Pretending To Be Affectionate [Transmigration] - Chapter 33

The sky outside was still dark, with only a sliver of light on the horizon.

Gu Qing held an unlit cigarette in her mouth, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. It had been six hours since the absurd night she had with Ling Yu.

Gu Qing had been standing there since she woke up. She didn’t know how long it had been.

Her usually clear mind felt a bit chaotic, and she couldn’t pinpoint what she was feeling.

The only certain fact was that she had slept with Ling Yu.

She had initially thought that in her crazed state from last night, she would not be so calm. She should have crushed Ling Yu, just as she did with the rat in her lab.

But the reality was surprisingly peaceful. She slept with Ling Yu, and Ling Yu in turn, slept with her.

Even though the process was intense enough to make her heart tremble, she didn’t harm her.

This was the first time Gu Qing had seen another side of Ling Yu.

The woman in the bed was far from the harmless person she appeared to be.

Aside from her foolish affection for her, Ling Yu’s eyes were filled with arrogance and… audacity.

That beautiful face, like a white peony, was incredibly deceptive.

So much so that when they were intertwined last night, she was powerless to resist.

Gu Qing thought that no one could resist such a beautiful pair of eyes.

They were like a fairy or a demon, and yet, also a pure lake.

Gu Qing’s gaze was unfocused as she looked out the window. An indescribable expression formed on her lips.

She hadn’t expected to lose control last night. This was almost a zero-probability event in her life.

Since she had memories, Gu Qing had been a child without much emotion.

She was out of place with all the other children around her.

They were all locked up in the Bangkok drug den, and every day there were terrified cries from her companions.

Gu Qing would sit in a corner with an expressionless face, watching them cry. She didn’t understand why they were crying.

Later, someone told her it was out of fear.

The year she met Gu Hongwei, Gu Qing was only eight years old. The middle-aged police officer secretly protected her, allowing her to escape the first life-or-death test for the children.

That night, Gu Hongwei asked her, “Do you want to come home with me, kid?”

Gu Qing didn’t understand the useless pity and affection in the middle-aged man’s eyes, so she said to him, “If you want to go home, I’ll help you.”

Gu Hongwei laughed and cursed her, saying she didn’t act like a child, but more like a high-IQ terrorist who could go astray at any time.

She was only eight years old then.

The children in the organization had to study every day. They learned more than kids their age.

If they didn’t meet the organization’s internal standards, their fate was death.

Gu Qing always learned faster than the other kids, so her survival seemed a bit easier.

In her free time, she could only watch, with a clear mind, as her companions were brainwashed and slowly walked down a path of cruel, mutual slaughter.

It felt like watching a group of rat in the same cage. Their master took away one of the elements of their survival environment and limited the amount of bread.

The rat in the cage wanted to survive desperately and ended up pointing their spears at their own companions.

Gu Qing had tried to talk them out of it, but it was no use.

Later, she watched them kill each other. Sitting on a big tree, she said to Gu Hongwei, “This is what they call an internal struggle.”

Gu Hongwei looked at her as if she were a monster. He said, “Qing Qing, I’m worried. What if one day, you become like them?”

Gu Qing shrugged indifferently. She was born lacking emotions. She couldn’t feel empathy, but that didn’t stop her from hating being brainwashed. She was an independent individual.

During Gu Qing’s youth, she had Gu Hongwei by her side. He gave her the nickname “Qing Qing” instead of the cold codename “7.”

In the drug den, they worked together to survive countless life-and-death crises, looked for loopholes in the drug trafficking organization, and strived to live like normal people.

Gu Hongwei would often ask her, “Do you feel a sense of accomplishment being an undercover anti-drug police officer with me?”

Gu Qing didn’t understand the pride in the middle-aged man’s eyes and would turn her back and walk away.

When she was ten, the organization’s headquarters was destroyed. Gu Hongwei adopted her from the orphanage and said, “Qing Qing, from now on, you’ll call me Dad.”

Gu Qing didn’t understand the fatherly love in his eyes. She casually said, “Let’s stick to ‘Uncle.’ I’m not used to changing.”

Until later, Gu Qing watched as the man was shot like a sieve. As the middle-aged man hunched over and protected her with his broad chest, she lifted her head with an expressionless face. At that moment, the man was just a bloody mess. She screamed, “Dad.”

From that day on, she had no dad.

