Love in Cthulhu

Chapter 2 A Perfect Match

"So... I was missing for seven days? You found me? And carried me back from the mountain? The reason you pounced on me like a wolf was because I was half-dead before, like a vegetable that couldn't be woken up at all, and you were overjoyed to see me suddenly wake up and wanted to check me out?"

After receiving a solid chop to the forehead, Zhou Nan and Jian Xi finally returned to normal conversation.

However, Jian Xi, sitting on the bed, still had a resentful look in her eyes. She tightly gripped her clothes with both hands, puffed out her cheeks, and huffed angrily, as if she was still worried that he might become a beast at any moment.

"I swear to God!" Zhou Nan sat on the other side of the bed, holding up four fingers with utmost seriousness. "There is absolutely no lie!"

"Although I really want to refute your ridiculous story..." Jian Xi rested her hand on her forehead, her head throbbing, "I really feel like my brain has gone blank, I can't remember anything from the past few days."

Zhou Nan thought to himself, "That's right, you can't remember. You're clearly dead! What can a dead person remember? Is it the Meng Po soup they drank halfway through? Or the Naihe Bridge they crossed halfway and then turned back?"
But she's sitting right here, alive and well, able to talk, with a warm body temperature, perfectly normal.

Did that resurrection spell really succeed? Or was she just exhibiting some kind of unknown, suspended animation from the very beginning?
"You really don't remember anything?" Zhou Nan was still a little skeptical. She often liked to make jokes, and who knew if her mischievous side was kicking in again, wanting to tease him.

"I can remember you, even if I had the desire, I wouldn't have the guts!" Jian Xi suddenly grinned. "Okay, okay, seeing how agitated you are, I thought my beauty had finally made you realize my mistake. But that won't do."

She suddenly adopted the tone of a caring older sister, sat up straight, and spoke earnestly.

"Zhou, you're still young, and it's understandable that you're attracted to the opposite sex. Of course, I know I'm incredibly beautiful and charming, but you need to learn to control yourself! I've heard that guys your age tend to suppress their feelings. If all else fails, I can take a couple of swimsuit photos of you as a self-cultivation manual for tonight... As long as you're willing to ask, I'll definitely agree without hesitation! We're like brothers!"

"Unless you are the only human woman left on Earth, I am burdened with the great mission of reviving humanity, and all the apes are dead, I would never look for you even if I were blind..." Zhou Nan leaned back with a look of disgust on his face.

In fact, Jian Xi is a real beauty. She has had an innocent and flawless face since she was a child. Her long hair is as black as lacquer and is so thick that it reaches her waist. She always likes to tie it into a small half-ponytail, which sways like a flower when she walks. She is a dancer and has a pair of strong and straight long legs. She is like the only female protagonist who walked out of a comic book, and she is the kind that is bling-bling and has her own starlight.

The problem is that this girl is completely deceiving with her appearance; inside, she's just a female hooligan.

When Zhou Nan first entered junior high school, he knew nothing about sex education, while Jian Xi already knew everything. In class, she would half-cover her face and write and draw on paper, telling him what a girl's genitals were and what organs they were... She would also make onomatopoeic sounds as she talked on and on about what booklets she had recently read.

Perhaps God was bored and, when adding points to her beauty skill, used points deducted from her character. Thus, she naturally became a hybrid of a fairy and a comedian.

Imagine Guo Degang sitting on a swing, smiling sweetly and saying, "Brother Xiaoyao, you're back!" Or perhaps Liu Yifei speaking with a Beijing accent, winking and saying, "I'm the woman who's spent many nights with you!"
Zhou Nan had this feeling when he was with her. Some people say that as long as a girl is beautiful, she looks good no matter what she does, but in Zhou Nan's opinion, it really depends on the person.

"Damn it, I never imagined your hobby was female gorillas instead of pretty girls..."

Jian Xi patted Zhou Nan's shoulder forcefully, her solemn expression making her seem like a seasoned gangster encouraging a repeatedly defeated underling. "It's okay, even so, I'll support your forbidden love! Don't give up on your fetish because of what others think, Zhou!"

"Get out! Get out! Get out!" Zhou Nan impatiently brushed her little paws away.

Sometimes he really couldn't stand this little slut whose head was full of dirty thoughts. At this rate, she was bound to go down the wrong path of becoming a pornographic wife, writing dirty jokes and novels all day long, and eventually getting caught and forced to work on a sewing machine.

