It was Sunday. When Jiang Yue and Xiang Sui returned to the dorm, their roommates were all out.
As usual, they’d probably be back around seven or eight in the evening.
Jiang Yue yawned, hugging a shoebox. “Why am I so sleepy? I slept the whole way in the car.”
Xiang Sui looked tired too. He took off his clothes, changed into a tank top and loose shorts, stretched his long legs out against the table, and yawned. “That base was full of blastozyme. We’ve gotten used to the smell, developed a bit of dependence on it. We’ll be fine after about a week.”
Jiang Yue yawned again and set the shoebox down on Jiang Sen’s desk. Xiang Sui also yawned, his eyes half-closed as he asked drowsily, “What’s that?”
“Basketball shoes for Jiang Sen.”
Xiang Sui glanced at the box. “The packaging’s kind of plain.”
“You think everything’s plain.” Jiang Yue mumbled sleepily as she changed clothes. But the moment she lifted her shirt to her chest, she realized something was off and said to Xiang Sui, “Turn your head away, ever heard of ‘see no evil’?”
Xiang Sui made the face of an old man peeking at someone’s phone on the subway. “Tsk, tsk, we’re both Alphas, same parts, nothing worth seeing!”
Even so, he obediently turned his head away.
Summer had already passed; the air was growing cooler, and the leaves had turned from bright green to gold.
So much had happened in the past month. Hopefully, the days ahead would be peaceful. With that thought, Jiang Yue pulled up the blanket and drifted off to sleep.
At seven that evening, Jiang Sen and Bai Wang kicked open the dorm room door, arms slung over each other’s shoulders.
The door slammed open with a loud bang! Startled, Xiang Sui shot upright, his expression dark as he glared at the two of them.
“Holy crap—Jiang… Jiang Sen, pinch me! The missing person actually came back! Am I hallucinating?” Bai Wang shouted.
Jiang Sen was just as stunned. When he turned his head, he saw that the other missing person, Jiang Yue, had also returned, fast asleep on her bed, breathing evenly.
Jiang Sen started pointing at them accusingly. “Oh, so you do remember how to come back? You’ve been gone for so long without saying a word! The rest of us were worried sick, you pair of heartless jerks.”
Xiang Sui jumped down from the bed, twisted open a bottle of mineral water, took a sip, and rubbed his dizzy head. “It was a special situation, you guys know what my family’s like.”
Jiang Sen and Bai Wang both nodded in understanding.
“What about Jiang Yue? How did you two end up coming back together?” Bai Wang asked.
“We were in the same place and got sent back together,” Xiang Sui replied.
Jiang Sen and Bai Wang looked ready to press for more, but Xiang Sui immediately raised a finger. “Whoa, whoa, stop right there. We both signed a confidentiality agreement, no more questions.”
“Tch!” Bai Wang flipped his white hair in annoyance and stalked off.
“Fine,” Jiang Sen said with a shrug, returning to his desk.
When he looked up, he saw a shoebox sitting on his desk.
It was fairly well-made, but for someone like Jiang Sen, who thought nothing of spending hundreds of thousands on a single pair of shoes, the box was clearly low-end at a glance.
He waved a hand under his nose, frowning in disgust. “Ugh, that cheap ink smell. Who put this thing on my desk? Must’ve been Jiang Yue. I doubt any of you would buy something like this.”
Xiang Sui lounged back in his chair, sprawled out lazily. “Jiang Yue said it’s for you,” he said offhandedly.
“For me?” Jiang Sen looked surprised.
Then he couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, well, looks like the wild cat’s finally bringing home dead mice!”
He lifted the lid of the shoebox… and his smile immediately faded into gloom.
…
Jiang Yue was sleeping deeply, but not peacefully. She had fallen into a dream far deeper than usual.
In her dream, she saw an immense network of roots coiled deep beneath the ground. One by one, the tightly shut eyes along the roots began to open.
Blood-red eyes, like pools of thick plasma.
[A better one…]
[Has appeared.]
Those blood-red eyes glowed with an eerie light.
An invisible force shattered Jiang Yue, and her broken self merged with the mass of roots.
She became it, became an enormous living being, feeling the pulse and breath coursing through countless root veins.
Then, all of a sudden, it was as if she had a body again. An invisible shackle clamped brutally around her neck, and some unseen power seized it, jerking it back and forth with violent force. Jiang Yue could almost hear the sound of her brain sloshing inside her skull.
Her shattered soul was yanked violently back into her body. Jiang Yue woke in a cold sweat, only to see a ferocious face looming above her.
Jiang Sen’s hand had reached through the bed rails, clamped tightly around her neck, and was shaking her with all his strength.
He roared, “Jiang Yue, you’ve got some nerve! You tried to fool me with fake shoes! Are you insulting my shoes—or insulting me?!”
Jiang Yue’s head bobbed like a frail leaf trembling in a northern wind. Her eyes rolled back as she grabbed at his wrist, struggling to force out a few broken words between coughs: “We can… talk… this out… just… let… go… first!”