The day Gu Hongwei died, his body was covered in tiny gun-like needle marks.

In the countless years after that, Gu Qing developed an even more serious sickness.

Gu Ting said she was a monster, and she admitted that she had been a monster since birth.

She had no empathy. Gu Hongwei’s body became a mental tumor she couldn’t get rid of.

Every month, for one day, she could only calm the uncontrollable cruelty in her heart by recreating the needle-like marks on Gu Hongwei’s bloody body on dead lab rat.

As for why she didn’t recreate it on people or living animals?

It wasn’t because she was kind. It was because she had promised Gu Hongwei that she would try her best in this life not to become a morally corrupt prisoner.

Her life was given to her by Gu Hongwei. The middle-aged police officer lived a bright and righteous life. He and Ling Yu were the same kind of people. They knew the difference between right and wrong.

His last words to Gu Qing before he died were: “Promise me, kid, to restrain your desires.”

And so, after that, every night at the beginning of the month was a disaster and a struggle for Gu Qing.

She would climb a cliff with her bare hands, her hands stained with blood, pulling herself up from the bottom. Then, at the beginning of the next month, she would freefall, a cycle that repeated endlessly.

All these years, only last night was quiet and peaceful.

Two hours ago, a light snow started falling.

The ice outside had frozen on the eaves. Gu Qing stared at the ground covered in a layer of broken snow. Suddenly, she felt a sense of absurd laziness. She wanted to stay in this warm bedroom and sleep in the arms of the woman in the bed, without a care in the world.

Gu Qing took the cigarette out of her mouth, flipped it, and put the butt in her mouth.

She bit off a piece of the tobacco leaf and chewed it.

She was trying to use the taste of nicotine to sober up quickly.

However, the speed of sobering up was much slower than she had expected.

A layer of visible impatience flashed in Gu Qing’s eyes. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the woman sleeping on the simple, large bed behind her. The woman’s milky skin was buried in the memory foam pillow.

Her eyelashes were black, and her lips were pink. Her limbs were slender and well-proportioned. She was curled up like a flower bud, her breathing long and steady.

Gu Qing’s gaze was fixed on Ling Yu’s watery, white peony-like face. Her fingers unconsciously twitched. In the end, her rationality won out over the ridiculous urge to get closer.

She and Ling Yu could not have any more interactions. Her world was a dense, dark ink that couldn’t be washed away.

She could not allow a second Gu Hongwei to appear and, at the cost of their life, pull her to the edge of the cliff to struggle.

Ling Yu was not supposed to leave a mark on her life. Gu Qing had warned her long ago to stay away, but what caught her off guard was that no matter how many times she tried to push her away, Ling Yu would stick to her like a piece of taffy.

Without Gu Qing’s guard up, she was led into the woman’s illogical reasoning, making her unknowingly be led by the nose and fall into the trap she had set.

What happened last night was a wake-up call for this out-of-control mistake.

Gu Qing was facing the danger of losing control with a clear mind, so the only thing she had to do after waking up was to get rid of Ling Yu.

As for what happened last night, Gu Qing thought that she probably didn’t owe her anything.

Otherwise, last night, after she slept with Ling Yu, according to Gu Qing’s habits, she would not have allowed her to dominate, and push back, letting her revenge herself in her weak state.

Gu Qing gave a final explanation for her impulsiveness last night. Even though there was a hidden sense of annoyance in her heart.

She forcibly suppressed that useless and dangerous thought. Gu Qing narrowed her eyes, impatiently bit off another piece of the cigarette butt, and crushed the tobacco between her teeth.

The taste of raw nicotine, of course, was not as effective as when it was burned.

Gu Qing frowned. After chewing the whole cigarette, she still couldn’t suppress the inexplicable impatience in her heart.

She planned to act quickly. Forcibly suppressing the emotions in her eyes, she calmly walked over to Ling Yu’s scattered clothes.

She bent down. Her fingers curled when they touched Ling Yu’s bra. Then, she resolutely took the recording button from it, put it in her pocket, and left without looking back.

However, the moment her long leg stepped out the door, Gu Qing stopped. She turned back and carefully looked at Ling Yu. The look was extremely long, as if she was trying to engrave every inch of her face into her memory.

Until the phone in her pocket vibrated.

Gu Qing suddenly snapped back to reality. She pursed her lips and gave the sleeping woman her final goodbye. She said in a silent voice, “Goodbye.”