Chapter 220: Chapter 215 – Jima’s Mortal Life (Part 2)
Outside, torrential rain was pouring down.
Summer in Dragon City is capricious.
It always suddenly unleashes a downpour.
Raindrops pounded against the walls, making a racket.
But Jima insisted on going back. After a few attempts to persuade her, her biological father stopped trying.
Her stepmother, like a hen that has laid an egg, clucked incessantly. After several attempts to persuade Jima to stay, she ordered her son to drive Jima away and urged Jima to take something back to eat.
“Take some fruit back with you.”
“No.”
“Take some rice cakes.”
“No.”
“Apples are delicious.”
“No.”
“Take some chicken back, free-range chicken.”
“No…”
Jima mechanically denied each suggestion, knowing it was pointless.
She believed her stepmother was merely expressing concern and care for her as a “stepson” with words.
Nothing more.
Jima put on her boots, ignored her, and pushed the door open.
Her biological father, Xu Ziqiang, said, “By the way, take out the trash while you’re at it.”
Jima grabbed a piece of trash, closed the door, and went downstairs, walking directly into the torrential rain.
The raindrops hit her, soaking her black hair, which clung to her back.
Jima did not use any magic, allowing the rain to pound on her because she wanted to “stay low-key as a mage.”
The trash can was thirty meters away; she could easily toss it in, but she didn’t. She carefully played the role of a “mortal,” walking three meters, and in front of a camera, threw the trash into the bin.
She moved forward in the rain and reached her biological mother, Wan Yaping’s house after ten minutes.
Jima’s “luxury car” was still parked in the yard, the refrigerator securely tied to the roof. Jima looked around and noticed there were no surveillance cameras.
She used a bit of magic to conceal herself, climbed onto the roof, and carried the refrigerator down into the house.
“How’s it going?” Perhaps the refrigerator had been without power for a long time, but Wan Ziqi’s corpse looked lively as he knocked on the cracked glass door and asked, “Is life good?”
Jima’s horns dripped with water as she said, “It’s terrible.”
“Someone is cooking for you, someone loves you; isn’t that good?”
“I don’t need it,” Jima said, “My stepmother doesn’t really care about me. She doesn’t even know how many bowls I’ve eaten but pretends to care. Hypocrisy isn’t the issue; the problem is that this kind of hypocrisy is so shallow and forced it’s insulting to my intelligence.”
“You’re being too harsh; it’s just courtesy. Your stepmother isn’t a bad person.”
“But this courtesy is based on shoving food into my bowl without caring about my feelings and nagging in my ear.” Jima said, “I really can’t understand how to heal this soul injury. You’ve completely failed, leaving me with such deep scars.”
“These are very common mortal experiences.” Wan Ziqi’s corpse said, “You’ve spent too long in that otherworld where people die left and right, and eventually, you’ll miss your family.”
“Oh.”
Jima replied coldly, feeling as if someone was trying to persuade her that a pebble was a priceless treasure.
“Try again.” Wan Ziqi said, “My mom treats me pretty well.”
It is pretty good.
After staying at her biological mother’s house for several days, Jima thought: at least Wan Yaping doesn’t put on those hypocritical shows every day.
However, Jima felt that her childhood spent at her biological mother’s house was not something worth reminiscing about.
The door to her room was broken.
Jima looked at the door and recalled the memory of it slamming.
It was her biological mother who kicked it.
That happened when she was in middle school.
During a one-hour long critical education session, she couldn’t help it and went back to slam the door shut.
Wan Yaping was furious and kicked the door open, continuing her lecture.
Jima even remembered the reason for the critique; it was because she had written the wrong answers on a test.
Wan Yaping had told her to write one for language and one for math, but she misheard and wrote English instead of language.
Every time she couldn’t take it anymore, Wan Yaping would criticize her:
“If you did everything right, would I still need to talk so much?”
Jima hugged her knees with her hands, her knees pressed against her shoulders, sitting on her bed, looking over at the refrigerator and saying, “What a warm childhood.”
The room was bigger here, and outside the window, the clouds were still thick, suffocatingly so.
From the refrigerator came Wan Ziqi’s voice: “But my mom treats me well.”
Jima looked up at the room’s walls, remembering when they had been pounded with fists, and voices of scolding came from outside.
Her biological mother, Wan Yaping, could never control her emotions, often cursing about something in the middle of the night.
Jima said, “I didn’t even realize I was a masochist.”
Wan Ziqi said: “She worked hard for me to get into a good school, changing my middle school so I could enter a key high school in the city…”
“Oh.”
To Jima, this sounded about as good as getting into a prestigious labor school.
“Wan Ziqi, come out for a moment.”
Wan Ziqi’s corpse trembled, and Jima frowned in annoyance, walking out to ask, “What now?”
She saw her biological mother, Wan Yaping, with her hands on her hips, holding a mop, pointing at a stubborn stain on the floor and saying, “What did I tell you? When mopping, it has to be done thoroughly; what does ‘clean’ even mean? Dry and clean…”
Jima took a deep breath and reached up to touch the pieces of the crown floating above her head.
Who would have thought that the Demon King would have to mop the floor and do housework herself?
Jima reached out for the mop and said, “Alright, I’ll change.”
“No, let me show you once.” Her biological mother, Wan Yaping, said: “Next time, don’t mess it up. If you can’t handle something so small, how will you manage in society? How will you find a job?”
Jima took another deep breath.
“What are you sighing about?”
