name — any other time, Xu Jialuo would have hung up on the spot.
But of all times…
…it had to be now.
She wanted to hear the voice of a living person. She wanted to speak with someone.
No matter who it was.
Anyone at all — so long as they could help her confirm that she had left the nightmare completely behind, that she had returned to the safety of reality.
Xu Jialuo tightened her grip on the phone. “What… do you want?”
“Did you see the friend request on WeChat?”
“…I saw it.”
Meaning: seen, but with no intention of accepting.
The other end fell quiet for a few seconds. Head bowed, Xu Jialuo braced for a frosty interrogation, or some other tiresome, cutting remark.
Instead, all she heard was: “Let’s meet.”
Xu Jialuo went still. “…What?”
“Are you at home right now?”
The other end unhurriedly recited the name of her residential compound and her apartment’s door number, the woman’s voice carrying a gentleness that seemed wholly unlike her usual cool. “This is the address, isn’t it.”
“…”
Her head was splitting, a wave of tinnitus rising with it. Xu Jialuo couldn’t make out whatever Bo Suiqing said next — only, on some level beneath thought, she refused to be seen in this state. “…Won’t… meet.”
The moment the words were out, the breathing she had fought so hard to level seized up again. Everything before her eyes sank inch by inch into darkness, and her trembling hand clamped hard around the phone.
Her throat felt pinched shut by an invisible hand; not another syllable would come.
The long-absent somatic reaction had begun.
Scrabbling blindly at her neck, she remembered — the necklace she had taken off before last night’s shower was still sitting on the bathroom counter.
It was already too late to go get it.
Xu Jialuo’s brow creased as she curled tighter, lips pressed trembling against the mouthpiece, unable to push out a single word.
A heavy swell she hadn’t felt in ages broke over her once more.
Crushing. Drowning. Cutting her off from everything.
Only the lit phone in her palm still reminded her of her last link to the world.
—Don’t hang up.
That was what her body’s instinct, starved to be saved, wanted to say. She couldn’t.
…
A true shame, really, that the person on the other end at this moment was Bo Suiqing.
Not a friend. If anything, the two of them couldn’t stand the sight of each other.
So even if she didn’t hang up on her end, the other side most certainly would.
Brow furrowed, Xu Jialuo buried her head, her fingers clamping down on the phone until the knuckles blanched blue-white.
Waiting for the moment the last of the light would go out.
And yet.
One second. Two. Five.
Time slipped past little by little — she couldn’t say how long — and still, impossibly, no disconnect tone came through the receiver.
Only the sound of light breathing, one breath after another, even and regular in her ear.
…Was she imagining it?
Hand trembling, Xu Jialuo pressed the receiver to her ear — and the instant it touched, the other end suddenly spoke. “Are you feeling unwell?”
“Xu Jialuo.”
“Xu Jialuo?”
“Answer me, Xu Jialuo.”
The clear voice rang in her ear like an invisible hand, reaching down and drawing her bit by bit out of the quagmire she’d been sinking into.
Head pillowed against the sofa, Xu Jialuo finally surfaced a little, answering in a dazed rasp: “…Mm.”
Her vision cleared by degrees. “I’m fine,” Xu Jialuo said.
A blatantly contradictory answer.
One that conveyed, in no uncertain terms, a careless brush-off — and a refusal to be examined.
Or to put it more bluntly: loathing.
Loathing for the very person on the line.
“Everyone, make the most of the break — we resume filming in ten minutes.”
Beneath a classical covered walkway half-veiled in dense green foliage, Xiao Nan, the assistant, stood to one side holding a cup of warm water she’d been about to hand off, peering in some confusion at the figure leaning against a wooden pillar.
The woman wore a moon-white1 satin qipao, her long dyed jet-black hair swept high and pinned with a dark jade hairpin; a hand in pearl lace gloves held a phone to her ear, on a call with someone.
Her figure was willowy as an immortal’s, her bearing languid and elegant; standing stock-still as she was, she was beautiful enough that no one could tear their eyes away.
Only — perhaps because of the dark tinted contacts she wore — her peach blossom eyes2 lay dim and fathomless as a pool, the light in them sunken low.
It was an expression… one she had never once seen on that habitually rarefied, dazzling face.
It looked like…
…a trace of disappointment. A trace of desolation.
…As if that could be true!
The little assistant shook her head, overruling the very idea.
A current It-girl actress like Jiejie — a powerful family at her back, a career sailing on smooth waters — what could she possibly have to be desolate about?
Even as she thought it, she glanced over again — and just then, the woman not far away seemed to hear something. She stilled for a beat, then tipped her head up slightly, the corners of her lips curving up radiantly.
The flecks of snow scattered through her brows and eyes melted away in an instant; spring water poured into her gaze, rippling, luminous.
“Whoa—”
The photographer at her side let out a gasp of wonder, hastily raised his camera, and fired off a rapid flurry of shutter clicks.
Xu Jialuo frowned at the screen, the call still live. “Are you listening?”
The moment she had finished saying she would be home all morning, Bo Suiqing’s end had abruptly gone silent.
What was that supposed to mean?
Wasn’t she the one who’d wanted to meet?
…Toying with her again?
Xu Jialuo straightened up, face gone cold — and one second before she could hang up, she heard Bo Suiqing say, “I’m listening.”
Then one more line: “I’ll be over in about an hour.”
She had gotten her answer — she just hadn’t expected it to arrive as so direct a promise.
Xu Jialuo paused. “…Mm.”
It was too late to back out now.
She hung up, dropped the phone, and raked her fingers through her disheveled hair.
She rose, folded the blanket, washed up quickly, tidied the scrap score sheets scattered across the floor, washed a few different kinds of fruit, and set the sofa cushions straight.
Then Xu Jialuo sat down on the sofa and lifted her eyes to the clock on the wall.
Never had she imagined that a day would come when she, of all people, would sit at home like this — waiting for Bo Suiqing.
In the fairy tale The Little Prince, there is a fox.
The fox longs to be tamed; it longs to wait, at the appointed hour, for the one it hopes will come.
Because waiting like that turns the time itself into happiness.
But what if it is someone you loathe that you wait for—
Xu Jialuo lowered her eyes.
—then that so-called waiting becomes a kind of torment.
Bzzt—
A new text message popped up on the phone screen.
—”Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
“…”
Xu Jialuo leaned forward, reached out, and with an utterly expressionless face gave the fruit plate on the table a small turn, setting it straighter.
The side heaped with bright red cherries now faced the sofa.
The author has something to say:
Xiao Xu: Bo Suiqing, very detestable.
Xiao Xu: The cherries — a certain someone loves them.
Good night, mwah mwah
Footnotes
- 月白 | yuè bái | 'Moon white' — a traditional Chinese color name; despite suggesting pure white, it denotes a pale, faintly blue-tinted white like moonlight, long favored in classical dress.
- 桃花眼 | táo huā yǎn | 'Peach blossom eyes' — a Chinese physiognomy term for almond eyes with a naturally upturned, smiling curve at the tail, classically linked to charm and romantic allure.
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