To Covet (GL) - Chapter 20

“What do you want to know?” a voice in my head was interrogating me.

If I tear out the pages of the book now, can I put them back together exactly as they were?

My language nerves short-circuited. My mind was filled with naive and stupid questions.

I stared at the apple that had rolled onto the floor.

Knowing someone is essentially picking up all the fragments of their past and building a statue with them based on your own subconscious aesthetic.

Yu Hanyang came out of his study, took a shower, and seeing that I was back, he simply asked me where I had been. Then he went into the kitchen, poured out the tea leaves from the pot, and told Yu Zhouwan and me to go to bed before he went back to his room.

I gave a perfunctory “okay.”

“Yu Zhouwan, do you like rabbits?” I asked her softly, resting my chin on her knees.

She looked up blankly, her fingers fidgeting.

“I used to like them a lot,” she said, as if she were facing an interrogation. “I like all small animals.”

“Someone, a friend who was several years older, invited us to visit a biology lab,” Yu Zhouwan lowered her shoulders, knowing what I wanted to ask, and continued her story. “They kept a lot of rabbits for experiments. I saw a rabbit that had been anesthetized. It was lying there motionless after being dissected, with tubes all over its body.”

“Maybe I overreacted, but after that, every time I saw a rabbit, it reminded me of the scene in the lab.”

I also overreacted a little. For a few seconds, a light bulb went off in my head, and I imagined an intricate connection between Feng Jia’s rabbit tableware and Yu Zhouwan.

Even though she had given me a negative answer, it only cut off one line that pointed to the other person. The others were still tightly bound.

Yu Zhouwan was a living person, and I couldn’t decide who had “ownership” of her. But I selfishly hoped that no one else would miss her—at least not during the time she belonged to me.

“What did she tell you?”

I carefully covered her eyes with a white gauze bandage, wrapping it around and around. Her vision gradually blurred. Yu Zhouwan reached out and felt the bandage from front to back, and then her hand fell into mine.

The house I had lived in for more than ten years was no longer a home. Every chair and corner was a part of a maze.

“She said we look a lot alike.”

I put her hand on my face. Her fingertips moved from my eyebrow to my jaw.

“And?”

“She said she had something to return to you.”

“Do you want to know what it is?”

“I don’t.”

I remembered that night. Yu Zhouwan was gasping under me. I tied her wrists and forced her to look at that blurry photo.

She was even willing to exchange unknown terms for my silence, so much so that I forgot my own situation. Now we were both trapped in the same swamp. I thought I could control her, but I didn’t realize she was also pulling me down.

“It’s a silver choker,” my fingertip pressed against the thin layer of skin on her throat and touched a soft bone. Yu Zhouwan instinctively flinched. “I asked her to buy it. She always thought it was a necklace.”

Because she couldn’t see, she could only sense the other person’s closeness through smell and temperature. I leaned against Yu Zhouwan’s chest and could clearly feel the rise and fall of her breathing.

I put my arms around her neck.

I didn’t know how to kiss. It was less of a kiss and more of a collision.

I could still learn to control pain. After all, touch was something I was born with.

But kissing was different. It carried a learned skill and a sense of seduction.

I had seen actors kiss in movies, and I always thought it was a little disgusting when their tongues and lips tangled together. But now, I was doing it to Yu Zhouwan.

She quickly noticed and skillfully guided me, so I wouldn’t get lost in the space between her lips.

The tip of her tongue pushed between my teeth, easily stirring my frantic mind.

I suddenly thought that Feng Jia had taught her this, and in that moment, I became defeated and lost my interest. I felt a slight resistance and pushed her away.

The sudden stop made Yu Zhouwan, who had lost her sight, reach out and grope for me. When her hand touched my leg, she relaxed and pulled it back.

With her eyes covered, she was like a plush doll, letting me do what I wanted with her.

I bit her shoulder, deliberately increasing the pressure.

“Hiss…” she said in a small voice, sucking in a breath.

There was a ring of teeth marks on her round shoulder. The indentation quickly turned into a noticeable red mark in the air.

“Sister.”

After I said those two words, I realized they had an invisible tone of solemnity and reverence.

I still preferred biting to an idealized kiss. It was an impulsive desire to tear and devour the other person alive out of greed.

Yu Zhouwan turned her body in the direction of my voice, as if to respond.

“Do you want a present?”

She was silent.

“Then what do you like?”

I took her hand and quickly let go. My hand went into her clothes. Her breathing suddenly became rapid.

Her back was bare. I wrapped my arms around her waist and stopped there.

The only thing I could think of was that Yu Zhouwan liked to draw, but she definitely didn’t lack art supplies. The path I had just taken a couple of steps on was a dead end again.

Yu Zhouwan’s earrings were still on. I didn’t turn on the lights. I used the dim light from outside the window to gently twist it, and the earring back and the pearl fell into my palm.

“When did you get your ears pierced?”

“When I was very young.”

Yu Zhouwan tried to take off the blindfold. I stopped her with my hand.

“For a performance.”

“I thought she was a very serious person.”

“It’s just an ear piercing,” she said, feeling her earlobe but touching my hand instead. “As long as you don’t get too carried away with dressing up every day.”

Okay, I had a prejudice against Shi Yunya. I forgot that she had seen the world abroad and wouldn’t be so conservative.

“Does she know about you and Feng Jia?”

“Of course not,” Yu Zhouwan answered honestly. “Mom would be angry.”

“Tsk, I thought she was so open-minded.”

I immediately felt a sense of balance.

“Maybe because she chose the wrong person when she was young, she’s stricter with me in that area.”

That was true. I rubbed my nose. She broke up with a guy, found out she was pregnant, and had a daughter by herself. Even though the father of the child eventually married her, there was still a ten-year gap and his other marriage in between. It was inevitable for her to hold a grudge.

“Mom was really afraid that I would follow in her footsteps. So when she heard from my teacher that a boy was going around saying he liked me, I had never seen her so nervous. It was the first time.”

I put my arms around Yu Zhouwan’s waist, listening to her describe the cause and effect of the situation, and found it amusing.

“So were you two together back then?”

“Not yet.”

I imagined it. If I were Shi Yunya and I found out my daughter was not only dating but also a lesbian, I would have a mental breakdown.

“Yu Keyi, why do you care about her so much?”

I blinked, not knowing where to begin.

“Feng Jia is a person who easily gets caught up in her own struggles. Being with me, she would only accumulate a sense of guilt.”

Yu Zhouwan knew that this explanation wouldn’t make me understand, but she clearly didn’t need to fully explain the process. It was like a multiple-choice question on a final exam. Getting the answer was all she was willing to share.

“Yu Keyi, do you pity me?” she asked suddenly, throwing out a question with no context.

I didn’t know.

I couldn’t answer for now.

I suddenly regretted having the idea of possessing her in a more transgressive way. At least before, I could flirt with her without any responsibility, pinch her thighs, and make her obediently listen to me. But now, I was filled with jealousy, thinking about her kissing someone else and whispering “I love you.”

“Do you have class tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” I started to feel sleepy as soon as I touched the pillow.

“When does it end?”

“I can skip it.”

She couldn’t help but laugh.

“Come to the art studio with me, okay?” she said, turning over to face me.