Chapter 76
"Huan Zheng," she said, her voice no longer loud like when she shouted, no longer soft like when she whispered, but somewhere between annoyance and disappointment, like a child told to wait by her mother in a crowded market, growing impatient because she wants to go home.
"Where is your common sense? You dare refuse the first kiss of a girl—of me—who has never even shared her first kiss with anyone? I have died eleven times for you, I have lost both my eyes for you, I have swallowed entire divine civilizations and turned them into flesh within my stomach for you, and you repay all of that with... three fingers?"
Huan Zheng, hearing Ling Xu's unusually long rant—because Ling Xu was not the type to talk much, let alone complain about something as trivial as a kiss—could only let out a sigh, a sigh that sounded like someone who had just realized he would not be able to nap not only today, but perhaps tomorrow, and the day after, and every day after that, as long as these two women continued fighting over him.
"Ling Xu—"
He began, but before he could continue, the Singer—who moments ago had still been staggering from Ling Xu's push—had already recovered, standing upright with blazing eyes.
Not the usual ember-red that refused to fade, but a deeper red—like blood, like fire, like something that could erupt at any moment.
"No wonder you were rejected, Miss," the Singer said, her voice no longer melodious, no longer soft, no longer laced with teasing desire as when she licked Huan Zheng's ear, but sharp, piercing, like a dagger slowly driven into one's back.
And as she spoke, she stepped forward, approaching Ling Xu with steps that were graceful yet threatening, like a tigress preparing to pounce on helpless prey.
She stopped right in front of Ling Xu, only an inch away—close enough for Ling Xu to feel the heat radiating from her body, close enough to sense the waves of anger and jealousy emanating from every pore of her skin.
And with a slow, deliberate, dramatic motion, she raised her left hand, her slender pale index finger—the same finger that once held the green flute whose melody could crack the sky and split the sea—touching Ling Xu's lips, pressing lightly against them, neither gently nor harshly, but with a strange pressure, like someone testing the texture of something before deciding whether it is worth claiming.
"You think you're special, Miss? You think that by being a 'girl who has never had her first kiss with anyone,' you deserve Huan Zheng's kiss? You think you are more worthy than I am?"
She laughed.
A laugh not melodious, not beautiful, not sorrowful like the flute songs that once made fishermen lose their heads, but bitter—a laugh born from someone who had lost everything and refused to lose the one thing she had left.
"Listen carefully, Miss. Since we were young, The Lazy One—Huan Zheng—has already tainted my purity. To be precise, since I was fourteen, when we were still young, when we still did not know that the world is cruel, when we still believed that love could overcome everything, he came to my room at night, and from that moment on, every single night, without fail, without missing a single one, he lay with me, held me, stroked my hair, kissed my forehead, and made me feel like the luckiest woman in the entire universe—until he left, until he disappeared, until he abandoned me alone, without explanation, without farewell, without giving me the chance to say that I loved him, that I would always love him, that I would wait for him, no matter how long it took, no matter how many obstacles I had to endure, no matter how many deaths I had to experience."
She exhaled—a breath that felt like swallowing all the longing she had buried for thousands of years, a breath that felt like releasing all the burdens she had carried alone for millennia—then continued in a softer, deeper, heavier voice.
"So don't be arrogant about your 'never-been-kissed' status, Miss."
Ling Xu, hearing all of that—every word from The Singer's lips, every mockery, every confession of "tainted purity" since the age of fourteen, every claim that Huan Zheng had kissed her thousands of times across countless nights—felt the fire of jealousy that had begun to subside when Huan Zheng rejected The Singer's kiss and chose three fingers instead now flare up again, fiercer, hotter, more uncontrollable, like a starving Cancer plague, like an ocean consumed by a storm, like a collapsing universe unable to withstand the fury of a girl who once watched her mother violated before her eyes and now felt that Huan Zheng—the only one who made her still want to live—would also be taken from her by this red-haired woman, a woman who claimed to have been kissed thousands of times, who claimed to have been held every night, who claimed to have belonged to Huan Zheng since before Ling Xu was even born.
"Huan Zheng!" she cried, her voice breaking, wet, like someone on the verge of tears yet holding them back because she refused to appear weak before the Singer, because she refused to give the woman the satisfaction of seeing how shattered she truly was, her eyes—or rather, her tightly shut third eye—pulsing so fast, so fiercely, so impatiently that a greenish-gray light began to seep from the thin gap between her eyelids, like the Cancer plague awakening from its slumber upon sensing that its host was angry, jealous, unwilling to share with anyone.
"Explain! What does this woman mean? You slept with her every night? You kissed her thousands of times? You... you've been doing that with her since you were fourteen?!"
Her voice trembled, fractured, like the strings of a harp plucked too hard, nearly snapping, and at the corner of her eyes—behind the white bandages wrapped tightly around her head, behind the empty sockets, behind everything she had sacrificed to reach this place, this artificial hell filled with black flames, bone walls, and endless screams—something wet began to gather.
Not tears, because she had lost both her eyes, and without eyes, no tears could fall—only pain remained, pain with no outlet, festering in her chest, rotting, rotting, rotting, like flesh that never heals, like a wound that never dries, like the memory of her mother being violated before her eyes that would never fade, never dull, never be forgotten, no matter how many gods she killed, no matter how many universes she burned, no matter how many deaths she endured.
Huan Zheng, seeing Ling Xu—the girl he had always known as cold, as someone who never showed emotions beyond hatred, resentment, and anger, who never cried even after losing both her eyes, who never complained even after dying eleven times—now standing at the edge of collapse because of jealousy, because the red-haired woman beside him had successfully provoked her, wounded her, made her feel that she was not special, that she was nothing more than a passing stop, that everything she had sacrificed meant nothing in the face of the thousands of nights Huan Zheng had spent with The Singer, could only let out a sigh.
To be continued…