Jiang Sen’s grip tightened even more as he roared, “Do you have any idea what shoes mean to me?! They’re my wives! My dignity! The honor I swore to defend! You got my wife dirty, I let that slide! But you—you tried to fool me with some worn-out trash from a brothel?!”
He shook Jiang Yue’s head violently, still shouting at the top of his lungs.
“I’m telling you! Even if I, Jiang Sen, had no shoes left to wear, if I had to walk barefoot over nails until my feet were torn to shreds, until they rotted beyond saving, and I had to jump out the dorm window, I still wouldn’t touch that counterfeit garbage!”
Jiang Yue finally managed to pry Jiang Sen’s hand off her neck. In a flash, she scrambled onto Xiang Sui’s bed, huddling in the corner against the wall and trembling as she shouted, “Calm down! Calm down, okay?! Calm down!”
Jiang Sen roared back, “You’ve got the nerve to tell me to calm down?! Even a dead mouse would’ve been better than this!”
After a moment of shock and confusion, Jiang Yue finally grasped what was happening. She grabbed her throat, voice cracking into a shrill Alpha rasp that was even louder than his. “Heaven have mercy, that thing wasn’t from me!“
Jiang Sen jabbed a finger right at Jiang Yue’s nose, cursing furiously. “Still denying it?! As if anyone else would have the guts to give me counterfeit Putian shoes!”
Jiang Yue shouted back, “I swear on both hands it wasn’t from me! It’s a birthday gift your sister asked me to pass on to you!”
“Bullshit!” Jiang Sen bellowed. “I don’t have a sister!”
Jiang Yue cried out in despair, “It was Major Ye Qian! She told me you grew up together, you call her your sister!”
Silence.
A sudden, absolute silence.
The furious Jiang Sen froze as if someone had pressed a pause button on him.
It was as though a whole palette of colors had been spilled across his face, his expression shifting wildly, an unreadable mix of shock, embarrassment, and disbelief.
Rubbing her neck, Jiang Yue hopped lightly down from the bed like a startled bird and picked up the shoebox from the desk.
“I think Major Ye Qian doesn’t really know much about shoes,” Jiang Yue said. “She spent the whole night running around just to get these, her dark circles were awful. Sure, they’re fakes, but it’s the thought that counts. So… maybe don’t tell her they’re counterfeit.”
She sighed. “Tell you what, I’ll take them back. The base gave me some compensation money anyway, I’ll buy you another limited edition pair instead.”
Just as she gathered the shoebox into her arms, Jiang Sen’s head turned stiffly, like a robot’s, and he stammered, “Y-Ye Qian… she’s the one who gave them to me?”
Jiang Yue nodded, looking puzzled. “Yeah, it was Major Ye Qian who gave them to you.”
Jiang Sen’s expression went blank for a moment. Then, just as Jiang Yue opened the locker to put the shoebox away, his knees seemed to take an arrow, he dropped to the floor in an instant, snatched the box from her hands, and said solemnly, “You’re right. It’s the thought that counts. Shoes are meant to be worn, no need to fuss over high or low quality.”
That did not sit well with Jiang Yue.
After all, even fairies have tempers.
Jiang Yue snatched the shoebox out of Jiang Sen’s arms. “Oh, so now you’re changing your tune? Just a moment ago you were trashing it, calling it worthless, calling her a withered flower! And now suddenly it’s ‘the thought that counts’? Please!”
Jiang Sen quickly grabbed the box back. “No, no, no—that was just me being too impulsive! I was joking, come on, don’t take it seriously, haha.”
Jiang Yue yanked the shoebox away again. “Joking?! My spine’s nearly dislocated from your ‘joke’, my brain’s practically shaken loose! You call that joking? I’m telling you, Jiang Sen—I, Jiang Yue, have feelings too!”
Jiang Sen snatched the shoebox back again. “My fault, all my fault, every bit of it! I’ve got a filthy mouth, no sense of gratitude, just a foolish, arrogant fool! Please, Your Highness, be generous and forgive me!”
Jiang Yue immediately took the shoebox right back, now looking triumphant and smug. “Forgive you? Not a chance! You, Jiang Sen, only deserve shoes that cost two hundred thousand apiece, how could cheap Putian knockoffs ever grace your noble feet? I’m used to rough living anyway, so I’ll just accept these with a smile!”
Jiang Sen grabbed the box once more, clutching it tightly to his chest, his head shaking like a rattle drum. “No, no, no! Those two-hundred-thousand-yuan shoes are just an IQ tax, a trap laid by consumerism! What’s wrong with being thrifty? Shoes are meant to wear! Real or fake doesn’t matter, if they fit your feet, they’re good shoes! We must not let consumerism brainwash us! Those greedy capitalists should be strung up on streetlamps!”
Bai Wang and Xiang Sui watched in stunned silence.
