My Cthulhu Girlfriend (gl) 21p2

Chapter 21: Morning Light p2

“Excuse me, please stay here for a while. I have a guest, she’s very important to me, could you please not scare her? Oh, and if you decide to show off your powers, you might end up being dissected in a lab, so please don’t do anything rash.”

She muttered to the sculpture. The sculpture’s large eye stared at her unblinkingly, as if not having heard a word. The wooden tendrils remained motionless, like ordinary wood.

Xiang Er breathed a sigh of relief, thinking as she washed up, that she should probably go out with Shen Yuhe later, away from this Evil God-infested apartment, to ensure Shen Yuhe’s safety… Wait, was today a workday?

She opened her phone and, as expected, her supervisor had sent several passive-aggressive messages: Your colleagues saw you having a meltdown and getting drenched in the rain yesterday. If you have mental health issues, please seek professional help. The company isn’t a hospital. If you take another day off this month, you’re fired… and so on. Just glancing at them made her head spin.

She turned her phone face down and carefully washed her face.

With Shen Yuhe here, her mood was unusually light. Looking at herself in the mirror, remembering the sight of Shen Yuhe wearing her sweater, she couldn’t help but space out again.

Shen Yuhe’s red dress… she needed to wash it before returning it. Which meant, she couldn’t leave yet, unless she wanted Shen Yuhe to leave in her sweater… Xiang Er started thinking about what outfit she could put together for Shen Yuhe, her lips curving upwards the more she thought about it.

After the intense self-doubt and the high fever of the past few days, she felt like she had been given a second chance at life, every moment too precious to waste!

And a beauty like Shen Yuhe, who had selflessly taken care of her all night without asking for anything in return, she couldn’t let her down. She had to spend the day with her.

Xiang Er picked up her phone and decisively sent a message to her supervisor: Taking a day off. Then she turned off her phone. She brushed her hair, her face still flushed and delicate from the fever, applied some lipstick to match the blush, successfully masking her sickly appearance.

She practiced smiling in the mirror.

It had to be a natural, sincere smile, cute and sweet, but not overly flattering, enthusiastic and lively, yet restrained and elegant… Her cheeks ached from smiling, and finally, she settled on the perfect smile, ready to face the day.

She took a deep breath, and another, mentally rehearsing what she wanted to say, adjusted her collar and hair, and took a few steps, practicing her posture.

“Don’t stumble… don’t let her see how nervous I am.”

She muttered to herself, forcing a confident smile, then opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

The sculpture on the shelf stood silently, observing everything.

Stepping out of the bathroom, Xiang Er saw that Shen Yuhe had somehow settled onto the living room sofa, in a position where she could see the bathroom door. She sat quietly, her long legs casually spread, her entire body sinking into the cushions, like a soft, boneless snake.

Her posture was completely unladylike, her clothes rumpled, patches of skin exposed here and there, making Xiang Er unsure where to look, the long legs, or elsewhere… She quickly averted her gaze, focusing on the space in front of her as she approached.

Shen Yuhe turned to look at her, her head tilted slightly upwards at an odd angle. Although her expression was neutral, it somehow conveyed a sense of alluring charm.

Her lips curved upwards, and Xiang Er’s heart skipped a beat.

Xiang Er fidgeted with the hem of her clothes and asked softly:

“I’ve washed your red dress, but it’ll take a while to dry. I don’t have a dryer, so it might not be ready until tonight… Would you like to wear my clothes for now?”

Shen Yuhe lifted her left hand and tugged at the collar of the sweater.

Her collarbones, like the banks of a river, the lines of her tendons and veins like mountain streams, flowed downwards from her neck, into the valley, carrying the jade-white promise of spring, nestled between towering peaks.

This tug gave Xiang Er a glimpse, and a lightning-fast thought struck her: Could it be… that she wasn’t wearing a bra?!

Xiang Er’s breath hitched, her scalp tingling at this realization. She wasn’t usually this prurient, she wouldn’t normally pay attention to whether someone was wearing a bra or not! But her focus on Shen Yuhe was revealing a new side of herself, a side she found slightly frightening!

Shen Yuhe’s slender fingers lingered on the collar of the white sweater, as if about to let go, her smooth elbow protruding from the sleeve, the very embodiment of icy jade skin and delicate bones.

Her lips curved upwards, her face resting against the back of the sofa, her dark eyes looking at Xiang Er from a slightly skewed angle, her aura carrying a unique, prickly sense of danger. She said playfully:

“But I’m already wearing your clothes.”

The faint morning light streamed into the room, the shadows of the trees dappling the balcony. Her cello-like voice lingered, mingling with the soft breeze outside. The air after the rain was unusually fresh, accentuating the sweet fragrance in the room, which wafted into Xiang Er’s nostrils.

Xiang Er felt dizzy, unsure if it was from the scent, or from Shen Yuhe’s words.

Her head began to throb slightly again, and she didn’t know where to look. Looking directly at Shen Yuhe meant seeing the white sweater clinging to her chest, looking down meant seeing her long, jade-white legs. Nowhere was safe, everywhere was Shen Yuhe, everywhere was the source of her racing heart.

She had almost completely forgotten the lines she had rehearsed in the bathroom, and could only stammer:

“Yes… yes. I, I just wanted to ask, are you… going out later?”

What she really wanted to ask was, are you going to leave, leave me? But of course, she couldn’t say that.

Shen Yuhe’s fingers finally left the collar of the sweater, but then casually rested against her cheek, like a silent invitation, drawing Xiang Er’s gaze.

Her cheek was incredibly fair, like porcelain, like white jade, smooth and delicate, yet bloodless, her skin flawless, without a single pore or blemish. The tiny imperfections that most people had were completely absent, her beauty almost too perfect.

