IRDLZ Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Discovering that there was an invisible, unknown entity following her was an utterly terrifying thing.

She couldn't see what it looked like, didn't know its form, had no idea when it had appeared or when it would leave.

Most importantly, she didn't know its purpose—it wasn't aggressive now, but what if it suddenly bared its fangs in the future? What if one day it revealed a vicious side?

It was like having her life suspended in mid-air, her safety dependent on whether the creature was in a good mood.

Ming Qingqing couldn't figure out why these things were happening to her. Even now, she still doubted whether it was all just her imagination—a problem with her mental state.

But since it had happened, she had to find the root cause.

Otherwise, how could she ever sleep at night?

Up on the roof, Xiao Fu had no idea that he had already been "demonized" in Ming Qingqing's mind.

He gazed melancholy at the moon for a while, planning to visit the library again the next day.

This time, besides the rapid heartbeat issue, he also needed to look up information about Element No. 335.

Perhaps Kelafulin had been recorded on Earth—just not under the name "Kelafulin" in Earth languages.

After a while, he heard movement downstairs. The mixed-breed dog was barking.

This time, Ming Qingqing seemed to be staying in the first-floor dog room for an unusually long time.

Xiao Fu couldn't help teleporting to the roof of another villa to see what Ming Qingqing and the dog were doing. Was she giving it treats? Playing fetch again?

Then he saw that Ming Qingqing, probably worried the dog might be cold, was putting a small bright yellow coat on the mixed-breed dog.

The dog was clearly resisting, but Ming Qingqing had some freeze-dried treats in her hand. She would feed it a few small treats after getting one leg through the sleeve, so the dog reluctantly put it on, barking all the while.

Clothes make the dog, just as a saddle makes the horse.

The mixed-breed dog, now dressed in its exquisitely tailored little coat and wearing a knitted cap on its head, instantly shed its previous scruffy look and appeared as dashing as a prized purebred.

Xiao Fu...

In the night breeze, his soft black hair was tousled.

He gazed longingly at the dog's coat, then turned his stiff neck and looked down at his own hoodie—worn for who knows how long, faded to gray, tattered and torn.

He lifted his long, pale fingers and tried to pull down the sleeve that had become too short. His gray-blue eyes brimmed with envy.

Xiao Fu would really like a new set of clothes too.

But since landing on Earth, he had been penniless. He couldn't steal or rob, and if he tried to get a job, he would scare people to death.

He could, of course, chip off a small piece of gold from his eggshell to exchange for clothing or other items.

But the eggshell was non-renewable.

Xiao Fu didn't want to return to his father and mother only for them to discover his shell was pitted and scarred.

The innocent little alien, tears brimming in his eyes, had no understanding of how convoluted and layered human thoughts could be.

Ming Qingqing was setting a trap for him.

Reflecting on how the mixed-breed dog had appeared and disappeared mysteriously lately, Ming Qingqing became more and more convinced that the creature on the rooftop back then probably wasn't a dog at all—it was "it."

Since she didn't yet know what it was, she could only refer to it as "it" for now.

That way, a lot of things could be explained.

Back then, when she had followed Feifei upstairs and it had almost been discovered, it had temporarily brought in a dog. That dog was very likely not a stray, but someone's pet.

Based on its recent behavior, it seemed to follow certain human rules and didn't want to cause alarm. So, whenever she wasn't around, it would return the dog to its owner.

That also explained why there were no dog droppings on the lawn.

Ming Qingqing still remembered that blue hoodie wedged in the gap of the chimney on the roof.

It was too large to have simply been blown there by the wind. Besides, just a brief glance at it from a distance made it look cheap and poorly made—unlike something someone in this villa district would wear.

That afternoon, Ming Qingqing had gone back up to the roof to check, but the clothes were gone.

A bold guess: it was very likely that "it" had taken them.

In other words, it needed to wear clothes.

