"Xinyue, the last mission just wrapped three days ago. I think you could actually take half a month off."
Yun Shao was a cop. Since entering this line of work, he'd never met anyone like Ji Xinyue. Her family circumstances were good—she could have lived the privileged life of a young heiress. At only nineteen, she ought to be in school. Like those girls on campus brimming with youthful energy, wearing pretty dresses, painting their nails, wearing pretty earrings and bracelets, with a group of handsome boys who admired her trailing behind.
He still remembered the first time they met.
That year she was sixteen, appearing before him in extremely shabby clothes, her face frostbitten by the cold wind because she'd gone a long time without applying any skincare. Her hands too had split open in some frightful cracks, even festering. Later, when he took her to the hospital, the doctor even told him quietly that she was covered all over in pus-filled sores, looking especially frightful.
He asked what was going on, whether she'd contracted some illness. The doctor said it wasn't an illness—it was because she'd taken a certain medication that caused those frightful pustules to break out on her skin, looking sickening and ugly, even giving off a foul smell. But as long as she stopped taking that medication and recovered properly, there'd be no problem.
The Ji Xinyue of back then was different from the bright, pretty her of now. Back then she didn't look like a city person—more like a country girl who'd weathered hardship and oppression.
The mission he'd received at the time was to find several missing girls. He'd investigated for about ten-some days with no leads. Just then, Ji Xinyue appeared before him, all bedraggled, and said to him, "Are you a police officer? I need your help right now."
Yun Shao had never imagined that the help she spoke of would turn out to be leading him to rescue a group of equally bedraggled girls. Those girls all had injuries to one degree or another, some even more bedraggled than her. There were eight of them, each looking somewhere between sixteen and twenty. Seeing them arrive, the dull, gray eyes of every one of them suddenly lit up. He caught sight of Ji Xinyue standing off to one side, still very bedraggled, smiling especially happily.
"They were all tricked into the little mountain village. They cried and sniveled every single day—I found it so annoying that I just stole them all out and handed them over to you officers to manage. You'd better roar at them, scare them a bit, and don't let them cry anymore." Those were the words Ji Xinyue said to him at the time. "Officer, sir, you've got to give them a good talking-to—tell them not to burst into tears at the drop of a hat, all right?"
Yun Shao remembered that when Ji Xinyue said this, those girls all gazed at her with pitiful eyes, making her wave a hand and turn to leave, muttering under her breath, "Always running into crybabies. So annoying."
"Crybabies—the most annoying of all."
The girl before him was nineteen this year; they'd known each other three years.
In these three years, she'd almost never rested, forever doing one thing: disguising herself as a clueless student, or a young girl fresh out into society who didn't know how sinister people's hearts could be, or a country girl desperate to find work. Girls like that were exactly what attracted traffickers most.
Yun Shao didn't know how she did it—every single time she managed to successfully rescue the girls who'd just been tricked into the mountain villages. Her fighting skills were excellent; he'd seen with his own eyes several grown men beaten by her until they howled. She could even kick a hole clean through a wooden door.
In three years, the girls she'd rescued numbered close to a hundred, and many trafficking rings had been smashed too. Some she'd rescued partway; when there was no other way partway, or when she heard there were girls newly sold into a mountain village, she'd sneak into the village and secretly take out the girls who were willing to leave.
Whether mountain roads or water routes, there was no path she couldn't travel.
Yun Shao was very curious, so he went and looked into her past specifically.
It turned out that in the year they met, she hadn't gone there specifically to rescue those girls. The truth was, she too had been one of those trafficked.
Unlike the other girls, who were simple-minded and had been tricked, she'd been secretly sold to traffickers by her stepmother. Those few girls happened to be in the very village where she was. At the time, all the newcomers were locked up in the same place; because they were disobedient and tried to escape, they were starved and savagely beaten every day.
According to what those girls said later, from the very beginning she'd been extremely composed, as if she knew something lay waiting ahead for her. Not long after being trapped inside, those sickening pustules broke out all over her body. Every day she made no fuss, just curled up in a corner and slept.
The other girls, meanwhile, huddled together, crying every day, saying they wanted to go home, wanted their mom and dad.
Finally, one night, she yelled out in great annoyance, "Stop crying. I'll take you all out one of these days."
Everyone thought she was joking—they never imagined they'd really get out afterward.
