Chapter 18

At noon, after eating lunch at the school cafeteria, Youyi headed home.

Since October, the weather has cooled down a lot. The mornings were especially chilly, with the autumn wind blowing briskly. Youyi had already switched to long sleeves and pants.

As soon as she stepped off the elevator, there was a woman waiting at the door.

Youyi was momentarily confused, wondering if she had gotten off on the wrong floor.

She looked up to check the floor number—9th floor, it was right.

The woman was wearing high heels, with delicate makeup and holding a bag. She glanced at Youyi, her gaze lingering as she began to size her up.

A very pure little girl, not very old.

That was the woman’s first impression of Youyi.

Youyi noticed she was standing at the door of unit 902. As her gaze swept across, she remembered the woman from the previous night, the one who had spoken with Fu Cheng downstairs.

She hadn’t seen her face clearly, but the figure seemed very similar.

Same height, same body shape.

It was probably the same person.

Youyi had only glanced at her, and then she calmly turned her attention back to her own door, blocking the keypad with her body as she prepared to enter her passcode.

Oh, she’s just a neighbor.

The woman sighed in relief.

“Hey, you’re Fu Cheng’s neighbor, right?” The woman spoke up before Youyi could enter the code. Her tone was sweet and seductive, with a hint of flirtation.

Youyi’s hand paused.

She turned back to look at the woman properly for the first time. After a couple of seconds, she nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m his friend.” The woman smiled, explaining, “I came to drop something off for him, but it seems he’s not home.”

Fu Cheng really wasn’t home.

Youyi said, “You can call him.”

“I don’t want to bother him,” the woman replied. “He said he had something to do today, so I didn’t think much of it. He left something at my place, so I came to return it.”

The bag in her hand looked like it contained clothes.

Youyi didn’t know for sure, as she only took a brief glance.

“How about I leave it with you, and you can give it to him when he gets back?”

Without thinking, Youyi said, “I’m not that close to him.”

“It’s fine, just pass it along when he returns,” the woman insisted. “Or I can send him a message to let him know I left it with you. Is that okay?”

Maybe to appeal to Youyi’s sympathy, the woman tried to sound pitiful. “We had a little fight recently. I’m just trying to make it up to him.”

When it comes to relationships, surely a young woman like her would understand.

At least, that’s what the woman thought.

But Youyi remained unmoved.

“You can leave it at his door. It’s fine,” Youyi said. “There’s just the two of us living here. No one else will come.”

Meaning, besides Fu Cheng, only she lived here. She wasn’t going to take it, and there wouldn’t be anyone else to take it either.

And she certainly wasn’t obligated to help deliver anything.

After Youyi finished speaking, she quickly entered the password, stepped inside, and closed the door.

Once home, she set her bag aside, changed her shoes, and went to the fridge to pour a glass of ice water. She drank one glass, feeling like her heart was on fire, and poured herself another.

The cold water slid down her throat and into her stomach. Her belly felt as empty as a valley, and the coolness flowed all the way down. By the second glass, her stomach began to shiver.

After a while, Youyi peeked outside through the peephole.

The woman was gone, but the bag was still hanging on the door handle.

Suppressing the urge to open the door and check what was inside the bag, Youyi took a deep breath, feeling like something was off today.

No, it should have started last night.

Her mood had become unsettled—extremely unsettled.

It was like being pushed headfirst into water, with water rushing in through every orifice, suffocating her. There was no oxygen in the water, and as it filled her, she couldn’t breathe. At that moment, she desperately wanted to escape.

Escape from this suffocating frustration.

She poured herself another glass of ice water.

Even though her stomach was already cold, she kept drinking.

Drinking seemed to help—just a little.

Later that evening, when Youyi went to the bathroom, she noticed a patch of red on her underwear and realized her period had started.

Crap.

She had drunk so much ice water in the afternoon—five or six glasses in total. For someone on her period, that amount was lethal.

To be more precise, it was a deadly level of coldness.

Her period cramps were a mystery. Sometimes, the pain was excruciating, and other times, it was nothing at all. Her cycle was regular, but whenever her period came, she couldn’t touch anything cold.

In her senior year of high school, she drank hot water even in the summer. That year, she took good care of her uterus and didn’t experience any cramps for almost the entire year.

After starting college, without the looming pressure of final exams, she got more lax. Some months, the pain was unbearable.

Now, she could already feel something was wrong.

Her lower abdomen throbbed with a heavy ache, as if an invisible hand was pulling her uterus downward. It hurt—a strange, tearing pain that came in waves, growing stronger with each one.

Youyi thought about doing something to alleviate it. She boiled a pot of hot water and made herself a cup of brown sugar water.

The scalding liquid burned her throat, so she sipped it slowly. After finishing the cup, she crawled onto the sofa and curled up into a ball.

The pain on the first day of her period wasn’t constant. It came in waves, growing more intense each time.

.

Fu Cheng returned home around 9 p.m.

He glanced at the bag hanging on the door and casually brought it inside. It was almost 10 p.m. by now, and he wondered if Youyi had gone to bed.

He sent her a message: “Are you asleep? I brought you some cake.”

A faint light peeked out from under her door, and Fu Cheng recalled her usual schedule—she shouldn’t be asleep at this hour.