Bai Wang stared at Xiang Sui, lips trembling. “Is that… really something Jiang Sen would say?”
Xiang Sui’s eyes nearly popped out. “A ‘consumerism trap’? He sure didn’t call it that when he was buying shoes.”
After a moment, Bai Wang snapped back to reality and jumped into the fray, furious. “Say that again, who did you say you were going to hang on a streetlamp?!”
Ah, right, Bai Wang’s father was an energy tycoon, a bona fide capitalist.
The dorm instantly descended into chaos. In the end, Jiang Yue relied on her superior combat skills to lock Jiang Sen outside the door, with Bai Wang assisting by yanking out several handfuls of Jiang Sen’s hair.
After the scuffle died down, Xi Boyu and Kuri eventually returned to the dorm. Jiang Sen crept in behind them, clutching the shoebox like a guilty dog sneaking back home.
Xi Boyu took one look at the box in his arms and stared in disbelief. “Did someone possess you or something?”
Jiang Sen shifted uncomfortably. “It’s the thought that counts. A friend gave it to me.”
Xi Boyu looked over at Jiang Yue. “You gave it to him?”
Jiang Yue shook her head. “No, it was from a Beta major named Ye Qian, she asked me to pass it along.”
Kuri rubbed his chin and clicked his tongue in amazement. “Well, would you look at that, guess the sun really did rise from the west today!”
Kuri nudged Jiang Sen’s arm with a teasing grin. “Didn’t see you treasure even your real shoes like that. Typical, you always want what you can’t have. That pair of sneakers barely had time to warm your feet before you started pining over them.”
Jiang Sen’s face flushed red, and he blurted, “Who’s saying I’m fickle? Who said I only want what I can’t get? I’m not that kind of shallow guy!”
Standing beside Xi Boyu, who was munching on vitamin gummies, Jiang Yue draped an arm over his shoulder, fished out a gummy from the box, and chewed it leisurely. “Sure, sure,” she said dryly. “When you get casual, you’re barely human.”
The dorm was filled with an air of cheerful chaos.
That night, Jiang Sen actually went to sleep hugging that pair of shoes.
Jiang Yue leaned close to Xi Boyu’s ear and whispered mysteriously, “Do you smell that?”
Because Jiang Yue had a rather unusual constitution, Xi Boyu immediately grew tense the moment he saw that look on her face. He sniffed the air cautiously, then asked in a grave whisper, “You’ve sensed something abnormal again?”
Jiang Yue shook her head. “Oh, come on, why so serious? Look at Jiang Sen, can’t you smell the scent of scandal on him?”
Xi Boyu: “…”
Everyone, come take a look, there’s a complete idiot over here.
He rolled his eyes, utterly speechless, and burrowed under his blanket.
The next morning, a piercing scream shattered the dorm’s silence. Bai Wang reached out and turned off the alarm on his terminal.
“Holy crap, Bai Wang, that alarm of yours could wake the dead, it’s enough to make a corpse sit up screaming!”
Groans and complaints filled the room as everyone got out of bed, everyone except Jiang Yue and Xiang Sui, who were still dead asleep.
In the dorm, Bai Wang was known to be the heaviest sleeper of them all. He suffered from a serious case of “can’t-get-out-of-bed syndrome”, so to make sure he woke up on time, he had specifically downloaded a horror movie and set the protagonist’s bloodcurdling scream as his alarm tone.
Jiang Yue was normally the lightest sleeper in the dorm, no surprise, given that the female Alpha’s five senses were razor-sharp. The slightest sound or movement would usually have her wide awake in an instant.
Yet now, even that ear-splitting ghost-scream alarm hadn’t managed to wake either of them.
Xi Boyu reached out to check the faint breath under Jiang Yue’s nose, then said succinctly to the roommates peering from below the bunk, “Alive.”
Jiang Sen hurried over to check on Xiang Sui and reported to the others, “This one’s alive too.”
Both of them were alive, but no matter what, they just wouldn’t wake up.
Xi Boyu glanced at the time. “No time left, class is about to start.”
He jumped down from his bunk, rummaged through Jiang Yue’s drawer, and pulled out a sewing kit. From it, he took the thickest, shiniest needle, and jabbed it hard into Jiang Yue’s finger.
“Ow!”
Jiang Yue shot upright from the bed.
The pain shot straight to her heart. Jiang Yue’s fingers trembled as she hissed in pain, blowing frantically on the pricked spot.
Xiang Sui didn’t escape his fate either. He stared at the bead of blood trembling on his fingertip and sucked in a sharp breath when he saw the steel needle in Xi Boyu’s hand.
“Couldn’t you have picked a thinner one?” Jiang Yue protested bitterly.
Xi Boyu sneered. “A thin needle wouldn’t even pierce pigskin. Stop whining and get ready for class.”
Xi Boyu: truly a merciless beast in human skin.
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152
Damn I miss their dynamic