There were many suspicious points about her, but Yun Shao had lost interest in tracing them. All he knew was that this girl before him had saved many people. She was an angel, the redeemer of those trafficked girls.
"Can your body hold up?" Yun Shao looked at her, so terribly thin, and advised, "Resting for ten days or half a month won't affect anything. Things like this are countless in the world—you can't handle them all on your own. You've already done very well."
"I know I've done pretty well." Ji Xinyue stirred the coffee in front of her, lifted her head, looking utterly proud, and shook her head at the man before her. "But I don't want to stop. Not for a single moment." If she stopped, she easily fell to brooding. In this life, because those few crybabies had cried and made a fuss every night, she'd had no choice but to change her fate of drifting into a little mountain village—she hadn't lived too wretchedly, so A-Xin probably wouldn't come.
Ji Xinyue stirred the coffee cup hard. Because of this, she'd come to hate the traffickers of this world. A-Xin probably wouldn't come, and she wasn't the suicidal type. Her family circumstances were privileged; her stepmother was no match for her. Honestly, she could just coast through life, eating and waiting for death.
But the days of missing someone, yet being unable to see them, really were too hard to endure.
She'd been a young heiress many times over. Starting a business, opening a company, becoming a tycoon—these were all simple for her. Precisely because they were so simple, there was always idle time left over to think about that person who might never come.
In the end, she chose a very special path: pitting herself against traffickers.
Wherever there were traffickers, there she, Ji Xinyue, would be.
But blending in among the trafficked girls was no easy thing—before long, you'd turn quite ugly. She was the person who loved beauty most of all; but because this world had no A-Xin, she figured being unbeautiful once in a while was fine too. Her wife wasn't around anyway—being ugly now and then didn't matter.
"All right, I can't talk you out of it. Then watch your safety. If your personal safety is ever threatened, you must pull out immediately."
Ji Xinyue's identity was very special, and very important. Her conduct had already been tacitly approved by those above.
"I know."
Seeing Ji Xinyue's nonchalant manner, Yun Shao knew she definitely hadn't taken his words to heart. His gaze never once left her face. He suddenly asked, "Xinyue, have you thought about the future? Do you plan to spend your whole life like this?"
"What do you mean by asking that?" Ji Xinyue raised an eyebrow and said with a smile, "Why can't I spend my whole life like this? I think it's pretty good—busy and bustling, every day especially fulfilling, and every adventure is especially interesting too."
Yun Shao took a deep breath and said, "Have you really never considered the future—say, getting married and having children someday?"
"Marriage and children? Pfft—" Ji Xinyue laughed first, then put her smile away. "I've considered marriage; I haven't considered children. But I think I'll never be able to marry in this lifetime."
"Why?" Yun Shao pressed.
"Because there's no one I like here. Marriage and the like—I'll pass. If she appeared, I'd definitely marry at once."
Seeing Yun Shao's dejected look, she downed her coffee in one gulp, picked up her bag, and stood. "I'm off. I'll let you know if there's news. Yun Shao, don't try to get anything from me. I'm not the person you're waiting for. There will never be anything between us."
"Why not?"
The corner of Ji Xinyue's mouth curved. "Because I've long had someone in my heart. Even if she never comes, I won't fall for anyone else. For the sake of your physical and mental health, I think you'd better find a different target. If you dare to pester me relentlessly, you know what fate awaits you."
Yun Shao couldn't help recalling the men she'd beaten until they were searching the floor for their teeth, and his momentum did weaken a bit. "Xinyue, there's no need to be so fierce with me, is there? I am a cop, after all, and I've got some skills too."
"You sure that three-legged-cat kung fu of yours counts as skills?" Ji Xinyue mocked without mercy. "Go back and practice some more. All right, no more talking with you—I'm leaving."
Ji Xinyue didn't linger in the slightest, turning to leave, leaving Yun Shao standing there with a regretful expression. "Just who is the person you like, worth waiting for like this, even with no result?"
After Ji Xinyue got home, she changed out of her outfit. From the dressing room she took out a schoolgirl outfit and put it on—truly pure, lively, and lovely. She slung on a pretty backpack, painted her nails with the polish most popular among schoolgirls, and slipped on a pair of little white shoes.
She didn't do much to her face, only tidied up her eyebrows. This year she was only nineteen; bare-faced, she was naturally pretty beyond compare.
