379. Lilith
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“Lilith!”
At noon when school was out, Lin Nan and Chen Yao strategically blocked the path everyone had to take to leave the teaching building.
She spotted Lilith immediately, striding up with a face like thunder and clutching a can of cola, “Where’s Li Na?”
Lilith, looking utterly baffled, tilted her head, “Huh?”
“I asked you where Li Na is!”
Scratching the head of the cola can, she furrowed her brow, “I don’t know either.”
“Aren’t you two together every day?”
“I just woke up in the rental apartment this morning and found Li Na was missing,” she mumbled, “I thought she’d run off to class early, but she wasn’t in our classroom…”
With a melodramatic sigh, she added, “She’s not picking up her phone, and I have no idea where she went.”
Lin Nan was flabbergasted, staring at Lilith’s woeful expression—it didn’t look like she was trying to pull a fast one. Hesitating, she muttered to herself, “She’s not on the run from some crime, is she?”
Not that it would be a serious crime, right?
Throwing her hands up in despair over Li Na, she remarked, “When you see her, tell her to delete the pictures she posted online.”
Lin Nan turned to leave with Chen Yao, but as she took a step, she suddenly realized her little bag was being tugged.
What kind of shenanigans is Lilith up to now?
“Don’t pull on it! I just bought it! Over 200 bucks!” Lin Nan pried her fingers off and huffed, “Chen Yao bought it for me! You can’t have it, no matter how much you like it.”
“Yeah, I bought it,” Chen Yao nodded. “Go have your boyfriend buy you one.”
After they said this, they walked off, but when they reached the alley where the rental apartment was, they turned back to find Lilith still trailing behind with the cat.
Lin Nan was starting to get confused. She stopped, frowning, “What do you want now?”
Lilith hesitated for a moment and looked up, “Cola hasn’t eaten all day! I’m starving!”
“Well, go get it some food,” Lin Nan still didn’t get it.
Lilith shot back, “I’m hungry too!”
“Then go eat! You can’t expect Li Na to feed you every time you eat, can you?”
Chen Yao, however, caught on to what she meant and asked, puzzled, “You don’t have money to buy food?”
“Exactly! Li Na didn’t leave any money for me!” Lilith protested, waving her arms in a not-so-logical but very forceful manner, “Having a witch eat at your place is a privilege for you!”
“What witch?” Chen Yao looked utterly bewildered.
It finally dawned on Lin Nan that Li Na disappearing without leaving money for Lilith was the reason she was trying to latch onto her now.
As a witch, couldn’t Lilith find a part-time job to support herself? Does she think she can just mooch off me?
“Not giving you any food!” Lin Nan had never been generous, grabbing Chen Yao’s hand and striding upstairs.
Lilith followed them to the apartment door, eagerly ready to enter with her, but just as she opened the door and stepped inside, it slammed shut with a loud bang, locking Lilith outside.
She blinked, staring at the closed door and then kicked it, feeling utterly wronged.
“I don’t even want to eat your food! You’d be lucky to have me! Back in the day, people begged me to eat their food, and I didn’t go! Ugh!” She kept kicking, her toes going numb from the pain.
After venting, Lilith took a deep breath and was about to leave when she glanced down at her precious cola can.
“If Cola starves, it’s all your fault!” she yelled at the door again.
There was no response from Lin Nan’s door, but suddenly the neighboring door opened. A grad student, who’d crossed paths with Lin Nan before, popped his head out.
He looked at Lilith, who was in full drama queen mode, and felt a bit intimidated, but mustered the courage to advise, “Miss, keep it down. I’m trying to review here.”
“Who’s a miss? Your whole family is a miss!”
“No, there are lots of people living here. Don’t talk so loudly…”
Before he could finish, Lilith marched right over to his door, looked up at him for a moment, and then broke into a dazzling smile.
Lilith was quite attractive, and if you compared her face to those overly edited beauties online, she could easily rival them. With that smile, she was like a mesmerizing enchantress.
The young man was utterly dumbfounded and stammered, “W-what’s wrong?”
“I’m hungry!” Lilith declared, cocky as ever. “Move aside!”
“Uh?” He took a quick step back in fright as she boldly walked into his room, starting to look around. “Is there anything to eat? Oh, by the way, my cat Cola loves chicken legs, and so do I.”
“I also like fish, like little dried fish, and fish soup too.”
“Oh, do you have any money?”
Saying this, she plopped herself down at his desk and started munching on some chips, completely ignoring the fact that she was intruding.
Is this beauty a bandit or something?
The young man stood frozen, unsure of what to do with his hands, utterly baffled by what was happening.
On the other side, Lin Nan was feeling a bit uneasy inside her bedroom.
Sure, Lilith was the one who turned her into a girl, but the thought of this person starving was hard to shake off…
It just felt staggeringly tragic.
It was just one meal.
She felt her earlier refusal was a bit too intense, but now it would be awkward to invite Lilith over for dinner again—especially since Lilith always had that smug look on her face whenever she got something.
Lin Nan got up from her bed, pacing back and forth anxiously.
“What’s wrong?” Chen Yao offered her a can of cola from their stash.
“Is Lilith still shouting outside?” Lin Nan furrowed her brow. “If she keeps shouting, just let her in; it’s only a couple of meals. Li Na can cover it later.”
“I didn’t hear anything; she probably left.”
“Left? What if Li Na doesn’t come back? What’ll she do?”
Lin Nan’s mind raced as she envisioned Li Na curled up in some corner, crying and clutching her stomach, looking utterly pitiful and starving.
She felt even more worried. Though Lilith looked like an adult, she still had the mentality of a child. This girl had grown up with everything handed to her, and she might actually starve.
Though, honestly, dying didn’t seem like it would be a big deal for her.
Lin Nan sighed heavily, blaming herself for being too soft-hearted.
She opened the door and peeked out, but Lilith was already nowhere in sight.
“I’m going to look for her at her rental apartment; you order takeout for three,” she told her boyfriend.
Chen Yao nodded, confused by the love-hate relationship between Lin Nan and Lilith, tossing a sun umbrella from the sofa at her, “It’s sunny outside. Use an umbrella so you don’t get any darker.”
“Got it!”
