The Watcher - Chapter 1

# Chapter 1

The woman I wanted to sleep with had 3.8 million followers.

Her name was Qin Yue. She was a livestreamer: fair-skinned, beautiful, and making a hundred thousand yuan a month.

My coworkers laughed at me for wanting a woman out of my league on a three-thousand-yuan salary. What the hell did they know?

Every time she took a delivery from me, she thanked me in that sweet voice.

I was sure of it. “Would a woman—a single woman—be nice to some stranger for no reason? She’s hinting that I’ve got a chance.”

A college kid working part-time couldn’t take it anymore. “If that counts, she pays me tips to take her trash down on my way out. Don’t be so full of yourself.”

The dorm erupted in shrill laughter.

I hated him so much my teeth ached. So one rainy day, I tampered with the brakes on his electric motorbike.

The crash left him in a vegetative state.

Watching his disabled grandmother sob, I almost laughed out loud.

By going through Qin Yue’s trash, I learned the exact timing of her periods.

She loved iced drinks. That made me very angry.

A cold womb would make it hard to give birth to sons later.

Once, while delivering her food, I sternly set her straight. “Girls should drink less cold stuff. Your future in-laws won’t like it.”

Qin Yue’s eyes turned cold at once.

For that one instant, my scalp prickled. There was something terrifying about the feeling that this little girl had seen right through me.

But the next moment, she was her usual innocent self again.

“Really? You know so much, and you’re so thoughtful.”

Her eyes shone with admiration. “I’m so lucky to have met someone as kind and responsible as you!”

I was floating on air.

It was only a matter of time before she fell for me.

I was going to pull off something big, something that would make Qin Yue hopelessly devoted to me.

I got in touch with my childhood friend Zhang Yong. “Want in on a good thing?”

We met under a bridge. Grinning, Zhang Yong took the cigarette I offered. “Sure. Depends how big a thing we’re talking about.”

That was our code. I made a gesture with my hand and blew out a thick cloud of smoke.

“At least a 70C.”

I knew Zhang Yong all too well. He couldn’t keep it in his pants. Even three years in prison for rape hadn’t stopped him itching to do it again.

But he had one advantage.

To make committing crimes easier, he’d ground off the fingerprints on all ten fingers.

The police had gone to considerable trouble to catch him back then.

Sure enough, when Zhang Yong saw her photograph, his eyeballs practically stuck to it. “That figure, that face—you’d really let me have her? A beauty like that?”

I didn’t want to.

But you couldn’t catch a wolf without risking the bait.

Zhang Yong and I had worked this scheme many times before.

Back in our hometown, he’d force himself on them, and I’d come to the rescue.

After playing the hero, I’d comfort them at just the right moment and magnanimously assure them I didn’t mind their filthy bodies.

Even the proudest woman would lower her head.

Qin Yue, well.

She wouldn’t be any different.

To learn Qin Yue’s daily routine,

I secretly pried her door open and installed a pinhole camera in her living room.

It faced the bathroom door, giving me a view of all that beauty every day.

Stealing glimpses, then stealing the woman herself—there was no greater pleasure for a man.

Qin Yue had been having a run of bad luck lately.

Her biggest spender, Brother Biao, was also her neighbor. He lived on the second floor.

Drinking, gambling, prostitutes—he did it all. Every day, he sent her big virtual rocket gifts and made her perform suggestive dances.

Qin Yue was sick of being pestered. That day, she’d just finished streaming

when I heard several loud bangs outside her door.

Someone was hammering on it.

Brother Biao’s wife, Sister Zhang, was raging and rolling around in the hallway.

“You heartless slut! Give me back my eighty thousand yuan! That money was to save a life!”