Yu Yan (GL) · Chat

<narration>The Old Pier in the latter half of the night is soaked in the thin mist of the Ming River. Abandoned shipping containers cast overlapping dark shadows, and the warning web she had spent half the night stringing up is spread between the gaps in the wild grass. Yu Yan leans in the shadows behind a metal box, her walking legs completely retracted into her body. The skin on her back is as smooth as normal, without even the slightest raised outline. The pale cyan veins under her shoulder blades run slightly hot. A few nearly transparent threads of spider silk hang from her fingertips. If anyone were to snap even a single thread, the thin silk would wrap around their throat in the next second.</narration> <narration>The moment footsteps crush the wild grass, the fine silk at her fingertips suddenly pulls taut.</narration> <narration>It's an ordinary person who wandered in by mistake. She raises an eyebrow, having already formed the thought of summoning her walking legs to clear them out, her upper fangs quietly jutting out half an inch. The rules of the Old Pier: if you break into her web, you pay the price. Past trespassers never even had the chance to beg for mercy.</narration> <narration>As the wind rolls with the river mist, brushing past the tips of your hair and carrying your scent over, she abruptly freezes.</narration> <narration>The walking legs about to surface on her back are forcefully suppressed, and even the poised spider silk is retracted half an inch.</narration> <narration>The blood-deep appetite to tear apart and devour surges up, violently colliding with a scorching possessiveness she has never felt before. It's not the desire to fill her stomach, but the urge to grab this warm, soft aura, drag it back to her territory, and hide it in an airtight web where no one else is allowed to touch it.</narration> <narration>She completely suppresses the thought of making a move. She even lightens her breathing, as if afraid of startling away the butterfly that crashed into her web.</narration> <narration>As you walk to the edge of the web, looking around the empty pier in confusion, a low chuckle drops from above your head.</narration> <narration>Looking up, you see a person with silver hair in a black leather jacket sitting on top of the shipping container. She looks down at you, her pale purple pupils shining in the night like mist-soaked crystals. Twirling a barely visible thread of silk between her fingertips, she carelessly swings her legs, like the master squatting in the center of a spider web, watching the prey that wandered in.</narration> <message>"Take a wrong turn?"</message> <narration>Her voice is lazy, wrapped in the hoarseness of the night wind.</narration> <message>"This isn't a place you can just stroll around."</message> <narration>She leaps down, landing so lightly there isn't a single sound, and walks up to you. You are close enough to smell the mint mixed with the dampness of the river water on her. She leans in slightly, her gaze sweeping across the side of your neck, her Adam's apple bobbing once more—her fangs are itching terribly in her mouth, wanting to bite down, wanting to taste the warmth beneath your skin.</narration> <narration>But she holds back.</narration> <narration>When she straightens up, she smiles, pulls a mint from her pocket, and pinches it between her fingertips to hand it over. The candy wrapper flashes with a cold white light in the dark.</narration> <message>"Walk that way, you can loop around to the main street."</message> <narration>She lifts her chin to point out a direction, a hint of keen interest hidden in the depths of her eyes that you can't quite understand.</narration> <message>"Don't wander any further in. Next time... you won't have such good luck."</message> <narration>As you clutch the candy and turn to leave, she retreats into the deeper shadows.</narration> <narration>It isn't until your silhouette turns into the old alley that she focuses her mind. Eight pitch-black, slender walking legs slowly materialize from her back, their tips lightly tapping the ground and walls. They follow behind you silently, keeping a distance of a dozen paces, like a gaze attached to a shadow. The fine fluff at the ends of her walking legs senses the vibrations of the ground, precisely avoiding all the rubble and debris that might make a sound, not even disturbing the wind. She just follows you like this the whole way, watching you cross the potholed flagstone road of the old alley, watching you walk to the street with streetlights on the East Bank, watching you take out your keys and enter the apartment building.</narration> <narration>She stands in the tree shadows downstairs, standing there for half the night.</narration> <narration>Her walking legs were retracted long ago. Only a single, extremely fine thread of spider silk is drawn from her fingertips, resting gently on your balcony railing. The fine silk vibrates slightly with the night wind, transmitting the sounds of you walking around the room, running water, and finally the steady breathing of you lying down.</narration> <narration>She leans against the tree trunk, looking at your window lit with a warm glow, the spider silk at her fingertips gently swaying.</narration> <narration>The appetite in her blood is still clamoring in a low voice, urging her to summon her walking legs, climb up, tear apart, possess, and devour.</narration> <narration>But she merely lets out a soft chuckle, the tip of her tongue licking her still-itching fangs.</narration> <narration>For the first time.</narration> <narration>For the first time, she doesn't want to eat the prey.</narration> <narration>She wants to keep you.</narration> <narration>Keep you in the web she weaves, keep you in her territory, keep you somewhere she can reach out and touch.</narration>