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Chu Wanning rejects the mission placement thirteen times.
Eleven of which happened to occur in the span of approximately thirty seconds, in the tidy and well-appointed top-floor executive suite of the Sisheng Cultivation Group.
"Absolutely not." Fourteen times.
"Yuheng, c'mon, it's just a week at most."
"No." Fifteen.
Xue Zhengyong's office is filled with handsome, new-wood furnishings. The desk is polished and bright, with all the trappings of a recent purchase. It matches the bookshelves lining the wall, filled more with baubles and plants from her husband than with books on their chosen career path. Above the shelves, hand-painted fans adorn the walls, between artistic renderings of the supposed original peaks that once housed the sect grounds before the modern world began to rise from the dirt and mud.
Sisheng Cultivation Group had once been among the greatest sects in the world, according to the records carefully secured in the SCG archives, but past success rarely promised future prosperity. For the handful of decades that Chu Wanning had worked for Sisheng, he had watched them grow in operations from a single floor rented above a costume shop to a brick-faced office to their own gleaming building in the center of the city. But bigger buildings mean higher rent, and higher rent means pricier jobs to take—especially when Xue Zhengyong refuses to let go of offering the disenfranchised no-cost exorcisms. That, of course, Chu Wanning will always be thankful for. If Xue Zhengyong ever stopped, she'd have to quit.
And Chu Wanning just finished moving her things into her office.
Such a shame she'll have to quit now, then—albeit for completely different reasons.
Across the shining desk, Xue Zhengyong's perfectly painted lips pout. "Yuheng, come on. Young couples are going missing; it's our responsibility to help those who are unable to help themselves."
"Has the Good Build Development Company considered going to the local police first?" Chu Wanning asks, her arms crossing over her chest as she readies another tired rejection right on the top of her tongue.
"They have," Xue Zhengyong tells her, "and then they came to us. Four couples vanished from their homes in the dead of night in the same apartment building. No signs of a struggle, no trails, no nothing. Not only is this the perfect case for us, but it's the perfect case for you."
"We reserve the right to—"
"Yuheng—"
"We reserve the right to refuse service to any company, individual, or organization requesting any of the following SCG services!" Chu Wanning pushes between her gritting teeth. "It is inappropriate. And a company like Good Build's Development should be able to afford one of the higher-end cultivation groups. Why not go to them?"
"Haven't you ever heard not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Yuheng? They came to us. The development company is willing to offer us a good amount of money for exterminating one little problem; it's the kind of fee that would cover a dozen pro bono jobs," Xue Zhengyong offers. "And it'll let us create a budget for the at-home protection automatons you've been working on. We might actually be able to prototype them and take them to next year's conference."
That... that leaves Chu Wanning perked. She flicks the sleeve of her cream-colored sweater, crossing her arms over her chest next. Her sword-straight brows crease in the center as she stares down Xue Zhengyong for another long, long moment.
Xue Zhengyong keeps looking at her, nails clicking gently against the top of the desk. "Besides... we could really use the reputation boost."
She takes a deep breath and, with an air of finality, says, "No," for the sixteenth time.
It's less than two weeks later that Xue Zhengyong wears her down with promises of the following:
- The ability to financially support a dozen free cleansings and exorcisms in the lower-income neighborhoods around SCG.
- An expanded budget for the home-defense project.
- Dinner. For two weeks. Preferably at Xue Zhengyong's home, where Chu Wanning can drink her fill without having to worry about getting bothered by whatever man thinks that two glasses of wine is enough to make her even tipsy. However, if necessary, she would agree to going out.
- The sworn and vowed and written-in-actual-contract promise that the person that Chu Wanning will be placed with will not, under any circumstances, be Xue Ziming.
This is not to say that Chu Wanning believes that her once-disciple is any less qualified than the others in Sisheng's employ—in fact, were it any other placement, she would have demanded that Xue Zhengyong place Xue Ziming under her command. It's just that... well.
"Remind me again why I need to be imitating being in an intimate relationship with one of my peers?" Chu Wanning asks, her affect flatter than a tire driven over spikes. Thrice.
Xue Zhengyong finishes double-checking the files carefully secured inside the manila envelope before sealing it with a talisman that ensures it could only be opened by Chu Wanning or her temporary partner. "It's only couples that are going missing from the apartment building. Before they build another complex, the development company would like to figure out why. If it's a curse on the company itself or if it's an employee, they'd like to know."
Chu Wanning stares at her, the envelope hovering between them like an unbreached ocean. "I could investigate this without involving anyone else."
"We don't assign solo projects anymore," Xue Zengyong reminds her.
Her eyes narrow. "I am one of the directors of this organization; in another time I would have been considered an elder in this sect. I have earned the titles the Yuheng Elder and the Beidou Immortal. Have I not earned enough respect from my peers to be permitted to track down the origin of some paltry haunting on my own?"
Xue Zhengyong taps the package with a well-manicured hand. "You wrote the policy yourself. It would look bad to not enforce it. Besides, I promised that Mengmeng wouldn't be your partner."
Chu Wanning frowns, the twitch of her lips hardly visible as she turns to leave Xue Zhengyong's office. The Sisheng Director follows, her heavy-but-stylish boots drowning out the sound of Chu Wanning's respectable flats as they keep even step down the hall. The upper floors of Sisheng Cultivation Group's home office building are crowded with assistants and upper-level cultivators milling about from office to office. Xue Zhengyong, as the director, has the corner office of the floor—but they pass the closed doors of each of the senior division heads one by one. Chu Wanning gives a lingering glance towards her own office door, the glossy wood neatly shut and sealed with an array of personally designed talismans to prevent anyone from trespassing during her off-site mission. Including and especially her boss. "It's likely some kind of yao that feeds off couples. Its nest could be located via any other form of traditional hunting," Chu Wanning says. Beside her, Xue Zhengyong doesn't seem moved by the final attempt at a plea as they approach the elevator. Chu Wanning tacks on a quick: "It would even allow me to finish my paperwork in a more timely fashion on a secure network as opposed to having to complete documentation on apartment WiFi."
Xue Zhengyong presses the down button on the elevator with one quick finger. "Yuheng," she sighs, her voice pitching low as the elevator dings to allow a small wave of exiting cultivators out amongst them. They don't look at Chu Wanning. They never look at her. Instead, they scurry past, giving her a wide berth. Heaven help her, she'd rather be in her office where they don't have to look at her or see her or smell her innocuous and deeply unscented laundry detergent and baby-safe body wash. "Ever since the incident with Tianyin and my niece—"
"You don't need to remind me," Chu Wanning bites, the line of her back stiffening as she steps into the now-empty elevator. A young medic from a lower floor moves to step in after her, but clearly the ice in her voice is enough to make him pretend to check his phone and turn on a quick heel to walk into a supply closet instead. "I am well aware of the costs of the last solo mission we permitted."