Jima rarely used magic to lie to her family:
“Nothing, you heard wrong.”
Her biological mother, Wan Yaping, bent down hard to mop the wooden floor.
Finally, Jima endured the critique.
“Tonight we have a big clean-up; you’re in charge of taking down the curtains and washing them.”
“Ah? Another big clean-up.”
“You finally came back once.”
“Can’t I just pay someone to do it?”
“No way, household chores are for family members to do. Why would we get someone else to do it? What kind of talk is that?”
Thinking about the previous day’s experience of doing a big clean-up with her biological mother made Jima’s head throb.
No matter what she did, she was criticized. She would prefer facing a hundred Sturmtroopers with their wings shot to bone by dimensional bullets than do another big clean-up.
“I’m going to my dad’s for dinner.”
“Oh.” Her biological mother, Wan Yaping, said: “You should just tell him that you’re spending Qingming Festival over here.”
As Jima walked out of her biological mother’s house, she felt a wave of relief. She exhaled deeply, trying to release the pent-up frustration in her chest. Yet the gloom in her chest stubbornly remained.
This kind of life really isn’t happy at all; what was I thinking? Why did I come back to suffer?
Jima thought, not driving but walking instead, since that would make her arrive at her father’s house later.
At dinner.
Her stepmother was still warm and welcoming.
“Eat more chicken legs if they’re good; last time, I saw you finished everything.”
“No thanks.”
As soon as she finished speaking, a pale yellow chicken leg was shoved into her bowl.
The food in her bowl piled up like a small mound, and her stepmother was smiling brightly at it.
Looking at her stepmother’s smile, Jima felt even more frustration.
“I really can’t eat that much.”
“Take your time; no rush.” Her stepmother said with a smile: “You’re so tall, and you eat one bowl of rice, is that enough?”
“This is my second bowl.”
“No rush; take your time.”
“I’ve had enough.”
Jima directly set down the bowl full of food, stood up, and hypocritically said, “Enjoy your meal.”
With that, she walked to the living room and stared at the flickering television.
Before long, her biological father, Xu Ziqiang, came over and sat on the sofa, saying: “Auntie cares about you.”
“I really don’t want to eat; I’ve said it countless times, and she keeps shoving food at me.” Jima said, “Can’t you make her shut up?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Xu Ziqiang said coldly, “She and I have worked hard to cook for you; we care about you.”
The pent-up frustration in Jima’s chest erupted suddenly:
“Caring for me? Without asking my opinion? Do you think I’m injured or have muscle atrophy? Do you need to shove food into my bowl? Do you need to put food right in front of me? I’ve told you I don’t want it, I don’t want it; is she deaf? Can’t she hear?!”
After Xu Ziqiang listened, he coldly replied: “She’s not as cold as you.”
Jima stood up and said: “Get lost! From now on, that damn chicken leg can be shoved up her own ass, and you can get lost too.”
As Jima spoke, she strode out, quickly put on her shoes, and pushed open the security door.
Behind her came Xu Ziqiang’s voice: “Wan Ziqi!”
“He’s dead.”
With a bang, Jima slammed the door shut.
Upon reaching downstairs, she faced the trash can, threw up the food she’d eaten without caring about the surveillance camera, used magic to wipe her mouth, and left.
Jima walked swiftly, getting farther away from Xu Ziqiang’s house, and felt lighter in her heart.
But thinking about the big clean-up waiting for her at home filled her with annoyance.
Looking up, she saw the thick clouds above her still looming.
“Is my return to my hometown just to live this kind of pathetic human life forever?”
She felt a sense of frustration.
Upon returning to Wan Yaping’s home, she found Wan Yaping doing gymnastics and temporarily didn’t call Jima to do chores.
Jima went back to her room and opened the glass door of the refrigerator to briefly explain things to Wan Ziqi’s corpse.
Wan Ziqi suggested, “You could find a job outside.”
“And then come back every year to be tortured?”
“What else can you do?” Wan Ziqi said: “This is the life you were meant to live, just as it always has been.”
“Meant to be?!” Jima felt a jolt of realization: “No, I didn’t come back to live this kind of life.”
She understood something.
Pointing at Wan Ziqi’s nose, she said: “Why should I obediently be a mortal? Now I understand.
“It’s you who’s got this set up, Wan Ziqi. You have imprisoned me, restricted me…”
Wan Ziqi’s corpse said: “What nonsense are you talking? We are the same person.”
“No, you and I are not the same person.” Jima shouted: “You are dead, and I am Jima the Demon King, I am a diamond extraordinary being, I am a succubus. You are a caterpillar, you are a pupa, and I am the butterfly that has broken free from the pupa.”
The soul injuries in her chest felt like they were healing.
Jima didn’t realize it; the more she spoke, the more excited she became, pointing at Wan Ziqi’s nose: “I am no longer a mortal.”
“If you separate from me, then what next?” Wan Ziqi’s voice grew faint: “Without my identity, aren’t you afraid of being caught by Huaxia?”
“It was your cowardly nature that contaminated me; no demon clan would ever be so timid.” Jima gazed out at the clouds: “I will declare war on mortals; if they want to come, let them come.”
As soon as she finished speaking, lightning struck through the clouds.
Jima said: “Today is a sunny day.”
The clouds dispersed, sunlight poured down, and the sky was clear.
Wan Ziqi’s corpse closed its mouth, perhaps it hadn’t spoken at all from the beginning.
