Chapter 3 Fear

The voice ringing in his head startled Jiang Jinyue so much that he froze in mid-air. The unfamiliar body temperature and touch of another person in his arms made Jiang Jinyue tremble and resist all over.

He lowered his head and met Lu Qingmian's dark eyes.

Those eyes were pitch black, not letting in any light, but at this moment they reflected Jiang Jinyue's beautiful face without any obstruction and the wings behind her that were so white that they were almost glowing.

Jiang Jinyue's eyes were different from Lu Qingmian's all-consuming darkness. They were clear and transparent, carefully hiding fear and hesitation.

The two of them stopped at a height of about 10 floors, with a brightly lit city beneath their feet. The evening breeze blew, and Lu Qingmian smelled a faint mint scent coming from Jiang Jinyue, a cool and clean smell with a slightly bitter taste of traditional Chinese medicine. It was the smell of the ointment that Jiang Jinyue had been applying on his back and shoulder blades recently.

The newly grown wings on his back flapped slowly, and as the two looked at each other, a white feather floated into Lu Qingmian's arms.

Lu Qingmian picked up the feather, without a trace of fear of falling from a tall building on his face. He was so indifferent as if the person who almost died was not him.

The feather was held in front of Jiang Jinyue's eyes, and Lu Qingmian asked, "Have I seen you before?"

Jiang Jinyue was trying hard to restrain the urge to throw Lu Qingmian out, but was suddenly frightened by Lu Qingmian's question. His arms loosened subconsciously, and Lu Qingmian fell down again.

While falling, Lu Qingmian was still holding the feather. The white and soft feather was blown into disarray by the wind brought by the fall. Lu Qingmian relaxed his hands and feet without struggling. His black eyes quietly looked at Jiang Jinyue who was hovering in the air, allowing himself to continue falling.

Jiang Jinyue's rapidly beating heart almost jumped out of his chest. He gritted his teeth, flapped his wings hard, dived down, and hugged Lu Qingmian again.

This time he was afraid of letting go, so he held Lu Qingmian's back tightly with both hands. Because of the huge height difference between the two, it seemed as if he was throwing himself into Lu Qingmian's arms.

Lu Qingmian lowered his eyes and looked at the wings behind Jiang Jinyue. His slender fingertips vaguely brushed across the shoulder blades where Jiang Jinyue's wings connected to his back.

The two people flying upwards suddenly tilted and spun in the air. Jiang Jinyue's limbs and waist suddenly felt sore. He gritted his teeth to steady his body, and stumbled into the wide-open window of the rental house with Lu Qingmian.

There was a crackling sound, and two people almost rolled into the room, knocking over things near the window.

Jiang Jinyue hurriedly got up from the ground, rushed over, picked up the heavy glasses and put them on, then picked up the mask and hung it on his ears.

He only had time to close one ear when Lu Qingmian came over.

Sensitively sensing another person approaching, Jiang Jinyue turned around abruptly, staring at Lu Qingmian closely, and kept backing away.

It was Lu Qingmian who fell from the building, but it was Jiang Jinyue who was scared and panicked.

Jiang Jinyue's pair of soft and beautiful wings tucked behind him, trembling slightly because of his master's panic.

He didn't bother to think about the golden finger. He only knew that he suddenly grew a pair of wings and was seen by others.

The man was standing calmly in his room at this time, approaching him step by step.

Lu Qingmian still held the feather between his fingertips. There was a thin wound on his cheek, with a little blood flowing out. It was caused by a piece of glass. Jiang Jinyue subconsciously looked at the wound.

At this moment, Lu Qingmian suddenly reached out, hooked his fingertips around the mask hanging on Jiang Jinyue's ear, and pulled it off. His usually indifferent black eyes were rarely filled with other emotions, like surprise and admiration, "I seem to recognize you."

Jiang Jinyue took several steps back. When Lu Qingmian took off the mask, his fingertips touched his cheek. The unfamiliar touch made his hair stand on end.

