Free Web NovelThe infant’s sharp cries rang out from the nursery behind her.
Ji An’s expression changed at once, crumbling into deeper despair.
“There’s a child?” Liu Jiayi tilted her head slightly.
Her ability to locate things through sound had always been exceptionally strong, and she quickly made the judgment. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
“In the last room. It should be Su Yang’s child.”
Ji An’s mind went blank.
Before she could think, she turned and stumbled frantically into the nursery.
With trembling hands, she locked the door, turned to scoop up the infant, and paced rapidly back and forth through the room, breathing in panicked gasps as terrified tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.
She shoved open the window and screamed toward the deserted street below, her voice breaking with desperation.
“Is anyone there?! Help! Is anyone there?! Please!”
No one answered.
Ji An buried her face in the baby’s swaddling clothes and sobbed hysterically. Yet even as she cried, her hands covered the infant’s ears, and she kept kissing and soothing the frightened child.
“It’s okay, Bao’an. Sleep, baby. Mama’s here. Mama won’t let anything happen to you.”
Behind her, the locked door made a soft ka-cha.
A key had been inserted into the lock.
Then it slowly began to turn.
Ji An’s breathing stopped.
Her hands shook as she reached into the pocket of her pajamas.
The nursery key that had been inside was gone.
Just like her phone, it had not disappeared.
It had been stolen ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ by those two people.
Ji An let out a long, broken sob. Tears covered her face as she closed her eyes in despair.
The nursery door slowly opened.
The room was empty.
Only the bell above the crib was still tinkling softly.
Mu Shicheng let out a strange, confused “Eh?”
He scanned the room, then bent down to look under the bed.
“Where is she? I clearly saw her run in here.”
Liu Jiayi raised a hand, stopping Mu Shicheng from moving farther in.
“Her breathing is still here.”
She half-closed her eyes, using sound to “scout” the room. Then she lifted her head toward the window.
“She’s outside the window.”
“Outside the window?!” Mu Shicheng was shocked.
He strode forward, pulled open the window, and looked out.
He immediately saw Ji An kneeling on the outdoor air-conditioning unit, the infant clutched tightly in her arms.
The night wind was cold and fierce, whipping Ji An’s white maternity pajamas until they billowed around her. She looked like a dandelion about to be blown away, desperately holding on to its own seeds, while large tears rolled down her face.
Ji An stared at Mu Shicheng with bloodshot eyes.
She gritted her teeth, baring them like a mother beast about to have her cub stolen, and threatened him hoarsely.
“Even if I jump down with my child, I won’t let you use us as leverage against Su Yang!”
Mu Shicheng instantly felt his head swell.
“Big Sister, we don’t have that intention right now! Of course, I won’t deny there might be some kind of arrangement later, but mainly we just want to find Su—”
Before he could finish, Ji An shook her head and retreated two wary steps.
The rusty screws of the old air-conditioning unit twisted beneath her.
The moment Ji An stepped back, the unit suddenly tilted and collapsed.
She fell toward the ground in panic.
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But Ji An, who had just declared she would jump with the child, instinctively thrust the bundled infant toward Mu Shicheng in that life-or-death instant.
Her eyes were desperate, pleading, and full of tears.
“Please!” she cried hoarsely. “Save my child!”
Mu Shicheng’s pupils contracted.
His reflexes were terrifyingly fast. He hooked one foot onto the window frame and sharply extended his other leg, catching the sagging air-conditioning rack firmly and stopping it from crushing Ji An and the baby.
The immense weight pressing down on his ankle made the veins on Mu Shicheng’s forehead bulge.
He braced himself against the outer wall, one hand gripping the window ledge while the other wrapped around Ji An’s waist.
“Shit!” Mu Shicheng’s face flushed bright red, the artery in his neck pulsing violently from the strain. “You’re so damn heavy, Big Sister!”
In the chaos of Mu Shicheng trying to pull her up, the infant’s swaddling clothes loosened.
The baby, completely unaware of the danger, let out a few happy “yi-ya” sounds and kicked its tiny hands and feet, slowly slipping free from the blanket.
“Fuck!”
Mu Shicheng stared in horror at the infant sliding downward, but he no longer had a hand free to reach for it.
“Hold on to your child!”
“Yi-ya!”
The infant slipped completely out of the swaddling clothes.
The tiny baby stared with round, innocent eyes as it fell through the air, its hands and feet spread outward as though trying to grab its mother’s fingers.
It had no idea what was happening.
It only looked upward with clear, guileless eyes as it dropped.
“My child!”
Ji An twisted around and reached out with all her strength, trying to catch the infant. Her expression was almost deranged, her face streaked with tears.
“My child!”
Without the slightest hesitation, Liu Jiayi moved past Mu Shicheng and flipped out through the window, bracing herself with one hand.
Mu Shicheng cried out in alarm.
“Liu Jiayi! Hey! You can’t see!”
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Liu Jiayi did not look back.
It was as though she truly could see.
She swung nimbly between the air-conditioning units Mu Shicheng had propped up, leaping several times before finally hanging from one unit with a single hand and catching the falling child by the foot.
The baby dangled upside down in midair, still not reacting in fear. It waved its limbs toward the sky, making soft “yi-yi ya-ya” sounds as it reached toward Liu Jiayi for a hug.
Liu Jiayi held the child steadily against her chest with one hand, made several more quick leaps, and landed firmly on the ground floor.
