Chapter 50

Chapter 50 - 50 049 Cast a spell You should love me Chapter 50: 049: Cast a spell: You should love me Chapter 50: 049: Cast a spell: You should love me Xie Shang hung up the phone: “Wasn’t talking about you.”

Oh, he was referring to the person on the other end of the call.

It seemed that person had also hit someone, no wonder they encountered Xie Shang at the police station.

“Have you eaten well?”

“Mhm.”

Xie Shang took her raincoat: “Then let’s go.”

The night after the rain was windy. Summer had arrived late this year, and the moist breeze was cool. It caressed the skin without cutting to the bone, providing a snug comfort.

Xie Shang drove very slowly. Wen Changling was a bit sleepy and didn’t feel much like talking. She rested her head against the window, watching the uniformly spaced streetlights racing backward, lulling her to drowse. The volume of the car radio was turned down low, a singer’s voice wafting through, sounding pleasant.

The drive took half an hour, and the car stopped at the back gate of the yard.

Wen Changling got out of the car first, followed by Xie Shang, with her raincoat in his hand. She asked him, “Did you give Zeng Zhili the money?”

“Mhm.”

Wen Changling had also planned to settle the matter with money. For someone like Zeng Zhili, money would be the quickest solution.

He wanted money, right? Beating him up and then offering a settlement and covering his medical bills was something Wen Changling could push herself to accept.

“How much? I’ll pay you back.”

“No need, it wasn’t much.”

It couldn’t have been a small amount, Zeng Zhili was insatiable. He surely asked for a king’s ransom.

Wen Changling didn’t press further, planning to top up Xie Shang’s phone credit when she got back. A transfer might not be accepted by him, but he couldn’t refuse phone credit, unless there was a daily limit.

“I owe you one, again.” She gave thanks once more, something she had done many times today.

Xie Shang found that she seemed to keep her distance from everyone, as if not wanting to form too many ties with anyone. She was compliant but also distant.

At that moment, his curiosity about Wen Changling peaked. Suddenly, he felt an inexplicable urgency and didn’t want to take it slow.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask.”

“Can you truly ‘cast a spell’?”

So many people said the Wen family’s girl from Wind Town of Flower City could ‘cast a spell.’ In the 21st century, to Xie Shang, such superstitions seemed like utter nonsense.

Wen Changling was not evasive in answering, her eyes forthright: “Did Zeng Zhili tell you that?”

“Mhm, he said you could ‘cast a spell’ on men.”

Zeng Zhili also said Wen Changling was a menace, that being with her would bring great misfortune. He claimed any man who got involved with a Wen family girl would ultimately meet a bad end.

Zeng Zhili even brought up his uncle, saying that seven years ago, there was an unlucky man who died because of Wen Yuan and her daughter, and didn’t even have a whole skeleton left.

“If you could really ‘cast a spell,’ you wouldn’t need to hit anyone.”

Wen Changling rarely smiled: “I wouldn’t ‘cast a spell’ on that sort of person.”

This tone was one she reserved for people she knew well, with unmistakable disgust, unhidden.

“So you actually can?”

Xie Shang had never believed in such things.

Wen Changling lifted her head, took a step forward, bringing her closer to him, then she went on tiptoes, reaching out to meet his gaze.

He didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t move.

She suddenly stretched out her right hand, touched his forehead with her neatly trimmed index finger. Her cool skin brushed against his, then his eyelids—she tapped them gently, one by one.

His eyes instinctively closed due to the reflex. The eyelids trembled slightly where her finger touched, like a raindrop falling into calm seas.

When Xie Shang opened his eyes again, he found Wen Changling smiling, a joyful smile.

It was as if the temperature of her skin remained, with a delayed, ticklish sensation prompting him to touch it subconsciously. His fingers curled slightly, but he resisted the urge.

“What were you just doing?”

Wen Changling’s demeanor was secretive: “I was ‘casting a spell’ on you.”

Her explanation was detailed, her act convincing, almost as if she truly could ‘cast a spell.’ Xie Shang had seen her eyes fully, and although he was not inept at painting, he found her features elusive to capture. The impressions she left on him were paradoxical, pure yet fallen. Suddenly, he remembered a fairy tale he had stumbled upon as a child, not a children’s book, but one found in his father’s library, a fairy tale meant for adults.

In the forest lived a beautiful Witch who adored the color red and loved wearing a red cloak. Whenever travelers lost their way in the forest, the Witch would appear. She carried a basket of apples, plump and bright red, offering them to the famished travelers in exchange for something they carried. Would they trade?

The traveler asked, “Anything?”

The Witch replied softly, “No, I want just one thing.”

“What is it?”

The Witch said, “The heart.”

Afterward, the travelers would be devoured, their hearts replaced with an apple in the gaping chest wound.

At this moment, the ‘spell-casting’ Wen Changling resembled that Witch.

“What should I do then?”

She said, “I’ve already ‘cast a spell’ on you, you should love me.”

The dim moon, the swaying lanterns, her hair tousled by the wind, overlapping shadows on the wall, and her eyes, tinted by the lantern’s red, created a compounded, dreamlike vista.

In that instant, her eyes became the Forest Witch’s apples.

The raincoat was discarded on the ground. Xie Shang’s hand wrapped around her waist, slowly tightening. The veins on his arm were subtly pronounced, her slender waist hardly filling his embrace, showcasing a stark contrast between delicacy and strength.

He bent down and kissed her.

It was a light touch, restrained and tentative. Then he pulled back, waiting for her reaction, for her to give a signal.

She didn’t push him away.

He leaned in again, no longer stopping at a mere taste. It was as if he, too, had been bewitched by the Witch, forgetting at that moment that he was the hunter.