Fang Qianan suddenly grabbed his cup of milk tea and took several sips, his Adam's apple rolling several times while swallowing.
Li Xiu looked at him in surprise.
"...Be careful of the heat."
Fang Qianan hummed, trying hard to keep an expressionless face, and then put down the cup.
The boy's neck was still red. After glancing at Li Xiu, he lowered his head, took out his cell phone, and seemed to be looking at it intently.
Li Xiu didn't say anything else, and sat in the milk tea shop with Fang Qianan in an awkward position with their knees touching each other for a long time.
After finishing a cup of hot cocoa, Li Xiucai spoke in a daze and whispered about what he had experienced in the haunted house.
"...I saw Ouyang in the photo." The boy's fingertips tapped unconsciously on his milk tea cup. "I don't know if it was an illusion. But why did he appear in both of our nightmares? I think it has something to do with the Xiao family villa."
Fang Qianan had already lost focus on his phone before Li Xiu spoke.
When he heard about what Li Xiu had encountered, his brows were tightly knitted together, and there was a hint of anger in his eyes that even he himself was unaware of.
"Don't think about that guy anymore. He's dead anyway," Fang Qian'an said. "Besides, didn't Teacher Xu tell you to stop thinking about it?"
Li Xiu was stunned for a moment, then met Fang Qianan's eyes.
"I know." His voice gradually faded. "But I don't know why, but I just care a little bit. You know? I've never really believed in these things, but what happened there is really..."
The skinny boy, who had never shown any sign of weakness even when being pinned down and bullied by a group of people, now showed a bit of fragility like thin ice beside Fang Qianan.
"Fang Qianan, in the villa...what did you see?"
"…"
Fang Qianan was silent for a few seconds.
"I sprinkled glutinous rice and salt in the room, and in the blink of an eye, you disappeared." Recalling the scene in the haunted house, Fang Qianan unconsciously clenched his fists. "I was startled. At that time, I caught a glimpse of a white shadow passing by the door. I thought it was you, so I chased after it..."
In Fang Qianan's memory, hurried footsteps could be heard from time to time in that huge abandoned villa.
Under normal circumstances, Fang Qian'an would have naturally found those footsteps creepy and terrifying, but at that moment, he was too distracted to care. The mere disappearance of a living being like Li Xiu had completely terrified Fang Qian'an.
He followed the shadow that looked like Li Xiu up and down the haunted house for several times, but he still couldn't really find Li Xiu.
Until he heard Li Xiu's voice coming from the far end of the upstairs corridor.
"...When I ran up to the second floor, I saw you standing in that room, mumbling to a, uh, shadowy thing. I was almost scared to death, so I called out to you."
When he said this, Fang Qianan's face had already turned ugly.
"As soon as you turned around, I saw something wrapped around you, and the door was moving, as if it was going to close and drag you away. I was so scared at the time that I didn't care about anything else. I rushed over, blocked the door, and forcibly dragged you out of the room. You know what? If that thing in the room was really some kind of monster, it must be quite strong."
As he spoke, Fang Qianan shrugged his shoulders.
"My shoulder hit the door at that time, and it hurts now. Hiss—"
During the movement, Fang Qianan accidentally agitated the injury on his shoulder and couldn't help but gasp.
Li Xiu looked at Fang Qianan's pained expression and felt a little uneasy: "I'm sorry."
Because of his physique and background, Li Xiu has always been good at accepting all kinds of difficulties and discrimination brought to him by others. However, when all kinds of teasing and exclusion turn into care and kindness, Li Xiu's reaction will become extremely rigid.
He had never been good at dealing with such unfamiliar emotions.
Fang Qianan paused, glancing at the bewildered expression on the boy's face beside him. A certain school bully raised an eyebrow.
"Hey, you seemed to be first in the whole grade in Chinese last time? How come when you're with me now, all you can say is sorry and thank you?"
The boy's seemingly arrogant complaint instantly broke the unnatural atmosphere between the two of them.
Li Xiu subconsciously retorted, "What else do you want to hear? Am I supposed to tell you, 'I have nothing to repay you with, so I might as well pledge my life to you'?"
In fact, this was just a sarcastic remark uttered by Li Xiu, but when Fang Qianan heard this, he was stuck with his mouth open and fell silent.
Li Xiu stared at Fang Qianan, whose face was flushed red, and always felt that something seemed to be wrong.
The hot cocoa continued to release heat in the stomach, and Li Xiu also felt her face getting a little hot.
"I, I do it with reluctance, but it's not impossible."
After a long time, Fang Qianan seemed to finally come to his senses, and he responded dryly.
Li Xiu: "...Ha, you want to be pretty."
