Chapter 52: Stage

The door of the infirmary closed behind her.
Xiahou Ming did not leave immediately.
She leaned against the wall beside the door, buried her face in the shadows, and tried to calm her violently beating heart a little.
The words of squad leader Shen Mo kept echoing in her ears.
“Tomorrow is the school anniversary.”
Only one night left.
She couldn’t continue to be passive like this.
She had to do something.
Do something… crazy enough, out of the ordinary enough.
Do something… that could make that woman turn her attention back to her.
But to do something “crazy,” she needed a suitable “stage.”
The bell for class had already rung, and the campus was empty and quiet.
The only sounds were the rustling of leaves in the wind and the faint shouting of slogans coming from the distant playground.
Xiahou Ming subconsciously walked along the shadows of the wall, avoiding all main roads where teachers might pass by.
She returned to the dilapidated red brick bungalow.
The wooden door that she had pushed open herself was now wide open, inviting her to step in again.
In the warehouse, everything was exactly the same as before, yet seemed completely different.
The dumbbells that she had kicked over and the jumping boxes that were knocked over were still in their places.
She could even see that on the ground in a corner, there seemed to be a little bit of… her and Lin Xiaomei’s blood.
But this time, when she approached the place where Lin Xiaomei had just fallen, another smell entered her nostrils.
It wasn’t the smell of blood or dust.
It was a kind of smell… that only a woman’s body emits when it loses control.
Xiahou Ming’s heart skipped a beat.
She looked at the darker, damp mark on the ground.
She remembered Lin Xiaomei’s face at noon, which was filled with a happy smile because of her violence.
She remembered how she had felt the night before, curled up in her skirt, her body shaking uncontrollably.
So…
It turns out that there is really only a fine line between pain and happiness.
It turns out that I can really turn a person into this.
She slowly squatted down.
She stretched out her hand and gently touched the mark that had not yet completely dried with her fingertips.
Warm.
With Lin Xiaomei’s body temperature.
Then, driven by an impulse that even she couldn’t understand, she leaned over and pressed her cheek against it.
Through the rough ground, she seemed to be able to feel the girl’s last trembling and warmth left here.
Her lips were only a few millimeters away from the mark.
Finally, she stuck out her tongue.
Gently, licked it.
Salty.
With a hint of rust.
Was it tears or blood…
Or something else.
She couldn’t tell anymore.
But at this moment, she confirmed one thing with great clarity.
Lin Xiaomei, from the inside out, from soul to body, everything was already… hers.
This thought suddenly brought her back to her senses.
What…
What the hell am I doing!?
She suddenly jumped up from the ground, staggered back several steps, and hit her back hard against the wall.
“Vomit—!”
She couldn’t bear it any longer, so she leaned over and began to retch violently at the dusty junk piled in the corner.
She couldn’t vomit anything, only sour gastric juice burning her throat.
She wasn’t disgusted by the traces left by Lin Xiaomei.
She was disgusted by herself.
She felt disgusted by the way she had just acted… like a wild animal, licking the traces of her prey.
That wasn’t the “him” of the past.
That wasn’t the “her” she thought she was.
That was a… a real monster that she didn’t recognize at all.
She held onto the wall and staggered to her feet, roughly wiping the acid from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
Then she turned around and rushed out of the warehouse that terrified her.
She took deep breaths of the fresh afternoon air, trying to expel all the foul air from her lungs.
No.
That place wasn’t right.
She needed a cleaner place.
A place that belonged only to the present.
A place… where she could get away from it all.
A place… worthy of that woman.
Her second target was on the other side of the teaching building—the boiler room where there was always a loud roar and scorching hot air.
She hid behind a row of bushes and watched from a distance.
She saw several rusty metal pipes crisscrossing the outer wall of the boiler room.
Among them, the thickest one extended straight upward and disappeared in the direction of the roof of the old teaching building.
Something in her heart was touched by this scene.
But that wasn’t enough.
The most crucial “altar” was still missing.
Ultimately, her goal was the rooftop of the old teaching building.
She walked up the secondary stairwell that she used to skip classes.
The stairwell was covered in dust and cobwebs, and with every step, a few grains of sand and gravel fell from the concrete steps under her feet.
She finally arrived at the iron door whose paint had completely peeled off.
The door was locked with a huge padlock, but that didn’t stop her.
She picked up half a brick from the ground and smashed it hard against the rusted lock.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
After a few hits, the fragile lock broke.
The scene before her made her frown.
The situation on the rooftop was even worse than she had imagined.
The corners were filled with broken tables and chairs, covered in a thick layer of bird droppings and dust.
The ground was covered with weeds, stubbornly pushing out from the cracks in the cement.
She walked to the center of the rooftop, next to the smaller water tank.
She reached out and touched the tank, and her hand was immediately covered with reddish-brown rust powder.
She saw that there was a crack at the bottom of the water tank caused by rust, just like an ugly scar.
No.
It didn’t work here either.
All places that belonged to the “past” had decayed and broken down.
They could no longer accommodate her new plan.
A huge feeling of disappointment overwhelmed her.
She walked to the edge of the rooftop in a daze, leaned on the railing, and overlooked the entire campus.
At this moment, her eyes subconsciously turned to the rooftop of the taller main teaching building not far away.
Then, she saw it.
On the edge of the rooftop, there was a familiar figure sitting there quietly.
Like a lonely black period.
Xiahou Ming’s heart skipped a beat.
As if sensing her gaze, the small figure in the distance slowly turned her head.
Their sights met in mid-air, separated by dozens of meters and through the wind-stirred air.
Xiahou Ming couldn’t see the other person’s expression clearly.
But she just knew.
She knew that Yu Yuhui was waiting for her.
She understood instantly.
The only stage could only be there.
This was where Yu Yuhui was.
It was their place of “now.”
Without any hesitation, she turned around and ran down the abandoned old teaching building.
The sky had become gloomy at some point.
The thick dark clouds, like a huge block of lead, weighed heavily over the small town.
The wind was getting stronger and stronger, bringing with it a damp smell before the rain, making Xiahou Ming’s school uniform, which was still stained with mud, rustle.
A pale streak of lightning flashed across the distant skyline.
Immediately afterward, a dull thunder rolled in.
It was going to rain.