After Saving The Villain, He Had Sex With The Female Ghost. Chapter 15

Chapter 15 The Surinam Toad (Part Four)

A World for Two

Qingwa County wasn’t large; it was only a two-hour high-speed train ride away. Located in the southwestern border region, it was shrouded in mist year-round, with lush, dripping green mountains and forests. The county seat was situated halfway up a mountain. As soon as she stepped off the train, Chu Yu felt a blast of cold wind and pulled up the collar of her windbreaker.

It was a pure black windbreaker of a certain bird brand. She had bought two—one to wear and one to burn. Li Heru, wearing the identical jacket, was waiting for her outside the platform.

“Hurry, hurry! Let’s go while there aren’t many people.” Li Heru was excited, shouting at her while looking at the distant mountain range.

Chu Yu waved, carrying her usual hiking pack, and walked toward Li Heru with immense strength.

After giving the driver the address of the pre-booked guesthouse, Li Heru spent the entire ride glued to the window, chattering away about the scenery.

She mentioned a park she used to visit as a child, wondering why it had changed so much; a pie shop that had somehow survived for so many years despite how awful the food was, questioning who on earth was eating there; and a school she had attended when she was young.

Chu Yu put on her headphones, pretending to be on a call, while responding to Li Heru’s every comment. Strangely, not only were she and Li Heru both born in Qingwa County, but their life trajectories were also similar.

She had an impression of many of the places Li Heru mentioned, but the memories weren’t deep. It was like a cassette player placed on a cabinet during childhood—the tape whirred, but standing beneath the cabinet, all she remembered was a stuffy, strange smell and the black-and-white static of white noise.

“What about your home? You never talk about it. Since you’re back, do you want to go see it?” Li Heru suddenly asked her.

Chu Yu froze. To be honest, she had never thought about returning, because there was no one left here she needed to see.

“I, I don’t think so. They seem to be gone,” Chu Yu said. The driver in the front seat suddenly cast a look of pity at her through the rearview mirror. She pursed her lips.

“Do you want to go see yours?” she asked Li Heru.

“Me? I grew up in an orphanage. There’s nothing to see,” Li Heru smiled. Chu Yu was surprised, as many of Li Heru’s habits suggested she came from a privileged background. Chu Yu had assumed she was a little princess born with a silver spoon.

“There was a teacher at the orphanage who was very kind to me. She often brought me food from outside. Her daughter was my age. When I got older and started school, she would bring me things her daughter no longer used, and she would take me to her house to play.” Li Heru turned her head to look at Chu Yu, her long hair falling beside her face, showing a rare gentleness.

Chu Yu’s heart stirred slightly, and she looked away.

“What year were you born?” she asked. “If she were still alive, she’d be twenty-seven now,” Li Heru said.

The wind swept a fallen leaf from outside the window onto Chu Yu’s lap. She picked it up, her expression surprised: “I’m also twenty-seven this year. What a coincidence. Maybe the three of us even went to the same school.”

The corners of Li Heru’s eyes curved. She covered her mouth with a fist and chuckled: “What a coincidence.”

A chain store of the pie shop happened to flash past the window. Chu Yu pointed outside: “That one, my mother used to love buying it. It was truly awful, and now it’s a chain store.”

“You think it’s bad too, right? The one you mentioned earlier is their main store now. I can’t believe it, time flies,” Chu Yu sighed.

After dropping off their luggage, they decided to rest properly. Their appointment with Huang Lin’s mother was for tomorrow, meaning they had an entire afternoon and evening to enjoy themselves today.

“Let’s go eat that pie. Taste your childhood flavor,” Chu Yu announced. Li Heru, as if by magic, had changed clothes again, braiding her curly long hair into a side plait and donning a wide-brimmed straw hat.

She called it her vacation outfit.

“Oh, great. You dragged me all this way just to eat pie? Aren’t we having a feast?” Li Heru complained. Chu Yu made a gesture of surrender: “It’s about revisiting childhood! What do you want to eat? We’ll go eat it.”

In the end, the two of them were sitting in the cramped pie shop. Because it was an old establishment, the decor wasn’t great, but business was booming. Chu Yu shamelessly occupied a four-person table by herself and ordered every single pie on the menu from top to bottom, finally stopping the owner’s look of displeasure.

Li Heru sat next to her, making it easy to eat. Food outside was different from food at home. At home, she usually used the offering table as a dining table, and everything she ate counted as an offering. Outside, it was inconvenient to light incense, and without incense, ghosts couldn’t eat.

But that didn’t stop a gluttonous ghost. Chu Yu openly pulled an electronic incense stick from her bag, flipped the switch, and it not only flashed red light but also played chanting sounds. The accumulated merit points were equivalent to ten hours of traditional incense per minute.

“Miss, what are you doing? This is a restaurant, you…” The owner walked over, angry yet hesitant. Chu Yu looked calm and played dumb: “It’s my birthday. I can’t light a candle for my birthday?”

This choked the owner. Her brows furrowed, and the nasolabial folds around her mouth almost twisted into a nutcracker expression. Finally, she sighed and walked away helplessly.

There were many types of pies, plus side dishes and soup, filling the large table. People occasionally stared at Chu Yu, and she would look straight back: “Can I help you?”

