This Is Love

That night, Jiaming and Shasha were locked in a room on the first floor of Xiao Lou. The windows had been welded shut and the iron door was locked. Considerately enough, their ropes had been untied and food was brought in. Jiaming had originally expected Cao Dongfeng to vent his anger with a beating, but that never happened. After giving it some thought, he understood. Cao Dongfeng liked Lingjing. When they had been locked up earlier, he had been shouting for someone to capture Lingjing too. He was probably waiting until Lingjing was caught before torturing him, so that Lingjing would suffer for him.

If that was the case, then he could wait another day... It would be more certain to act when Lingjing was in front of him. After all, if he made a move here and they produced another hostage over there, things would become much more troublesome. Besides, he could find out what had happened to Yuechi Xun.

There was no poison or anything in the food, so Jiaming sat down and ate a few bites. Full of energy, Shasha kept kicking the door and swearing furiously. By the time she had cursed herself exhausted, night had fully fallen. There were no lights in the room, so Shasha felt around the table as she ate. She was picky about food and refused to eat ginger or garlic. Every so often, she picked up the wrong dish and put it in her mouth, then immediately began spitting. Halfway through eating, she suddenly realized something. "Ah, what if there's poison in this food?"

Jiaming smiled to himself. "Then I'd already be dead."

Shasha hesitated for a while and asked whether his stomach hurt or anything. Though he answered no, she no longer had the mood to keep eating.

The room had an iron door, iron windows, and concrete walls. Even for Jiaming, escaping would take considerable effort. A table, a bed, and a small toilet in the corner were the room's only furnishings. Shasha sat at the head of the bed, cursing quietly and imagining one escape plan after another. Occasionally, she would comfort Jiaming with a "Don't be scared." While responding absentmindedly, Jiaming listened to the sounds next door.

"You can't blame me. Everything happening today is what your father owes me..."

"Back then, he used despicable means to steal your mother away. Your mother was originally my fiancée. He actually took his elder brother's wife..."

"All these years, I endured humiliation and hardship to gain You'an Tianqin's support. The Yuechi Family is finished. Kaoru, I captured you to save you, to give Chiying Qianhuan a better inheritance. I was originally the Yuechi Family's eldest son. I was the one most qualified to inherit Chiying Qianhuan..."

"You've pushed me too far. I'm capable of anything!"

The speaker was that old Japanese man. His voice was shrill, like a eunuch's, and he kept whining away. After only a few sentences, there would be a sharp slap. Clearly, he was striking the Japanese little girl with that bamboo sword again. It was obvious that the old man hit hard, yet his technique was remarkably precise—the sort that hurt to the marrow without damaging muscles or bones. Jiaming wondered whether the guy was some kind of BDSM expert.

Harboring such wicked thoughts, he sat with Shasha until midnight. Shasha had lost the mood to keep cursing and yawned several times. Jiaming said, "Shasha, go to sleep."

"What about you?"

"There's only one bed. I'll lie on the table for a while with my clothes on."

"How can that work!" Shasha jumped up. After hesitating for a moment, she said, "It's almost winter. It's so cold, you'll catch a cold. How about... how about we sleep on this bed together? We'll keep our clothes on anyway."

Jiaming smiled. He did not actually care about such things, but Huaisha cared, so he put on a show of refusing. After hesitating for a moment, he finally agreed. The two took off their shoes and climbed onto the bed, Jiaming on the outside and Shasha on the inside. The blanket was thin as paper, barely noticeable over their bodies.

Although the two were already quite familiar with each other, there had been times at the Liu Family villa when Jiaming, Shasha, and Lingjing had played until they were exhausted and fallen asleep together on the carpet. But this was, after all, their first officially defined experience of "sharing a bed." For the first ten-odd minutes, Shasha lay stiffly without daring to move, like a corpse. Not long afterward, she muttered, "There isn't even a pillow..." Then she began shifting awkwardly on the bed.

Jiaming was a light sleeper. In this state, even with his eyes closed, he could basically sense every change around him. He heard Shasha changing positions every few minutes, then changing positions again every few minutes, and found it amusing. More than an hour probably passed before she truly fell asleep, her body curling into a ball from the cold. Before long, she rolled and rolled until she had wrapped the entire thin blanket around herself.

After around three hours of sleep, well past midnight, Shasha began changing positions awkwardly again. Then she half sat up and waved her hand before Jiaming's eyes several times. It seemed she wanted to climb over him to get out of bed, but she had only made it halfway before jumping back. Carefully, she pulled the blanket over Jiaming, even tugging it up around his shoulders. She looked like a clumsy young wife, newly married and still unable to take care of her husband. After fixing the blanket, she waved her hand before Jiaming's eyes a few more times before climbing out of bed.

What was she doing...

Jiaming found it strange. Shasha had always been straightforward and careless; she had never been able to hide anything on her mind. Yet now she was being so cautious. Opening his eyes a sliver, he saw her walk into the corner and take off her pants, and he finally understood. He closed his eyes. A faint trickling sound came from the corner. A moment later, Shasha climbed back into bed, pulled open the blanket on the inner side, and lay down stiffly like a corpse.

With no pillow and the midnight cold, Shasha began curling up uncomfortably again. After rolling twice, she finally reached out quietly, grabbed one of Jiaming's hands, and gently laid his arm across the bed.

"Lingjing, sorry... just this once..."

Jiaming heard her say it very softly. Then she used his arm as a pillow and settled down comfortably. A moment later, the girl rolled over twice, turned on her side, wrapped her arms around Jiaming, and fell deeply asleep. Jiaming smiled helplessly as he put an arm around her shoulders. This girl—she was such a loyal Yuri that even just hugging him to sleep required a sincere apology to Yuri's partner. In that moment, Jiaming felt somewhat touched. This was love.

The night passed just like that. When Shasha woke up the next morning, her face was as red as a tomato. Then, to ease the awkwardness, she began swearing loudly again. Before long, someone tossed two steamed buns through the gap in the window as breakfast. Through the crack in the iron door, Jiaming could see that the Japanese little girl was still wearing her bright red kimono, sitting quietly in the small square and enduring her beating.

That morning, the entire lumber processing plant was quiet. Cao Jinghao and Cao Dongfeng seemed to have gone out, leaving only the old Japanese man's eunuch-like voice and Shasha's occasional excited curses echoing through the small square. One was Chinese, the other Japanese, and when they mixed together, Jiaming found it rather comical.

By afternoon, the Cao father and son finally returned in a rage. The moment they arrived, Cao Dongfeng ordered someone to open the iron door, tie the two children's hands, and drag them out.

They apparently had not prepared to deal with Shasha yet. They merely tied the girl to a chair, but dragged Jiaming beside a pillar over two meters tall and bound his hands tightly behind his back. Yuechi Xun, who was being beaten, was not far away. The two stood side by side, reminding Jiaming of revolutionary martyrs who had heroically sacrificed themselves after suffering brutal torture.

"Fuck, I can't be bothered waiting for Lingjing anymore." Taking a bamboo sword like the old Japanese bastard's, Cao Dongfeng approached while swearing. Shasha shouted loudly from the side, "Cao Dongfeng, what are you doing? If you dare touch him, I won't let you off!"

"Hmph, you little bitch have no place speaking here. Shut her up!" As Cao Dongfeng spoke, two of his men brought over a cloth gag and stuffed it into Shasha's mouth. "Fuck, classmate Gu Jiaming, to be honest, I've been holding in a bellyful of rage today. Now, I'm going to loosen your bones!"

With that, the bamboo sword swept sideways toward Jiaming's chest!