Chapter 26

Shen Siyan took the phone and glanced at it with a calm expression.

"Are you sure?" Her voice was as steady as ever.

Wei Xiaolu hurriedly covered herself. "I’m fine with anything; it’s up to you, CEO Shen."

"Then we’ll do this one," Shen Siyan said, already getting to her feet and picking up her bag in one smooth motion. "Since it’s the one you wanted to go to."

Wei Xiaolu downed a mouthful of coffee and hurried after her.

She hadn’t expected Shen Siyan to agree; she’d thought Shen Siyan would find it childish and boring.

Still, Wei Xiaolu did actually want to try this kind of thrilling attraction. She wasn’t afraid either; after all, those ghosts were just moving props. If they really came after her, she’d just run.

They took a taxi to the haunted house.

From the outside, it looked like a ruined castle, with eerie music faintly drifting from the windows.

Only when they bought the tickets did Wei Xiaolu learn that the haunted house had different themes. After discussing it with Shen Siyan, they chose the zombie apocalypse version. Before they went in, the staff specially reminded them, "If you can’t take it, just close your eyes. Our NPCs will also adjust the scare level according to how afraid you are, so please enjoy yourselves with confidence."

"Wow, that’s so considerate," Wei Xiaolu said eagerly, rubbing her hands together. She turned to Shen Siyan. "What do you think, CEO Shen?"

Shen Siyan gave a soft laugh. "Sounds interesting."

"I won’t be scared!" Wei Xiaolu thumped her chest with complete confidence.

"Is that so?" Shen Siyan raised an eyebrow and teased her lightly. "Don’t hide behind me later."

I’m not that cowardly.

Wei Xiaolu swore to herself and stepped into the terrifying journey.

Inside the haunted house, the lighting was dim. The first room was a human experimentation lab, and in the corner of the room, on a rust-stained bed, lay half a corpse.

The room was lit with the same green used for emergency exits. Wei Xiaolu rubbed her hands, a little nervous, and followed closely behind Shen Siyan, walking across the bridge through the lab and deeper inside.

The room was utterly quiet; the only sound was the creak of their steps on the floor beneath them.

What was unresolved, what had not yet become anything at all, was the most terrifying.

Everything around them was silent, as if nothing had happened, but they both knew danger would appear at some point; they just didn’t know when. It could be the next second, or this very second.

Wei Xiaolu’s legs felt weak. She edged closer to Shen Siyan, her heart in her throat, bracing for a scare at any moment.

They had only gone a few steps when a fake spider suddenly dropped from above. Wei Xiaolu instinctively reached out to block it—

"Ah."

Wei Xiaolu jerked in shock and turned to look at Shen Siyan, who had cried out reflexively.

She hadn’t been frightened by the spider at all; instead, she’d been startled by that sound from CEO Shen.

Wei Xiaolu pinched the fuzzy toy in front of her. "It’s plastic."

"Mm." Shen Siyan’s response was faint, but Wei Xiaolu somehow felt that her breathing had gone a little quicker.

Further ahead, the bridge grew narrower, and the surroundings turned into filthy, murky pools.

A chill seeped up from under their feet, accompanied by shrill wailing.

In the middle of the bridge, all of a sudden, a giant octopus tentacle shot out of the water and came crashing toward them.

"Ah!" Before Wei Xiaolu could even react, she felt a tight grip on the back of her hand—Shen Siyan suddenly seized her, shut her eyes, and ducked into the crook of her shoulder.

Wei Xiaolu’s eyes went wide.

At the very last instant, just before it would have touched her nose, the monster stopped.

Its dark tentacles, covered in suction cups like a wall, slowly withdrew.

Once she sensed the danger had passed, Wei Xiaolu realized she could blink and breathe again; but she didn’t, because there was another presence beside her that she couldn’t ignore... Shen Siyan’s fingertips were ice-cold, even faintly trembling. Her forehead didn’t quite rest against Wei Xiaolu’s shoulder, but her warm breath reached the skin over Wei Xiaolu’s racing heartbeat first, brushing that small stretch of skin through the thin fabric with an unsettling clarity.

The octopus had already retreated underwater; Shen Siyan didn’t know that.

But Wei Xiaolu, who did know, didn’t say anything either. She waited until Shen Siyan finally lifted her head on her own, then released her hand.

Neither of them said anything. In a haze of panic and fear, they silently continued forward.

After crossing the bridge, they entered a room hung with dried corpses. Shen Siyan stepped back two paces, as if steeling herself, before walking in without a trace of fear.

The props overhead swayed slightly, drawing all attention upward; they hadn’t expected the real zombies to make their entrance from the side at that very moment.

So when Wei Xiaolu saw that old bastard, he was already close enough for hand-to-hand combat.

There wasn’t even time to look at his face. Adrenaline spiked violently; her mind buzzed, unable to think of anything. Only at the next moment she was capable of thought did she realize she and Shen Siyan had already run out of the room where the corpses were hanging.

That had been terrifying.

Wei Xiaolu let out a breath, but before she could finish exhaling, it caught in her throat.

Damn.

In the corridor they had just rushed into stood a girl in a bloodstained dress, covered in dangling threads.

"I don’t want to look anymore," Shen Siyan suddenly said.

Wei Xiaolu looked to the side; the zombie was dragging its crippled leg as it chased after them. Then she looked ahead; the girl was approaching with a strange smile.

Instinctively, she wanted to run, but when she turned around, she saw Shen Siyan with her eyes shut, standing there with a resolute, righteous air.

What was the point of closing your eyes and not looking? Run!

In her panic, she grabbed Shen Siyan’s hand and ran in the opposite direction.

She ran past an industrial processing room, then into a zombie bathing area. One after another, monsters sat up from the bathtubs, and Wei Xiaolu instantly had the illusion that she was truly fleeing through the apocalypse.