Standing below the building, she gave Mu Shicheng a casual wave, then carried the child toward the stairwell, apparently heading back upstairs.
Mu Shicheng finally breathed out in relief and helped pull Ji An back inside.
Ji An panted in lingering terror before turning and stumbling toward the door.
When she opened it, Liu Jiayi was already standing outside.
Liu Jiayi was holding the infant by the diaper, keeping the baby far away from herself. The infant, however, seemed to find this extremely amusing, giggling while being held up in the air and trying to reach Liu Jiayi’s face.
With an expression of numb disgust, Liu Jiayi pushed away the child trying to get close to her and quickly handed the diaper-clutched baby over to Ji An.
“Here. She peed all over me.”
Ji An took the child and hugged her tightly. Exhausted, she sank down onto the floor.
After several deep breaths to steady herself, she finally could not hold back anymore. She covered her face and burst into loud sobs.
Mu Shicheng walked out, rubbing his shoulder.
He looked at Liu Jiayi in amazement.
“Your movements are seriously good. Aren’t you blind? How did you jump onto those air-conditioning units so accurately?”
“By listening,” Liu Jiayi said naturally. “The night is very quiet. When sounds are loud enough, I can judge the position of obstacles through their echoes. Air conditioners are box-shaped, so their echoes are loud and distinct. It’s very obvious.”
She paused, then added with faint disdain:
“You can’t even do that?”
Mu Shicheng: “...”
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Don’t talk about that kind of bizarre skill like it’s common sense!
Only bats can do that!
It’s perfectly normal for humans not to be able to do it!
The strange one is you, monster kid, jumping down six floors like it’s nothing!
By the time Ji An settled the baby and came back out, her pajamas were stained with rust from the air-conditioning rack.
Mu Shicheng and Liu Jiayi were sitting on the sofa with great ease.
These two probably had no idea how to spell the word embarrassment.
Ji An, who had just come out of the nursery, felt awkward instead.
Especially when she saw the scratches on Mu Shicheng’s face, which she herself had caused, and Liu Jiayi’s palms, red and swollen from the strain of grabbing the rack while catching the baby.
Ji An gripped her own wrists.
She lowered her head and opened her mouth, but the sharp questions she wanted to ask would not come out.
After a long silence, she turned back into the room and brought out a small medical kit.
Half-kneeling beside the coffee table, she placed disinfectant, bandages, and adhesive plasters on it.
Mu Shicheng looked at the items on the table, then glanced at Ji An with a strange sense of novelty.
Ji An kept her head lowered and said nothing. She merely turned her face slightly away, pursing her lips to avoid Mu Shicheng’s scrutinizing gaze.
Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes were red and swollen.
Clearly, she had just cried in the room from the lingering fear.
In the end, Mu Shicheng picked up the disinfectant supplies and, out of habit, handed them to Liu Jiayi.
Once Ji An had gathered herself, she took a deep breath and looked steadily at the two uninvited guests.
“What business do you have with Su Yang?”
“His colleague caught our...”
Mu Shicheng began searching his mind for the precise word to describe their relationship with Bai Liu.
Before he could find one, Liu Jiayi calmly took over.
“His colleague took my father away without warning.”
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Ji An looked startled.
“Your... father?”
Without the slightest change in expression, Liu Jiayi admitted it.
“Yes.”
Mu Shicheng immediately broke into a fit of earth-shaking coughs.
Just as he was about to speak, Liu Jiayi’s hand shot out beneath the coffee table, grabbed the flesh at his waist, and twisted it in a full circle.
Mu Shicheng sucked in a sharp breath and clutched his waist.
Liu Jiayi blinked.
Tears instantly welled from her large, hollow eyes.
She bit her lower lip, sniffled twice, and said in a low voice, “Big Sister, we really don’t want to do anything to you. But my most important father was taken away. I only know that when they captured him, I heard them call one of the people ‘Su Yang.’ That’s all I know.”
“I really have been trying to find my way home. I searched for a long, long time before finding your house.”
Liu Jiayi pitifully reached out and tugged at Ji An’s sleeve.
“We don’t want to hurt you or your child. I just want my father to come home.”
Her voice trembled.
“You’re also waiting for your child’s father to come home, aren’t you? You have a child too. You know how a child feels when she’s forced to leave the only father she can rely on.”
“I know he seems to do very dangerous work, but I swear, everything he does is legal. He does it all so he can give me a better life. Even if it’s only for my sake, he would never do anything bad.”
Liu Jiayi’s nose wrinkled. Large tears rolled down her face as she began to sob.
“I just want to find him. I don’t understand why he was arrested when he didn’t do anything wrong.”
As a new mother who worried day and night about Su Yang, yet never knew exactly what he was doing, Ji An found it very difficult not to empathize with Liu Jiayi’s words.
Her originally resistant expression gradually became hesitant.
And as Liu Jiayi covered her face and sobbed as though her heart were breaking, Ji An was finally moved by this little girl who had just risked her life to save her child.
In this fragile girl, she seemed to see the shadow of her own baby.
Ji An leaned forward, gently hugged Liu Jiayi, and sighed as she stroked her hair.
“...Don’t cry.”
Ji An patted Liu Jiayi’s shoulder comfortingly and sighed.
“Your father... should be alright.”
Liu Jiayi lifted her head from Ji An’s shoulder.
Tear tracks still marked her face, but her expression was utterly calm as she silently mouthed to Mu Shicheng:
Learn something.
The dumbfounded Mu Shicheng: “...”
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