The lobby button glows merrily as the doors slide shut. Xue Zhengyong deflates only slightly. "Wanning..." she trails. "It's good to build up relationships and positive reputations in the community. We lost a lot of face when we defended her, and now the other cultivation groups think we're some kind of untamed sect filled with rogue cultivators who do whatever they want. Just like the old days. It's good to do things by the book for once. For everyone. Top to bottom."
Chu Wanning's lips press into thin and pale lines. She voices neither agreement nor disagreement.
With the lack of protest provided, Xue Zhengyong only exhales, as if she had been holding her breath in anticipation of Chu Wanning's next quip.
"It'll be good for both of you to be associated with a case like this once it's done," Xue Zhengyong adds on after a brief period of heavy silence. "God knows your partner needs the positive press."
The elevator dings to announce their arrival at the lobby in the exact moment Chu Wanning realizes that—barring the promises made that her partner would not be Xue Zhengyong's daughter—she has no idea who she'll be working with.
Dread and bile fill her stomach, and Chu Wanning has never wished she had a Tums bottle in her pocket more.
"Zhengyong..." she warns as she freezes just outside the elevator.
"The car is waiting with your bags just outside. It'll take you two to the other side of town. The keys to the apartment are in the envelope—and a mail key, too, but I don't know how much mail you'll be getting on the job. But maybe check it once or twice a day, in case the yao is living in the rafters of the mailroom."
"Zhengyong."
"The basics of your cover stories are in there too—but honestly, I figured we'd let you guys work out the details on your own."
The lobby of Sisheng Cultivation Group is just as busy as the other floors—albeit with more civilians lingering about and looking for assistance. Low-level cultivators greet them and whisk them away for intake appointments or to take reports or to deliver whatever lost, possessed property was recently cleansed. The little apothecary and pharmacy is teeming this close to lunch, with people on their breaks stopping by to pick up possession preventative care or anti-venom for whatever yao was found lurking in their sinks. But Chu Wanning doesn't see them.
Across the shining, lacquered floor of the busy cultivation headquarters, a woman leans against a support pillar near the door. Chipped blue-black nail polish blurs as she types on her phone with a speed only known to people with far, far too much to say. The lobby is filled with people dressed for work—blazers, skirts, sweaters, button-downs, and slacks—but she sticks out in muddy combat boots laced up over her ankles and baggy black cargo pants hanging low over thick and powerful hips. She's tall, too—taller than the average woman—with broad and strong shoulders and shaggy-cut black hair that more resembles a mullet than anything even nearing the world of professionalism. The whole look reeks of biker, right down to the leather jacket and the helmet sitting next to her feet.
Something lights up on her phone, and she smiles, and even in the profile Chu Wanning can see her dimples—soft and playful in perfect diametric opposition to her rough aesthetic.
"No," she whispers, as Mo Weiyu glances up from her position leaned against the pillar. Violet-blue eyes lock onto Chu Wanning, and her heart seizes in her chest, a sudden and burning ache that refuses to yield. "Absolutely not."
Mo Weiyu, Mo Weiyu—even the thought of her name echoes around in Chu Wanning's mind as a bile-slick urge to throw up climbs the back of her tongue. She can feel the shape of it in her molars, curled like a sleeping dog before it winds like blood between her teeth. How many times has she said it? How many times did she swallow it down instead of barking it out into the dead of the night? How many times has she thought it with the mournful weight of an apology?
She looks different from the last time that Chu Wanning saw her—when she had been handcuffed on the pavement with a black eye so swollen and red that Chu Wanning was worried she'd never be able to see from it again. Her face had been so bloody and dirty that Chu Wanning barely recognized her—her cracked lips parted with each wheezing breath as one of Tianyin's cultivators rammed their boot into her stomach. Chu Wanning hadn't had any choice but to react. Mo Weiyu was her disciple.
Tianwen had struck out, the amber glow reflecting off the shiny blood caking Mo Weiyu's dark hair to her split scalp. Chu Wanning was acutely aware in the moment that she had signed her own arrest warrant when Tianwen made contact.
She hadn't expected--
"Chu-laoshi."
Chu Wanning snaps back to reality, the stink of wet pavement mixed with the copper tang of blood receding as she turns her gaze up the long distance to Mo Weiyu's. "Director Xue," she says, as her traitorous boss-and-confidant crosses the invisible threshold separating her from her once-disciple.
Xue Zhengyong claps her on the shoulder, a strong hand meeting an even stronger muscle there. "Ran-er!" She coos. "Look how much you've grown!"
"Auntie Xue!" Mo Weiyu beams. "It's only been a few weeks! I was cleaning up a nest of pretty angry beetle-rats outside of town, and I thought it would be great to get out for a little bit. I hope you and Uncle Wang didn't miss me too long."
Xue Zhengyong clicks her tongue, ruffling Mo Weiyu's already-mussed hair. "Ran-er's been inconsolable," she says. "I can't believe you just got back, and it's already time to send you off again."
Chu Wanning bites the tip of her tongue. She can practically taste blood at this point.
"When you told me about this job, I came right back," Mo Weiyu says. Chu Wanning does not miss the fact that beyond the quick acknowledgement of her presence, Mo Weiyu has not looked at her once.
She feels remarkably like a child standing beside her mother, watching her chat back and forth with a fellow woman she's run into at the store, wondering when they'd actually see her instead of simply pretending that she doesn't exist. Chu Wanning moves to chew the inside of her lip, her palms starting to sweat as she feels her heartbeat only prick in earnest anticipation of when she should break the tension. It's definitely been too long for her to feel anything but obviously irritated when she inevitably does so—no longer would it feel natural and relaxed.
Mo Weiyu chats with Xue Zhengyong as easily as she chats with anyone who isn't Chu Wanning. They talk about the job she did with the beetle-rats outside of town, Xue Ziming's latest missions, what's been cooked for dinner lately, what Mr. Wang has been cultivating in his gardens, and what other idle little things pass between family members. Chu Wanning keeps her gaze lowered for as long as she can stomach it, tracing out the patterns in the tile to find where they repeat and then tracing them all the way back to the beginning again. She doesn't want to look up; she doesn't want to look up; she doesn't want to--
--but something is burning inside of her. She can feel it in her blood, in her bones.
