The yogurt was sweet.
They shared it between them, and a drop slipped down.
When Xie Mingjun took a bite, it dripped onto her lips, then her chin, then her neck.
Dong Yin lowered her head to taste, and Dong Yin’s fingers were clenched tight in her clothes.
By her ear, Xie Mingjun asked if she could get her clothes dirty.
Dong Yin said no.
So Xie Mingjun bit her shoulder.
She bit the front, then turned her and bit the back.
Dong Yin was hauled up, hands braced against the table.
These past few days, Dong Yin had been teasing her, and in truth she’d wanted to kiss her too.
There was one thing Dong Yin suddenly understood—why she liked being with her. Because… it was simple.
When she was with her, she could do so many things she liked. The thoughts in her heart could be spoken anytime, anywhere. She didn’t have to pretend so much.
Her inferiority, her timidity—being crushed under them was suffocating.
She had so many things she wanted to say, so much she wanted to express, but she was always a second too late. The words would stick on the tip of her tongue, then be forced back down, forcing herself to swallow her thoughts.
It wasn’t that Dong Yin had never thought about it.
She just hadn’t dared.
Starving for it, Dong Yin poured out her desire. She wanted to kiss her, wanted to kiss her. Her responses were messy, her biting messy…
There was a transparent thread between them that couldn’t be cut.
From above, Xie Mingjun’s fingers fell against Dong Yin’s cheek, then slid to her lips.
Light as air. Her whole body felt faint and dizzy.
By the time Dong Yin came back to herself, they had already left the private room.
She whispered to Xie Mingjun,
“You… you remember to ask the waiter to change the tablecloth.”
Xie Mingjun asked,
“How am I supposed to tell the waiter? That you got the tablecloth dirty?”
There was no way Dong Yin would dare let her say that. Way too suggestive.
“It wasn’t me, I didn’t, but… other customers have to eat there.”
At the elevator, Xie Mingjun pressed the button and said,
“I think Chu Ning’an and Lu Hanqiu are the ones coming to eat later.”
She was smiling as she said it.
Dong Yin only thought she was awful—bad and mean on purpose, making her feel ashamed.
When they reached the room, Xie Mingjun went to shower.
Dong Yin’s body wasn’t dirty at all; instead it was Xie Mingjun who had yogurt smeared all over her.
Dong Yin sat at the edge of the bed, her head still buzzing. She snuck a look at the group chat.
Sure enough, Chu Ning’an and Lu Hanqiu were saying they were on their way to eat.
She buried her face in the pillow.
Too evil.
Later, when Xie Mingjun came out of the bathroom, she was wearing a bathrobe, loose and slipping, only a belt tied around her waist. She squeezed some water from her damp hair as she walked to the bed.
Dong Yin had picked up that book again and was reading with apparent seriousness.
It wasn’t until Xie Mingjun came close that she heard the movement.
Startled, she hurriedly stuffed the book under herself.
“Hey, why are you hiding my book?” Xie Mingjun asked.
“…Ah, it’s yours?”
Dong Yin slowly fished it back out and asked,
“Why are you reading something like this?”
Xie Mingjun was about to answer, then glanced at the author’s name and changed her tune.
“It’s Lu Hanqiu’s book. She dropped it here last time.”
Dong Yin clearly didn’t quite believe her.
“What would Lu Hanqiu be doing reading this?”
Reaching out, Xie Mingjun took the book, flipped through a couple pages, face unreadable.
“How would I know? I haven’t read it.”
“…Oh.”
She closed the book and looked at Dong Yin.
Dong Yin pressed her lips together and asked,
“Can you lend it to me? I want to read it.”
“What’s it about?” Xie Mingjun asked.
“It’s just… a pretty ordinary foreign novel,” Dong Yin said softly.
“Two women grow up together, and later they end up sleeping together. One of them leaves, and the other one keeps remembering what happened…”
Xie Mingjun leaned in, murmuring by her ear,
“…And then?”
“There are parts I don’t really understand,” Dong Yin admitted.
The book mostly lingered on their reunion. The descriptions were… physical. It said that because of that, they cut their nails short.
Dong Yin had only read the beginning. She didn’t really get it.
When she and Xie Mingjun kissed, Xie Mingjun would grab her leg, her nails sliding lightly over Dong Yin’s skin. It felt pretty good to her.
