Instinct

“What are those two doing…” Lin Baiyu lowered her voice without thinking and poked Chen Xia’s shoulder with a finger. “Do you know?”

Chen Xia opened her mouth, her eyes flickering. She beckoned Lin Baiyu closer. When Lin Baiyu leaned in, she whispered what she had just seen into her ear.

Lin Baiyu shrank back, the breath tickling her ear and making it itch. Her ears went bright red. After hearing everything, she straightened up and rubbed them hard; it took her a while to process what Chen Xia had said.

Then she froze. She snapped her head around to look at the two of them, staring blankly with her eyes wide. She didn’t notice Chen Xia watching her, a hint of secret anticipation in her gaze.

Nan Changgeng was looking down, pinching the hem of her clothes with two fingers to inspect the faint red lip print. Her lips were pressed into a thin line; beneath her lowered brows and lashes, a thoughtful look slipped out despite herself.

Yu Mao had curled into a tiny ball and was looking up at her face. Her eyes were clear and bright, with almost no emotion in them, more like the simple thoughts of a little animal; she looked utterly innocent.

It reminded Nan Changgeng of her own cat after causing trouble, brazenly crouched at the scene of the crime and tilting its head to stare back at her, so frank it was as if nothing at all was hidden in that small body.

As if it didn’t know it had done anything wrong; or as if that tiny brain simply couldn’t grasp what consequences would follow after a mistake.

The ambiguous atmosphere others saw was nothing more than something forced into being by a lip print carrying a certain symbolic meaning.

But for Nan Changgeng, the feeling spreading through her heart was something ordinary people could not understand: a strange sense of ease and comfort, along with a desire that had suddenly been pried open by those catlike eyes and could no longer be suppressed.

She let go, allowing the hem of fabric to fall neatly back into place. Then she leaned to the side, resting an elbow on the back of the chair, and gave Yu Mao a casual curve of her lips; she smiled faintly.

The woman’s sharp brows were softened at that moment; her gaze was warm and unreadable, like spider silk or nougat, sticky and tenacious, eager to wrap someone up and swallow them whole. It was faintly unsettling.

Facing Nan Changgeng, Yu Mao became like an insect that had lost its danger sense; she tilted her head, her eyes clean and bright, little sparks of joy fluttering all over her body as she waved her tiny invisible feelers with all her strength.

She didn’t understand danger. Looking into the woman’s eyes, she only felt as if she saw an entire glacier melting; seawater, carrying transparent shards of ice, flowed clear and cold toward her and surrounded her.

Happy. The emotional aura Nan Changgeng was giving off was positive, so she was happy.

Nan Changgeng lowered her eyelids, hiding her eyes beneath the shadow of her long lashes, then reached out and pinched the girl’s cheek, smiling faintly.

“Be sure to do well tonight.”

Her voice was gentle, but there seemed to be something deeper hidden in the seriousness of her tone.

The fingers on her cheek held back Yu Mao’s nod, so Yu Mao spoke instead; she enunciated a single word, clear and almost ringing with certainty: “Okay.”

The woman seemed satisfied and smiled. Before withdrawing, her fingertips pressed firmly against Yu Mao’s delicate skin, as if lingering there; as if in a subtle, uncontrolled act of possession.

Little Flying Hero captured everything on camera. The two of them seemed to have reached some tacit understanding unknown to outsiders; no one could know that this was really just a mistaken exchange based on another layer of perception.

Yu Mao was stupidly oblivious and didn’t know anything. But she also didn’t care whether she understood anything or not; as long as Changgeng was happy right now, that was more than enough.

Lin Baiyu stared dumbly, reaching back to feel for her chair before slowly sitting down. Her expression was vivid and strange, but mindful of the camera, she forced herself to hold back.

She swallowed hard, looking deep in thought.

Chen Xia glanced at her once, then again. She turned back to the mirror, the corners of her mouth twitching as she held back a laugh. She picked up her lipstick and applied another layer; her hand shook, and she accidentally drew a smiling lip shape.

Good. A reaction meant they hadn’t gone that far.

The online discussion was basically focused on Nan Changgeng and Yu Mao, and not many people noticed the shifting thoughts between the two of them.

[This doesn’t feel right… why does my main pet CP seem like it’s veering off in another direction]

[No, no! My daughter is still a child!]

[She’s twenty-two. Looking young doesn’t mean she actually is a child]

[Actually, Little Cat still looks like an innocent kid; the way she was holding onto someone’s collar didn’t seem sexy at all, more like a pure little animal. Nan Changgeng’s words and actions were also very gentle and normal, but put the two of them together and somehow there’s this inexplicable sexual tension; who understands?]

[I do, but I can’t figure out what the problem is. They interacted like this before, so why does it feel so wrong this time?]

[Isn’t that obvious? Yu Staring Stare’s mindset hasn’t changed one bit; it has to be Nan Changgeng’s problem. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but I’m sensing an aggressiveness from her that wasn’t there before]

[You people are insane. Can you CP-brains stop making things up? My sister’s words and actions are perfectly normal!]

The barrage was starting to turn into an argument, but none of that had anything to do with the contestants.

The makeup artists were on the job now. Yu Mao was dragged back for makeup; she was scheduled first. It wasn’t just because they were prioritizing by popularity; it was also because her makeup progress was negative—she hadn’t put any on at all, and had even been smeared with the wrong lipstick.