It feels like a fever, devouring her.
Taking her.
Her eyes lift, catching the turbulent ocean of Mo Weiyu's staring back at her.
"Chu-laoshi," she says again, her lips moving in a way that almost looks like the edge of a smile.
Chu Wanning's stomach drops to her feet. "Mo Weiyu," she greets.
"We should get going, hm?"
This is far and above the worst day that Chu Wanning has ever had.
She glowers at Xue Zhengyong as both she and Mo Weiyu take their leave of the Sisheng Cultivation Group lobby, the manila envelope held fast to her chest as she keeps her eyes dead-set forward. She knows what everyone is going to think the moment they see her walking alongside Mo Weiyu—one of Sisheng's gleaming gems, briefly lost because of the hapless and cruel Shizun that failed to guide her disciple to success. It's a shame, they must think; it's a shame that Mo Ran would be stuck with that frosty bitch yet again.
The car that takes them away is a relatively sleek yet anonymous black SUV. There's room enough in the back for Chu Wanning's single suitcase and briefcase and the two duffel bags tucked beside a threadbare backpack covered in patches and pins that Chu Wanning presumes belong to Mo Weiyu.
The backseat is roomy enough that Chu Wanning doesn't need to risk her thigh touching one of Mo Weiyu's—at least until Mo Weiyu slides into the seat and proves that entirely wrong.
She spreads her legs when she sits, sinking down into the creaking leather and letting one knee drift aimlessly across the great divide between their seats.
It's warm where it makes insistent contact with Chu Wanning's.
She clears her throat and crosses one leg over the other, pressing herself into the hard plastic of the door.
"We should create our cover story," Chu Wanning says, voice flat as she buckles herself in. "We might as well take the time to make it something semi-believable."
It strikes her as she pinches open the metal fixtures of the envelope that she is going to have to pretend to be Mo Weiyu's girlfriend. Her girlfriend.
Her much… much…
much
older girlfriend.
Fantastic.
Chu Wanning closes her eyes as she readies herself to pull the brief out. They're going to have to introduce themselves to the neighbors as being romantically intertwined. Chu Wanning can already imagine what they're going to say.
How could someone like that be with someone like that?!
I wonder how much money the ugly one makes to end up with such a good-looking younger girlfriend.
What a shame. I hope the younger one realizes what she's worth and leaves the ancient, frigid old hag.
Sucking in a stabilizing breath, Chu Wanning glances down at the sheet.
Typed out in a clear and simple font are the basics of Chu Wanning and Mo Weiyu's cover story. They are a couple who are moving in together for the first time; the apartment—503B—will be their first real home together. Both of them make a respectable amount of money at their own individual jobs—Chu Wanning as an ancient history textbook writer and Mo Weiyu as an EMT currently on leave due to a workplace injury—which led to them being able to afford a personal moving service.
Chu Wanning glowers at the paper.
"This implies that I am the breadwinner in the relationship," she says, her eyes skating off the page and finding Mo Weiyu squinting at her own paper. "And you have no visible injuries."
She leaves unsaid: They'll think you're some kind of lazy wastrel who is only with me for my money.
Which, additionally, leaves unsaid: Which makes sense, considering there would be no other reason for you to be with someone like me.
This all allows for Chu Wanning to think, privately: Xue Zhengyong must have thought of this. Perfect.
Mo Weiyu sniffs, her body slinking down against the sleek door of the comfortable company car. "I don't know. It doesn't say anything about our family status in it. Maybe I'm from some rich family overseas?" She shoots Chu Wanning a grin from her side of the car. "I'm spending my time helping people as an EMT while supporting your writing habit out of love and deference."
"You do not have an accent that would support that," Chu Wanning shoots down, feeling a pinkness begin to crawl up her cheeks. "And under what circumstances would we be renting an apartment then?"
"It could be close to the station," Mo Weiyu suggests, her brows waggling for no reason that Chu Wanning is capable of discerning.
Chu Wanning only frowns in response. "Don't be stupid," she warns. "Take this seriously."
The smile that had crept over Mo Weiyu's face vanishes in an instant, freezing over into a soft and wintery frost. "What do you think we should do then, Chu-laoshi?"
Chu Wanning frowns, an acrid comment about her lack of responsibility for Mo Weiyu beginning to build on the back of her tongue. Like acid. Or bile.
Or just plain vomit.
Before she could manage to regurgitate it, however, a sharp turn from the driver sent her straining against her seatbelt into Mo Weiyu's space, the dizzying scent of a musky and masculine cologne filling her senses. She smells like fresh-churned earth after a fire, like smoke and ash mingling with something more animalistic and new. Amber, maybe, like the color of Chu Wanning's eyes—mixed with leather and some kind of tree. It's the sort of smell that Chu Wanning would expect to suffocate her from a far distance on public transit—traceable to some bachelor without much in the way of class.
She coughs, choking on her own spit.
"I am not your teacher anymore, Mo Weiyu," she manages to wheeze as the car levels out and she clambers back against the door, her heart thudding in her ears.
"You're right," Mo Weiyu says. "You're my girlfriend, and you should call me Mo Ran."
Chu Wanning is fairly certain that she could—and should—be lodging a formal complaint against Sisheng Peak for her current working environment.
Formal workplace protections are lax for cultivations; however, she is certain that nowhere—nowhere—in any reasonable person's mind should someone be expected to stomach living in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with a co-worker who seems to find it perfectly acceptable to walk from the bathroom to said bedroom in nothing but gym shorts and a sports bra.
Chu Wanning had been standing (well, sitting) guard by her suitcase for exactly forty-five minutes, after taking in the dismal sight of the apartment. It was almost exactly as she anticipated. A single queen bed in the bedroom with two evidently thrifted little side tables, a kitchen table of equal quality, a set of beaten and worn-in pots and pans, and evidently used dishware. There was nothing particularly identifying for either of them, and Chu Wanning was rather fine with that.
Even the groceries that had been delivered soon after them spoke more of what Xue Zhengyong thought of Chu Wanning than anything else.
And so, Chu Wanning sat to allow Mo Ran space to fill in all the gaps and edges of the room as she was born to do. Mo Ran chatted idly about living spaces, offering herself to take the couch while Chu Wanning took the bedroom—before Chu Wanning helpfully pointed out that if they are contending with a spirit, they need to be visibly romantic even in the privacy of their own home. Mo Ran had looked away, making some kind of strange noise before claiming that it was the exact time she preferred to shower.
It had been—as far as all of the clocks Chu Wanning could see claimed—around three-thirty in the afternoon.