Glasses, a mask, and overly long hair were all his armor. Without any one of them, he would feel uncomfortable all over. He lowered his head and stared at Lu Qingmian's feet on the floor, feeling powerless as if his territory was being invaded by wild beasts.

Panic, fear, powerlessness, the emotions piling up made Jiang Jinyue's eyes go dark, and the sound of whispering voices and laughter seemed to ring in his ears again.

"Stay away from him, he's a psychopath. If anyone touches him accidentally he'll go crazy and scream. It's really scary."

"Not only is he yelling, but last time I deliberately pushed him to see his reaction, and he just lay on the ground and slapped his head..."

"So he's mentally ill. No wonder he wears a mask every day. Is he afraid others will freak out seeing his face?"

"I've seen his face, it looks like a woman's, motherfucker!"

"You just realized he's a sissy? I heard that when he was a kid, he was kidnapped as a girl because he was a sissy. Hahahaha..."

Jiang Jinyue's vision began to go dark. He tried to open his eyes wide and look at Lu Qingmian, trying to distinguish between reality and illusion.

Under the control of his emotions, he couldn't help but think of the worst possible outcome. If Lu Qingmian told others about his wings, if others knew that he had wings...

He would be considered a monster.

The scene in front of Jiang Jinyue's eyes began to distort. In a trance, he saw those men again, walking towards him with steel needles in their hands.

"don't want……"

Jiang Jinyue's tense nerves drove him to turn around like crazy and pick up the fruit knife thrown on the key cabinet next to the door. He held the handle tightly with both hands and faced Lu Qingmian.

"Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone that I have wings!" Jiang Jinyue threatened in a trembling voice.

Lu Qingmian lowered his eyes and looked at the trembling blade in Jiang Jinyue's hand, without any fear.

He approached again and reached out to grab the fruit knife.

Jiang Jinyue had nowhere to retreat, and the hand that Lu Qingmian stretched out to him twisted into a sharp steel needle in his eyes.

Those steel needles would pierce his fingertips, his limbs, the soles of his feet, and would constantly poke under his skin...

"Don't come near me!" Jiang Jinyue shouted, waving his hands subconsciously. With a slight sound, blood dripped down Lu Qingmian's arm onto the floor.

"Bang." The fruit knife in Jiang Jinyue's hand fell to the ground.

The illusion before my eyes vanished, and the laughter in my ears also disappeared.

The rental house was very quiet. The night wind kept pouring in through the wide-open window behind Lu Qingmian, and Jiang Jinyue felt cold from head to toe.

The feather that Lu Qingmian had been holding in his hand fell to the ground, stained with blood and no longer white.

Lu Qingmian raised his arm slightly and glanced at the wound. It was just a shallow scratch, but Jiang Jinyue seemed to be scared to death.

"Are you calm?" Lu Qingmian asked.

Jiang Jinyue's messy hair covered her face, and the heavy glasses frame hung crookedly on her face, with the lenses fogged up.

Lu Qingmian lowered his head and moved closer to Jiang Jinyue, and he could smell the minty scent with a hint of Chinese medicine again.

"Are you afraid of me?" Lu Qingmian's question was not a question.

Jiang Jinyue's shoulders and wings trembled slightly, and he clung to the wall like a small animal that was about to suffocate from fear.

Lu Qingmian blocked all of Jiang Jinyue's escape routes.

He stretched out his bloody fingertips and gently touched Jiang Jinyue's wings under Jiang Jinyue's panicked gaze, as if to confirm whether the wings were real.

The white wings were stained with a hint of red.

Jiang Jinyue trembled even more violently.

Lu Qingmian's expression was unpredictable: "Are you afraid that I will touch you?"

Jiang Jinyue couldn't hold it in any longer. He weakly raised his neck back, trying to relieve the suffocation in his throat. Just because of a slight touch, he began to breathe heavily. Fine beads of sweat appeared on his fair skin, and a thin pink appeared faintly.

Lu Qingmian finally stepped back.

The oppressive feeling in front of him suddenly disappeared. Jiang Jinyue looked over through the tilted and foggy lenses, and folded his wings forward, trying to hide himself.

