Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Uncle Xiong was getting on in years, and his stamina had long since given out.

Every time he reached the final moment, his face would twist grotesquely, his eyes bulging as if they might split apart.

Like a man who had been constipated for a month and had finally managed to squeeze out the tiniest bit of shit.

His eyes rolled back as he reached the heights again. With one long, ragged breath, he stopped caring about the mess he was in, flopped over, and started snoring.

I wiped his body clean with warm water and tucked the blanket around him.

Then I dimmed the lights and lit the incense he liked.

The scent of green grapefruit and blackcurrant slowly spread through the bedroom.

Uncle Xiong had his own story too.

He was forty-seven, owned a large transportation company, and had a net worth of over a hundred million.

But ever since his wife gave birth to their second child, she had refused to sleep with him.

She complained about his smell, complained that he was soft, complained about the sores in his nostrils, complained about his stinking feet…

Uncle Xiong spent every day pent up with a bellyful of dirty fire, and the moment he got home, he and his wife would start fighting.

Divorce was out of the question.

But making do left him bitter.

Having an affair cost too much.

Keeping a mistress was too much trouble.

Golden Sand Beach was still the easiest. The girls were clean, sensible, and well-trained. More importantly, none of them would ever run up to his wife and flaunt anything in her face.

I took out my little notebook and added a stroke after Uncle Xiong’s name.

[Uncle Xiong: standard T]

Another merit point, +1.

I gently rubbed the knot between Uncle Xiong’s brows until it loosened, then adjusted his pillow. Once his breathing turned steady and even, I slipped quietly into the guest washroom.

Golden Sand Beach Club had twenty-eight floors in total.

From the first to the twelfth floor were the bar, bath center, buffet restaurant, arcade, gym, swimming pool, KTV…

The thirteenth to the twentieth floors were guest rooms, with one presidential suite on each floor.

Above the twentieth floor, you needed a private elevator. Ordinary guests couldn’t get up there.

This presidential suite on the eighteenth floor was my first time here.

But the layouts were all more or less the same. The guest washroom was separated from the master bedroom by a huge reception room and dining room, so it didn’t matter how loud any sound got.

I turned on the tap and carefully washed myself clean.

In the bathroom mirror, my figure was slender yet full.

Sister Hua had once praised me:

“A face like hibiscus, a chest like jade, and a willow waist you could hold in one hand.”

Sister Hua was the mentor who brought me into the trade, and she was also a legend at Golden Sand Beach.

She didn’t step back from the front line until she was fifty. Now she was almost sixty, yet there were still plenty of old clients who couldn’t forget her.

To be honest, when I first met her, I didn’t believe it.

Her looks were very ordinary, and her figure had gone a little soft. Even if you rolled the years back by forty, she still wouldn’t have counted as stunning.

But when she untied my bathrobe and looked at me with eyes as gentle as water, I believed it.

I had never met my mother.

But I felt that if a mother’s gaze had a shape, it ought to be like Sister Hua’s.

Soft, steady, filled with unconditional love and tolerance.

“You have to set yourself alight first,” she said, “before you can make the client melt.”

Her fingertips wandered.

My breathing fell apart.

A scorching current flowed into my body through the pads of her fingers, turning me into a wavering little flame.

“Yes, that’s the expression.

“Two parts faint helplessness, three parts timid longing. When someone sees it, it makes their heart…

“Ache just a little. Ache until it itches.”

Her voice was like freshly ironed clothes, carrying a clean, scalding heat.

Only then did I suddenly understand why those men were so obsessed with her.

She had magic. She knew how to speak to desire.

She taught me the pleasures between men and women, taught me how to read faces and moods, designed my makeup and outfits for me, adjusted the way I walked…

She said she would pass on everything she had learned in her life and make me the most expensive girl at Golden Sand Beach.

Before that, in all my years, I had never felt a mother’s care. I hadn’t even had a decent older female figure in my life.

I still remembered middle school. When my period came, I didn’t even know what to do.

I stole some of my father’s pocket change and bought the cheapest sanitary pads I could find. I used them like Band-Aids, thinking that would stop the bleeding.

For those seven days, every time I changed my pad was a nightmare.

It wasn’t until I saw someone else’s used pad in the restroom trash can that I finally understood.

I had stuck mine on backward.

I had long since grown used to “not being loved,” and I was always mentally prepared to be “abandoned.”

By default, I assumed everyone around me had bad intentions. Then, slowly, I would pick out the ones who weren’t quite so terrible and cautiously draw a tiny bit of affection from them.

Sister Hua’s closeness made me feel both flattered and overwhelmed.

She admired me, praised me, guided me to let go of my shame around my body, and taught me the tricks to receiving love and pleasure.

Once, when my emotions got the better of me, I couldn’t help calling her “Mom.”

She jumped in fright and waved her hands in a panic.

“You can call me Mommy, but not Mom. There are some things a mother would never teach her daughter to do…”

Afraid my greed would scare her away, I hurriedly changed my words and called her “Mommy.”

She let out a breath of relief too. “Good girl.”

Not mother and daughter.

Mommy and girl.