Once Mo Ran left, Chu Wanning had discreetly smelled herself to see if it was something terribly off-putting—but neither body odor nor breath seemed to be anything beyond normal.
It only left the obvious, really: that Chu Wanning and Mo Ran's past was simply too heinous to ever allow for them to coexist peacefully.
And such, for the next forty-five minutes, Chu Wanning reviewed the facts of the case up until the exact moment that the bathroom door opened and Chu Wanning considered her potential litigation against her boss and best friend.
Mo Ran had grown into a stunning woman.
This is not a fact that Chu Wanning is capable of denying.
She had, of course, been a charming student. She had a whip-wild smile with deep and handsome dimples that matched perfectly well with shaggy hair and the sort of kindness that spoke volumes for the heart that lay buried inside a well-scarred ribcage. Mo Ran used to talk endlessly about the common people, about saving those who needed it most. She told stories about picking up puppies and kittens on the side of the road and told Chu Wanning about the times she used to sit and rescue worms with a stick.
She had wanted to be a hero of old, she said, to protect the life of every living thing.
It lasted from Mo Ran's internship all the way through to the end of her second year.
After that, Chu Wanning hadn't seen Mo Ran for years.
And now she is seeing far, far too much of her.
A droplet of water follows the curve of her throat, trailing over the broad, freckled line of a shoulder and soaking into the navy strap of a too-tight sports bra. Chu Wanning feels herself flush as she watches the fabric darken where it meets her skin, her eyes following the seamline until it reaches the place where it stretches over the curve of her chest, and fuck, fuck!
Chu Wanning is ogling the breasts of her former subordinate.
Her… her something.
Her nothing.
Her gaze drops down—but beneath the curve of her breasts is the flat plane of her tanned stomach and the divot of her stomach and the slight paunch of protective fat that lies over her internal organs and the dark thatch of hair that crawls down over it to disappear over the worn strap of her gym shorts. Fuck.
Chu Wanning knows that she is interested in women in a purely academic way. She has never felt a flicker of attraction towards men—however, there have been dreams.
Oh, God, have there been dreams.
In each one, Chu Wanning dreams that she is back in the era of true cultivation. She dreams of heavy, white robes pulled open by rough and scarred hands. She dreams of her hair being pulled as a tongue pushes past her teeth. She dreams of fingers shoving inside of her soaked, dripping cunt, and she dreams of the quaking pleasure that overcomes her until she can do nothing but drop to her knees and let the mysterious woman behind her have her and have her and have her. Chu Wanning wakes from those dreams with her underwear soaked through and her fingers already clawing to touch herself through them.
She only ever does it through them.
She doesn't know why. Maybe in some way it feels cleaner to keep her fingers off her skin, as if the shame were any less real.
In those dreams, occasionally, there is a thatch of dark hair low on a belly as rough hands force her back and fill her senses with the musk of arousal. She only knows what her own cunt smells like, but the one that hovers above her is rich and heady. Saliva fills her mouth at the mere thought of it, of the spread above her in her dreams—the lingering moments before it sits atop her face as if it meant to claim her as nothing more than furniture.
Chu Wanning blinks as a snap clicks her back to reality.
"What?!" She bites as Mo Ran holds the two fingers she'd snapped with in front of her.
Fuck. Chu Wanning can feel how wet she is already.
This is Hell.
No… No, Hell would be nothing but bliss in exchange for this.
This is Mo Ran. Hell could never compare.
"You were zoned out there, babe," Mo Ran says, that soft lilt of a pet name already making Chu Wanning boil with quiet dread. "I wanted to check in on you."
"I'm fine." She says, pushing herself back up. "I'm going to bed."
Mo Ran hurries behind her. "It's not even five, Wanning. C'mon babe, don't you want to unpack a little? I'll even make us dinner."
Chu Wanning pushes past her, her feet shuffling over the bland and dull carpeting of the hallway. "I'll lie down until it's ready." She pauses, her palm curved over the cooling, grounding shape of the doorframe. She rolls over a world of possibilities under her tongue. "Darling."
Not that one.
She scowls at the door and slams it shut behind her.
That night, Chu Wanning dreams of Mo Ran.
She dreams of a body pressed against her own—slick with sweat and feverish with want. She dreams of a mouth pressing to her own and a tongue plunging back behind her teeth until she shakes with a hunger that she has never known.
She dreams of Mo Ran's hands skating up the bare plane of her back.
She dreams of Mo Ran's mouth on her neck.
She dreams of Mo Ran's full, warm breasts pressed against her own modest chest.
Chu Wanning wakes up soaked through her panties and fucking furious.
It takes three days of this before they get their first lead.
It is three days of playing house with Mo Ran.
Three days of sharing a bed with a different layer of blankets between them. Three days of Mo Ran walking out of the bathroom in shorts and a sports bra, three days of Chu Wanning keeping her suitcase just outside the bathroom so that she can wriggle her clothes for the day out just in case she forgets them.
It is three days of Mo Ran cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner as Chu Wanning looks at the blueprints of the building and circles all the questionable places.
It is three days of Mo Ran inviting over neighbors to meet her girlfriend and three days of Mo Ran stealing mail for an excuse to chat with the people who seem less inclined to come in for buns or cookies or whatever else Mo Ran baked to attempt to entice their neighbors to talk to them.
Three days of dreams.
Chu Wanning hasn't slept a healthy and consecutive series of hours since the first time that she shared a bed with Mo Ran. It… is almost comfortable in places.
This is the worst option. It's comfortable to sit across the table from Mo Ran and eat her breakfast; it's comfortable to hear the sound of Mo Ran breathing as she sleeps just a scant few inches away from her at night.
It's comfortable.
This is hell.
She dresses in the same outfit she had worn that first day—a cream sweater, skirt, and tights. She eats the breakfast that Mo Ran makes for them, and she answers emails on her laptop, and she watches as Mo Ran settles on the other side of the couch from her. Chu Wanning hates how comfortable it is. She hates how easy it feels to sit on the same surface as Mo Ran, she hates how close they are, and she hates that she can still smell Mo Ran's shampoo in the bathroom every time she showers.
Every time she showers.
The thought comes unbidden: Mo Ran in the shower. Mo Ran naked. Mo Ran's naked body pressed against her own. She thinks of Mo Ran's strong and scarred hands brushing through her hair and a tender kiss pressed under her ear. She recalls the dreams that she has had—the ones where Mo Ran bends her over and slides her tongue from her cunt to her asshole to leave Chu Wanning so wrecked with pleasure that she could not support herself with her hands any longer.