"Can I open my eyes?" Shen Siyan asked.

"No," Wei Xiaolu said, covering her eyes with a slap of her hand. "I’ll let you open them once I’ve taken you through this room."

Finally, they escaped the bathing room. But damn it all, they entered a cured-meat factory next. Wei Xiaolu had thought things might be a little quieter here, only to turn around and see several zombies cutting pieces of flesh from their own bodies and hanging them from wooden beams.

Fortunately, those zombies didn’t seem intent on attacking.

"Can I open my eyes now?" Shen Siyan asked.

Holding Shen Siyan’s hand, Wei Xiaolu hesitated for several seconds. "A little longer."

That "little longer" lasted all the way to the exit.

At last they saw daylight again. The familiar sunlight was blinding, leaving them unable to open their eyes.

Wei Xiaolu felt weak all over. She turned to look at Shen Siyan and found her face a little pale, but she still carried her usual composure.

"You’ve both worked hard," the staff member said, bringing over two stools. "You can sit here and rest for a bit and calm down."

Shen Siyan took the stool, thanked them softly, and moved it to the corner of the wall to sit down.

Wei Xiaolu sat beside Shen Siyan, still somewhat out of her mind.

She secretly glanced at CEO Shen, who also didn’t seem fully recovered. Her eyes were blankly fixed ahead; she was clearly lost in thought.

"This place is so scary..." Wei Xiaolu suddenly found her words coming out all wrong. Everything she said felt off, and in the end she could only ask awkwardly, "CEO Shen, are you okay?"

"I’m fine." Shen Siyan blinked, her composure returning. A slight smile curved her lips. "How’s my navigator?"

"I’m fine." Wei Xiaolu said the same thing.

After saying it, Wei Xiaolu subconsciously curled her fingers. They still held the icy sensation of having gripped Shen Siyan’s hand earlier—navigator. That was how Shen Siyan described the hand that had guided her. It sounded like the kind of term used after too many days at work: professional and open, making the stirring little thoughts lurking in Wei Xiaolu’s heart feel suddenly like childish nonsense.

Wei Xiaolu took two cups of water from the service area, handed one to Shen Siyan, then unscrewed her own and drank like crazy to calm herself down.

"This doesn’t feel that fun after all," she said after another couple of gulps. "You even scared our beautiful lady’s hand cold."

Shen Siyan lowered her head to twist the cap back on, her movements pausing slightly.

"How do you know my hand was cold because I was scared?" She snapped the cap shut again with a soft click. "Maybe it was for some other reason."

Wei Xiaolu’s heart started rippling again, wave after wave.

Some other reason?

She didn’t dare think too deeply, but she also couldn’t help trying to guess the unfinished meaning in those words. "Could it be because I was gripping too tightly?"

Shen Siyan first froze, then a trace of amusement flashed in her eyes. Her fingertip tapped lightly against the bottle cap. "Yes. You squeezed so hard my blood couldn’t circulate."

"Oh, oh, sorry." Wei Xiaolu hadn’t expected that to be true and hurried to apologize. "Then I’ll be gentler next time."

Shen Siyan’s eyes lifted at the corners. "There’s a next time?"

"Ah." Wei Xiaolu slapped a hand against her forehead. "No, no, no, we’re not playing anymore. CEO Shen, we’re never going to the haunted house again."

A laugh slipped out.

Wei Xiaolu looked at Shen Siyan, only to see her reaching out and covering the hand that had been pressed to her forehead.

"I only found out I’d be scared after playing this time," Shen Siyan said. "But my hands were cold because the air conditioning inside was turned too low. See? Now they’re warm."

Wei Xiaolu’s hand was trapped between her own forehead and Shen Siyan’s palm. Both her palm and the back of her hand were warmer than her fingers, and several kinds of warmth intertwined until it was impossible to tell who was warming whom.

"CEO Shen..." Wei Xiaolu looked up at her, her eyelashes trembling.

"Mm?" Shen Siyan replied, withdrawing her hand. "What is it?"

"...They really are warm now." Wei Xiaolu lowered her gaze, looking at the patches of sunlight scattered at their feet through the gaps in the leaves. She smiled softly. "Warmer than my hand."

Wei Xiaolu waited a while, but Shen Siyan didn’t speak, so she slowly lifted her eyes.

She had thought Shen Siyan had finished the topic and gone off to think about something else, but when their eyes finally met, she realized the other woman was looking at her with unexpectedly focused attention.

"Little sister doesn’t seem very afraid," Shen Siyan said.

"I’m not really scared of this kind of thing. Those moving zombies are fine," Wei Xiaolu said. "What I’m afraid of is the kind that starts out with lots of signs of life, but later becomes desolate."

"Because that kind of scene is so quiet it makes you uneasy?" Shen Siyan asked.

"More or less," Wei Xiaolu said, blinking. "I just prefer things that are a little livelier."

"Things with vitality," Shen Siyan said.

"Yes, yes." Wei Xiaolu nodded.

As they talked, neither of them looked away. Like two magnets, they kept staring into each other’s eyes.

Being too focused made Wei Xiaolu feel, for a moment, as though she were mistaken.

As if they were using the shell of a conversation, one that gave them permission to look at each other without restraint, to frame thoughts neither dared say aloud.

"Little sister is very full of life," Shen Siyan said with a smile.

"If you say that, I’ll get embarrassed," Wei Xiaolu said, laughing too. "This is still only low-level vitality. I should be aiming for the high-level kind like yours, CEO Shen."

They were still talking, and Shen Siyan was still looking into her eyes.

The illusion seemed to deepen. It felt as though, so long as the conversation didn’t end, that entangled gaze would keep existing forever.