—Then, it should be some kind of entity with a physical form that needed to hide.

That made things easier. At least one of the cameras it didn't notice would be able to capture it.

Time stopping meant it had the ability to control time.

She had never seen it, which meant it could pass through walls or vanish in an instant.

Ming Qingqing pieced things together bit by bit.

But this wasn't enough. She needed more information to find it.

One other key issue was that when she installed the pinhole cameras, it had to be absent.

So she also had to figure out its movements, when it was around and when it left the villa.

After dressing the dog, Ming Qingqing left the first floor and returned to the third.

Xiao Fu saw her take two cold pills in the kitchen, then pick up two books and go to her room, apparently planning to sleep early. It seemed she wouldn't be coming back down to the first floor. So, he teleported downstairs, intending to return the mixed-breed dog to its owner.

But then he noticed the little coat on the dog and was troubled.

The mixed-breed dog didn't wear clothes at its owner's place. If it returned wearing clothes, it would definitely startle its owner.

So Xiao Fu struggled to crouch down and tried to unbutton the little coat.

Everyone knows how hyperactive dogs can be. Even Ming Qingqing had needed to bribe the dog with small treats just to get the coat on—let alone Xiao Fu, with his clumsy limbs. It was nearly impossible!

The mixed-breed dog struggled desperately, opening its mouth to bark. Xiao Fu, panicking, quickly froze it before it could make a sound.

Now that the mixed-breed dog had turned into a statue, Xiao Fu spent quite a while removing the clothes from its body.

His forehead was covered in glistening sweat, but at least he managed to return the dog to its owner.

He breathed a sigh of relief, crouched in front of the oil heater, and warmed his head. Then he slowly lay down on the floor, planning to sleep.

But just then—

He suddenly heard footsteps coming down from the third floor.

Ming Qingqing: "Dandan?"

Xiao Fu had never expected Ming Qingqing to come back. Panic surged through him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

But then he noticed that the small door in the adjacent greenhouse just big enough for a cat or dog to pass through had been closed. In other words, Dandan couldn't have gone outside; it should still be inside the villa.

He thought quickly. If Ming Qingqing came down and didn't see Dandan, she would definitely grow suspicious.

His heart jumped into his throat. He immediately teleported over and brought the dog back.

The dizzy, disoriented mixed-breed dog, having been teleported back and forth within minutes: "..."

Grass! A type of plant. ((It's like saying "Oh sh—I mean, oh sugar!" ))

But, the dog's coat!

With a jolt, Xiao Fu scrambled to put the coat back on the dog. But putting it on was even harder than taking it off! He waved his arms about like a little digging machine. Having already used his time-stop ability, he couldn't use it again on a large scale in such a short time.

So when Ming Qingqing pushed the door open, he had no choice but to abandon the last sleeve that hadn't been put on. With a "whoosh," he vanished.

Ming Qingqing walked in, dragging a large mat about a meter and a half in diameter. She placed it on the floor and casually glanced at the bewildered, disheveled mixed-breed dog.

Just as she had suspected, the dog's coat hadn't been fully put on in time.

Ten minutes should have been more than enough for a person to take a dog's coat off and put it back on.

But "it" couldn't manage it.

This confirmed Ming Qingqing's suspicion—although "it" had strong abilities, its movements were likely not very agile. Otherwise, it wouldn't have dropped a pill on the floor.

That gave her a small window of time to catch it before it vanished.

To put "it" at ease, after delivering the mat to the dog, Ming Qingqing returned upstairs as if nothing had happened. She claimed she was giving the mat to the dog, but she knew full well that the dog didn't actually stay there at night.

And in fact, Xiao Fu never suspected a thing.

After returning the dog to its owner, his eyes lit up at the sight of the thick mat on the floor.

He had always felt too embarrassed to sleep on the sofa, afraid of dirtying it.