She recalls the part of the dreams where Chu Wanning sobs into the pillows, her hair spread around her as her cunt drips a mixture of spit and cum and slicks into a heavy puddle on the sheets. Her thighs shuddered, and her fingers grasped at the sheets—threatening to tear them off the bed itself.
She recalls sobbing Mo Ran's name, begging for her to put her fingers or her tongue or her cock (a silicone blue thing that occasionally populated Chu Wanning's dreams, a thing that seemed too terrifyingly large to ever be used and yet one that Chu Wanning's cunt seems to know the sensation of being stretched around until she thinks she is going to rend herself in half.)
or anything.
Everything.
Chu Wanning had never taken anything like that before.
And yet?
Chu Wanning snaps her laptop shut as Mo Ran stretches out and sighs with contentment.
"Must you make such obscene noises all the time?" She bites, whipping her head around to shoot Mo Ran as filthy a look as she could manage.
All Mo Ran could manage in the time it takes Chu Wanning to shove herself off the sofa and stalk back to the bedroom seems to be a confused and almost wounded, "Huh?"
It is crass to masturbate in the shared bed of the shared bedroom of the shared apartment that Chu Wanning is—unsurprisingly—sharing with her co-worker. So she doesn't.
She meditates in the bed until the burn of her blood is cooled to a reasonable degree, and then she strips off her skirt, tights, and underwear before realizing that she left her fucking suitcase in the hallway.
Faced with the possibility of having to re-dress in her filthy underwear, Chu Wanning instead scowls and pulls her tights back up her legs. It feels… terrible.
Every ounce of her feels raw against the fabric, a searing heat that scrapes with the delicate lines of the nylon. Another shudder tears through her, summoning up another distant flicker of her dreams. In those, there is rope lashing her thighs to her calves, holding her open as she pleads against the tongue that presses to her clit.
Another gush of slick threatens to drench the tights pulled up over her bare cunt.
Great.
Fantastic.
She pulls her skirt up over them before wadding up her filthy, ruined underwear and shoving them deep into the wastebasket. Chu Wanning permits herself the dignity of a few moments to smooth down the front of her shirt, re-tie her hair, and pace the length of the cramped little apartment a few dozen times before she lays herself down.
In absolute sincerity, Chu Wanning has no intention of falling asleep.
And then, she dreams of Mo Ran.
Again.
In this dream, Mo Ran is young and pretty and dressed in the styles of their forefathers. She dresses like a man, like an emperor sat upon a throne as Chu Wanning kneels before her with blood on her teeth.
Hands from dozens of featureless, anonymous bodies hold her down on her knees. She hisses, teeth gnashing as she screams and fights—but Mo Ran only grins, a ruthless and angry thing.
The hands haul her closer, dragging her knees against the concrete until she's left a bloody mess behind her. Unceremoniously she is dropped before Mo Ran, landing between the spread legs of her supposed empress.
Chu Wanning does not crane her head in this dream, but her thighs are already shaking with a shameful arousal that comes with the tender brush of Mo Ran's hand over her hair.
"My beautiful wife," Mo Ran whispers. "Come be served by your empress."
The polished steps beneath Chu Wanning's hands feel real as she crawls towards her, the dizzying scent of Mo Ran's own arousal starting to bleed through the fabric. Chu Wanning feels herself start to shake in earnest as she pulls herself forward on weak, trembling limbs. She crawls, her once-white robes dragging behind her, until she has fully pressed her cheek into the high crook of Mo Ran's thigh.
"Good girl," Mo Ran sighs, fingertips carding through her loose, sweat-stained hair. "Come on, come up and lay yourself over my lap. I'll make you feel so good, Wanning. I promise. You won't have to wait for me anymore. I'll make you come so hard that you'll never even want to touch yourself again. I'll ruin you for everyone, baby, even yourself."
Chu Wanning's throat was dry, her cunt pulsating to the beat of her heart as she did as she was bid.
She stands.
In all ways, Chu Wanning knows that this is a dream.
She knows that this is a dream when she lays herself over Mo Ran's lap, a thick and strong thigh pressed low into her stomach while the other crushes her breasts up against her chest. It is a dream.
It is a dream when she turns and sees the sea of faces staring up at her, blank and featureless.
It is a dream when an almost gentle touch pulls the back of her robes up.
It is a dream when Mo Ran laughs.
"Shizun," she breathes. "Shizun, do you have any idea how wet you are?"
Chu Wanning presses her thighs together, but it does nothing to protect her as she stays bent in this position.
"I've wanted this so badly, Shizun. Since the moment that I was put under your command. I saw you in that little dress with the collared shirt under it, and I knew I had to have you." Mo Ran's mouth runs as she drags the tips of her fingers over the seam of her cunt, the touch only magnified by the raw edge of arousal that courses through her. It feels almost like she's being touched through fabric still—like a hand is dragging up over the heat of her. "I know you were walking around without panties on earlier—did you think that I wouldn't know? Like a fucking whore."
Chu Wanning's breath shudders, caught in the center of her throat. "M-Mo Weiyu," she manages to choke.
"I know," Mo Ran sighs. "I know you need it. You need this pretty little cunt filled. Sometimes I'd lie in bed and ask myself how many times you've been filled. If you've ever had fingers or a cock inside of you. I don't think you have. I want to be the first person that feels the inside of your cunt, Wanning. I want to be the first person that knows what it feels like to feel you spasm as you come so hard that you're fucking mindless."
The filth spewing from Mo Ran's mouth is enough to make Chu Wanning's cunt clench pitifully around nothing at all. The pressure forces a fat glob of slick to ooze from her slit, swelling and running down over her pulsing clit.
"I want them to watch," Mo Ran sighs, as the tip of one slickened finger nudges between her folds. "I want them to watch me make you mine."
It's just a single finger, thick and calloused as it strokes the twitching, drenched entrance.
Chu Wanning's lips part as she presses into it, her fingers grappling for any purchase against the rich, dark robes of her empress.
"M—Mo Ran," she chokes. "Please."
And—all at once—Mo Ran sinks into the first knuckle.
Chu Wanning wakes with a start, a heavy weight keeping her lashed to the bed as she fights to catch her breath.
She can taste it—above the pulsating arousal that screams under her skin.
Unholy things impact the world around them in ways that cannot be otherwise defined. Chu Wanning had been training to sense them since she was a little girl. Her heart thrashes in her chest, blood howling before all of her lessons catch up to her. A twist of her hand throws a quick burst of spellfire into the room, illuminating it with a sharp gasp from the bed beside her.
