Too Stubborn to Admit It

The two continued deeper inside.

As they went on, things grew increasingly bizarre.

Severed limbs suddenly dropped from the ceiling, deathly pale hands reached out of the walls, and even the sound of a suona suddenly blared beside Lu Yan's ear. His nerves were stretched taut.

Every step felt like a game of minesweeper, and his grip on Aemeath's hand grew tighter without him realizing it.

Aemeath, however, was curious about everything. She even reached out to touch the fake hands that had fallen, commenting on the texture of the silicone.

At last, they arrived at the haunted house's final scene: the bridal chamber.

The entire room was bathed in harsh red light. A bright red double-happiness character was pasted on the wall, yet it gave off an indescribably eerie feeling.

An ancient bed stood in the center of the room, its red gauze curtains stirring without a breeze.

Lu Yan stopped in the doorway, his breathing already growing heavier. He could have guessed with his toes that the haunted house's ultimate big boss was definitely hiding behind those curtains.

"Let's... pick up the pace and rush through." Lu Yan gritted his teeth and took Aemeath's hand, preparing to force their way through.

The moment they stepped into the center of the room, the eerie background music abruptly stopped, and the entire room fell deathly silent.

Immediately afterward, whoosh! Two projections suddenly appeared on the walls to either side, and countless ghostly white faces spun wildly across them.

At the same time, the red gauze curtains of the canopy bed were flung open. A ghost bride in a bright red wedding gown, her hair disheveled and two thick patches of rouge painted on her face, let out a piercing wail. Propelled by an overhead track, she swooped through the air straight at Lu Yan's face at incredible speed!

The overwhelming sight of that instant, combined with the full force of Chinese horror, shattered Lu Yan's psychological defenses.

"Hiss..." Lu Yan sucked in a sharp breath. His feet stumbled, and he involuntarily took half a step back.

His face turned deathly pale in an instant, and a fine layer of cold sweat even broke out on his forehead. The hand holding Aemeath's trembled violently.

He instinctively wanted to pull Aemeath away, but his legs felt as though they had been filled with lead, too stiff to move.

Just as the ghost bride was about to come face-to-face with him.

A soft yet extraordinarily strong arm suddenly wrapped around Lu Yan's waist from the side.

Lu Yan froze. A faint warmth came from the palm of that hand through his trench coat and sweater, separated from his wildly pounding heart by only a layer of clothing.

Without a word, Aemeath stepped out from behind him.

The ghost bride's overhead track was still moving, making a faint metallic scraping sound.

The scarlet wedding gown descended from the air, and the heavily rouged face was close enough for them to see a line of eyeliner the makeup artist had drawn crooked.

Aemeath turned her head and shot the ghost bride a sideways glance, her golden eyes extraordinarily bright under the haunted house's sickly green light.

"You scared him." Aemeath's voice was quiet, and her tone was calm, but it carried a chill.

The ghost bride froze in midair for a moment. The staff member playing the bride was clearly a little bewildered by the reaction.

She was probably used to visitors running away, screaming, or even swearing, but she had never seen a young girl glare at her so fiercely.

The ghost bride stopped in midair and met Aemeath's gaze for a second.

Then she silently took a step back. The track hadn't pulled her away; she had retreated on her own.

Aemeath paid her no further attention. Turning around, she wrapped both arms around Lu Yan's stiff arm and nestled herself against his side, rubbing her face against his shoulder.

"A-Yan~ Let's go. Their acting isn't professional at all." Aemeath's voice turned sweet again.

Lu Yan's Adam's apple bobbed slightly. Forcing down the lingering panic in his heart, he gave an awkward laugh and said, "I wasn't scared at all. A scene like that is nothing. It's just too dark in there, and my chest felt a little tight, that's all."

Aemeath didn't expose him. She simply smiled, her eyes narrowing, and lightly brushed a finger across his nose. "Mm, I know. A-Yan is the best."

They walked out of the haunted house, and sunlight fell over them.

Lu Yan took a deep breath of fresh air, feeling as though he had finally come back to life.

Without drawing attention to himself, he unclenched his sweaty hand and discreetly wiped it on his pant leg.

His mind really had gone blank when the ghost bride lunged at him, but now that he was standing in the sun, his senses returned, and he felt he hadn't actually been that scared. Weren't they just a few mechanisms and staff members in makeup?

But he still had reason to be afraid. After all, Aemeath had traveled across worlds, so it wouldn't be strange if ghosts existed too.

He gave himself a pep talk, then remembered the arm that had wrapped around his waist in the darkness.

Lu Yan looked down at the girl holding his arm and happily licking her cotton candy. An indescribable warmth welled up in his heart.

He had wanted to protect her, yet it seemed he had been protected by her again. But being protected made him feel incredibly safe and comfortable.

Aemeath licked her cotton candy. The strands of sugar melted on her tongue, so sweet that she narrowed her eyes.

She turned to look at Lu Yan. He was doing his best to maintain an air of calm, as if he hadn't been the one frightened inside the haunted house.

Aemeath laughed to herself. A-Yan was so cute when he stubbornly refused to admit it.

His face had gone pale and his legs had been trembling, yet after coming out, he still had to say, "I wasn't scared at all."

She remembered how, inside the haunted house, he had been scared to death himself, yet his first reaction had been to pull her tightly into his arms and shield her with his back from the zombie that popped out.

His embrace had squeezed her breasts out of shape, but the fierce pounding of his heart in that moment had been more powerful than any words of love.

She took a bite of cotton candy, hiding her smile behind the strands of sugar.

Forget it. I won't expose him. I'll let him save some face. After all, he's my cutest A-Yan.

Lu Yan put an arm around Aemeath's shoulders. His movement was gentle, but still stiff from having just recovered from the fright.

"...You weren't scared at all in there just now." He tried to restore his usual calm tone, but the end of the sentence still wavered a little.

Aemeath swallowed the last of her cotton candy and licked the sugar strands from the corner of her mouth before saying unhurriedly, "Why would I be? The ghosts weren't real."

Her eyes suddenly curved into a smile. "But A-Yan really was protecting me the whole time."

"When the zombie jumped out, you held me so tight I could barely breathe."

Lu Yan remembered saying he was "afraid of hurting her," and felt a pang of guilt.

"I was just saying that mechanism sprang out too fast." He cleared his throat and kept a straight face, doing his best to preserve the last of his dignity.

Aemeath didn't call him out. She just gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Mm, I know. So let's do it again next time?"

"...We'll talk about it next time." He struggled to keep a straight face as he squeezed out the words.

Aemeath looked at Lu Yan's face, still pale even as he tried to maintain his aloof image, and finally couldn't hold it in anymore.

"Pfft... hahaha..." At first, Aemeath merely covered her mouth and giggled, her shoulders bobbing.

But seeing Lu Yan's eyes darting everywhere, never daring to look at her, she laughed more and more freely. At last, she abandoned all decorum and doubled over, clutching her stomach with both hands. Her clear laughter rang like silver bells along the amusement park's tree-lined path.

"What are you laughing at...?" Her laughter annoyed Lu Yan, but there wasn't a trace of real anger in it, only embarrassment.

Two patches of red visibly appeared on his cheeks. The blush spread across his face, burning all the way to his ears in an instant, and even his neck turned pink.

"I was scared. So what?" Lu Yan gave up all pretense and abandoned his utterly unconvincing facade.