Blood Neon-Chapter 39

Chapter 39
A Visit
If the person speaking to you sounded like a mature, college-graduate older sister from next door, but looked like a petite girl barely 160 centimeters tall and seemingly younger than you, anyone would feel an odd sense of discord that was hard to ignore.
A child's body, an adult's mind—"Horse-monkey-burning-liquor Ying-chan desu!"
—Such a line involuntarily popped into his mind.
Although Zhang Qiming had only experienced that sort of feeling through anime and novels, even in this situation, he felt his impression wasn’t far off.
Mature, seemingly knowledgeable about everything, speaking with a calm and composed tone, not at all uneasy in unfamiliar surroundings, and showing none of the naive greenness typical of girls her age.
…But what was the point of overthinking it? It wasn't like it mattered anyway.
Zhang Qiming picked up the cup in front of his computer.
The girl had said that she might come play again if she had time.
But he had no intention of reading too much into that.
After all, he was just an ordinary… okay, relatively ordinary high school student.
Even though he often clashed with the local delinquents at school and his name was well-known across his grade, almost like some kind of campus legend, he still remained well aware of his actual place in the world.
He wasn't some alien, nor did he have superpowers. He was just an ordinary human—and people like him were a dime a dozen in this world. Maybe everyone was special in some way, but most people were still just average.
Romantic comedies, trials by fire, saving-the-world kind of stories—those were all just fantasies.
At the very least, he'd learned long ago not to pin his hopes on everything in life.
Like back when he was in elementary school, when his parents divorced...
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Carrying two cups, Zhang Qiming walked straight from his bedroom to the refrigerator.
He pulled out a large jug of honey tea with a few hundred milliliters left. Tilting it back, he took two big gulps directly from the bottle to quench his thirst before pouring a full glass into one of the cups.
The bottle was nearly empty now, so he finished the remaining bit in one go and set the empty bottle aside.
In the corner not far from the fridge, four or five two-liter plastic bottles in various designs were already piled up.
Just as he raised the other, still-empty cup and headed toward the water dispenser, a strange, indescribable feeling suddenly washed over him.
Maybe everyone had experienced it at some point—that odd sensation, like a red notification dot on a chat app, quietly asserting its presence, calling to you, urging you, almost like an obsessive compulsion, pushing you to click and clear it.
Compelled by that vague urgency, Zhang Qiming felt a growing sense of unease in his chest. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like drinking water anymore.
The door… the door.
Was something at the door?
He stopped walking and placed the empty cup in front of the water dispenser, then turned his gaze toward the front door a short distance away, a puzzled expression on his face.
Did he forget to lock the door after coming home?
Did he leave the key in the lock?
Zhang Qiming furrowed his brows, thinking hard for a while, but he couldn’t recall ever forgetting to close the door.
Or… was it something else?
This strange sense of unease made him very uncomfortable.
A feeling of fate, of karma, of constipation… whatever it was—something vague and impossible to describe.
All he knew was that he suddenly had a strong urge to open the door, a strong urge to see for himself what exactly was out there.
Waves of agitation surged within him, pushing him step by step toward the door.
He must look really stupid right now, suddenly feeling the urge to open the door…
Zhang Qiming couldn’t help but mentally ridicule himself.
But after all, there was no one else home at the moment—no parents would pop out and ask, “Why are you opening the door like that for no reason?”
So what if he looked dumb? No one was there to see it anyway.
Thus, driven purely by instinct, he closed one eye and pressed the other against the peephole.
Then his vision was completely overtaken by a sea of red.
Through the peephole, a blood-red pupil stared back at him without a hint of emotion.
Magnified by the peephole, the red eye filled the entire field of view, pressed right up against it—an incredibly striking sight.
Or rather, far too striking.
“Waaahhh!”
He was scared out of his wits.
Quite literally. Zhang Qiming let out a strange cry, his whole body jolting as he leapt back two steps.
Clutching his pounding heart, it took him several seconds to recover enough to process what had just happened.
He walked up, turned the handle, and opened the security door in front of him. As expected, standing there was a well-behaved, adorable-looking girl carrying a plastic bag, wearing an innocent and curious expression.
“Did I scare you?”
The girl smiled.
Still shaken, the boy was filled with dark lines across his face.
Of course he was scared—scared to the point he nearly went into cardiac arrest. He didn’t even have the energy to be angry. His heart still hadn’t calmed down yet.
“What… what were you doing just now?”
After holding it in for a while, he could only ask in a weak, defeated tone.
The girl tilted her head, as if lost in some deep, complex thought. After a few seconds, she slowly opened her hands, striking a pose like she was distributing holy communion.
“A… little experiment?”
“Doesn’t make any damn sense!”
He blurted out the complaint, managing to hold back the final word he almost said: “Shit.”
Honestly speaking, at his age—where pride mattered a lot—this kind of loss of composure made his shame level spike to the max. He was also choking back a stomachful of frustration.
But after glancing at the person in front of him, he suddenly couldn’t stay angry anymore.
No wonder people said that looking at beautiful girls could prolong your life. Rubbing his head, he couldn’t help but think that might be true.
Still, complaints were complaints. After giving it a bit of thought, he took the initiative to step aside and let the girl in.
“Thanks for the treat earlier~”
Lin Ying softly muttered as she stepped through the doorway.
“Treat? What treat?”
Zhang Qiming was confused—when had she piggybacked on his Wi-Fi?
.
As the girl passed by him, he caught a glimpse of her small head and noticed something.
The peephole on his front door was at a rather awkward height—right around 1.6 meters.
For him, it was slightly low. He always had to bend down a bit to get a proper look outside.
But for Lin Ying…
He glanced at the petite and adorable girl.
Her height barely reached his chin, so probably just a little over 1.6 meters.
Thinking about that, it meant she couldn’t have looked through the peephole and locked eyes with him directly in a natural position.
Staring at her height, Zhang Qiming raised his hand and made a mental measurement.
Although he didn’t really understand how she had pulled it off just now, did that mean before he opened the door, she had been standing on tiptoes, body leaning against the door, with her eye pressed up to the peephole waiting for him?
Just imagining that scene—he suddenly found it… kind of cute. And that cheered him up again.
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After shutting the door with a clunk, he walked to the shoe cabinet and bent down to take out a pair of guest slippers.
Seeing that the girl had changed into a new outfit since the last time they met, Zhang Qiming now had a lot of questions he wanted to ask.
But no matter how you looked at it, as a teenage boy, before speaking to a girl, his thoughts would always spiral—overthinking things like whether it was appropriate to say this or that… etc.
So after mentally rehearsing a few lines, he finally opened his mouth.
“Is something up? You just suddenly dropped by.”
That was a reasonable enough question, right?
The girl finished changing her shoes and looked up at him.
“Nope, nothing really. I just happened to be passing by and didn’t have anything to do, so I came over.”
She thought for a moment, then asked,
“By the way, have you eaten yet?”