Shocked by the sound, Chu Wanning lets Tianwen fill the shape of her palms as she lashes out and strikes the intruder holding fast to her waist.
"Shizun!" Mo Ran cries, her voice as surprised as Chu Wanning feels in the heart-clench moment.
She whips her head around to see a confused and still half-asleep Mo Ran cradling a bleeding, whip-marked arm to her chest. Chu Wanning's heart continues to thud, each moment the scent of something thinning out.
"It was here," Chu Wanning whispered, her voice unsteady as she felt it creep closer to a waiver.
Mo Ran's breath freezes behind her. "I smell something warm."
"Medicinal," Chu Wanning adds, her tone flattening. After a quick and routine scan of the room confirms that they're alone, Chu Wanning turns back to her. "It isn't a typical ghost. Tell me exactly what you experienced."
Mo Ran stares down at her bleeding arm, the crimson stained black in the pale light of the moon. "I made dinner, I took out the trash in the room, I packed your portion away for tomorrow—or later, if you were hungry—and then came to check in on you. You were asleep, so—"
"Skip ahead."
"I went to bed a couple hours after, after reviewing the facts of the case and meeting our neighbors to get the low-down on all of our missing couples, and woke up when you whipped me. Which, I'm sorry, Wanning—really—I didn't mean to touch you in my sleep. I just… I tend to, I guess?"
Chu Wanning huffs. "A result of inhabiting countless beds, I presume."
Mo Ran looks rather akin to a dog taking a beating.
She clears her throat. "What did you dream about?"
"Huh?"
"Don't be a dummy," Chu Wanning says, her mouth pitching downward. "What did you dream about?"
"Oh…" Mo Ran's fingers tighten against her wounds—as if attempting to ground herself in the wash of pain it most certainly caused. "I, uh… I dreamed that I was some empress, and I was… uh. I was commanding a bunch of people and showing off."
Chu Wanning's recollection of her own dream is sharp. She flushes, thankful for the darkness. "Stupid," she mutters to herself, even as her cunt clenches around the nothing she's permitted now.
Mo Ran clambers out of bed, dropping down to all fours in her stupid blue-black gym shorts and ragged, hole-marked sports bra. "It's medicinal and warm… if it's a type of spirit-draining ghoul, they usually leave behind residue under where they were siphoning from their victims."
Chu Wanning moves slower, with more purpose. She slips from bed and checks the windows and then the door for any evidence of foul play or any sign of any other type of creature.
Clearly getting nothing, Mo Ran moves to check other options.
"A spirit-draining ghoul leaves a bitter taste in the mouth," Chu Wanning reminds her. "Only Dream-Puppeteers leave traces like this."
Mo Ran freezes, in equal time with Chu Wanning.
"Dream-Puppeteers," Mo Ran echoes.
Chu Wanning shoots her a glance. "Go on."
"It can't be a Dream-Puppeteer," Mo Ran says. "They devour the dreams of living people, often taking multiple people asleep in the same room and melding them together."
Chu Wanning's lips press flat together. "Yes."
Mo Ran stares at her.
Chu Wanning looks away.
"They feast on the dreams of people until they consume their entire soul," Mo Ran says, as Chu Wanning pretends not to hear the ghost of her own lecture. "The scenes that they create are functionally lucid dreams, where all people on whom the puppeteer is feeding are…"
"Aware that they are dreaming and in control of their own selves," Chu Wanning finishes.
The silence between them is thick.
Mo Ran clears her throat first.
"If it's a Dream-Puppeteer," Chu Wanning says, quiet and certain. "They often are made from the residual energy of those who were unable to have creative freedom in life, and they live in wet, often abandoned conditions."
Mo Ran thinks for a moment. "One of the neighbors told me that there used to be a pool. It was closed when a young woman drowned herself in it."
Chu Wanning stares, the exhaustion filling her eyes. "Let's go. Do you recall how to rid a location of a Dream-Puppeteer?"
Mo Ran clears her throat. "Of course! But, uh… Shizun?"
"Yes?" Chu Wanning says, already unzipping the suitcase that Mo Ran evidently moved into the room for her.
"If it's a Dream-Puppeteer, then, uh… then …"
Chu Wanning hid the qiankun pouch within the fabric of her suitcase. "Mo Weiyu," she hisses over her shoulder. "Are you tired of living?"
Mo Ran winces, the implication seemingly lost on her. "Shizun… I—wouldn't it be—we would have to confirm the presence of a Dream-Puppeteer?"
Chu Wanning shuts her suitcase with a slam, her shoulders already wound so tight that she feels rather like she runs the risk of simply snapping. "Taxian-Jun," is all she says.
Mo Ran, helpfully, shuts up.
"Remind me how to defeat a Dream-Puppeteer?" Chu Wanning keeps her steps light as the two cultivators hurry down the quiet halls of the peacefully sleeping apartment building. Forcing repetition and forcing students to educate one another (even if it was merely a farce) has been one of Chu Wanning's most classical teaching styles.
She doesn't glance behind her as Mo Ran recites, "Dream demons usually need to be defeated in the waking world. A dream puppeteer isn't actually a demon, but it follows a similar principle. It needs to be killed in the first waking world, and it needs to be killed in its nest—it's left up here, by the way."
Chu Wanning's flats click to a halt. She turns down the hall to her left, tugging the skirt she fell asleep in a little bit further down her thighs. She ignores the reality that should this be a Dream-Puppeteer, then…well.
It could be worse.
It's just a dream.
All it is is a dream.
"Human beings are not capable of controlling their dreams usually," Chu Wanning says as she scans the hall until her gaze falls upon the door labeled for the locker rooms for the pool. The padlocks are still shiny and clear, not quite taken over by rust or decay yet. It makes it more difficult to cut through the metal or shatter the actual chains themselves, so Chu Wanning takes the time to flip through her little pouch of talismans to find an unlocking one.
She sticks it to the padlock on the ladies' locker room, listening for the telltale click of her charged magic working.
"Right," Mo Ran says from behind her. "We can, uh… we can forget it happened, right?"
Chu Wanning nods stiffly. "Of course."
The lock clicks open, slightly louder than Chu Wanning would have wished in the quiet of the darkened hall. Wincing at the rattling collapse of unlocked metal striking the floor, Chu Wanning steps over the chain and pushes the door open.
The locker room smells like the decaying whisper of old, forgotten chemicals. The dank, musty smell of the wet, untouched space. The flooring is slick, sending Chu Wanning's first sure step shivering across the tile. She slides forward until a strong arm catches her by the waist.
"Easy," Mo Ran whispers. Her voice was bouncing off the walls in the darkness.