But even if she was awake, she didn’t reply.

Fu Cheng entered the password and unlocked the door.

Ding Youyi was curled up on the sofa like a feeble kitten, clutching the blanket tightly, clearly in a lot of pain.

“What’s wrong?” Fu Cheng quickly walked over, sitting beside her on the sofa. He gently cupped her head, his hand coming away damp with sweat.

Youyi had just ridden out a wave of pain and still had the strength to speak. Her eyelids drooped as she weakly murmured, “Menstrual cramps.”

Fu Cheng frowned. He glanced down at her, lowering his voice softly, “Does it hurt a lot?”

He had never seen a woman with menstrual cramps before, so he didn’t know how painful it could get. But Youyi looked like she was in agony, as if her life was being drained from her.

“Do you need some medicine?” he asked.

Youyi hadn’t even remembered she had any medicine in the house.

Her head had been so clouded all afternoon that she hadn’t thought of it. It felt like her memory had been wiped clean.

She gritted her teeth, recalling that she’d brought over some medicine when she moved in.

“I think I have some ibuprofen in the drawer.”

She glanced over at the cabinet by the coffee table. Fu Cheng followed her gaze and got up to look inside.

He found a blister pack of ibuprofen with two pills already taken.

He checked the expiration date, then poured a glass of hot water. Returning to the sofa, he helped Youyi sit up, supporting her head.

He placed the pill in her mouth and brought the glass to her lips, helping her sip the water. Youyi obediently drank, though the bitterness of the pill made her frown. Still, she swallowed it down.

Fu Cheng was careful not to let her choke, lifting her head gently as he murmured, “Careful.”

Youyi swallowed the pill and water, but her body had almost no strength left, leaning entirely on Fu Cheng. If he hadn’t been holding her, she wouldn’t have been able to sit up.

Afterward, she lay back down.

The medicine wasn’t going to work immediately. Youyi had taken it plenty of times before and knew what to expect. But even though she had just taken it, maybe it was psychological, she already felt a little better.

She exhaled, looking up at Fu Cheng standing in front of her.

His tall frame cast a shadow as he leaned down, clearly worried.

“Fu Cheng, do you think I’m not that pretty after all?” Youyi’s eyes reddened as she looked at him, her voice tinged with a bit of grievance.

She thought… maybe she was a little pretty, enough to catch his eye, which is why he’d say he liked being with her.

But when she thought that it was only because of this, she felt sad.

Because there were so many women prettier than her in the world. If he liked her for her looks, he could easily like someone else too.

The thought of “someone else” clogged up her heart.

Fu Cheng thought she was probably delusional from the pain, even checking her forehead to see if she had a fever.

“What are you talking about?”

Youyi continued, “There are so many women prettier than me.”

“Did you have dinner?” Fu Cheng didn’t address her rambling, wondering how long she had been lying there. Maybe she hadn’t even eaten.

“Do you want anything to eat?” he asked gently.

“I’m not hungry,” Youyi replied. She wasn’t interested in talking about food right now.

Youyi sat up, pushed Fu Cheng’s hand away, hesitated for a moment, and asked, “When I came back, I saw a bag hanging on your door. What was that?”

Fu Cheng paused for a moment. “I haven’t looked at it yet.”

Youyi wanted to ask more, but she felt like she didn’t have the right to. After all, the relationship between her and Fu Cheng was, at best, purely physical.

Fu Cheng was concerned about her and didn’t notice her other emotions. His heart was tense, worrying if she was still in a lot of pain.

Earlier, when she injured her foot, she endured it without showing any signs of discomfort. Now, drenched in sweat, she must have been in unbearable pain.

He placed his palm gently on her lower abdomen and softly asked, “Do you want me to massage it for you? Would that help?”

Youyi didn’t respond.

After a while, she lowered her head and said quietly, “Can you leave?”

Fu Cheng paused.

“You don’t want to see me?”

Youyi nodded.

Her mood was unpredictable during her period, and Fu Cheng understood. After seeing that she felt better after taking medicine, he decided to listen to whatever she said.

“Then lie back down first.” Fu Cheng bent down, picked her up, and carried her back to the bedroom. He pulled the blanket up to her chest, and as he stood up, he couldn’t resist gently patting her head.

“I’ll sleep in the living room since you don’t want to see me,” Fu Cheng whispered in her ear. “If you’re uncomfortable, just call out. I’ll hear you.”

Youyi buried her face in the blanket, remaining silent.

Fu Cheng turned off the lights but left the door slightly ajar, leaving a small crack.

He lay down on the sofa in the living room.

About an hour passed.

Fu Cheng, always alert, hadn’t fallen asleep, listening intently for any sound from the bedroom. Hearing nothing, he assumed she had fallen asleep.

Suddenly, there was a loud “bang.”

Fu Cheng immediately sat up. He pushed open the door and saw Youyi curled up on the floor. His heart sank. He turned on the light and saw a large patch of red staining her lower body.

Fu Cheng’s face instantly paled.

“Youyi,” he called her name as he picked her up. For the first time, his voice trembled with panic. When he lifted her, she clung tightly to his arm and, burying her face in his chest, started sobbing.

“My stomach hurts…”