The person would then awkwardly walk away. Li Heru, holding a pie, couldn’t help but burst into laughter. “You really are something…”

Then she took another bite of the pie and said, half-sentimental, half-reminiscing: “Nothing has changed. That’s good.”

Speaking of no change, the flavor of the pie truly hadn’t changed. The vegetarian ones were bland, and the meat ones tasted fishy. It was still that awful. But many things had long since ceased to be as they were back then. Chu Yu couldn’t understand how the deceased Li Heru could utter the sentiment that nothing had changed.

Perhaps it was precisely because so many things had changed that this pie, whose flavor had remained consistent for decades, seemed so precious.

Even her own memories of Qingwa County were sparse. Brilliant memories had turned into fragments, sticking straight into the soft brain tissue, causing pain whenever she tried to think. She might as well not dwell on the past and keep her focus on the future.

After eating the pies, they went to the lakeside to enjoy the breeze.

A few schools of small fish swam beneath the aquatic plants by the river. The water was clear and sparkled in the sunlight, tempting tourists to touch it. But deterred by her terrible memories of the aquarium, Chu Yu withdrew her hand.

“I loved coming here when I was little, though I didn’t come often. Only during elementary school field trips. There used to be a lot of playground equipment here, an inflatable castle, a fishing pond—it was big and beautiful.” Li Heru framed the view with her hands, squinting one eye as she looked through the frame.

Chu Yu did the same. All she saw in the frame was a desolate, gray square. No one was selling toys, not even water.

The unwatered lawn was patchy, and a few clumps of common roses bloomed in the corner, their colors dull and messy, like haphazardly stacked old clothes or silent bags of fertilizer. They didn’t look like flowers; they lacked vitality.

“What about you when you were little? Didn’t you also grow up in Qingwa County?” Li Heru looked at her.

Me? I don’t know. That was Chu Yu’s honest thought, but saying it out loud would sound too dismissive.

“I didn’t come often when I was little either, but it was very beautiful here,” Chu Yu said, looking around, unable to find anything familiar.

“My memory isn’t very good,” Chu Yu added.

Li Heru glanced at her, saying meaningfully, “I know.”

Huang Lin’s mother met them at a teahouse, in a private room on the third floor. Outside the window was a large bamboo forest, and through the swirling mist, they could see clusters of villages. The scenery was quite beautiful.

Huang Lin’s mother wore light makeup, her hair neatly combed, and a pearl necklace over her high-necked thin sweater, giving her the appearance of an elegant, serious, and restrained noblewoman.

However, she looked utterly exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, deep nasolabial folds, and her hand trembled slightly when she reached for the teacup. Seeing Chu Yu staring at her hand, she explained: “It’s an old problem. It’s been like this ever since Xiao Lin left.”

“Have you seen Huang Lin again since she disappeared five years ago?” Chu Yu asked. Huang Lin’s mother shook her head, her eyebrows furrowed into a frown: “This, it’s embarrassing to say, but I saw her once. But at the time, I was so angry I lost my head. I slapped her and told her to get out… I haven’t seen her since then.”

“Do you have any news about my daughter now?” Huang Lin’s mother asked, her eyes pleading. Chu Yu pondered for a moment and did not answer her question directly: “Let’s understand the situation first. You must tell the truth. Why did you hit her then? And how did you see her?”

Huang Lin’s mother’s face alternated between pale and flushed. She clenched her hands and remained silent for a long while before covering her face: “It was half a year after she disappeared. I was at work, and she rushed in, yelling at me, saying she had a gift for me, and then threw a box at me.”

“I didn’t open it. She demanded I open it right there, or she would never come back.” Huang Lin’s mother’s hands trembled. Then she picked up the tea, drank half a cup, took a long breath, and continued.

“To keep her, I opened it. Inside was a used pregnancy test stick, showing two lines.”

“And then you hit her?” Chu Yu asked. Huang Lin’s mother nodded, her expression dark: “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so impulsive. I should have pretended everything was fine, tricked her into coming home, and then dealt with it. That way, she wouldn’t have run away.”

? Chu Yu’s eyes widened slightly. She also picked up her tea and took a sip.

A story about a delinquent youth and an overly controlling mother? But honestly, what kind of delinquency is pregnancy? She just underestimated the harm pregnancy does to the body—a complete fool.

“She did it to spite me, I know, but she was hurting herself too! Why would she do that? She is the flesh and blood that came from my body. Every inch of her skin, every muscle, every milliliter of blood belongs to me. How dare she hurt herself without my permission?”

Huang Lin’s mother gritted her teeth, growing more agitated as she spoke. Suddenly, she slammed her fist onto the table. The wooden tea tray clattered, echoing in the spacious, quiet room, startling the waiter who peeked in through the doorway.

At the same moment, the back of Chu Yu’s hand burned with pain. A tearing, heart-wrenching sensation spread from the back of her hand, as if a black hole was being forcibly ripped open there. She clutched her hand, beads of sweat rolling down her face.

A cold embrace wrapped around her. Li Heru’s voice was ethereal, as if from the heavens, and she said.

“Deep breaths. I’m here.”

[Author’s Note]

Time for the little couple to be together~ My house cat is too cute, I’ve been playing with it until now, almost didn’t finish writing [crying][crying][crying]

Revised version: Youth is a gender-neutral term [cheering][cheering]