After visiting Mei Ying, the troupe's leading lady, the witch in a black dress with icy eyes sat bound to a high-backed chair and gave Jiang Han a smile enough to shatter someone's mental defenses:
"Comrade, we will meet again."
Her beauty did not seem human.
Her voice came from the deep sea.
Her soft murmur was like a lover's breath brushing behind one's ear—sweet, and dangerous.
Like warm seawater, like a clear spring-fed lake, its tingling pull slowly dragged one under. There was no need to breathe; with every moment of suffocation, one drew a little closer to seeing her phantom.
Then, with a sharp clap that exploded beside Jiang Han's ear, she snapped awake. She shuddered, swiftly ducked her head to the side, and saw Qiao Rou looking at her with concern.
"Wake up, Miss Han, wake up!"
Jiang Han blinked and shook her head.
"What happened?"
"You weren't looking where you were going at all just now. Look at what's right in front of you," Qiao Rou said, pursing her lips and pointing ahead of them.
Jiang Han followed her finger and saw a pillar directly in front of her, covered in all kinds of tags and profiles of witches in the Squirrel Society who accepted commissions. It was like a bulletin board that let clients make their own selections.
She had almost walked straight into it.
"Sorry, I was a little... distracted." Jiang Han hugged her left arm with her right hand and gave a listless smile. "How did you and those doctors get used to it?"
They went around the pillar and entered the lounge.
Qiao Rou made her a cup of rich hot chocolate, using the powdered chocolate currently popular among witches.
Come to think of it, witches were a race that loved sweeping