"I said, don't you feel bad if you can't remember what you've been through before?" Zhou Nan decided to change the subject.

"What's so upsetting? If you can't remember, you can't remember. There are plenty of things people can't remember."

Jian Xi, still in her carefree tone, waved her hand and said, "Just like now, can you remember what you ate and drank at the end of last month? Even if you can't remember, you're still alive, aren't you? People live in the present moment, like a live broadcast."

"That's just like you. Other people's troubles are nothing to you."

"Please, this isn't even a problem, okay? Besides, I'm the one who's missing, has amnesia, and is out of contact. If anyone's going to be worried, it's me. I, the one in charge, haven't even complained, and you, little Zhou, are already worried about me? Just say you care about me, don't be so smug, okay? Come on, let me see if you're blushing!"

She pounced on him again, grinning, to pinch his cheek.

"Just admit you like me, you little slut! Don't keep trying to touch me all the time!" Zhou Nan jumped off the bed and ran away, pinching his nose and fanning himself. "You're filthy and stinky! You're going to ruin my old house!"

"It does smell a bit bad..." Jian Xi pinched the hem of her clothes and sniffed. She had just woken up and was so busy arguing that she hadn't noticed the fishy smell on her body from not having showered for seven days and being soaked in rain and mud.

She reached into her pocket, only to find it empty. "Oh dear, I have no idea where my phone and keys are. Now I can't even get home."

Jian Xi lives alone in a building opposite this old tile-roofed house. Opening the window reveals the front courtyard of the old house.

"How about we go to the public bathhouse? It's still open right now," Zhou Nan said.

"There's no need for that. Don't you have that big wooden tub at home? I'll use that to wash." Jianxi became excited again in an instant, full of nostalgia.

She was referring to a bathtub the size of a rice jar, with an iron bottom. You sat directly on a flame to boil water, just like the iron pot the monster used to cook Tang Sanzang. As long as you kept adding firewood and coal, it would always be hot.

When they were children, the two of them used to take baths together. The old house had open-air water pipes and no hot water supply, so they used this method to bathe, so the same amount of water could be used to bathe two more people.

Jianxi now lives in an apartment building, so of course she has access to a water heater, but she still prefers this kind of troublesome and traditional thing, saying that this is true enjoyment, and that it can purify both body and mind, even better than a hot spring bath.

Before Zhou Nan could even agree, Jian Xi had already jumped out of bed and gone to find the bathtub as if she knew the way by heart.

As she passed by, she glanced casually at the chalk drawing on the ground and the kitchen knife that Zhou Nan had hastily put down. She said nothing, but deliberately made her footsteps heavier as she passed by, the soles of her shoes fading away a corner of the pattern and leaving a trail-like mark.

In the open backyard of the old house, a long-unused bathtub was set up, placed on a specially built mud stove. The charcoal mixed with firewood underneath burned brightly, crackling and popping. The rain had stopped, and fine snow had accumulated in a thick layer on the winter grapevines. Incandescent bulbs hung under the eaves, illuminating the cement ground with shimmering snowflakes. Jianxi's clothes were scattered all over the ground, but she didn't intend to keep them anyway.

She slipped into the rising steam, sat down slowly, hugged her knees, and submerged half her head underwater, her long hair spreading out like seaweed in the ripples.

"I've put my clothes here." Zhou Nan placed his stack of clothes on the shelf. The bathtub was very deep; once inside, he couldn't see anything, only hear the rushing water.

"Okay, want to take a shower together?" Jian Xi emerged from the water, leaning against the edge of the tub with a sly grin, brushing her hair back with one hand.

When she lay there like that, her entire body was only black and white: jet-black hair, jet-black eyebrows and eyes, and a pale face and fingers. The light falling on her skin was like the shimmering light on snow.

"Have some shame! If you're after my looks and want to seduce me, just say so." Zhou Nan moved another stool over and sat down.

He didn't need to hide it; she had always been this way.

This kind of perverse humor is like a little fairy mocking a boy who peeks at her. If he avoids her, she will take advantage of him. Only by adopting an attitude of "I don't care to play with you" can you keep her in check.

Zhou Nan used tongs to hold the charcoal, then added two more pieces. "Is the fire strong enough?"

"I feel like it could be even bigger!" Jian Xi twisted her shoulders, her eyes shining.