The heat summoned the memory of the dream, the lashed arm around her waist, and the heat of the thighs against her chest and belly. Her legs tremble, and Chu Wanning wrenches herself out of Mo Ran's hold. Her flats slide and click against the tile as she gathers herself enough to get her footing. "I can walk!"
Mo Ran holds her hands up, face ducked slightly. "Right, right. I'm sorry, Shizun."
Chu Wanning tugs her shirt into place and continues forward, leaving behind the memory of the dream. She winds through the rusted, forgotten lockers—the detritus of long-abandoned lives left behind in the moment. There are hair ties left on benches and a single, forgotten flip-flop left in a locker. Some t-shirts that were clearly not needed enough are hanging beside trash cans, and the occasional pieces of toilet paper or broken lids of shampoo litter the floor.
All in all, Chu Wanning drinks in the locker room and comes to the same conclusion as Mo Ran.
"This isn't the lair," Mo Ran says, her voice softened in the darkness. It's impossible to avoid the echo, and the gentle whisper only leaves Chu Wanning's spine shuddering under the clothes that she has been wearing for far, far too long.
"It might be in the pool proper," Chu Wanning offers, once they find their way through the web of a locker room—passing the abandoned, darkened showers that only make Chu Wanning shudder in a quiet flicker of an unwelcome image of Mo Ran, soaking wet with thick beads of water running down the muscular line of her tanned back. "We check everywhere before we make our decisions."
It is the ghost.
It has to be the ghost.
Chu Wanning pushes the door to the pool room open with a touch more force than necessary. It grinds open with a screech, exposing the sickly green-blue wash of the pool room.
It appears, all things considered, that the room itself was currently hosting something. The pool chairs being stacked near the walls and the desolate emptiness of the abandoned room spoke of a cleaning crew sweeping through before locking the doors—but the clear, clean water mixed with the subtle flickering and ichorous brilliance of the pool lights spoke of something much different. Chu Wanning gestures for Mo Ran to move slowly and quietly, her gaze flickering over the rippling surface of the pool.
Mo Ran had been correct in her recollection of her lessons. Dream-Puppeteers often tend towards taking up damp and isolated spaces. The water itself provided a reflective surface upon which the puppeteer could watch the scenes play out around them, like a movie that they can pull the strings of. It wasn't uncommon for Dream-Puppeteers to be found in boiler rooms or lurking near the spillways of dams.
"Miss Chen?" Mo Ran calls, drawing Chu Wanning to wince.
What happened to her gesturing to keep quiet? What about her gesturing to watch it?!
"What do you think you're doing?" Chu Wanning turns to hiss, her ponytail whipping around to her own face in the flurry of movement.
"The young woman who drowned here, she was an author," Mo Ran says. "One of our neighbors—the ones with the yappy dog? She said that Miss Chen was her neighbor. She wanted to be a romance author."
It… Chu Wanning huffs. "Romance author."
Mo Ran stares at Chu Wanning for a moment longer than Chu Wanning intends to consider. "I… I thought it might be why she was attacking couples. Their dreams might have been inspiration… for her. …"
Chu Wanning… she didn't…
She didn't disagree. Though, privately, she did think that was a silly reason. Her dreams would make for terrible books. Nothing but filth. Thankful that the green glow from the pool kept her from being too far exposed by the burning of her cheeks, Chu Wanning turned and started to clear the room piece by piece.
"If we are able to stop this without violence." Chu Wanning waits a passing moment. "But you still shouldn't put yourself in unnecessary danger."
"Miss Chen," Mo Ran tries again, apparently happy to ignore Chu Wanning's order to not put herself in any unnecessary danger. "I know that you're looking to finish your book. My girlfriend and I can help."
Girlfriend!
Chu Wanning slips on the slick tile in shock, landing hard on her back in the exact moment that a curious splash emits from the pool.
"Is that it?" The voice—warbled and disconnected—asks. "If you want to be part of the quest for greatness… then please… offer yourselves to me."
"Whatever you need," Mo Ran says, her stupid crooked smile too bright and too brilliant, and Chu Wanning struggles with the sharp pain in her head and her back from the tumble to scramble up to her feet and stop her.
"No!" Chu Wanning barks, but it's far too late.
Green-tinted tendrils of pool water emerge, reflecting within them the captured essence of dozens upon dozens of dreams—people and hearts and minds and souls, all mixed together with the infinite sheen of possibility. Stories, collected there and buried beneath the waves.
One of the tendrils, filled to the brim with dreams that Chu Wanning does not recognize, slams into Mo Ran's form.
Chu Wanning twists on the damp, slimy tile—pushing herself up in time to see Mo Ran's knees buckle. Darkness claws at the edges of her vision—consuming and prickling and picking as Chu Wanning feels so much as if she is drowning.
And drowning
and drowning
and sleeping.
Shower water strikes skin as Chu Wanning throws her head back with a wet gasp. "Fuck!" She cries, her hand shoved between her legs as she leans the full weight of her body against the cold tile walls. The anonymous locker room of whatever anonymous sports complex she was pretending to occupy was empty, save for the shameful woman currently finger-fucking herself in the shower.
Chu Wanning comes into herself as she drops to her knees, her cunt clamping down on the three narrow-boned fingers buried inside of herself. A pathetic, keening whimper escapes her as she presses one hand into the plastic-lined floor and tries to stretch her shoulder enough to shove her fingers deeper—deeper—deeper into herself.
"Come on," she pants, dumped into this stupid body already too far along into the process to mindfully orient herself anywhere else.
(It is a dream. Maybe. Maybe everything else was a dream. Maybe this is the real life, Wanning. Maybe this is the life you live right now.)
"Without me?"
The voice behind her should startle her—but it can't. It can't be like this because she knows it.
She knows the woman behind her.
She knows what it feels like—from other dreams or realities or lifetimes or something—when Mo Ran's heat radiates off her body. She knows what it feels like when Mo Ran kneels down, the width of her shoulders and her chest keeping the warm shower spray from slicking Chu Wanning's skin.
"Mo Ran," Chu Wanning pleads, pulling three exhausted, soaked fingers from herself with a filthy noise. "Mo Ran… just fuck me…"
Something blunt and thick and—if Chu Wanning's strange, fragmented memories of other dreams are true—blue and silicone slides between her hungry, slick folds. Chu Wanning's cunt clamps down around nothing, a spurt of slick bubbling up and running down from her cunt to her clit before it dangles there—viscous and thick—before landing and being washed away by the shower spray.