Shen Yuhe, her perfect face turned towards Xiang Er, said:

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay with you.”

Xiang Er’s mouth opened slightly, and she looked at Shen Yuhe, a smile spreading across her face. She felt like her smile was foolish, but she couldn’t control it.

After smiling for a few seconds, she remembered something and turned to go to her room:

“I’ll wash your dress…”

She picked up the red dress from the bed, its beautiful fragrance clinging to the fabric. The scent was somehow familiar… But Xiang Er shook her head. She was still feverish, how could she possibly distinguish the scent of perfume? She paused before taking the dress to the washing machine.

Designer clothes usually couldn’t be machine washed… She turned to ask Shen Yuhe:

“Can this be machine washed?”

Shen Yuhe shook her head. She stretched languidly, stood up gracefully, and shuffled over in the rabbit slippers. Extending a long arm, she plucked the red dress from Xiang Er’s hands.

She said:

“No need to wash it.”

She walked to the balcony, where the washing machine and clothes rack were. She casually tossed the dress over the rack.

Then, she turned around and said calmly:

“That’s fine. Aren’t you hungry?”

Xiang Er was shocked by her casualness. That dress looked expensive, how could she just hang it like that?

But perhaps it was precisely because it was expensive that she could treat it so carelessly… Xiang Er thought in awe, as expected, Shen Yuhe was even wealthier than she appeared. Even if the dress was damaged, she probably wouldn’t care at all.

What had she been asking just now? Oh, about food.

Xiang Er frowned again:

“Yes, it’s time to eat. What do you want to eat? I’ll order takeout.”

Shen Yuhe, her legs still spread casually, asked:

“Takeout? Is that the stuff they make at restaurants and deliver here? Let me do it.”

Xiang Er was puzzled:

“You don’t know about takeout?”

Shen Yuhe replied:

“I know.”

She reached out and, seemingly out of nowhere, produced a phone, clumsily poking at the screen with two fingers.

Xiang Er recognized the phone. It was a top-of-the-line model, costing over two thousand dollars, the latest trendy model often displayed prominently in phone stores.

Shen Yuhe’s handling of the phone was surprisingly awkward. She poked at the screen for a while, then suddenly turned to Xiang Er and asked:

“How do you order takeout?”

Xiang Er, confused, opened her own phone and showed her the food delivery app.

“It’s this app. What do you want to eat? I’ll order it on my phone. Consider it a thank you for taking care of me last night, besides, you don’t have my address.”

Shen Yuhe poked at her phone for a while longer, then stopped, tossing the expensive phone carelessly onto the sofa, her delicate brows slightly furrowed:

“Fine, you do it.”

Xiang Er asked her what she wanted to eat. Shen Yuhe said anything was fine. Xiang Er thought for a moment and ordered a nourishing seafood porridge and assorted dim sum from a nearby Cantonese restaurant. It was a bit expensive, but someone like Shen Yuhe would probably enjoy that kind of food.

After ordering, she turned to Shen Yuhe and found her staring intently at her phone screen, her eyes filled with childlike curiosity.

Xiang Er thought, as expected of a wealthy person, they probably never ordered takeout themselves. It was perfectly normal, just like in those novels. She couldn’t help but think that perhaps some authors of those CEO romance novels had actually met real CEOs, to be able to portray their habits so accurately.

Like their indifference towards expensive things, their inability to eat or do laundry by themselves… and so on.

But she now understood that a “CEO” like Shen Yuhe… was truly captivating.

She tilted her phone slightly towards Shen Yuhe, allowing her to see better, and continued browsing. She had several new messages on WeChat. After ordering the food, she opened the app, and as expected, they were all from her irate supervisor.

“What are you doing? Taking another day off! Do you think I’m a pushover?!”

“If you’re really crazy, just resign! Taking time off is delaying the project. Are you going to take the blame for me when we miss the deadline? A newbie acting like this, I see you don’t want this job!”

“Let me tell you, if you mess with me again, I’ll blacklist you from the entire industry!”

Shen Yuhe, having read the messages, frowned even more deeply:

“Who is she? Why is she talking to you like that?”

Xiang Er switched screens, not replying, and said:

“She’s my supervisor.”

Shen Yuhe leaned back, her body boneless, practically melting into the sofa, the view of her chest unobstructed. She extended a jade-white fingertip and poked Xiang Er’s phone screen, startling her. Her hand twitched, and the screen shifted, opening a different chat.

It was a new message from General Manager Cheng.

“Xiang Er, if you’re not feeling well, stay home and rest. I support you! I’ll be waiting for you to come back.”

Xiang Er felt something was off about this message. She placed her hand on the screen, bringing up the keyboard to reply.

A strong, slender hand suddenly reached out and grasped her right hand, preventing her from typing.

The grip was almost forceful, startling Xiang Er, making her cry out, her eyes instantly filling with tears.

She looked up at the person in front of her, her tear-filled eyes shimmering, and whispered:

“What’s wrong?”

Her voice was soft, like a warm bowl of snow fungus and pear soup, as sweet and clear as her glistening, misty eyes.

Shen Yuhe pulled her hand back, the phone falling onto the sofa with a “thud,” and Xiang Er, like a helpless kitten, was pressed against the back of the sofa.

Shen Yuhe looked into her eyes, then at her lips, her own face expressionless, cold as a statue.

But in her dark, intense eyes, a black fire seemed to burn, invisible yet compelling, impossible to ignore.

Xiang Er, flustered and blushing, turned her head away, and seeing the prominent veins on Shen Yuhe’s wrist, realized… that she was completely enveloped in Shen Yuhe’s embrace, surrounded by her.

Shen Yuhe spoke, her voice dangerously close to Xiang Er’s ear:

“Don’t reply to him.”