"I'm sorry..." A small voice came from Jiang Jinyue's throat.

He clearly wanted to save people, but ended up hurting them.

Lu Qingmian bent down and picked up the fruit knife on the ground, but did not return it to Jiang Jinyue: "You saved me, so I should be the one to say sorry. I am the one who caused you trouble. I am sorry."

He walked towards the door, opened it, and suddenly turned back to add, "Thank you for tonight. I'll see you again tomorrow."

There was a slight sound of the door closing, and Jiang Jinyue's legs went limp. He fell to the ground, hugged his knees and curled up with his wings.

He's in trouble again.

Jiang Jinyue recalled over and over again how he looked like a madman when he couldn't control his emotions and couldn't distinguish between illusion and reality, and his nails dug into his skin.

He even injured someone with a knife.

Huge guilt, regret and self-loathing almost overwhelmed Jiang Jinyue.

He sat on the floor, leaving the window wide open and letting the increasingly cold night wind invade him, as if punishing himself.

After a long time, Jiang Jinyue looked up, and the tears on his face had dried.

"If you hurt someone, you should be responsible." He tried to calm down and planned to buy some medicine for the injuries tomorrow and then apologize to Lu Qingmian.

It was not until this moment that Jiang Jinyue remembered the strange voice that had appeared in his mind before.

A super-invincible Mary Sue cheat? An angel who can't escape? What is all this?

Jiang Jinyue gently moved the wings behind him, feeling dazed.

Are these wings going to stay exposed like this forever? Can't they be folded up?

His frozen brain started working again, and the things he had previously ignored emerged one by one.

Why did Lu Qingmian break through the glass and fall down?

Thinking of Lu Qingmian, Jiang Jinyue lowered his eyes.

The Lu Qingmian I met again in H City seemed different from the gentle and humble Lu Qingmian in high school.

Jiang Jinyue got up from the ground, walked to the window, and finally closed the wide-open window.

The cool breeze could no longer enter the rental house, but it rushed madly into the floor above Jiang Jinyue.

Upstairs in Jiang Jinyue's rental house, the glass that had been converted into a semi-floor-to-ceiling window was shattered all over the floor. The room was pitch black. Lu Qingmian stood quietly by the window without any protection, the hem of her clothes fluttering in the strong wind.

The bright moon rose high in the sky, and the clear moonlight shone into the room, refracting the broken glass on the ground into a shimmering starry river.

The galaxy spread out, bringing moonlight into the center of the room.

The room behind Lu Qingmian was very empty. There seemed to be nothing else except the mattress placed directly on the ground, a laptop, scattered books and a suitcase lying on the side. Every corner of the room was still hidden in the darkness.

As the night deepened, the moonlight grew brighter, finally illuminating the corners of the room.

On the walls on both sides of the room, simulated human specimens of different heights, weights and sizes are compactly arranged.

Most of these simulated human specimens have incomplete skin, exposed texture and internal organs, and each one looks hideous and terrifying.

In the heart of one of the simulated human specimens was stuck the knife that Lu Qingmian had confiscated from Jiang Jinyue.

There was still Lu Qingmian's blood on the blade.

In the corner of the room stood a huge box filled with simulated human specimens, including hands, feet, internal organs, brains, and even intestines hanging from the edge.

What Jiang Jinyue heard downstairs was not the sound of dragging furniture, but the sound of dragging boxes.

Lu Qingmian stood by the unobstructed window, looking at the city below the tall building with an expressionless face.

Suddenly, he raised his hand, reached for the back of his neck which was slightly itchy, and pulled out a fluffy, soft, white feather from his collar.

Lu Qingmian narrowed his eyes slightly, loosened his fingertips, and watched the feather float down from the sky on the wind and disappear into the endless darkness below.

The feathers were fragile, soft, and extremely beautiful, just like Jiang Jinyue himself.

"Jiang Jinyue."

A cloud passed by, blocking the moonlight, and everything returned to darkness.

In the darkness, Lu Qingmian accurately called out Jiang Jinyue's name.