Chapter 5 (2/2)

It sounded like a load of crap to Hao Ren so, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

The entrance had two layers of structure—a security door on the outside and a paneled door on the inside. The doors’ locks were decrepit and difficult to open. Hao Ren had spent a considerable effort to open them one by one before he was able to get in and switch on the hall lights to usher Lily in.

Once they were inside, Hao Ren locked the doors. He proceeded to show Lily around the house. “My dad was the house’s chief designer,” he began to explain. “His idea was actually quite ‘novel’ if you know what I mean. This is the living room; there are bedrooms on both sides of which one is for you and the other is for me. The door on the north side of the living room is a passage way to the kitchen as well as the washroom. There are four bedrooms upstairs but they are all vacant at the moment. Let me show you your bedroom—do you have your own bedding? Well, most girls are quite particular about that. Anyway, the rooms are quite clean and tidy.”

“I’m fine as long as there’s a place to sleep!” Lily was energetic as she tapped her suitcase and said, “I don’t a have personal bedding set. It wouldn’t fit in my suitcase.”

Hao Ren was impressed. He felt that Lily was not your typical girl; she was of the ebullient type.

Lily hauled her heavy luggage into her room. She didn’t ask for help. It could have been out of her own shyness or nervousness. She hastened him into the kitchen while repeating that she would pay for dinner.

There was not much left in the kitchen. He took out some dried noodles and other ingredients from the refrigerator. He hummed his favorite song as he turned on the gas stove. After that night’s episode, he needed a nicotine fix to clear his mind. He took out a cigarette and tapped it a couple of times before putting it in his mouth.

However, he quickly realized the stupidity in his action. He turned off the gas stove lest it be the last cigarette he smoked.

He heard Lily busily unpacking her suitcase and he wondered what kind of luggage she had. As he was cooking, he tried to reorganize his thoughts and make sense of everything that had happened: he was looking for a job but ended up napping in the park; then he woke up with an amiable girl who presently had become his new tenant; he bumped into some bizarre creatures—the werewolf was one of them; he had a supernatural and near-death experience—all of which defied his understanding of the world.

“What could the half-human, half-bat creature be? Also, that scent of blood and chill?”

He figured that it could have been a legendary vampire—the archenemy of the werewolf. After all, the werewolf was already real.

However, the werewolf he had encountered was anything but legendary— there was no green-eyed monster, there were no long fangs and none of the scary features. She was just sort of cute, dumb and almost comical.

The harder he tried to think, the more perplexed he became. He decided to leave his thoughts on the back burner. He figured it was wiser to ask the werewolf girl to explain herself.

The noodles were ready. He served it in a bowl and brought it to the living room as Lily waited eagerly at the table. Her nostrils flared like a puppy as she smelled the delicious scent in the air. Hao Ren was amused.

Lily grabbed a pair of chopsticks and started stuffing the food into her mouth. Suddenly, Hao Ren headed to the stairs and yelled, “Rollie, it’s dinner time!”

Lily was curious. An obscure black and white creature suddenly ran down from the stairs. As it approached Hao Ren’s leg, it rubbed its head against his shoe—it was a black and white cat.

Lily almost jumped out of her skin upon seeing the cat. She leaped out of her chair and fled to the back of a nearby sofa. Why on earth was a fearsome werewolf scared of a cat?

This sudden turn of events left Hao Ren dumbstruck.