The next morning, I woke up from a groggy sleep, opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was a leftover piece of salmon from last night. I thought I was still in the sunroom, but looking around, I realized I was back in our room at the Zhe Jiang Building, which is mine and Yaoyao's room.
Yaoyao wasn't there, but Qianxun was in the room, sitting in a chair playing on her phone, and from the sound, it was likely "Yang Le Yang."
I stretched, and Qianxun, seeing me wake up, immediately exited the game and crawled over from the foot of the bed, "Dad Chengfeng, you're finally awake!"
"...Qianxun, stay away from me, you're almost poking my face with your nose," I said with a frown, considering the age gap.
Qianxun didn't seem to mind. She shifted from kneeling to leaning back, forming a posture resembling a duck's sit, and winked at me. I glanced over her head towards the wall behind her; it was already half-past nine in the morning.
"Why did you sleep so long... What time did we get back last night?" I asked.
Qianxun looked back at the clock on the wall, thought for a moment, then got up and walked over. Standing on tiptoe, she pointed to the position of 11, "Around this time, we came back."
That was in Roman numerals, so she didn't recognize them yet.
It seemed they hadn't gone too wild, at least they knew to come home.
I activated my Qi sensing technique to check their locations. Most of the demons and companions were sleeping in their respective rooms. Only Yaoyao and Zheng Bingbing were absent. I noticed Yaoyao's phone was still on the table, and I wondered what they were up to.
I sent a voice message to Bingbing: "Are you with Yaoyao?"
Bingbing replied with a one-second voice message: "Mhm, you're up?"
It seemed everything was fine, so I didn't rush to reply. After using the restroom and getting dressed, Qianxun had somehow learned to make coffee and prepared a cup for me, placing it on the table. She was kneeling on the carpet, earnestly asking if I needed anything else.
"...Who taught you all this?" I couldn't help but frown. She called me "Dad," and I intended to raise her like a princess, not a maid.
"I saw Mother Kunkun... Sister Kunkun, wasn't she like this last night?"
I had already corrected her bad habit of calling every beautiful woman "mother."
"You don't need to learn from her, you don't need to serve anyone," I said, stroking her head and telling her to get up. However, Qianxun climbed onto the bed and then knelt on it. I even suspected she had some Japanese ancestry, liking to kneel.
I picked up her phone, exited the game, and found a first-grade Chinese lesson on Bilibili for her, telling her to go online and study. Qianxun was a bit displeased but did as she was told.
Not finding any cigarettes, I got up and walked out into the hallway, knocking on the room opposite, which belonged to the fox demon. She might have transformed last night, and after changing back, she was still in her demon form. She hadn't realized it, opening the door for me, then lazily walked back to the bed, lying down in a starfish position, and continued sleeping.
"Where are your cigarettes?" I asked.
The fox demon's tail was sticking out, one of them perked up and pointed towards the balcony. I opened the door and entered the balcony. She had moved the table and chairs over to the balcony, making it open-plan, presumably for better ventilation. The cigarettes and a lighter were on the table. Additionally, there was a dinner plate with a piece of bloody raw meat on it, with a knife and fork placed beside it. It didn't look like ordinary pork, beef, or lamb. It might have been rabbit meat. Rabbits are so cute, they must be delicious.
But I wasn't interested. It seemed to have rained this morning, and it was a bit cold. I sat down in a chair, took two deep breaths of fresh air, lit a cigarette, and gazed aimlessly at the city below. Our place was too high, over twenty floors up, and Fucheng was quite small. From this angle, I could almost overlook the entire city. On the hillside at the furthest end, there was a square, gray-white building, standing alone. That was the city's funeral parlor. Outside the east wall was the location of the City God Temple. Of course, it was too far away for me to see anything but the general direction with my naked eyes. My Qi sensing technique couldn't reach that far, so I couldn't see the actual temple.
*Bzzzt.* My phone vibrated. I took it out to check. It was a voice message from Zheng Bingbing: "Why aren't you replying? Did you fall asleep again?"
With the fox demon inside the window as a backdrop, I zoomed out my phone, held the cigarette in my mouth, and took a selfie to send to her.