Blood Neon-Chapter 22

Chapter 22
A Short Break
The blaring sound of the alarm clock woke Zhang Qiming.
Still keeping his eyes closed, he fumbled for his phone and tapped it, then decisively turned over and resumed his communication with the god of dreams.
However, barely two minutes after his consciousness drifted off again, the second alarm rang.
With a bit of resignation, he propped up his upper body and turned off the phone screen once more.
The fatigue had yet to fully dissipate, and as his brain came back online, waves of pain surging through his body made his brows furrow tightly together, as if he were wearing a mask of agony.
Gritting his teeth, he still managed to put on his clothes and got out of bed.
When someone is forcibly woken up without sufficient sleep, and their brain hasn’t gone through the proper boot-up sequence, it tends to fall into a chaotic mess of jumbled thoughts, as if just pulled out of a washing machine.
Zhang Qiming squinted his eyes and stumbled toward the bathroom.
After completing his first daily task, and gaining +5 activity points, he felt slightly more awake. He returned to his room, picked up a cup, and headed to the living room.
“You’re up. Good morning.”
A gentle and pleasant morning greeting came from nearby.
“Mm, morning.”
He responded casually, then picked up the cold cup and poured himself a glass of water with practiced ease.
?! Something was off.
Suddenly sensing something unusual, Zhang Qiming snapped alert, his consciousness synchronization rate spiking.
In the living room, nestled in the corner of the sofa, was a petite girl curled up like a ball.
That woke him up completely.
“Forgot to turn off your alarm?”
Lin Ying was wrapped in a blanket, with only her head sticking out, looking at him as she asked.
Zhang Qiming first patted his head, shaking off the last of the sluggishness, then spoke.
“No, I actually planned to get up around this time to go to school.”
He sat on the other end of the sofa and took a big gulp of water.
“Seriously?”
“What do you mean, seriously?” He looked a bit confused.
From beneath the blanket, Lin Ying extended a tendril and pointed at Zhang Qiming’s head.
“You’re still planning to go to school in that condition?”
According to Lin Ying, she could more or less control the extent of the “influence” her body had on others. If she wanted, she could make things appear normal—just like now—when showing parts of herself to others.
Of course, this reduction in effect wasn’t absolute. If this was Zhang Qiming’s first time seeing that tendril, he’d probably already be back in bed. It was just that, after a few intentional or unintentional glimpses, he’d gradually developed the ability to remain calm in front of those pitch-black appendages. This adaptive study was, in fact, one part of an experimental discussion the two had the previous night.
Zhang Qiming touched the bandage on his head, looking a bit helpless.
“What else can I do?”
“Call in sick, obviously. What other option is there?”
Lin Ying couldn’t understand what was so hard about it.
“Just send a message to your teacher or make a call. Your parents aren’t even home.”
“Ah, I can’t really do that myself, emmmm…”
The boy seemed to be caught in some sort of inner struggle.
Then just contact your parents, she thought. Don’t tell me you love studying that much? Lin Ying quietly ridiculed him in her heart. Or does your school have some sort of perfect attendance award?
“Bad relationship with your parents?”
Lin Ying asked. It was the only semi-logical guess she could think of.
Zhang Qiming didn’t really react—just maintained his conflicted expression.
She didn’t press further and simply watched in silence. After all, it was his own business.
But when she thought about it more carefully, she realized she had gone through a phase like that when she was younger too. Fearing anything that deviated from the norm. Fearing anything that made her stand out. Afraid of being late, of getting caught without her school badge, of asking for leave and becoming “different”...
Basically, she just feared trouble back then.
But she didn’t feel this guy matched that vibe. He had thick eyebrows and big eyes—didn’t look like the type.
...
In the end, Zhang Qiming sent a message to his teacher, saying that he wasn’t feeling well and needed to rest, and that one of his parents would follow up with the teacher later.
After that, he also messaged one of his parents, roughly explaining the situation.
After completing that series of actions, he let out a long sigh and sank back into the sofa.
“Good job.”
Lin Ying, who had been watching the whole process from the side, commented with a hint of admiration.
“Mm…”
Zhang Qiming exhaled again and replied weakly.
“Still in pain? Then it’s better to take another half a painkiller.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Actually, I should be the one thanking you—for letting me spend a night in a soft place again after so long.”