But it was an old floor mat, covered in soft, warm fuzz. Before leaving, Ming Qingqing had patted the dog’s head and said it was something she had intended to throw away anyway—perfectly fine to sleep on, so the dog wouldn’t catch a cold.

So surely he could sleep on it for a while too.

Xiao Fu lay down on it, greedily rolling around. It felt so much better than the hard, icy floor.

With the heater on and the soft mat beneath him, he curled up into a ball. His gray-blue eyes reflected the flickering flames in the fireplace. This was, he felt, the happiest moment since he had arrived on Earth.

Ah... if only he could stay here forever and never be driven away.

That night, Ming Qingqing barely slept. How could she, knowing there was a non-human entity beside her?

But under the influence of her cold medicine, she eventually drifted into a deep sleep.

The next day, Ming Qingqing began trying to figure out when "it" was not at home.

At first, she couldn't think of a good method. There was no way for her to track its movements—it was in the shadows, while she was in the light.

Then she discovered that "it" seemed to grant her every wish.

That morning, while eating breakfast, she wanted to watch entertainment news. She searched everywhere around the TV cabinet for the remote, ransacking the place but couldn't find it.

Yet when she went to the kitchen to grab something and came back, the remote was conspicuously wedged between two sofa cushions. It made her question whether she had simply missed it earlier.

Clearly, it was "it."

Ming Qingqing picked up the remote, calmly continued eating her breakfast, but her heart was racing with nervousness.

It was right there, around her. It could hear her.

Lying on the roof, soaking up the sun, Xiao Fu had no idea what was going through Ming Qingqing's mind. The bright sunlight fell on him and on the pages of his book. He was reading stories from the Complete Guide to Recognizing Characters, the tuft of hair on his head sticking up, feeling rather happy about having helped.

He had slept wonderfully on the thick mat last night.

Ming Qingqing was the kindest person to him in this world. He really wanted to thank her.

Once Ming Qingqing discovered this, she spent the whole day "unable to find all sorts of things."

First, she crouched in the fourth-floor room, murmuring with downcast eyes, "I'm so bored. I want to play with a Rubik's cube. I remember there was one here, but where is it now?"

She repeated this three times.

Soon, she found a small four-by-four Rubik's cube in a pile of odds and ends in the third-floor living room corner.

Ming Qingqing recognized it at once. It was the Rubik's cube that had been stained by sewage from the big trash bin and thrown out of the villa the other day.

Had he picked it up again, cleaned it, and kept it?

A spirit with a hoarding habit.

Ming Qingqing silently added another label to her mental list.

Then, standing on the balcony, she sighed dejectedly, "I'm so weak from this cold. I can't even wring this out."

This time, she only said it once.

A dozen minutes later, when she went back to the balcony, the bedsheet was no longer dripping.

If she hadn't looked closely, she might have thought the sun had dried it. But there were clear signs that it had been wrung out.

Ming Qingqing found that this entity was rather foolish.

—There was a dryer right next to it. She had said she couldn't wring it out, and it had actually come to wring it for her.

Did it not know what a dryer was? Or was it just utterly unsuspecting, never imagining she was testing it?

All day long, "it" granted her every request.

Until sunset, when Ming Qingqing's murmured wishes were no longer fulfilled.

That was when Ming Qingqing confirmed: at this hour, "it" was probably not around.

She quickly made a phone call. The pinhole camera installation team, which had been waiting at the foot of the mountain for a long time, came in. Within minutes, they had deftly finished the job.

Inside toilet paper rolls, on light switches, in ceiling crevices—cameras were installed everywhere.

Though the installation team found the job peculiar, Ming Qingqing dismissed it with a simple explanation: "It's for getting into character."

After the entire villa was wired up and connected to Ming Qingqing's phone, she returned to her room, remotely turned on all the cameras, and stared intently at her phone screen.

Her entire body was tense, her heart practically leaping into her throat. She had never been so nervous in her life.

When "it" came back, she would definitely capture it on camera.

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