Chapter 9: Selection
Four o’clock in the morning.
The whole town was still asleep, with only a few families who had gotten up early to make tofu still having dim lights on.
Xiahou Ming wandered through the deserted streets like a ghost.
She avoided the main roads, instead venturing into familiar, unlit alleyways.
The air, thick with the smell of garbage and damp earth, filled her nostrils.
The tall wall of the school appeared before her eyes.
She looked around and made sure there was no one around.
Then she took a few steps back, took a short run, grabbed a loose brick on the wall, and slid in neatly.
Although this body was weak, the memories and skills of the past were still there.
She jumped from the wall over two meters high, and when she landed, she used a forward roll to dissipate most of the force.
But her knees were still a little numb from the shock.
She stood up lightly, dusted off her hands, crouched down, and carefully approached her target, the girls’ dormitory behind the teaching building.
And the simple clothes drying area below the dormitory.
The school nights were quieter and more eerie than she had imagined.
The dormitory building was pitch black, like a huge, silent beehive.
She could imagine hundreds of girls she didn’t know living there, each sound asleep in their own dreams.
And she, a “same kind” in body but an “alien” in spirit, was spying on their territory like a perverted thief.
This realization made her feel physically nauseous.
Finish it quickly.
She said to herself.
She slipped into the shadows of the clothes-drying yard, her heart pounding with nervousness.
At this moment, a light suddenly came on in a window on the third floor of the girls’ dormitory above her head.
Xiahou Ming’s whole body stiffened.
She immediately turned off the flashlight, pressed herself tightly against a row of sheets, and held her breath.
She heard the sound of a window opening, then a girl coughing, and what seemed to be the sound of pouring water and drinking it.
Those few minutes felt like a century to Xiahou Ming.
She was completely motionless, her heartbeat seemingly stopped.
She could even make out the vague outline of the girl in front of the window.
Fortunately, after a few minutes, the lights went out, and the windows closed.
Xiahou Ming was drenched in cold sweat.
She turned her attention back to the “goods” hanging on the wire in front of her.
Rows of girls’ underwear and skirts were hung here to dry.
In the dim light of the early morning, they swayed gently in the breeze.
Like pieces of peeled, soft skin, they exuded a strange scent mixed with different brands of laundry detergent.
She felt like a complete pervert.
She forced herself not to think about it and started to carry out her task—”selection”.
She didn’t know what good-looking meant and could only judge based on the intuition of her past self as “Xiahou Ming”.
The pink one with the cartoon bunny on it was too girly.
No.
The one with lace looked cumbersome.
No.
That yellow one… looked like the rag she’d had at home for years.
No.
She was like a picky customer, inspecting the rows of “merchandise.”
The scene was so absurd that even she wanted to laugh, but couldn’t.
Finally, her eyes fell on a dark blue straight vest dress.
The style was very simple, with no waistline and no extra decorations, just a piece of cloth that went straight up and down.
This… should be okay, right?
She thought.
At least, it won’t look too awkward.
When you wear it, you won’t look like a walking palette.
She didn’t dare to stay any longer and decided to end the battle quickly.
So, like a real thief, she looked around to make sure there was no movement in the dormitory building.
Then she quickly rushed forward and pulled the still damp skirt off the hanger.
The moment it was pulled off, a small cloth tag with a name on it, which was sewn on the skirt, broke due to the pulling and fell to the ground.
She was shocked and did not pick it up, forcing herself not to look at the name on it.
I don’t know who it belongs to, and that’s for the best.
Just as she tucked her skirt into her coat and prepared to return the way she came—
“Meow—!”
A shrill scream broke the silence of the night.
A skinny wild cat, probably startled by her movements, jumped out from behind the trash can.
“Who’s there!?”
In the distance, the scolding voice of security guard Old Man Li and the beam of a flashlight were heard getting closer and closer.
Oh sht!
Xiahou Ming cursed in her heart; it was too late to return the same way.
She made a prompt decision and turned around, rushing in another direction—the untended, weed-covered hillside behind the school.
She ran through the darkness like a hunted beast.
Sharp branches scratched her cheeks and arms, leaving streaks of burning blood.
She slipped and tumbled down the hillside, her body covered in mud and rotten leaves.
Finally, she scrambled out through a hole dug by a dog at the bottom of the wall.
The security guard’s flashlight swept the hillside in vain.
She climbed over the wall and disappeared into the darkness of the alley.
On the second-floor corridor of the teaching building, a thin figure slowly walked out from the shadows.
The person looked in the direction where Xiahou Ming disappeared, with no expression on her face.
She walked downstairs and came to the clothes drying yard.
She squatted down and searched carefully on the ground in the dim light.
Soon, she found the small white cloth tag that had fallen on the muddy ground.
She picked it up and brushed the dust off it with her fingertips.
On the cloth tag, three beautiful words were embroidered with blue thread.
She looked at the name and a thoughtful smile appeared on her face.
Then, she took out the Sony Walkman radio, pressed the record button, and whispered to the air in a voice that only she could hear:
“Nighttime infiltration.
Target: the laundry area of the girls’ dormitory.
Reason: To complete my mission.”
“The process was full of surprises.
It was very interesting.”
After she finished speaking, she turned off the recorder, put the small name tag and the radio into her pocket, and then disappeared into the darkness like a real ghost.
*
When Xiahou Ming returned home, the sky in the east was already turning pale, and it was five o’clock in the morning.
She was dirty and tired, and her arms and face were burning.
There was no time to sleep.
The first thing she did was rush to the bathroom and rinse the dirt and wounds off her body with cold water over and over again.
The cold water irritated her skin, but it also made her confused mind a little clearer.
Then she had to deal with the stolen goods.
She carefully filled the largest basin in the house with water, put the muddy dark blue dress in it, and scrubbed it over and over with her hands.
She looked at the foam containing mud and sand rising in the basin and felt that what she was washing was not a skirt, but the evidence of her own crime.
After washing, she wrung the skirt dry and hung it on a clothes hanger in front of the only window in her room that could provide ventilation.
The sky was completely bright.
She looked at the wet skirt, which was dripping with water in the early morning light.
She knew she had no way out.
She felt a deep exhaustion, not physically, but mentally.
But she couldn’t sleep.
She had to prepare for the humiliating trial that was coming.