Lin Ying shrugged as she handed over the pill.
“Not going back to rest?”
“No need. This is the time I usually wake up anyway.”
Zhang Qiming looked relaxed and natural, which made sense—after all, a Tuesday when he didn’t have to go to school didn’t come every week. Faced with a sudden, unexpected break, people often got a bit excited from not wanting to “waste” it, which effectively reduced any lingering drowsiness.
“Your school starts at 8 o’clock?”
“Yeah, it’s the standard for high school.”
“That late? Well, no wonder then.”
Thinking back to the times around 8 a.m. when she’d seen a few middle schoolers sprinting with bread in their mouths, Lin Ying finally solved a long-standing mystery.
“Late? I think it’s already pretty early. Elementary school starts at 9.”
Lin Ying could only shake her head slightly at that.
“Back when I went to school, we had to get up before 6 a.m., and be at school by 6:30.”
“Ah... that’s rough. Students in your world had it pretty hard.”
Zhang Qiming was dumbfounded. Indeed, contrast really did make a difference.
“You all have it better. Sleeping an extra hour a day is far more meaningful than studying for another hour.”
Lin Ying couldn’t help but reflect. Ideally, a normal adult should get 8 hours of sleep a day, yet students in their prime years of growth were being forced to compress their rest time and drain their energy. It was a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Poor little bookworms—how laughable.
“Really? There are a few top students in our class who barely sleep at all, and they’re even kind of proud of it.”
“Well, that’s their choice. You told me before that you have twelve years of compulsory education, so I can understand them.”
Lin Ying picked up a paper cup and took a sip of water too.
“By the way, I haven’t asked—are your parents off traveling?”
“They… it’s a bit complicated.”
“?” Lin Ying made a question mark behind her using a tendril.
“To put it simply, my dad is a small businessman. He’s basically out on the road all year round, and usually only comes home for two or three weeks during the New Year.”
“Got it.”
“When I was in elementary school, my parents got divorced, and I stayed with my father.”
“A year or two later, he remarried. The woman he married is now my stepmother.”
“As for my biological mother, I think she also got remarried. She didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with the past anymore, so naturally she hasn’t come to see me again since.”
“Actually, my current mom treats me pretty well. It’s just that... there’s still some awkwardness between us, I guess.”
Letting out a breath after finishing his sentence, Zhang Qiming took a sip of water. “That’s basically the situation in my family.”
“She went out together with your dad?” Lin Ying asked.
“No, she’s usually at home. It’s just that she happened to be on a business trip recently. She left on Monday and should be back in another couple of days.”
Lin Ying glanced around the clean and tidy home furnishings. She’d already felt earlier that this wasn’t the level of cleanliness a high school boy living alone would be capable of. Now it made sense—someone else had been keeping the place in order.
Looking at the boy quietly sipping water and taking his medicine, Lin Ying couldn’t help but feel a bit moved.
“You’ve got it tough.”
No wonder he’d ended up with the personality of a hotheaded rookie. Clearly, the influence of his family environment couldn’t be separated from it.
Wait—he wasn’t even at the age of leaving his family yet. So calling it his “original family” didn’t really apply. At this stage in life, for a teenager, the family made up half of their world—and the other half was school. These two spaces were the main arenas that shaped a person’s character.
In her past life, Lin Ying had just been an ordinary person.
Though as an adult he’d been tough enough to follow the International Red Cross alone to Africa, his childhood, adolescence, and young adult years had been fairly uneventful. There were no dramatic soap-opera-style stories in his family or personal life.
His parents both had stable, ironclad jobs, and they lived pretty relaxed day-to-day. Their parenting style had been relatively open-minded. His grandparents’ generation had mostly come from work units too, all with pensions and their own homes, so there wasn’t any pressure to support them. The whole extended family lived comfortably in a fourth-tier city, and he’d never had to worry about his family situation.
…
The two of them continued chatting like that for around half an hour. As the sunlight gradually warmed the room, Lin Ying stood up and said she’d go make some breakfast.
“No need, I’ll go cook something instead.”
Zhang Qiming tried to stop her.
“It’s fine—just think of it as a little gesture from a guest. Besides, you’re the injured one here. Just sit tight and wait for food.”
After checking the contents of the fridge, Lin Ying pulled out a few slices of toast.