The role she was to play this time was going to a certain county town to meet an online friend she'd been chatting with. Beforehand, after reasoning it through from every angle, she'd concluded this online friend should be a trafficker—one who specifically targeted simple, easily fooled young girls.
And hearing that familiar county-town name again, she was even more certain.
In this life, ever since birth she'd had all her previous memories. She'd likewise glimpsed the world's will: in her sixteenth year, she would be sold to traffickers by her stepmother. She'd intended to play along with the scheme and wait for A-Xin to rescue her—but she'd never imagined she wouldn't be able to bear those few crybabies and would have to find a way to take them out.
According to the original trajectory, that time, having escaped several times, she'd ultimately be beaten to death by the villagers and buried directly; the people on the outside would never uncover the truth.
Three years after the original trajectory came the story of that unlucky thing.
That's right—that unlucky thing again. According to A-Xin, it was the little demon the Dragon Prince liked. The unlucky little demon's name was Jiang Han. Because she'd made plans with a few classmates to go hiking, she'd carelessly stumbled into a county town nearest to the little mountain village. Gathered in this county town were many traffickers of young girls—seeing a few young women, how could they not get ideas?
They enthusiastically acted as the girls' tour guides, introducing the local scenery and food, which greatly attracted the few city girls. In the end, they even said their village over there was especially nice, perfect for taking photos and seeing the scenery. And so they tricked this group of girls into the village.
Jiang Han counted as this world's female lead. Just as she was about to be abused by an old man in the village, in the moment she escaped, she happened to run into this world's male lead, Song Xian, home on summer break. At the time, seeing Song Xian looking sunny and handsome, not like a vicious person, she assumed he was an outside tourist, so she begged him for help.
She was indeed saved—at least she wouldn't be like the other girls, trapped forever in that little mountain village. In the end, the villagers held a wedding for them, and Song Xian took her away. She still thought of the others trapped in the village and asked Song Xian whether he could help her.
Song Xian indicated he couldn't help. Their village had always been like this; though those villagers were in the wrong, they were people he knew, his kin—how could he betray his own family for the sake of outsiders? Song Xian's refusal kept Jiang Han in a state of inner rejection toward him the whole time. Their relationship was forever fraught with bumps.
Later, Jiang Han tried to go to the village to rescue those classmates, but failed and was caught by the villagers. Were it not for Song Xian's sake, she too would surely have had to stay there forever.
Song Xian rushed back, face dark, and took her away.
Afterward he watched her constantly, leaving her no chance to do anything. She wanted to escape Song Xian, only to find escape was impossible; she spent her whole life with Song Xian, yet was never once happy. On holidays and festivals, Song Xian would even take her back to the little mountain village, where she watched those girls she'd first met grow numb in expression, vacant in gaze, no different from the village women—it was deeply painful.
This was a tragedy. In the end, Jiang Han truly couldn't bear the condemnation in her heart and killed herself.
"An unlucky thing for sure—getting taken a fancy to by scum like the Dragon Prince, it'd be a wonder if she weren't unlucky." Ji Xinyue hummed a little tune, occasionally muttering, "This life, you'd best hold tight to this young lady's leg. To hell with Song Xian."
Ji Xinyue bought a ticket to that little county town, found a seat near the back—the trip was several hours long—took out an eye mask, and planned to have a good sleep.
Just as she was about to sleep, a voice suddenly came by her ear. "Excuse me, is this seat taken?"
Ji Xinyue took off her eye mask and glanced at the fair, clean-looking girl before her, then glanced around the bus, discovering that apart from the seat beside her, there was only one seat left, in the middle of a few men at the back. And part of her bag had slid onto the seat beside her, which was why the other had asked.
"No one's sitting there. Go ahead." Ji Xinyue withdrew her gaze and gave the girl who thanked her and sat down a meaningful look.
She couldn't help thinking to herself: this unlucky thing was actually riding the same bus as her.
The unlucky thing wasn't really that unlucky, though—at least she could run into her, couldn't she?
"Is something wrong?" Jiang Han didn't understand why Ji Xinyue kept staring at her, and asked shyly.
Ji Xinyue let out a pfft of laughter. "I feel like we've met somewhere."
"Is... is that so?" Jiang Han thought feebly: wasn't this pickup line a bit too cliché? Pah—no, wait, the other party was a girl, not some fickle player.
"I must have mistaken you for someone else." Ji Xinyue put her eye mask back on, and Jiang Han didn't feel right pressing further.