To Covet (GL) - Chapter 6

I was at the entrance of Qizhong on time, and Yu Zhouwan, who was waiting there, stood up and walked over to me.

“Thank you,” she said, letting out a sigh of relief. “Yu Keyi, you’re really the best.”

“Don’t mention it.” I rubbed my temples and waved a hand at Yu Zhouwan.

She took a deep breath, her hands clenching into fists from nervousness, then suddenly relaxing, as if she was swallowing a very important sentence.

I stood sideways in the subway car, and Yu Zhouwan’s long, distorted shadow on the floor merged with mine.

I knew that on the surface, I was acting normally, but my exhausted mind wouldn’t stop working. In that state of shock, I hadn’t even remembered the curly-haired woman’s face. The scene I’d witnessed in the alley kept replaying in a loop—the moans and gasps as their tongues intertwined, and the hand moving around her waist, trying to stir up desire. It all culminated in a frozen snapshot.

My face was pressed against my forearm. Using it as a shield, I glanced at Yu Zhouwan, who looked completely serene. The swelling on her face was gone; you could hardly tell unless you looked closely. But there was a trace of the aftermath, a lingering mark on her neck, hidden by her printed white collar.

It was reddish-pink, with tiny veins of blood, and it burned in my eyes.

“Keyi wasn’t feeling well tonight and didn’t want to go to evening study hall, so we came back together.”

Yu Hanyang stood up, wanting to check on my health. I quickly said I was too tired from the week and needed to rest, then fled to my room and closed the door.

The spacious bed didn’t feel as comforting as my grimy single dorm bed. I rolled off the bed and onto the floor, letting my head rest against the leg of the cabinet. From my perspective, the whole room stretched and grew, and I was trapped in the past, in that dark scene.

Yu Zhouwan liked women. After the initial shock wore off, I began to understand some other things.

It was like a balloon suddenly swelling with air, and as it slowly deflated, its wrinkled skin was revealed. These wrinkles were the hidden dangers that could cause it to shatter at any moment.

I took out my treasured photos from the drawer and flipped through them. Yu Zhouwan was a beauty from every angle, but what I appreciated most was her look of being consumed by lust. It was a shame that I hadn’t recovered from the sudden unveiling of this secret, and with the poor lighting, all I had was a blurry photo of the two of them, like I was six feet away without my glasses.

She must have been enjoying that kiss, accompanied by the pain. Yu Zhouwan, on the verge of suffocating, showed a look of utter vulnerability. I just happened to capture it, like a clear stream suddenly appearing in the wilderness, and on closer inspection, I found sweet, coppery blood flowing in the water.

“Keyi?”

I hadn’t locked the door. When Yu Zhouwan opened it, she saw me sprawled out on the floor between the bed and the wardrobe, staring blankly.

“What’s wrong?”

She took a step, walking around my hair scattered on the floor, and crouched down.

“You look so tired today.” Her cold fingers touched my forehead and moved down to my cheek. “Is studying at Qizhong really that hard?”

I didn’t answer directly. I sat up and met her eyes. The warm yellow light from the bedside lamp cast varying shadows on Yu Zhouwan’s face. There was a glimmer of light on the tip of her lip, making me stare at that single point of light.

Yu Zhouwan subconsciously touched her mouth.

“It’d be weird if I wasn’t tired after a whole day of classes,” I said, pushing her out without an explanation. “I’m sleepy.”

My physical and psychological exhaustion led to a long, drawn-out dream. I opened and closed my eyes frequently in the middle of the night. In the dream, I was the one secretly watching their lovemaking. But the setting had changed from the dilapidated alley to our house. I held my phone’s camera, cautiously peeking through the crack in the door, but Yu Zhouwan suddenly turned and looked at me.

Everything stopped. It was morning.

The dream’s content quickly faded, but the image of the fictional Yu Zhouwan in my mind kept replaying. It made me so scared that when I stumbled into the wrong room in the groggy morning and saw her face, I felt a sense of panic, as if she could read my mind after I’d secretly criticized her.

There was a key hanging on the door. I didn’t know if Yu Zhouwan had forgotten to lock it last night or if someone else had been there. Her backpack was still on the sofa. I felt the rabbit keychain—it was the one I gave her.

I let out a slow breath when the last two teeth of the zipper met in silence.