The makeup artist wanted to wipe it off, but Yu Mao refused. In the end, the artist had no choice but to switch to a different color and cover it directly; Yu Mao didn’t object after that.

The new shade was a deep red, almost the color of congealed blood, with a matte finish. Against her pale skin, it made her look even colder, with a ghostly, sinister air.

After hearing her rehearsal, the production team’s stylist had already settled on this makeup direction. The makeup artist was just there to cooperate, and with the darker black eye makeup added, the first impression was of a delicate, eerily cold doll.

Her performance outfit had already been changed into a black little dress; she still looked like some foreign ghost.

The stylist was there too. Standing behind her and studying her for a while, he felt something was still missing, so he took up her hair and braided several thin plaits into it. They were tiny and fine, mixed in with her loose, heavy hair, adding just the right touch of refinement to the casual look.

With this style, even the gauze on her forehead seemed like a unique accessory.

Once they were done fussing over her, Yu Mao couldn’t sit still for even a second; she stood up and walked toward Nan Changgeng. Her little leather shoes tapped out neat, crisp steps on the floor, making people smile without realizing it. With just a change of styling, a translucent little ghost had turned into a doll.

Over here, Nan Changgeng’s makeup was nearly finished as well. She knew how to do her own makeup, so the progress was faster; the makeup artist only needed to make a few adjustments. At that moment, she was listening to another makeup artist complain about Xu Yang, and couldn’t help laughing.

“If you don’t know how to do makeup, at least ask someone else first. What the hell are you messing around for? What kind of nonsense is this? You didn’t even put on base makeup and went straight to highlighter on your eyelids? What, are you trying to cosplay the Monkey King? Why don’t I throw you into an alchemy furnace and refine you there?”

This makeup artist was clearly from the Northeast; not only was her tongue quick, her voice was loud too. Even though she deliberately lowered it, the people nearby could still hear everything clearly, and they were all snickering.

Xu Yang leaned back in her chair without saying a word, expressionless, radiating utter dejection, as if her soul had already left her body.

Yu Mao walked to the back of Nan Changgeng’s chair and stared at the woman’s smiling brows and eyes in the mirror; she also wanted to smile along.

Many of the emotions she perceived were filtered through Nan Changgeng as they passed from the world to her. She had eyes that gathered all the stray light and always fixed straight on one person.

But after trying for a long time, she could only mechanically pull up the corners of her mouth; she didn’t know how to coordinate the muscles in her face.

She should have had this instinct, as natural as blinking or frowning without thinking; but it was trapped.

She clearly no longer felt sadness or fear over what had happened in the past, yet the joy in her soul still couldn’t synchronize properly with her body. She didn’t know whether, after being brought back from death, she had lost part of her control over her body, or part of her subconscious...

Nan Changgeng caught sight of her in the mirror and didn’t miss the small curve at the corners of her mouth, stiff enough that anyone would mistake it for an eerie doll at first glance.

Yu Mao seemed to realize that smile wasn’t quite up to standard. Meeting her turning gaze, she immediately flattened her mouth, blinked her bright black eyes, and her expression turned harmless; the sinister air vanished at once.

Nan Changgeng unconsciously curled her lips too, but she still couldn’t bring out much of a smile.

The girl was usually quiet, with few words and few expressions. She always sensed the torrent of emotions inside her through another layer of perception, so she rarely remembered that Yu Mao couldn’t smile.

When she suddenly remembered, there was inevitably a pang of pain.

She was skilled at rejecting the emotions of outsiders that flowed toward her, skilled at avoiding any kind of past hurt. That was true for Yu Mao too. She accepted that she was unlike ordinary people, but she had never been willing to bear the cause behind it along with the difference itself.

But she couldn’t stop these moments from appearing in their interactions, moments she couldn’t avoid.

Was she willing to let that memory hurt her right now? She should have built a barrier in her chest by now. But she failed.

A cold, watery tide of emotion surged toward her, heavy and slow; it wasn’t violent, but it seeped everywhere, quietly pushing open that barrier like a wave washing away a piece of driftwood, leaving no room for resistance or obstruction.

It didn’t seem to hurt much, but it was as salty and cold as being drenched in seawater.

Nan Changgeng felt a trace of irritation. She turned to look at Yu Mao behind her, and then she suddenly caught a whiff of fruit mixed with milk; her emotions eased again, and she laughed for real.

She leaned her head back against the chair, which turned with the motion, and she lazily reclined half-lying down, smiling up at the little doll standing rigidly upright.

Being soothed so easily by just a scent; if Yu Mao’s ability to heal her was this strong, then Nan Changgeng could finally confirm that she was truly ready to accept her.

She only needed one last certainty, to give her timid trust a foothold so it could climb higher, until she had the courage to truly take that step.

Tonight would be enough.

Yu Mao rarely stood beside her like this. In a single glance, she took in her whole body: the white shirt under the open dark red suit jacket, the plain silver-buckled belt cinching her waist into a very slim line, her legs crossed, trouser legs straight, pulled up a little to reveal ankles wrapped in gray cotton socks.

Her black, shoulder-length hair had been twisted up and loosely clipped at the back of her head, with a few strands left loose over her forehead. Her makeup looked cool and noble, sharp-edged, but the hairstyle softened it with a touch of warmth.

If she stood up in that outfit, her presence would surely be impossible to look at directly. But slumped in the chair and smiling so warmly, she simply didn’t have much bite.