The train came to a stop, and the carriage fell silent.
The doors slid open to both sides, and dusty air rushed in.
Outside was a dull gray, not a normal sky. There was no sun to see, but the light was enough.
Lu Yuan was the first to reach the doorway and look out.
A concrete road, lined on both sides with low houses and shops. The signs hung crookedly, and a few had fallen to the ground.
The pavement was cracked, with yellowed weeds growing in the gaps.
Farther out, he could see a three-story building, most of its windows shattered and its walls peeling away.
No one.
No sound either.
"I’m getting off," Lu Yuan said, glancing back.
Shen Nian had already come up beside him. Barefoot, she stepped on the metal edge of the carriage door and leaned her head out to look.
"Let’s go."
The two of them jumped down from the train.
The concrete was a little warmer than the floor inside the carriage, but not by much. It felt rough under their soles, and the gravel stung Shen Nian enough to make her hiss.
"Damn it."
She looked down at the sole of her foot. No blood, but it was definitely uncomfortable.
Lu Yuan didn’t stop. He had already walked a few steps ahead, his eyes sweeping the buildings on both sides.
This town wasn’t big. From where he stood, he could see the end of the main road, roughly three hundred meters away, and there were only about twenty buildings total on both sides.
No sign of monsters. No footprints, no claw marks, no blood.
It was unnaturally quiet, but an F-rank station wasn’t supposed to be very dangerous to begin with.
"You check the left side. I’ll take the right," Lu Yuan said in a low voice.
Shen Nian gave a quiet "Mm," and the two of them moved forward along the main road.
She walked a half-step faster than Lu Yuan, probably out of habit from being class monitor. Before long, she had moved ahead of him.
Her wheat-colored back was sharply defined in the gray light, narrow at the waist, wide at the hips, and her hips and ass swayed left and right with each step. Lu Yuan pulled his gaze back and kept scanning the storefronts around them.
On the right was a general store, its roll-up shutter only half lowered, the inside dark and impossible to make out.
A little farther on was a breakfast shop, with two plastic chairs tipped over at the entrance.
Across the street was a hardware store. The sign read Old Li Hardware and Sundries, and half the lettering had rusted away.
It took the two of them more than ten minutes to walk the whole main road.
No danger.
At least not yet.
Shen Nian was walking in front. Her pace slowed, and she looked back at Lu Yuan.
"This lousy place is like a ghost town. Not even a rat."
"It’s an F-rank station. It shouldn’t have anything too strong in it," Lu Yuan said, still two steps behind her, his eyes continuing to sweep the buildings on either side.
Shen Nian turned back and kept walking.
As they passed a convenience store, she stopped.
Half the glass door was shattered. Inside, two rows of shelves had been knocked over, and there were wrappers and empty bottles scattered across the floor.
But a few shelves were still standing, and there seemed to be things on them.
"There might be—"
She didn’t finish.
Lu Yuan was staring at a second-story window across the street, not at Shen Nian, and his feet didn’t stop.
He went straight into her back.
Shen Nian stumbled, her whole body pitching forward.
"Fuck—"
Lu Yuan reacted fast, reaching out to catch her. One arm wrapped around from her side, and the other shot forward, trying to grab her and steady her.
They were both naked, skin against skin, and it was slick. Lu Yuan’s right hand didn’t catch her arm properly and slid upward a bit, until his palm landed squarely on Shen Nian’s chest.
Both of them froze for about half a second. His fingers sank into a mass of warm, soft flesh.
Shen Nian usually bound her chest, and when she wore the loose school uniform, she looked no different from a boy.
But now that she was wearing nothing, her breasts were much larger than he’d expected, full and upright in shape, plump and firm to the touch, completely unlike the soft, yielding feel of other girls - with a springiness shaped by training and exercise.
His palm was right over her nipple, the rough pad of his finger pressing into that spot.
Shen Nian’s body stiffened. The sensation from her nipple was completely different from a girl’s hand.
The roughness of the skin, the heat. The friction shot straight up her nerve endings, and the hairs on her back stood on end for an instant.
In that half-second, Lu Yuan didn’t think about anything.
But from the moment he woke up in the carriage until now, surrounded by more than thirty naked girls for nearly two hours, everything he’d been holding back had piled up there. His fingers tightened almost on instinct, squeezing.
Not hard, but unmistakably.
His whole palm closed around that soft mass, his fingertips sinking into the elastic flesh, the nipple pushed out and hard, pressing against his hand.
Shen Nian drove an elbow back into him.
Not hard.
Really not hard.
If she had seriously wanted to shove him off, with her physical conditioning, one elbow could have sent Lu Yuan half a meter away.
But she only gave him a light shove.
Lu Yuan felt it.
He didn’t let go. Instead, he pinched her nipple between his index and middle finger and lightly brushed it.
That little point bounced against his fingers.
"You’ve been the one leading the charge to tease me every day," Lu Yuan said in a low voice, his mouth right beside Shen Nian’s ear, his breath brushing the shell of it. "Now you can’t take it?"
He was hard.
Since coming out of the carriage, he’d been half-hard, half-soft, hanging there, and now the thing between his legs was fully erect, standing straight and hard against Shen Nian’s waist.
Hot, hard, and still throbbing.
Shen Nian felt it.
That thing pressed against the skin of her lower back, burning hot enough to make her muscles tense.
"You fucking—" she ground out through her teeth, her tone impossible to read, not entirely a curse. "You can even get hard on me?"
"You’re not a woman."
After saying that, Lu Yuan withdrew his hand from her chest.
He stepped back half a pace, putting some distance between them.
The air between their bodies suddenly felt scorching.
Shen Nian sucked in a breath. Her ears were flushed red, the color burning from her neck all the way to her collarbones. She didn’t turn around, just stood there as her shoulders rose and fell a few times.
Then she felt a dull pain shoot through her right ankle.
The stumble from just now had twisted it.
"Hiss—"
She crouched down, one hand braced on her knee, the other rubbing the outside of her ankle. Lu Yuan saw her crouch and his expression changed.
"What is it? You okay?"
"Twisted it," Shen Nian said, head down as she rubbed her ankle. Her voice had returned to its usual tone, but there was still a trace of roughness that hadn’t gone away. "It’s nothing serious. I’ll be fine after a bit."
She rubbed it for a few seconds and tried to stand.
Her right hand pushed against her knee as she bent and rose, and the moment her weight shifted upward, pain shot through her ankle again, and her right leg went weak.
Lu Yuan stepped forward at once and half-crouched to steady her by the waist.
Shen Nian’s balance failed. Her body sank downward a little, and with one leg unable to hold her up, her legs spread slightly on instinct to keep her footing.
Lu Yuan was half-crouched directly behind her, both hands at her waist, his hips aligned with her lower body.
The moment Shen Nian’s body dipped, the glans of Lu Yuan’s cock was right between the lips of her pussy.
Hot. Wet.
He couldn’t tell whether it was sweat or something else.
Shen Nian’s descent didn’t stop completely. Lu Yuan’s hands were holding her waist and straining, but with her weight and the momentum - the glans forced apart the soft petals and slid inside.
Not all the way. About half of it.
Both of them made a sound at once.
Lu Yuan gave a muffled groan, while Shen Nian’s voice came out more like something squeezed from a throat being held shut.
Short, sharp, trembling at the end as it slipped out through her nose.
Her hands shot up and clamped onto Lu Yuan’s arms.
Ten fingernails left ten white marks on his arms.
The two of them stayed in that position, neither of them moving.