Then I'll Do It

Wu Changkong stood beneath the teachers' apartment building.

Night had fully settled in. Several streetlamps glowed dimly, stretching his shadow long and thin. He looked up at the window on the third floor—Lu Menge's room. The light was on. Half the curtains were drawn, while warm yellow light spilled through the other half. A shadow occasionally moved past.

She had not left her room since that cat cry last night. She had taken sick leave. Gu Yue had said it was not an ordinary illness. He believed her.

He climbed the stairs. His pace was not fast, but every step was solid. The corridor was quiet. At this hour, most teachers living on campus were still in their offices preparing lessons, leaving the dormitory area empty. He stopped outside Lu Menge's door. He raised his hand and knocked. Three times, not heavily.

There was silence inside for a while. Then came footsteps, slower and lighter than usual. The door opened.

Lu Menge stood inside, wearing a light gray sweater and dark blue trousers. Her hair was casually tied into a low ponytail. She did not have her usual lazy smile, but she did not look serious either. She looked perfectly normal, so normal that it seemed as though nothing had happened—if one ignored the faint redness around her eyes.

"Teacher Wu?" She tilted her head. A flicker of surprise passed through her fox-like eyes before she swiftly slipped back into her familiar teasing manner. "Coming to see me so late—don't tell me you want to treat me to a midnight snack again? Not today. I'm getting ready for bed."

She smiled. She was smiling.

That smile made Wu Changkong's throat tighten. He remembered what Gu Yue had told him beneath the ginkgo tree that afternoon—she said Lu Menge was fine, that she always smiled, smiled so much that no one could believe it, yet she still insisted on smiling. Before, he had never understood why there was always something indescribable in Lu Menge's smile. Now he did.

"May I come in?"

Lu Menge blinked and stepped half a pace aside. Wu Changkong entered and pulled the door shut behind him. His movement was light, but when the lock clicked into place, Lu Menge's lashes twitched almost imperceptibly.

"What is it? Why so serious?" She walked two steps toward the windowsill and casually picked up her thermos for a sip. "Did Director Long pile more work on you again? Or did Wulin get into trouble? I'm telling you, he's been working really hard lately—"

"This afternoon," Wu Changkong cut her off, "I went to see Gu Yue."

The thermos in Lu Menge's hand stopped halfway to her lips. Just for an instant. Then she continued drinking from it, her tone as casual as ever. "Why did you see her? She's been training pretty seriously lately. She hasn't been slacking, has she?"

"She cried."

A tiny crack finally appeared in Lu Menge's expression. It was small—only the curve of her lips stiffened for a fraction of a second, and the laziness in her eyes dimmed slightly—but she quickly covered it with another smile.

"That child looks cold all the time, but she's actually very sensitive. Was the pressure from her exams too much? I told her she didn't need to put so much pressure on herself—"

"She told me everything about you."

Lu Menge's smile remained on her face, but her fingers froze against the rim of the thermos. Her nail tapped lightly against the cup, making an almost inaudible crisp sound. Her amber fox eyes swept over Wu Changkong's face, as if reassessing just how much information his words contained.

"What about me?" she asked. Her tone was calm, and the curve of her lips had not yet faded.

"You went to find those people for Gu Yue's tuition." Wu Changkong's voice was soft, but he took a step forward. Lu Menge's back was already against the windowsill. There was nowhere left for her to retreat. "What those people did to you. Your sleeves were torn open, your neck covered in bruises, and you were still smiling. You wore that kind of skirt in temperatures more than ten degrees below zero. When you came back, your lips were frozen purple and your legs were covered in bloody wounds. You burned with fever until you started talking nonsense, clutching your sister's hand and telling her to run. Every morning, you washed your hands until the backs of them were covered in bloody cracks. You threw up over the sink, then cleaned the floor before letting her come out. Then you served breakfast in front of her and told her the chocolate milk was what she had said she wanted yesterday."

He repeated everything Gu Yue had said, sentence by sentence. His voice was low, his pace slow. Every word seemed carved from ice.

Lu Menge's smile finally vanished from her face. She stood by the windowsill with the thermos in hand, and her knuckles gradually turned white.

"She was forced into this state—" Wu Changkong did not look away. "And you still think it's nothing?"

Lu Menge opened her mouth. Her mind, however, was filled with thunder and lightning. Gu Yue—that little brat—hadn't she merely felt embarrassed over that cat cry, taken a day off, and hidden in her room all day? Torn sleeves? Wearing a skirt in subzero temperatures? Cleaning up after vomiting before serving breakfast? The thermos in her hand contained tea steeped for who knew how many millennia. She squeezed the lid until it gave an almost inaudible creak, a hairline crack appearing between the lid and the cup, nearly invisible to the naked eye.

"Teacher Wu," she moistened her lips and carefully chose her words, her tone more cautious than ever before, "I think you may have misunderstood—"

"Misunderstood what?"

"What Gu Yue told you about—may not be quite the same as what I understand." She tried to phrase it as tactfully as possible. "I didn't—"

"How long are you going to keep hiding it from me?"

Lu Menge choked on those words. She looked at Wu Changkong's face. Normally, it was cold as a glacier, but now it carried an emotion she had never seen before—not anger, not sympathy. It was something burning beneath the glacier. He was angry. His brows were pressed low, his lips drawn into a line. The way he looked at her was more serious than any of his previous assumptions.