As a being whose original form didn’t require sleep, Lin Ying had taken a brief tour around the not-so-large home after waking from her light rest.
Back when she saw the toaster in the kitchen, she’d already been itching to try it out.
“Do you have any butter?”
She called out to the living room, then added, “Not the kind in your computer.”
“?” Zhang Qiming had just taken a sip of honey tea and nearly spat it out.
Turned out… they really did have both kinds.
—
With the apron on, Lin Ying preheated the frying pan a little, cut off a reasonably sized chunk of butter from the block, tossed it into the pan, and quickly stuffed the rest back into the fridge.
Accompanied by the sizzling sound, the butter quickly melted into a pool of lightly colored liquid.
It was just a cheap, salted, regular butter—not the kind of refined, clarified butter that barely showed any color when melted.
She took out two eggs, cracked them open into the pan, and watched as the egg whites rapidly turned white before her eyes, releasing an intense crackling sound as they clashed with the hot oil.
Turning on the range hood with practiced ease, Lin Ying then sliced up four pieces of luncheon meat and set them aside. She flipped the eggs over.
As the toaster let out a crisp “ding,” she quickly placed two slices of toast onto the prepared plates, then split the nearly-finished fried eggs with a spatula, placing one on each slice of bread.
She threw another small piece of butter into the pan, and once it melted, she added the luncheon meat. A few quick flips later, they were ready to be taken out. After that, she tossed in two more slices of unprocessed bread, switched the heat to low, and gently pressed them with a wooden spatula, letting them soak up all the remaining butter. Once the side touching the pan turned a tempting golden brown, they were just about ready.
She placed the two buttery slices on top of the others—two sandwiches, done.
What a pity there was no lettuce or tomato in the house. The presentation and taste would’ve been even better. Lin Ying sighed internally at the thought.
.
Zhang Qiming, already seduced by the rich, unmistakable smell of butter from the living room, finally saw the long-awaited arrival of breakfast.
He placed two prepared cartons of milk on either side of the table, eyes shining as he watched Lin Ying walking over with two plates.
“Ah, I forgot to ask earlier—this milk is room temperature. Do you want it heated?”
Zhang Qiming paused while unwrapping a straw, realizing too late.
“No need. It’s fine like this.”
Lin Ying sat across from him, clearly unconcerned about such minor details.
Both of them, a little eager, picked up the sandwiches and took their first bite.
“So good!”
Not even finished chewing, and not caring that the food was still a bit hot, Zhang Qiming rushed to praise her.
“Ah, be careful when you bite into the egg,” Lin Ying warned, chewing in small, quick bites. “It’s probably soft-boiled. If you’re not careful, it’ll run onto your hand.”
But she wasn’t paying much attention to the boy’s expression at the moment. She was fully immersed in the emotion building up inside her.
After so long without the chance to cook, she finally got to make a meal with her own hands again.
She’d never exactly loved cooking in her previous life, but this feeling of playing around in the kitchen, and even more—the feeling of sharing something she made—was deeply nostalgic.
She hadn’t expected to get another chance like this anytime soon. Then, all of a sudden, she stumbled upon one.
That was why she’d insisted so firmly on doing it herself earlier. Who knew how long it would be until the next opportunity came?
She took another bite. The unique aroma of the buttery toast, and the subtle sweetness from the butter-fried egg made Lin Ying squint her eyes in satisfaction.
This body was perfectly capable of normal eating, with a fully functioning digestive system—and even more importantly, whether or not she felt full could influence her original body.
To put it simply, if her external human body had three full meals a day, Lin Ying felt like she could probably last about a week to ten days without eating humans.
Of course, she’d still need to occasionally eat small live animals—cats, dogs, and the like. She couldn’t quite explain why that was. She had some theories, but nothing confirmed yet.
At most, she could say she only understood the basics of her own feeding needs.
If one day, she could fully figure it out—find a way to survive without ever having to eat humans again—then she’d live a peaceful life. Find a small place to stay, have three meals a day, spend her afternoons wrapped in a blanket on a balcony lounger, holding a cat, reading a book, and sipping coffee...
Wouldn’t that be perfect?
As Lin Ying bit into the soft-boiled egg in the sandwich, some yolk burst out unexpectedly, leaving a golden streak down the side of the bread.
She quickly licked it up.