The conversation between the two people finally got back on track, but when they looked at each other inadvertently, Fang Qianan and Li Xiu would still look away and play with their phones while pretending to be calm.
After a long stalemate, Fang Qianan's phone buzzed. He flipped it over and took a look, a cold look flashing across his rosy cheeks.
Although Fang Qianan hung up the call the next second, the call reminded Li Xiu that they had been sitting in the milk tea shop for a long time without realizing it.
"It's too late. I want to go back."
Li Xiu glanced at the time and stood up, grabbing her schoolbag.
As a result, just as he was about to leave, he felt the corner of his clothes tighten.
"You're just leaving? You're planning on going home alone?"
Fang Qianan opened his eyes wide and asked nervously.
Li Xiu was stunned for a moment: "What else? I still have several papers to do tonight."
Because of the so-called ghost incident these days, he has not been able to concentrate on his studies for several days.
Since he has made up his mind not to deal with these weird things anymore, the most important thing he should do now is to go home quickly and study hard.
...It's impossible to hide in a crowded milk tea shop to calm down for the rest of your life, right?
After hearing Li Xiu's question, Fang Qianan seemed to react.
"oh."
The tall boy let go awkwardly.
"Well, aren't you afraid of going back alone?"
Li Xiu lowered her eyes.
"Didn't Teacher Xu say that the more afraid you are, the more unstable your mind will be. It's better not to think about it." At this point, Li Xiu looked at Fang Qianan thoughtfully, "Are you afraid? I have several collections of comprehensive essays in my schoolbag. I can give you a few."
Fang Qianan straightened his back instantly and raised his voice a little: "Huh? If you're not afraid, then why should I be afraid... I was just worried about you."
Li Xiu stared at the boy in front of her who looked strong but was actually weak, and felt a little inexplicably worried in her heart.
However, Li Xiu soon thought that with Fang Qianan's identity, if he really didn't want to be alone, there would probably be a lot of people scrambling to get together with him, right?
"Don't worry about me. Well, I'm leaving." Li Xiu said in a low voice, turned around and left the milk tea shop.
However, while waiting for the bus on the side of the road, Li Xiu always felt that Fang Qianan's eyes were still glued to her.
Is that person still looking at me?
Li Xiu turned her head and glanced through the bright and clean floor-to-ceiling windows of the mall at the seat where she and Fang Qianan had sat before, but found that Fang Qianan had also disappeared.
*
Because he skipped classes in the afternoon, Li Xiu got home much earlier than usual this time.
As usual, when she opened the door, Li Xiu put aside the old women's high-heeled shoes placed at the door. While she was still looking for the key, she heard a loud bang coming from inside the house.
Li Xiu was startled and opened the door in panic and rushed in.
Grandma was standing in the living room, her whole body trembling, her hands slightly open in front of her, looking around in panic, as if she was afraid of something.
"grandmother?!"
Li Xiu stumbled to her grandmother and found that the old woman's eyes were empty and her gaze was wandering and not focused at all.
"What's wrong, Grandma?"
Li Xiu shouted for a long time before his grandmother finally seemed to notice his presence. Her dry, branch-like hand instantly grasped Li Xiu's arm tightly. The old woman stared at him intently, tears streaming from her cloudy eyes.
"A Xiu, grandma was wrong, grandma did something wrong... wuwu..."
Grandma kept mumbling incoherently. No matter how Li Xiu asked her what happened, the old woman just kept repeating the same sentence over and over again.
Li Xiu subconsciously glanced at the shrine where her grandmother always used to entertain guests.
There was no one sitting next to the table.
The whole house was still as dark as usual, and grandma's frightened sobs echoed in the shadows filled with cheap sandalwood. Li Xiu frowned, vaguely realizing that something seemed to be wrong.
But at this moment, his grandmother's abnormality attracted all his attention, and he had no time to think about it.
Li Xiu frantically tried to calm her agitated grandmother, and finally managed to get the old woman to sit on the old sofa and calm down.
"Grandma, what's going on? Did something happen?"
Li Xiu half-knelt on the ground and asked cautiously.
He placed one hand on his grandmother's back soothingly, and he clearly felt that his grandmother seemed to shudder after hearing his words.
The next second, grandma suddenly turned her head, her gray eyes trembling slightly.
She stared straight at Li Xiu.
"Shh-"
The old man raised his finger and lowered his voice.
"Don't let him find out."
Grandma said.
"Who? Who discovered it?" Li Xiu was confused.
"Xiaoyu..." The old woman gasped heavily, and then a look of fear appeared on her face again, "No, that's not right, that's not Xiaoyu... I was wrong, I was really wrong..."
"The child I brought back was not that child at all."