To Covet (GL) - Chapter 29

I listened to the sound of my own inhales and exhales, not giving her an immediate answer.

Yu Zhouwan leaned in, her hair scattered, and rubbed her cheek against my shoulder obediently.

“Why?” I turned my face away to avoid her kiss and countered, “You’ve done this so many times, are you still afraid of these things being seen by others?”

“I’m not afraid. I know you’ll help me keep it a secret, right?” She used her fingers to wipe the sweat from my forehead. “What I mean is, since I already belong to you now, why keep those irrelevant photos from before?”

“Say yes, won’t you, little sister… I mean, Master?”

Hearing is especially acute when a person is nervous. In the few seconds I was considering whether to agree to her request, I pricked up my ears—it was extremely subtle, but I could definitely hear the sound of slippers dragging on the floor.

The increasingly clear footsteps and the whispers in my ear were both slow and steady, yet they were like a jarring death knell forcing me to make a decision.

In a panic, I held my breath, pushed Yu Zhouwan off me, quickly put on my clothes, and opened the door.

Shi Yunya was wiping her hands with a tissue. Seeing me rush into the kitchen in a desperate hurry, she abruptly stopped her steps toward my bedroom and turned to walk toward the kitchen.

“Yu Keyi.”

She wasn’t wearing her glasses and couldn’t see clearly, distinguishing people only by the color of their clothes.

I was desperately thirsty and felt better only after gulping down a large glass of cold water.

“Wanwan slept with you again today?” Shi Yunya yawned. “Were you two up to something sneaky in the middle of the night? I always feel like I don’t sleep soundly; I keep feeling like I hear noises outside. Was that from your room?”

“Hmm? What noise?” I played dumb and thought carefully. The bell sound couldn’t have been loud enough to penetrate two thick wooden doors. Only the sound of Yu Zhouwan pulling the metal rack when she struggled was the most jarring.

“The chair got moved when my sister and I were getting a blanket out of the closet, and we almost knocked it over. It was probably the sound of the chair being dragged,” I volunteered to explain.

“I knew it,” the confusion immediately left Shi Yunya’s expression. “Remember to turn up the air conditioner.”

As she spoke, she took a small bottle from her pajama pocket and reached for her glass.

I poured her some water.

Shi Yunya looked preoccupied. She drank the water in one gulp, then remembered the pill still in her palm.

“Thank you, Keyi.” Shi Yunya rubbed her temples tiredly. “I’m getting older. Melatonin doesn’t work for me. If I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep. Sleeping pills are the most effective.”

“Medicine can be addictive; it’s best not to take it if you can,” I said, glancing at the long English name on the bottle, guessing it was some kind of calming or sleep-aid drug.

“I know. I’ve been under too much pressure lately, always overthinking, and often having auditory hallucinations. I’ll be fine after a period of rest. You and Wanwan should both get some good sleep. You have school tomorrow.”

“Good sleep” was clearly not in the cards for me tonight.

I turned off the kitchen light and quietly lay down on the living room sofa, attempting to escape answering a certain question by creating distance between us.

I heard someone walking from the direction of the bedroom and squeezed my eyes shut even tighter.

The time Yu Zhouwan stood behind me felt so long, so long that I almost couldn’t resist turning my head for a look.

Finally, I resisted the urge to look back and continued to feign sleep. Yu Zhouwan turned and walked away. I only breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the door close, then got up and went back to my room.

A voice inside me told me to give Yu Zhouwan a clean, straightforward refusal, to tell her to stop daydreaming. Even if I didn’t agree to destroy the photos and videos, what then? She would still obediently let me play with and torment her.

Even if she was a thousand times unwilling and tormented to tears, as long as she remembered the fatal compromising material was still in my hands, Yu Zhouwan would choose to submit in humiliation.

From the day I pushed open her door and tied her hands, I became increasingly engrossed in exploring the boundaries of pain and pleasure on her body.

Last night, she suddenly showed another side—obedience and enjoyment—and even though I knew it was 100% faked, it still left me lingering and savoring the memory.

If Yu Zhouwan hadn’t actively exposed herself and told me that her compliance had always been purposeful, I think I might have let it continue. On a day not long from now, I really might have given in to her wishes in a moment of ecstasy while making love.

The next morning, before anyone else woke up, I got up, packed my things, and fled back to school. I sat through the gloomy morning reading session until the evening self-study, and then went to my Physics competition class.

“Xiao Yu, Sister Yu?” Xu Lanlan poked my arm with her pen cap, teasing with a smile. “Why are you at evening self-study today? Did Mr. Gao call your parents?”

“No, I have a few problems I can’t solve and want to ask the teacher about.” I tore off a piece of scratch paper.

A few weeks into the competition class, most students had dropped out. The remaining thirty or so students made for a much more efficient learning environment.

“Are you staying for the last self-study period?”

Xu Lanlan tossed a slip of paper to me, but the handwriting wasn’t hers. I tilted my head in confusion, only to meet the Physics teacher’s glaring eyes. I quickly recoiled and started writing the problem.

It was too late. He raised his hand and tapped on my desk, telling me to stand up and explain my thought process.