She’d been stuck on that sentence for a long time.
Xie Mingjun arched a brow, scanning the original line on the page, and said,
“That’s because your thighs are a sensitive spot. If I pinch you there, it feels good to you… but fingers are meant to go somewhere else.”
“Huh?”
Xie Mingjun laughed.
“Keep reading. Don’t blush.”
The way she laughed made Dong Yin panic even more. She had the feeling this was going somewhere dangerous.
She kept reading anyway, and her face flushed on its own.
“She entered my body with her fingers, and I felt very comfortable.”
“So you really are supposed to use fingers…
So that’s how you do it.”
Xie Mingjun froze for a second, not expecting Dong Yin to read it out loud.
She’d read the original line in that clean, standard American accent, with a suppressed emphasis, a little sultry, a little tempting.
For a moment it was impossible to tell if she was just analyzing it, or doing it on purpose.
“There doesn’t have to be fingers,” Xie Mingjun said.
“There are other ways.”
She was leaning against the headboard. She wasn’t really reading, just tossing the words out, arguing with her on reflex.
Dong Yin, however, took her very seriously.
“What else is there? It seems like it’s fingers all the way through later on.”
“Are you actually shameless, or just pretending?” Xie Mingjun asked.
“I’m just curious,” Dong Yin whispered.
She honestly couldn’t figure it out. What else could you use?
This was a blind spot in her knowledge, and she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to explore further.
Xie Mingjun pointed out a couple of paragraphs for her and told her to read them herself.
“Need me to help translate?” she asked.
“No.”
Dong Yin refused. She often took on English translation jobs; reading this was child’s play.
The sex scenes between the two heroines had them touching each other’s legs. It became a kind of signal, a way of clinging to each other. Hands and legs became their closest points of contact.
Dong Yin lay on her stomach reading.
When she tilted her head, she could see right into the gap of Xie Mingjun’s robe—the deep V dipping almost to her lower abdomen. One side of the white robe had fallen open, revealing a smooth, damp, gleaming leg.
Dong Yin’s fingertips rubbed at the edge of the page.
There was a little admiration in her eyes.
“Xie Mingjun, you’re amazing. How do you know everything without even reading the book?”
Pinching her chin, Xie Mingjun let her thumb trace the line of her jaw.
“So, are you still going to keep provoking me?”
Dong Yin licked her lips and only asked,
“Xie Mingjun, could you… teach me in the future?”
“Teach you?”
To Xie Mingjun, that sounded like the setup to a joke. She looked at her with amused interest.
“Why would I teach you? What’s in it for me? And besides, teaching you something like this… it’s ridiculous.”
“I’ll give you something in return,” Dong Yin said.
She rolled over to face her, tapped her own thigh with a fingertip, and hinted,
“I’ll let you bite.”
For a second, Xie Mingjun blanked out.
As soon as she finished, Dong Yin slipped off the bed in a rush. She didn’t chase after an answer.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
She shut the bathroom door.
Her back pressed against it, toes curling with embarrassment.
“Whew…”
This was a suite that Xie Mingjun had booked; the bathtub was huge, big enough for Dong Yin to soak alone.
She took off her clothes and poured in bath salts.
With her arms wrapped around herself, she felt the water lapping against her skin. She touched her own thigh, pinched it.
Nothing. No reaction at all.
All this time, she’d always felt like a mimic.
Whatever the outside world did, she copied. She always watched other people, walking behind them, terrified of doing anything even slightly out of line.
Even when she had ideas, she bottled them up, never daring to speak.
The only bold thing she’d ever done was deciding to seduce Xie Mingjun.
It was like a deadly addiction that she couldn’t quit.
When Dong Yin came back out, Xie Mingjun was gone. She’d probably gone back to her own room.
Dong Yin felt a little disappointed, and at the same time, a little relieved.
She lay on the bed, flipped back to that book again, and couldn’t help reading more.
This book was very useful.
She was going to study it carefully, learn everything.
Dong Yin had a habit when she read: she liked to flip to the ending first, afraid of stumbling into a tragedy.
This one had a happy ending, and a very complete one at that.
She turned to the final page.
There was a short line written there:
“In the end, I fucked her.”