"You can tell me anything," he said, his voice low. "If you won't tell me now, then when will you? Next time? When you're so sick you can't even take leave? Or when Gu Yue comes to me and tells me her sister is gone?"

The end of his sentence softened when he saw the confusion in Lu Menge's eyes. Lu Menge set the thermos on the windowsill and began seriously worrying about how to explain this. The version Gu Yue had made up was simply too outrageous—wearing a skirt in subzero weather, cleaning the floor after throwing up acid before serving breakfast, and even things like "not worthy of you" and "a voice like winter wind." Where had that little brat learned such phrases? Could Di Tian's secret letters contain excerpts from romance novels too? Her ears began to burn. Not from guilt, but because the more she thought about it, the more stifled she felt. She was the mighty Nine-Headed White Tiger, an ancient sacred beast, master of slaughter, a being who had lived through several revisions of the laws of heaven and earth. Yet in this man's mind, she was some pitiful little thing dragged by the sleeve by a greasy old man and forced to crawl under a table without daring to make a sound. And she could not even explain. He was getting angry at her. He had never gotten angry at anyone in his life. Wu Changkong suddenly raised his voice. Lu Menge jolted and instinctively shifted another half inch toward the windowsill.

"Those people you went to find—what did they give you? Supplements? Soul rings? Are those things really that important to you?"

Lu Menge's beautiful fox eyes blinked at once. She opened her mouth, ready to speak. She had her own "supplements," and she had her own "soul rings."

"I—" I can explain.

"How much do you need?"

The words Lu Menge had been about to say caught in her throat. She watched Wu Changkong pull out a card from his pocket and slap it onto the windowsill beside her eternally unchanged thermos.

"This is my salary card. Federation Bank. The money comes in on the fifteenth of every month. I've already arranged a supplementary card. I'll give it to you tomorrow."

He pushed the card toward her. His movement was stiff from nervousness. He was not good at doing this sort of thing. His ears had turned red, his Adam's apple bobbed, and his gaze shifted toward the darkness outside the window.

"If... if money is important to you—then I'll support you. You don't need to go find those people anymore. Gu Yue's tuition, living expenses, all of it."

Lu Menge lowered her head and looked at the card. Her lips parted slightly. She had lived for so long; she had seen every kind of scene. But this—this was something she had never seen before. She looked at the card as the redness in her ears visibly spread across her cheeks. She thought quickly: accepting it was obviously impossible; if she refused, Wu Changkong would likely stand outside her door all night; explaining the whole story to him—how could he possibly believe it? She extended one finger, lightly pressed it against the card, and pushed it half an inch toward the edge of the windowsill.

"Wu Changkong," she said, her voice softer than ever, "listen to me first—"

"Take it. There is no deadline—you don't need to pay it back. Whatever you need is fine. You don't need to think about whether you're worthy of it—I have never thought that way."

Lu Menge's finger stopped on the card. He even knew about "not worthy." Her ears turned completely red. She lowered her head to stare at the card, pressing her lips together slightly. No. I can't laugh. I absolutely can't laugh. She forcibly suppressed every bit of laughter threatening to break through her reason. The Little White Tiger poked its head out from the cotton nest in the corner of the windowsill, its round eyes looking from Lu Menge to Wu Changkong. She let out a soft breath and lifted her head to meet Wu Changkong's eyes.

"Teacher Wu." Some of her composure returned to her voice. "I really haven't been—"

"You don't need to explain," Wu Changkong said.

He pushed the card another inch toward her, then turned and walked toward the door. After taking two steps, he stopped without looking back.

"Come to the cafeteria for breakfast tomorrow morning. I'll be here at seven."

His footsteps gradually faded down the corridor. Lu Menge stood by the windowsill, a cold bank card in her hand and the Little White Tiger peeking at her from in front of her. She shut the door and leaned against it, lowering her head to turn the card over in her hands several times. Her fingertips pressed over the card number, as if confirming that it was not some talisman invented only moments ago. Then she said to the thermos, "...He gave me money."

The Little White Tiger let out a howl.

"He wants to support me."

The Little White Tiger's tail stiffened.

"He said there was no deadline—" She placed the card on the windowsill and paced around twice. High heels, low heels, flats—she looked down and realized she had nothing on her feet. She had been talking to him barefoot the whole time. She covered her face with one hand and let out a muffled, restrained breath through her fingers. Someone who had lived for countless millennia covered her face and crouched down, burying her face in her knees. Her shoulders trembled. It was impossible to tell whether it was from laughter or something else.

Beneath the teachers' apartment building, Wu Changkong stood beside a streetlamp and pulled up the Federal Investigation Bureau's encrypted hotline on his communicator. He lowered his voice to the barest whisper. "Help me investigate a few people. Don't go through the academy system—use my private channels. Once you find them, don't alert them." He gave several names Gu Yue had described beneath the ginkgo tree. After ending the call, he looked back once more at the lit window and slung the Heavenfrost Sword over his shoulder. Eastsea Academy's security patrol happened to pass by. From a distance, they saw the sword hilt gleam and instinctively took a detour. Tonight, no one wanted to work overtime near the administration building.