Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR IS RIGHTEOUS

tw: murder, eye trauma, all having happened in the past

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The scene dissolves around the woman, making Yao Shen momentarily dizzy with vertigo.

He's on the verge of losing his footing when Xin Hulei's hand shots out and holds on to his arm, pulling him into his chest.

"Endure it, it will be over soon."

Those words, whispered over the top of Yao Shen's head, along with the sudden proximity raise gooseflesh along his arms, making him shiver involuntarily.

He closes his hand into a fist, and slams it softly into Xin Hulei's chest.

"Idiot," he mumbles through gritted teeth.

Xin Hulei doesn't know why he's being insulted but seeing Yao Shen's reddened earlobes he finds that he doesn't much mind.

When the scene reapers around them, all the good humor vanishes.

They reenter the hotel room just as the ghost woman does, a plastic bag filled with drinks clinking loudly where it hangs from her arm when she pushes the door open.

The bag falls to the floor with a loud crash as soon as the woman sees the scene in front of her eyes, her hands flying up to her mouth in shock.

"Shit, you were supposed to lock the door," one of the men says, glaring at the one holding a bloodied knife over the corpse of one of the girls who was entertaining them earlier.

The girl's red qipao is stained almost black from all the blood she has lost, her sallow face almost translucent.

Yao Shen can't hide his own horror at the sight of her empty vitreous eyes, staring vacantly towards him.

He must make some noise to alert Xin Hulei of his distress, because the very next moment a broad palm falls over his eyes. "Don't look."

Yao Shen reaches back towards Xin Hulei to try and hold on to him, ground himself somehow.

The men are all talking over each other, but he can tell one of them must have grabbed the ghost woman by the hair because she starts screaming.

The piercing sound makes Yao Shen flinch, and Xin Hulei lifts his free hand towards his ear, curling his other arm around his head and pulling him into his chest, so he won't hear or see anything.

Xin Hulei keeps looking, though, his gaze unflinching as he takes in the scene in front of him.

The ghost woman keeps shouting in blood-curdling panic, even more so when she's forced to kneel beside the corpse of the young girl.

"Why, why, Hua Mei? She was a good girl, a good girl," her words are slurred by her panicked sobbing.

One of the man laughs, twisting his hands into her hair cruelly. "None of you whores were ever good girls."

The other men jeer, a muscle tightens in Xin Hulei's jaw and his eyes glow red for a split second.

"It's like this, you dumb bitch..." Another man holding a knife grins and runs the edge of the blade under the ghost woman's neck. "We're so rich already, what can't our money pay for?"

Another man cackles, his face distorted in cruel delight. "We've done everything, had all the fun money could buy, we were only left with the fun it couldn't." He waved his bloody hands at the girl. "We gave all your other girls money to go away and leave her behind, they didn't even blink. Who will miss someone like her?"

The ghost woman's sobs don't subside. Her eyes stare in abject terror at the corpse of Hua Mei, a girl she led to this fate like a lamb to slaughter.

She murmurs silent pleas for forgiveness under her breath, but the only person who could absolve her is no longer in the room.