Blood Neon-Chapter 33

Chapter 33
Return to the Nest
After stroking the kitten in her arms for a while longer, Lin Ying reluctantly set it back down on the ground.
The kitten cooperatively crouched on the floor, mewed softly, and adorably stretched out a paw to lick it. The sight made the girl’s heart melt.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t considered just taking it home. But since she could barely support herself and didn’t even have a fixed place to live, Lin Ying gave up on the idea.
What a pity. Otherwise, she could’ve brought it along when visiting someone like Zhang Qiming someday and made a joke about it being emergency food.
Still, even if she really did bring it home and tried to raise it, she doubted that such a wild little cat would stay peacefully in her place.
Her apartment wasn’t sealed up or anything—more than likely, the very next day after bringing it home, it would vanish without a trace.
You couldn’t exactly expect loyalty from a cat.
Not to mention, that little cat might very well have its own territory or “business” around here... Bringing it home only to end up reenacting The Incredible Journey? That would really make her the villain.
She gently rubbed the white kitten’s little head with the pad of her finger. It squinted its blue eyes and meowed a few times. Lin Ying murmured to herself a few times, saying “Little Bei”, “Little Bei”, but in the end, she stood up and left without a word.
When she was very young, her grandfather’s house had a cat named Little Bei. But she heard it had run off and was never seen again.
The memory stirred something in her. She couldn’t help but feel a little sad.
Glancing back at this temporary “Little Bei”, she saw that the white kitten had already burrowed into a pile of garbage and disappeared from view.
For a moment, Lin Ying fantasized that the kitten might come running after her, unwilling to part. She sighed and turned to leave.
There was nothing she could do. Someone like her, drifting like duckweed in the rain, unable to even take charge of her own life, wasn’t in a position to take responsibility for another cat’s future.
.
“Please come again~”
As the beeping sound of the automatic door echoed behind her, Lin Ying stepped out of the convenience store carrying a heavy plastic bag.
After midnight, all the little shops had long since closed. Only a few 24-hour convenience stores still lit up the streets.
As an eighteenth-tier city, people here didn’t have the same need for round-the-clock stores as those in the big cities. In fact, up until just a few years ago, even the larger chain fast-food restaurants in Pingyang City didn’t offer late-night service.
Speaking of fast-food restaurants, if it didn’t require an ID or anything, Lin Ying actually wouldn’t mind working at a place like that—if only for the employee perk of getting half-priced meals. That alone sounded like a pretty good deal.
During her shift, maybe she could sneak a Big Mac to someone who only drinks corn juice?
As for junk food or whatever, that was the least of her concerns. After all, this body of hers didn’t gain weight no matter how much she ate, and didn’t slim down no matter how little she consumed. So far, she hadn’t even noticed any major impact from nutritional balance. One less thing to worry about—just eat and be done with it.
The plastic bag in her hand felt impossibly heavy due to several bottles of canned liquids inside. Lin Ying, still habitually using just one hand to carry it like she used to, soon felt her small palm getting painfully strained.
She had no choice but to use both hands, lifting the bag in front of her with effort.
Compared to carrying the bag with one hand, the biggest drawback of holding it with both hands was that, when the body moved with larger strides, the bag would sway along with it—an incredibly uncomfortable experience.
Simply put, carrying the bag like this meant she could only take small steps, walking slowly like a full-time housewife heading home after grocery shopping—assuming the bag wasn’t too big. If it were, then no matter how she carried it, it’d still be uncomfortable.
Lin Ying, however, wasn’t in any particular rush. What annoyed her at the moment was simply how weak and delicate her current body was.
Her body looked tender and dewy, and felt soft and boneless to the touch. She was practically the embodiment of the phrase “fragile and easy to topple.”
There was nothing she could do about that—after all, it’s not like she got to shape her body herself. From a certain point of view, if the original intent was to be some kind of alluring trap, then looking like this did make a certain kind of sense.
.
After arriving at a more deserted part of the urban village, Lin Ying glanced around to check all directions. Once she confirmed no one was within her line of sight, she decisively extended a tentacle from her body and hooked it onto the plastic bag.
From a physics standpoint, she should still have felt the weight of the bag—if the tentacle's connection point was on her arm, then the shoulder, where the arm connected to the torso, would still bear a similar amount of force. Only the torque would be different.
That’s where the supernatural part came in. Once the bag was lifted with a tentacle, its weight seemed to vanish. Lin Ying instantly felt much lighter and more at ease walking.
Strictly speaking, it hadn’t actually vanished. The version of her inside the shadow was the one exerting the effort now, and the point of force had shifted to that side, meaning her delicate body in the surface world no longer had to do the heavy lifting.
Trying to fully understand the principle was quite difficult. But with so many unscientific things happening to her body already, Lin Ying had long since gotten used to it.
Hey, what’s the point in overthinking it? The most important thing in life is to be happy.
Inside the plastic bag were four cans of cola, freshly taken from the refrigerated shelf, a can of Sprite, and some snacks like plain potato chips and corn sausages.
The store she had randomly chosen earlier didn’t offer bento or rice balls, and even the grilled sausage machine had been turned off for the night—something that left Lin Ying quite disappointed.
She had planned to treat herself to something good today, since she had just accomplished something big and earned quite a bit of extra cash.
In the end, she still had to spend the night alone with just a pile of snacks. Not bad, really, but it left her feeling a little unsatisfied.
She really wanted fried chicken...
Lin Ying silently called out in her heart.
—But it was already around 12:30, and there were no places nearby still selling fried chicken.
After letting out another helpless sigh, the girl touched her stomach and picked up her pace slightly.
At least eating people didn’t mean her physical body also got full. In a way, maybe that was a good thing.
.
By the time Lin Ying finally returned to her temporary secret base, the moon was already high in the sky.
She walked into an area now devoid of residents, abandoned after relocation; passed through roads left rugged and broken due to demolition.
At the second streetlight, she turned right. At the first trash bin, she turned left. At the hair salon named “Lang○ Hair Studio,” with a missing character, she veered right—after circling left and right several more times, she finally stopped in front of a wooden door.
Not sensing any human presence, Lin Ying pushed open the slightly ajar wooden door without worry.
Though she could’ve slipped through the cracks directly, she felt like moments like this—returning home—still needed a bit of ceremony.
.
“I’m home~”
With a creak of the door, and a soft greeting addressed to the empty house (and her aunt, jokingly), Lin Ying finally returned to her little den after being away for more than two whole days.
She quickly passed through the still-messy front room, then slowed her steps and climbed a rickety-looking staircase to the second floor of the dilapidated building.
The house itself wasn’t large—just two floors, each no more than thirty-something square meters. It was tight, to say the least.
After going upstairs, Lin Ying pushed open a flaking, half-painted wooden door and entered a room that was in relatively better shape.
She placed the plastic bag from her tentacle onto a piece of cardboard, then extended a few more tentacles. Like a puppeteer, she manipulated a large teddy bear in the corner of the room to stand up and wave its fluffy, grimy little arms at her.
“Welcome back.”
The girl softly spoke to herself.