I was putting my organized materials into a folder when a shadow suddenly fell across my desk.

“Yu Keyi,” Gao Rui had a physics workbook tucked under her arm. “I have something to ask you. Do you have a moment?”

Xu Lanlan buried her head, scribbling on her test paper, pretending not to hear.

I wasn’t close to Gao Rui, the class president. My impression of her was so vague it could be summarized with labels.

She was sitting right behind me in class, yet I hadn’t noticed her.

Her suddenly throwing me a note was also unexpected. If her essays weren’t often printed and circulated as examples, I wouldn’t have recognized the handwriting on the anonymous note.

“Sure,” I closed my pen cap.

“Sister Yu, do you know? The class president’s family is super rich,” Gao Rui had barely left when Xu Lanlan ignored the duty teacher on the podium and dragged me to listen to her. “The rent from their factory alone is this much a year.” She exaggerated the number two with her fingers.

“Two hundred thousand? Two million?”

“It’s twenty million,” Xu Lanlan exclaimed. “Her family also owns a company. Twenty million is just a small part of it.”

“Oh,” I blinked. I hadn’t experienced the power of twenty million. Such a huge fortune felt like just a string of numbers to me.

“Seriously, no kidding,” Xu Lanlan winked. “Sister Yu, look at all the major gossip you missed by skipping evening self-study.”

“If her family is so rich, why didn’t they send her abroad? If she stays for the college entrance exam in China, the study pressure is high, and there are many competitors.” I recalled what Shi Yunya had said to Yu Zhouwan: for ordinary students, getting into a foreign university during the undergraduate phase, removing the financial stress, was indeed more cost-effective than the domestic entrance exam.

“How would I know?” Xu Lanlan was stumped. She hadn’t actually talked to Gao Rui, and all her knowledge about her was secondhand gossip. “I don’t dare talk to her, though. She seems so cold and never chats with anyone in class. Before, a boy from Class Four—he was quite handsome, the pretty-boy type—confessed to her, and she totally ignored him, treated him like air, and walked right around him.”

These two points were quite similar to Yu Zhouwan—rich family, cold personality. However, Yu Zhouwan’s social relations were pretty good, while Gao Rui was more thorough in her isolation from others.

After finishing my homework, I started spinning my pen and flipping through the study guide. As the hands on the wall clock approached dismissal time, I still hadn’t figured out how to face Yu Zhouwan. Even though I was certain I wouldn’t agree to her request no matter what, the thought of nearly indulging in this abnormal relationship and almost falling into her trap haunted me with a pervasive sense of frustration. The annoyance in my heart lingered.

Gao Rui actively pulled me aside after school. We exchanged contact information and went to an off-campus bookstore to pick out study materials, which caused me to get home more than half an hour later than usual.

Yu Hanyang was out socializing, Shi Yunya was applying a face mask in the bedroom, and Yu Zhouwan’s door was closed. I sighed in relief. Everything was peaceful.

I locked the door and continued to work on the remaining problems in the study guide. I had only intended to use them to distract myself and stop thinking about the person I shouldn’t be thinking about.

I truly became engrossed in the work. When I closed the book, the hour hand had passed midnight. I tiptoed to the bathroom to wash up.

“What is it?”

I spat out the mouthwash and saw Yu Zhouwan in the mirror, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, looking serious as if she wanted to discuss something important with me.

I sidestepped around her and returned to my bedroom. She silently followed me.

“You still haven’t told me…” Just before the door fully closed, she suddenly put her hand on it and then stepped inside.

I looked down, scrolling on my phone.

I didn’t believe someone as smart as Yu Zhouwan wouldn’t understand that my attitude implied rejection. Yet, even though the power and initiative were entirely in my hands, I didn’t feel any sense of control over her fate.

“Are you home?” A new friend request had arrived three hours ago, with a question that barely counted as concern.

“Who is it?” Yu Zhouwan took a step toward me.

“A classmate.”

I took a photo of the problem-solving process on my scratch paper and sent it to Gao Rui, telling her I had missed a special case.

“Thanks,” Gao Rui replied quickly. “Get some rest.”

“Yu Zhouwan, why should I agree to you?”

Seeing her determined expression, I was truly impatient. I grabbed her arm and pressed her relentlessly against the wall.

“I like you the way you are now, trying so hard to please me even though you feel disgusted and want to vomit.”

“Even lying requires a basic premise. I know you’ll wipe your hands clean of this the moment you get the photos.”

Exposed, Yu Zhouwan didn’t lash out in anger but stared at me quietly.

Our eyes met for what felt like an eternity. I couldn’t read the micro-expressions on Yu Zhouwan’s face. I took it as her being full of disdain but unable to come up with a solution, so I released her.

Yu Zhouwan didn’t run away. She wandered aimlessly behind me like a ghost.

The book in my hand slammed onto the desk. I turned to tell Yu Zhouwan to stop her futile debate with me, but she actively wrapped her arms around my waist.

A word that was on the tip of my tongue didn’t have time to be swallowed. I was restrained by her and subjected to the sudden kiss. She reached past my teeth without any resistance.