SLEEPWALKING

At night, He Yingtong phoned to ask Jiang Yue how her new place was.

“It’s pretty good,” Jiang Yue replied.

“Really?” He Yingtong was confused. “According to my client, his friend is really weird, changing housekeepers four or five times in a month, but it’s not because he has a bad temper. It’s just that he’s weird. I don’t know the specifics, but there’s no problem with his character. He won’t use violence against others, and he won’t…force himself on you.”

“I know.” Jiang Yue thought to herself, she had already witnessed his weirdness firsthand.

“Jiang Yue,” He Yingtong said sincerely, “You can come to me in the future if you need anything. I still consider you my friend.”

“Thank you.”

After she hung up the phone, Jiang Yue went to the washing machine to dry the washed bedsheets. As she passed by the living room, she paused in her tracks.

It was already dark, and the living room was pitch black without the lights turned on.

In the darkness, the refrigerator door was opened, and the cold white light shone on the man sitting on the ground. He was facing the refrigerator while bending his long legs and lowering his head as he played chess on the floor.

Jiang Yue continued to walk without looking at him. Once she arrived at the balcony, she shook the sheets and hung them to dry.

On her way back to her room, she unconsciously took a glance at him.

His hair was long. He was wearing a headband that pushed all of his hair back, revealing his smooth and round forehead, and the love bands under his lower eyelids stood out even more in the cold white light.

His gaze was focused on the chess pieces on the floor.

His outstretched hand was slender and clean, with very fair skin and visible veins beneath.

He Yingtong had said that he was a retired professional e-sports player. Jiang Yue expected his fingers to be thick and coarse from excessive use, but she did not expect his hands to look like this.

Beautiful and delicate.

Jiang Yue didn’t disturb him. She went to her room and started livestreaming.

The ASMR livestreaming that she had been doing was without showing her face, only her voice.

One of her cellmates made a living by singing and dancing live on the internet. Jiang Yue heard that she had made a lot of money from it. After consulting her cellmate for a long time and doing a lot of reading in the library, the first thing Jiang Yue did after being released from the prison was to earn money to purchase a computer and recording equipment.

She wanted to make money, a lot of money.

That way…her parents wouldn’t make her go to jail for someone else’s crime for the sake of money in the future.

She had wasted nine years of her life in prison. When she was released, she could hardly tell what day and year it was, and she had almost forgotten how old she was that year.

She entered prison at the age of nineteen, the age where she should have been in college and everyone her age was in school, the age where she should have been blooming like a flower, but instead she was locked up. On her birthday, she could only look up at the dark sky and silently make a wish.

I want to go out.

I want to have a good birthday.

I want to buy a big cake, preferably one with three layers.

In the past nine years, no one from her family had paid her a visit. Jiang Yue, disheartened, had never visited her parents after being released from prison. She had no money when she was released, so she had taken on part-time jobs that paid her on a daily basis. After working day and night for nearly a month, she finally saved enough money to rent a place to live, but every landlord required a deposit. After a long search, she finally met He Yingtong.

That was the first time she was grateful that there were still good people in the world.

He Yingtong had helped her a lot. She had taught her how to use a computer, how to dress, gave her beautiful clothes, reduced her rent, and even took her out to eat.

When Jiang Yue received her first earnings from livestreaming for the first time, she bought a very expensive perfume as a thank you gift for He Yingtong.

She had thought that they could always be good friends and live together for a long time.

She even secretly saved money in order to give He Yingtong and Wei Jiyuan an extra large red packet when they marry.

Unfortunately, things had not gone the way she had planned.

She put on her headphones, launched the streaming app, and began typing on her keyboard.

【Welcome to all the babies who are listening. The stream starts in 30, 29, 28…】

Jiang Yue only did livestreaming at night, from ten o’clock at night to one o’clock in the morning.

She would archive each stream, so that her new fans could watch her previous streams.

She had a lot of tools on her desk, including more than a dozen small bottles. Some fans liked to hear the sound of twisting open bottle caps, others liked the sound of picking ears, and many liked listening to the sound of bubbles.

She almost never spoke in her streams. Even if she occasionally made sounds, they were pop sounds made with her mouth, like a small fish blowing bubbles.

If there was a message from her fan in the chat, she would make a bubble pop sound. If there was no message, she would quietly sweep the microphone with a feather or cotton swab.

At one o’clock, when she was done, she would quietly close the live streaming without saying anything.

That was her habit, not saying good night or anything else like other livestreamers.

She was always conscious of having an accent when speaking Mandarin and was afraid of others hearing it.

However, He Yingtong used to praise her, saying that she could hardly hear her accent.

When she was in prison, in addition to reading books, she also read novels to her fellow inmates. They enjoyed listening to her read, claiming that it sublimated their souls.

After cleaning up her desk, Jiang Yue opened the door to go to the bathroom.

But the moment she opened the door, she froze. The light in the living room was turned on, and the man had a glass of juice in his hand, which he was spilling on the floor all the way to the bathroom door.

“…”

Jiang Yue asked quietly, “Do you hate me?”

The man didn’t speak. He opened the refrigerator door again, took out an egg, and plopped it on the floor.

Jiang Yue walked behind him. “Mr. Xie Jin, I think we need to have a conversation. Do you hate me and don’t like me here, so you’re doing this on purpose?”

The man turned around, as if he couldn’t see her, and poured another bottle of juice onto the floor.

Jiang Yue was a little angry, but as she was about to touch him, she saw his eyes.

His eyes were half-closed.

Jiang Yue was stunned for a moment.

Sleepwalking?

She took a few steps back and quietly observed him.

The man was very tall, nearly 1.9 meters in height, with no expression on his face. He took out drinks and juices from the refrigerator again and again, poured them on the ground, and opened the fridge door again. Only after he had thrown everything on the floor did he return to his room and shut the door.

This was the first time Jiang Yue saw someone sleepwalking. There were also sleepwalkers in prison, but she had only heard about them. This was the first time she had actually seen one, so she was a little scared.

She didn’t know what sleepwalkers do, but the one in the prison was said to be confined in a separate room after nearly strangling someone to death.

She grabbed a mop and began mopping the floor. It took her more than an hour to clean the living room.

She had been busy all day. After taking a shower, she flung herself on the bed and fell asleep the moment her head touched the bed.

When the alarm went off, she had only slept for less than four hours.

She rubbed her eyes and got up for grocery shopping.

She was surprised to see the man downstairs. He was running, and he had done a few laps with sweat on his forehead.

He was dressed in white sportswear, with a cap on his head and earphones in his ears. He was tall and slender, and his face was full of sunshine and vitality.

Jiang Yue thought of the expressionless man pouring drinks on the floor in the early hours of the morning, and she really couldn’t connect that man with the person in front of her.

When she was finished with her grocery shopping, she noticed the man walking out of the supermarket with a drink in his hand.

“Mr. Xie Jin.” Jiang Yue walked over to him. “I already bought drinks. If you want something to drink the next time, you can write me a list and I will buy it for you.”

Xie Jin removed his earphones and turned to face her. He was quite tall, and his downcast gaze was somewhat condescending.

The voice that drifted through the air was low and magnetic, yet the words that came out were not particularly pleasant.

“You are the housekeeper in charge of cleaning, not my nanny.”

Jiang Yue: “…”

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