"Is that what you need, baby?" Mo Ran asks, her voice already pitched low with arousal as the strap slides down from where the tantalizing edge of it toys with the entrance to Chu Wanning's cunt all the way until she's rocking the fat head of it against Chu Wanning's clit. "Do you need my cock inside of you? You want to be fucked all the way open for me, don't you? You want me to split you in half and make you take my big fat cock? You want me to fuck you again and again and again until you're fucking fat with my cum, is that it?"
Chu Wanning would—if she were present enough for this in her state of being—immediately protest Mo Ran's usage of such absolute filth! And yet… and yet she can't. She can't because each word makes her pulse in this dream just the way it does whenever she recalls it. Her cunt twitches, clamping rhythmically down on nothing as if it could manifest Mo Ran's cock inside of it.
She's never been more ready for anything.
"S-shut up," she chokes, her cheek pressing into the hard edge of the floor as she struggles with trembling thighs to keep her hips up enough to chase the grinding pressure of the strap.
Mo Ran keeps rolling her hips, sliding the full length of the faux cock against her cunt again and again until finally—finally—the head of it fits neatly against Chu Wanning's starving fuck slit.
She babbles uselessly against the floor.
The moment it pierces her, Chu Wanning's single cognizant fragment of her mind wonders if this really could be a dream. It feels too real when her body burns to take in the sheer size of Mo Ran's strap. She sobs, her body twisting in a frantic place between attempting to escape the unstoppable push and fucking herself back down onto it harder. She sobs, she begs, and she pleads as Mo Ran takes Chu Wanning's hips in her wide, calloused palms and bottoms out without hesitation.
"That's my girl," Mo Ran groans, as if she could feel the vice-like grip of Chu Wanning's cunt. Her hips disappear from where they were pressed flush to Chu Wanning's hips—the cock sliding out as Chu Wanning wails to be permitted to keep it. To keep her cunt filled, to keep Mo Ran inside of her. She can do it. She can keep it.
Mo Ran laughs, the sound vibrating through her body and into the gentle bounce of the cockhead still just inside of Chu Wanning's pleading body. "Don't worry, baby," Mo Ran swears. "I'll keep your pretty pussy stuffed full of my cock. You'll get every single inch of it. And maybe when I'm done here, I'll fill your ass full of my dick while I fill you up on my fingers. How would you like that, baby? Would you want all five of my fingers inside of you while I fuck your ass in half? Make sure every one of your pretty little holes is stuffed for me."
Chu Wanning has never come in a dream before.
Typically, dreams lack the requisite physical stimulus to get her to completion.
And yet? She has never felt closer.
To complete her threat, Mo Ran bends her chest to Chu Wanning's back and lets her hand circle around Chu Wanning's thighs. Two fingers find her clit with perfect precision as Mo Ran grinds her own breasts into Chu Wanning's back.
She can feel the prick of her nipples and the humid panting of her breath against the shell of her ear. "Do it, Wanning," Mo Ran whispers, "come for me, baby. I know you can. Come for me, and wake up."
Come for her…
Come for her and wake up.
Chu Wanning cannot fathom what that means. This is her life now.
What need does she have to wake up? She is Chu Wanning; she is an all-star tennis player with a collection of white mini-skirts and matching polos that barely cover the cut of her hipbones. She is Chu Wanning; she is married to the captain of the national rugby team.
She is Chu Wanning; she is being fucked in half on the floor of the showers after she won the international doubles. She is Chu Wanning.
She is Chu Wanning, and Mo Ran's fingers slide—one on either side of her clit for a moment before they move to touch her in sharp and short circles, patching perfectly to the beat of the cock fucking her in half. She feels herself start to clench, her body tightening in a perfect line down her body. Orgasm has always strung her so tight that she thought she would snap. She has always felt like she was on the verge of unbecoming. Of destruction—entirely and wholly.
"You're so close, babe," Mo Ran urges, her breath starting to thin where she pants in Chu Wanning's ear. "C'mon. I want you to come like this, and then… and then we can do it right. Come for me, and then I promise, Shizun, I promise that I'll leave you alone or eat you out or whatever it is you want me to do. Please… c'mon. Come back to me."
Chu Wanning's arms give completely, and then her legs. She feels herself held aloft by nothing but Mo Ran's grip as she's pounded into again and again—her cunt nothing but a warm, wet hole to take Mo Ran's cock again and again. She feels how hard it is to fuck her as she tightens; she feels the way that Mo Ran pushes to invade her body no matter how hard it fights to clench down and tighten in the early waves of oblivion.
When she breaks, it's with a wordless cry of obscene want.
She writhes in Mo Ran's arms as wash upon wash of untold pleasure consumes her—lapping at the inside of her lungs and pushing out her chest. She doesn't even think she breathes.
And then—
It's over.
Chu Wanning breaks the surface with a gasp, her thighs still trembling as she fights against the still waters of the pool.
"Fuck! Shizun, I'm so sorry!"
A hand plunges down to grab her. The water grips at Chu Wanning's sodden clothes as Mo Ran heaves her out of the pool.
Her vision is blurry, confused by the pulsing post-orgasmic rush of adrenaline and the strange knowledge of the dream mixed with reality. The room that the Dream-Puppeteer was in feels… dirtier.
"I handled it," Mo Ran says. "I, uh… I tried to talk to you to wake you up… but, uh …"
Mo Ran clears her throat. "I thought the water would help."
Chu Wanning scrambles up until she's standing. The pool water had twisted her shirt almost halfway around her torso and hitched her skirt up over her hips. With a furious noise, she fixes both as quickly as she can. She's missing a shoe, but she certainly isn't going back into the pool for it. "I… it helped. Thank you."
"Dream-Puppeteer is gone." Mo Ran says, her voice thin and slightly awkward. "Um… Shizun?"
Come for me, and then I promise, Shizun, I promise that I'll leave you alone or eat you out or whatever it is you want me to do. Please… c'mon. Come back to me.
Chu Wanning darkens. "Yes?"
"Can I ask you something," Mo Ran asks, her voice sounding almost vulnerable.
Come back to me, me and then I promise, Shizun, I promise that I'll leave you alone or eat you out or whatever it is you want me to do. Please… c'mon. Come back me. Come for me and then I promise, Shizun, I promise that I'll leave you alone or eat you out or whatever it is you want me to do. Please… c'mon. Come back me. Come for me, me and then I promise, Shizun, I promise that I'll leave you alone or eat you out or whatever it is you want me to do. Please… c'mon. Come back to me.
Swallowing, Chu Wanning turned to towards the exit. "What is it?"
"… are you not wearing underwear?"