Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore
The Past
Lou Jingmo’s Past
The sky brightened, and Shen Maomao was surprised to find she was still alive.
She opened her eyes wide, wanting to immediately share her joy with Lou Jingmo. But when she turned her head, she saw Lou Jingmo fast asleep, holding her hand.
There were two visible bluish-black circles under Lou Jingmo’s eyes. These circles hadn’t been there yesterday; they had clearly been earned over the course of a single night.
Shen Maomao was used to being no heart and no lungs1, and only now did an emotion called reluctance begin to faintly surface.
Was the story between her and Lou Jingmo going to end just like this?
Thinking about it now, for Lou Jingmo, ending up with a troublesome girlfriend like her was probably more like an accident, right?
Lou Jingmo was a light sleeper. Hearing the sound of Shen Maomao turning over, she immediately opened her eyes, not leaving her much time to blame herself and be full of regret.
She looked completely awake, her eyes staring straight at her, not at all like someone who had just woken up.
Shen Maomao beamed a huge smile at her. “Lou-jie! Good morning!”
Lou Jingmo averted her gaze and opened her mouth to ask, “Why aren’t you dead yet?”
Shen Maomao: “?? Are you hoping I’ll live, or hoping I’ll die?”
Lou Jingmo said, “I ordered an extra-long freezer online. After you die, I’ll put your body inside to preserve its integrity to the greatest extent possible. Next, I’ll enter the game as much as I can to find cards. If I succeed, I’ll resurrect you, and everyone is happy. If I fail, I’ll kill myself next to your corpse before the grim reaper comes for me. If things go quickly, we might even see each other again next year. Your parents might be a bit difficult to deal with, but thankfully you don’t contact them much, so they should be easy to fool…”
Shen Maomao was with eyes staring and mouth agape. “So, you spent the whole night thinking about this?”
Lou Jingmo pressed her dry lips together. “Mn.”
Shen Maomao sighed and said emotionally, “Lou-jie, do you really regret falling for me…”
Lou Jingmo pulled her into a hug, her eyes growing moist again, but she didn’t let the tears fall. She just said in a firm tone, “No, not regretful.”
Never had she regretted it.
It was getting late. The two of them changed their clothes, washed up, and prepared to go out for breakfast.
During this time, Lou Jingmo followed Shen Maomao, not leaving by an inch of a step, wishing they could become conjoined twins, terrified that she would be gone in a moment of inattention.
Fortunately, no accidents occurred all morning, which allowed Lou Jingmo to relax a little. But at the same time, a sliver of doubt arose—why was Shen Maomao’s buffer period so long?
As far as she knew, most players died within minutes of leaving the game; some didn’t even have time to leave their last words. Of course, there were those who died after a few hours, but they were few in number. She wasn’t entirely sure of the specific reason, but she figured Shen Maomao must be one of them.
After eating, the two took a car to the train station. Lou Jingmo’s spirit was like a tightly drawn bow; the slightest grass movement from the blowing wind could trigger her vigilance and alertness.
Her mind was uncontrollably filled with fantasies of Shen Maomao’s various deaths, each one bloody enough, each one capable of making her break down.
The noisy clamor of the train station gave her a headache, and the overly bright sunlight made her feel a bit dizzy. As a result, her pace was sometimes fast and sometimes slow, making Shen Maomao wonder if she had drunk some fake alcohol2.
Still, nothing happened. It was so peaceful it was as if Shen Maomao hadn’t run into any trouble in the game at all.
Even after they had packed their luggage, checked out of the hotel, and boarded the high-speed bullet train home, Lou Jingmo still felt a sense of unreality.
A row of Osmanthus trees was planted in front of the train station in Nancheng. The moment they got off the train, they caught the rich fragrance of osmanthus blossoms in the wind.
It was late October, the time when the flowers fall. The gentle breeze carried a few golden petals, which landed on the heads of people rushing towards the exit.
For safety, Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo trailed unhurriedly at the very back of the crowd, making idle chit-chat.
They had set out at the beginning of the month, first wandering abroad for half a month, then starting to travel from abroad bit by bit towards Nancheng. They had originally planned to travel for another half a month, but who would have thought something like this would happen, forcing them to return early.
Shen Maomao said, “I want to eat osmanthus tangyuan3.”
Lou Jingmo: “Eating tangyuan in October?”
Shen Maomao said angrily, “Who made a rule that you can’t eat tangyuan in October?”
“Fine, we’ll go buy some later.”
“I also want to eat hot pot.”
“Are you a pig? How can you eat so much?”
“You fart4, am I not your little sweetie5 anymore?”
“Eat, eat, eat, we’ll go buy it in a bit.”
“I also want to learn how to drive.”
“…We’ll talk about this problem when we get back.”
Only when the crowd had mostly dispersed did the two of them emerge from the exit.
The small plaza in front of the train station was carpeted with osmanthus flowers. Staying here for too long would probably leave one’s clothes scented with their fragrance. Under the trees and by the subway entrance sat a group of people in a thousand postures and a hundred states6, leisurely waiting for their ticket-checking time to arrive, chatting with friends now and then. Everything was so relaxed and pleasant, yet it failed to ease Lou Jingmo’s tension.
She felt like she was playing a game and had reached the final boss level; the closer she got to the end, the more nervous she became, and the more she feared that a special situation would disrupt all her plans.