"Okay, I'll cook you right away, add some radish and yam, and also some star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves and Sichuan peppercorns."

"Wow, the meat soup cooked by the most beautiful girl in the world, eating it might grant immortality, right?"

"According to the rule of 'you are what you eat,' drinking this soup will cause you to have internal heat. It's probably the kind of soup that would make a 70-year-old jump three feet high."

Jian Xi laughed, bursting out with a soft laugh. Her eyebrows curved into crescents, her shoulders trembled, and the snowflakes danced in her clear eyes. Zhou Nan also smiled, silently watching her.

Isn't this just Jian Xi herself? She's not the kind of weak and delicate girl. Even if she just crawled back from the Bridge of Helplessness, she'll be lively and energetic the moment she opens her eyes. That confidence is innate; she takes it for granted that she is the cutest person in the world.

But is she really Jian Xi?

Uncle Wang said they found another Jian Xi's body. Assuming that's the real Jian Xi, then what is this thing they carried back? A female ghost? Why doesn't she just peel off the beautiful skin on her skull right now, reveal her fangs, and say, "What a handsome young scholar, let me have a good time!"
Conversely, if the person in front of you is indeed Jian Xi, then what about the Jian Xi corpse on Uncle Wang's side? Jian Xi has always been an only child, and she doesn't have any distant twin relatives who look very alike.

Because of some concerns, when he told Jian Xi what had happened recently, he deliberately omitted the fact that she had died once.

It's not that I don't trust her. We've been in the same hospital room since birth, only an hour apart. We grew up together in the courtyard of the cultural center. We were in the same class in elementary, middle and high school. It's no exaggeration to say that we've probably spent more time together than with our own parents. We're practically each other's other half.

The strange thing this time was her. He couldn't pretend nothing had happened, and his usual interactions couldn't dispel his doubts. He remained wary.

"Hey hey hey, what are you thinking about? You've been staring at my face."

Jian Xi reached out and waved her hand, making a grabbing motion in the air before tossing it back onto him, as if trying to stuff his wandering soul back into his body.

"Ah, I know, you're imagining things again, aren't you? A beautiful girl is right in front of you, but you can't touch her or have the courage to touch her, so you can only use your rich imagination to satisfy your infatuated desires... Sigh, a sixteen-year-old boy, that's the age when even seeing a faucet makes him horny!"

She was shaking her head, her face covered in salt and water, when Zhou Nan suddenly stood up and strode over. Jian Xi was startled by his actions and quickly hugged her chest and shrank back into the water.

Zhou Nan didn't do anything beastly. Instead, he squatted down at the same height as the wooden tub and gently touched her forehead: "Are you hungry after not eating for so long? I'll go buy some food and cook it for you."

Jian Xi blushed and stared wide-eyed, as if she was about to scold him at any moment. She instantly realized that Zhou Nan's big commotion was a deliberate act of retaliation to scare her.

But she didn't push his hand away. She was taking a bath and was completely vulnerable, so she could only glare at him angrily, like an angry little lion.

"Eat! Eat everything! I'll eat you out of house and home!" She was practically jumping up and down, baring her teeth and brandishing her claws.

"Then don't just disappear without a word again. Be good, stay here and don't move. I'll go buy you two oranges."

Before Jian Xi could react and grab the back of his hand, the guy had already run away with a smirk.

On the way from the backyard to the front door, that smile gradually peeled away from Zhou Nan's face, disappearing bit by bit. By the time he took his keys and phone and went out, his face was completely expressionless.

He regretted having to lie to 'Jian Xi'. He didn't like this terrible feeling. The two of them had made a pinky promise before, saying that they would tell each other if they had any troubles. Adults live their own lives, and we live our own lives. It was a little secret that belonged only to you and me.

But this time he had to break the agreement. There was another Jian Xi waiting for him at the funeral home. Only by seeing it with his own eyes could he know who the fake monkey was.

The bicycle hinges slowly turned, and his figure gradually disappeared into the darkness. In the old house behind him, Jian Xi silently lowered the curtain she had been using to spy on him.

She walked barefoot through the old house, which felt both familiar and strange, with light, fox-like steps. Her eyes were sometimes vacant and lost, as if shrouded in a hazy mist, and sometimes bright and alert, like a curious child who wanted to touch everything she saw.

(End of this chapter)