Yu Zhouwan rolled over from lying on her back to curling up, her right leg hanging off the bed. She was sleeping soundly, breathing evenly, occasionally pursing her lips.

But faced with such a peaceful and quiet sleeping face, a despicable thought took root in my mind.

Just as she promised, Yu Zhouwan didn’t cross any boundaries for the next two weeks. She returned to being the good girl she was supposed to be, going from school to home and back again.

I’d lost count of how many times I had skipped evening study hall. As always, I was on the balcony of the building across the street, watching Yu Zhouwan quietly studying. The person in the desk in front of her turned around and knocked on her desk with a test paper. She closed her book and answered them calmly and humbly, occasionally smiling with her eyes.

But what I didn’t expect was that after tonight, I would see that same curly-haired woman again.

The lights in the classroom were off after class, giving the place an eerie feel.

“Anyone can get into Linzhou Foreign Language School these days,” I thought, biting the dead skin off my lips.

Yu Zhouwan didn’t seem surprised. They stood in the hallway and talked for a few moments before moving into the shadow of the classroom.

I hurried down the stairs, stepping lightly on the building’s steps. In the dead of the night, I didn’t want to make a sound that would give me away.

The hallway was quiet. I pressed my ear against the ground by the windowsill, but I couldn’t hear their footsteps or voices. I even wondered if they had left in the two or three minutes it took me to get there.

“Feng Jia,”

I heard Yu Zhouwan call the curly-haired woman’s name softly, but she didn’t respond.

“Feng Jia, Teacher Feng…”

Yu Zhouwan’s voice was trembling, reminding me of a fingernail touching a guitar string. Her breathing came in waves, rising with each one. My uncontrollable desire made me move to watch the seductive scene in the classroom.

Feng Jia had her pressed against the lectern, her hand moving restlessly on Yu Zhouwan’s slender waist. Yu Zhouwan’s soft moans and whimpers were completely stifled by their intertwined kiss.

Feng Jia unbuttoned Yu Zhouwan’s school uniform shirt. Moonlight shone on her round shoulders and smooth back. Her neatly pinned-up hair was completely undone, and a strand fell softly. Her chest rose and fell with her quickened breathing.

She lifted Yu Zhouwan, who was now only in a bra, and carried her to the back of the room.

I quickly crouched down and hid, taking my phone out of my pocket and pressing the camera lens against the shadow in the bars of the window.

Feng Jia pressed her body against Yu Zhouwan on the desk. She kissed her, while her hands continued to explore. Her hands went from her waist and back to her bare thighs, and she pulled off her skirt. Her fingertips slid between Yu Zhouwan’s legs, stroking her, trying to cross the final boundary. Yu Zhouwan pushed against her arms, resisting, but Feng Jia completely ignored the feigned resistance and moved her other hand under Yu Zhouwan’s bra, moving between the soft flesh. The classroom was filled with nothing but broken words and a thick, ambiguous mix of gasps.

“Someone’s here.”

I was startled. I quickly pulled my phone back and hid it, crouching down and moving to the corner of the stairs.

I hadn’t even had a moment to collect myself when a faint, shaking light approached from the hallway. It was accompanied by the sound of girls giggling.

“You guys are still here so late?”

“Oh, Teacher Feng, we came back for a test paper we need to do tonight,” a girl’s voice said, clear as bamboo. “Bye, teacher.”

I had already used their conversation as a cover and fled the scene.

Yu Zhouwan, I thought her name silently. She was so proper and calm, but with one little touch from someone else, she became flustered and whimpered. She let herself be toyed with until she was weak in her lover’s arms, her clothes half off, her skirt pooled at her ankles. Even though they hadn’t gone all the way, it gave her a look of vulnerability and seduction, like she had been violated. It made me want to hurt her even more.

She was like a delicate porcelain doll in an exquisite box, giving the illusion of being expensive and untouchable. Only I knew that her body was filled with moldy, low-quality cotton.

I watched the blurry video repeatedly, with the covers pulled over my head. I wished that woman had been more eager to go all the way, but that thought was quickly replaced by an even more beautiful fantasy—I never wanted to completely expose Yu Zhouwan to others. I wanted her to be ravaged. I wanted her most primitive, most naked side to be for my eyes only.

It would be even better if she was forced and couldn’t fight back.