Then the two hailed a taxi. Lou Jingmo stuffed Shen Maomao into the back seat, placing her directly behind the driver, and forcibly buckled her seatbelt. This made the driver up front laugh, and he said in an authentic Nancheng dialect, “Little lady, your safety awareness is pretty on point. You’re the first one I’ve seen who insists on wearing a seatbelt in the back. Why don’t you buckle up yourself?”
Lou Jingmo replied in the same dialect, “She’s more fragile.”
Shen Maomao’s eyes widened in surprise.
This was the first time she had ever heard Lou Jingmo speak in a dialect.
The Nancheng dialect was very soft, easily bringing to mind the weeping willows on the banks of a Jiangnan water town7 in March. Yet, coming from Lou Jingmo’s mouth, it didn’t feel out of place at all. It even seemed to soften her entire person.
No, Lou Jingmo has always been very soft—ahem, in all aspects.
Still, nothing happened on the road. After getting out of the car, the two took the elevator upstairs, and Shen Maomao took out her keys to open the door to their home.
Because they were coming back, Lou Jingmo had called ahead to hire a housekeeping service. The apartment was now spotless, not at all looking like a place that had been unoccupied for over a month.
Lou Jingmo put down the luggage, told Shen Maomao not to run around, and then went downstairs to buy the food she wanted while keeping her on a voice call.
Shen Maomao changed into her pajamas, lay on her stomach on the bed swinging her legs, and sighed contentedly, “Home is still the most comfortable. Lou-jie, have you arrived yet?”
Lou Jingmo’s faint voice came through from the other end. “No, still a little ways to go.”
Shen Maomao giggled foolishly. “You sound so good when you speak in dialect.”
Lou Jingmo: “I’m from Nancheng. I learned Mandarin8 later.”
A flash of inspiration struck Shen Maomao. She suddenly remembered that Lou Jingmo had said she would tell her about her past. But then too many chaotic things had happened, followed by their sweet romantic trip, and she had completely pushed the matter to the back of her mind.
Now that she remembered, she was again wriggling and about to move9, so she brought it up without any subtlety. “Lou-jie! You still haven’t told me your story!”
Lou Jingmo asked her, “What do you want to know?”
Shen Maomao thought for a moment. “Um… I want to know the reason you entered the game.”
“Ah…” After saying that, she quickly added, “If it’s really difficult, it’s okay if you don’t answer.”
Lou Jingmo’s voice came from the phone’s receiver. “It’s not that difficult, it’s just that you’ll find it to be dog blood10 after I tell you.”
“Impossible!” Shen Maomao was one step away from patting her chest and swearing an oath in front of her. “Absolutely not! We’re professionally trained, we would never laugh, unless we absolutely can’t hold it in.”
Lou Jingmo chuckled lightly on the other end and said, “This is actually pretty good. There are some things I’d be too embarrassed to say to your face. I don’t know the specific criteria the game uses to judge guilt or innocence. In all these years, besides being cold-blooded or choosing to see death and not save11, the thing that would most likely determine my guilt would have to be that incident…”
“My dad died early, and my mother, unable to raise me alone, chose to remarry. She never had a good life, and in the end, she married a scumbag. But luckily for her, she got sick and passed away after just a few years with that scumbag.”
But for her, the days of suffering were just beginning.
If she had to use one word to describe that man, it would probably be damned.
He a thousand shouldn’ts, ten thousand shouldn’ts12, should not have gotten ideas about her.
“From the time I was old enough to understand, I felt that the way he looked at me was disgusting. In the very beginning, with my mom around, he didn’t dare to be too excessive. But not two days after my mom passed away, he started to become unbridled and without fear.”
“I was always on guard against him, so he never succeeded. Later, he used my living expenses and tuition to threaten me. I simply moved out, staying long-term in the school dormitory. I earned a lot in royalties by submitting novels to various magazines, and at the same time, I applied for student loans and hardship grants from the school. For a while, I managed to hold on.”
“Two days before my college entrance exams, he used the excuse of having found my mom’s belongings to trick me into coming home. What he wanted to do, I naturally don’t need to spell out.”
“Fuck!” Shen Maomao sat up abruptly, her eyes red with anger.
What a bastard with sperm worms rushing to the brain13, so shameless! He should be dragged out and fed to the dogs! Fucking hell, even feeding him to the dogs, I’d be afraid the dogs would get shit poisoning!
Lou Jingmo laughed, unconcerned. “No need to get so worked up. He didn’t succeed. I went with a knife. I stabbed him once, right in the kidney, then I cut off his assault tool14 and called the police.”
Shen Maomao: “Greatly satisfies the people’s hearts15!”
Lou Jingmo: “My grades were good, I had skipped grades in elementary and middle school. At that time, I was only 15, not even 14 in full years of age16. Even if it was excessive self-defense17, what does a little underage girl who was almost raped know? I played pitiful in front of the police and the judge and successfully sent him to prison for 20 years.”
“Actually, I knew what he was thinking. It was nothing more than feeling that I was about to fly out of his grasp, and it would be harder to get his hands on me in the future. At that time, I felt like I might never be able to escape him, and I didn’t know who to ask for help, so I went with the mentality of the fish dies, the net breaks18, bringing a knife with me. Thinking about it now, it was really unnecessary. There were many methods where soldiers’ blades are not stained with blood19. Unfortunately, I was too young then and didn’t think things through enough…” At this point, she changed the subject. “I’m at the supermarket. What all do you want to eat?”
The author has something to say:
At first, I was wondering if this setup was a bit too dog blood, a bit unrealistic. But I never expected that similar things actually happen in real life. I wish a certain death upon all the scumbags who force themselves on children.
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