SES Chapter 166 Part 1

Chapter 166

Mu Dai ate in silence.
She watched Luo Ren pay the bill in silence.
She followed him back to the car in silence, kicking a small stone along the way until it rolled into the gutter.

Luo Ren opened the passenger door for her first.

When she sat down, he suddenly leaned in and pressed a light kiss to the center of her forehead.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t buy you a rose,” he said softly. “I just don’t like roses.”

He closed the door for her and walked around to the driver’s seat.

Mu Dai smiled to herself, watching him through the glass. She thought, a little smugly, that her quiet mood had finally earned a reward.

The car pulled back onto the road.
After passing the toll station, the highway opened up, smooth and empty. The headlights only lit the short stretch of road in front of them. Once the sky turned fully dark, there was nothing left to see outside.

Mu Dai rested her forehead against the window for a while. Then she turned to him.

“Why don’t you like roses?”

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to hold that question in,” he said.

He took a slow breath. His Adam’s apple moved slightly.

“Once… I went to a bar with Eurice and the others.”

Going to bars had been routine back then. Living at high intensity and constant risk required extreme release. Smoking, drinking, and women — those were outlets. There were even darker ones, but they had an unspoken rule never to touch them.

That night, Luo Ren arrived late.

The moment he walked in, Eurice grabbed him and dragged him aside, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully.

“There’s a girl. You’re going to like her.”

Then he shoved him toward the bar.

One glance was enough for Luo Ren to understand.

Most Filipinos were of Malay descent — not unattractive, but far from what matched Luo Ren’s taste. Qingmu and the others had once pressed him on what he liked. Pushed into a corner, he had thrown out a photo of Tingting.

“Like this.”

No wonder Eurice said he’d like her.

The woman at the bar looked eighty percent Chinese, but her skin tone and aura carried a hot, seductive Southeast Asian edge.

She was breathtakingly beautiful.

A silver evening gown with a high slit. Hair elegantly pinned, curling strands falling at her temples. A long, graceful neck. A diamond necklace. Golden shimmer on her eyelids. Lips full and red, like a blooming rose.

She looked completely out of place in that bar.

“Where did she come from?” Luo Ren asked.

Eurice shrugged. “Who knows? Some rich man’s mistress, some crime lord’s lover — could be anything.”

Nobody here was stupid. This was Mindanao — a few streets away could be a robbery, a shootout, or a bombing. No one believed a princess would walk into a bar like this.

Strangely, no one dared to approach her.

Luo Ren didn’t either. He took a seat in the corner, ordered a drink, and drank by himself.

Halfway through, the woman walked over and sat beside him, casually sweeping her dress aside.

She spoke first.

“Every man in this bar is either with someone or flirting with dancers. You’re the only one alone — and you didn’t even buy me a drink.”

Luo Ren said, “You’re covered in jewelry. Normal men wouldn’t dare come near you.”

She laughed. “I think I’m pretty. I made a bet with my friends that I’d be constantly hit on if I came to a bar. But no one talked to me. The Malay dancers are more popular than I am.”

“If you changed outfits — cami top, shorts, hair down — every man here would go crazy for you.”

Her eyes lit up.

“Wait for me.”

He saw her pull over a dancer and haggle in the shadows, taking off her earrings and necklace.

The dancer accepted, delighted, and led her out through the back door.

When she returned, she was wearing a cami top and shorts, her hair loose in soft waves.

In an instant, she became the center of the crowd.

But she refused to let anyone buy her drinks. She pointed at Luo Ren.

“I’ll only drink what he gives me.”

The entire place erupted in cheers. Eurice and Qingmu were the loudest of all.

She asked for a cocktail called “Northern Lights,” but the bartender didn’t know how to make it. She made it herself.

Then she said, “You have to turn off the lights. It looks better that way.”

The bartender cooperated. The lights dimmed.

She walked toward Luo Ren, holding the glass.

Only then did he understand why the drink was called Northern Lights. As she walked, the liquid shimmered and shifted, glowing like a tiny galaxy in her hand.

He didn’t refuse. He slowly drank it all.

“You said you’d buy me a drink,” he said. “But I ended up drinking it.”

She smiled. “You can give me something else.”

When the lights came back on, Luo Ren gave her a rose.

…

Mu Dai froze as she listened. After a while, she forced a dull smile.

“Luo Xiaodao… you shouldn’t have told me that.”

He continued anyway.

“After that, she disappeared. No one noticed when she left.”

Mu Dai turned her face toward the window. In the reflection, her expression was faintly irritated.

“I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“I thought it was some kind of magical encounter. I went out through the back door to look for that dancer. I remembered the woman had traded diamond jewelry for that outfit. I wanted to buy the jewelry back for her.”

Mu Dai knocked her forehead lightly against the window.

Why is he still talking?

“Those dancers lived hard lives. Most of them stayed in wooden shacks behind the bars. I’d been there before. I knew the way. I called her name while pushing open the wooden door.”

“The room was a mess, clothes everywhere. The dancer was dead. On the bed. Two knife wounds — one across the throat, one through the abdomen. Blood covered the floor. When I walked in, it was still dripping from the bed.”

Drip.
Drip.

Outside, music and shouting from the bar could still be faintly heard.

A chill ran down Mu Dai’s spine.

Luo Ren started to laugh — first softly, then more loudly.

“Did you assume what I did? That she was a sweet girl who traded diamonds for clothes?”

She wasn’t.

She had smiled and gone back with that dancer, killed her, then calmly chosen her clothes, changed, and returned to the bar like nothing had happened.

Luo Ren ran outside and vomited while gripping the doorframe. That cocktail — which had looked as beautiful as a galaxy just moments earlier — now felt sour, rotten, unbearable.

“One careless joke from me got an innocent person killed.”

Mu Dai didn’t speak. After a while, she twisted open a bottle of water and held it toward him.

“Do you want some water?”

He shook his head. The road ahead seemed endless. The headlights could never break through the dark.