Searching for the Stalker Fan

The fury in Yun Huaizhu's chest subsided before it could burn for long. Apart from her missing clothes, she felt no discomfort at all.

Even as her mind raced, her eyes darted across the room. Then she spotted the clothes she'd been wearing before losing consciousness—folded neatly at the top of the pillow—and froze.

Would someone with ill intentions toward her fold her clothes neatly, set them beside her, and then vanish?

Yun Huaizhu didn't like staying in cheap hotels like this one, and the place made it impossible to think clearly, so she dressed and left.

By now, Yun Huaizhu had already guessed that she'd differentiated into an omega.

After all, there was an omega-specific suppressant in the hotel trash can, and the injection marks on her arm told her she'd used it.

By that logic, the person who had brought her here might have been an extreme fan or a stalker fan—at the very least, not necessarily malicious.

Fate really did love its jokes. The one thing she'd least wanted to differentiate into was an omega, and now she was one. Thank goodness she hadn't differentiated at Su Yutang's villa that day; otherwise, who knew how Su Yutang would have treated her.

Just as Yun Huaizhu was leaving, she spotted the pair of peridot earrings on the bedside table—the ones the stalker fan had given her.

Just thinking about the tracker hidden inside the peridot earrings made her skin crawl. But when she'd left that day, Su Yutang had said she wanted to help deal with this stalker fan... Yun Huaizhu knew exactly what Su Yutang's methods entailed. No matter how bad this stalker fan might be, she didn't deserve to be tormented by Su Yutang.

Yun Huaizhu hesitated a moment, then reached to pocket the earrings. But the instant her fingers touched them, a wave of dizziness caught her off guard, and one earring slipped down between the bed and the bedside table.

Once the dizziness passed, Yun Huaizhu crouched hurriedly and moved the bedside table aside to search for the earring. To her surprise, tucked in the corner beneath the table, alongside the earring, was a pair of glasses.

Her heat had just passed, and her nose was still sensitive to scent. She picked up the glasses and gave them a brief sniff—the scent on them was identical to that of the person who had brought her here. More importantly, they were exactly like the glasses worn by the fan who had come to her concert that day and given her the earrings.

Without a second thought, Yun Huaizhu tucked both the earrings and the glasses into her pocket.

……

When Yun Huaizhu left, she wore a hat and a mask. She went to the hotel front desk intending to ask to see the identity information of the person who had checked in with her, but the front desk informed her that her companion had used Yun Huaizhu's own ID to book the room.

The front desk clerk was the same beta from that day. She gazed enviously at the heavily bundled woman before her. "You don't know how good your girlfriend is to you. She washed and ironed your clothes herself, and before she left, she even booked you two extra days and told us not to disturb you since your heat had just passed."

Then the clerk added, "Oh, by the way, if you check out now, we'll have to charge a 30% handling fee on the refund for the last day."

At that, Yun Huaizhu felt an inexplicable twinge of guilt.

So that person had taken such meticulous care of her over these two days—and yet the first thing she'd done upon waking was suspect them.

But a stalker was still a stalker.

If anything, it only made Yun Huaizhu more determined to find that person and ask what her goal really was.

Seeing that she couldn't get the identity information, Yun Huaizhu made up an excuse—"My girlfriend seems to have dropped something when she came. Could you check the hotel records for me?"—and asked the hotel to pull the surveillance footage from when she and that person had entered the hotel.

But the person had been cautious throughout, seemingly avoiding the cameras on purpose. Even when going to the hotel laundry room to wash her clothes, she had worn a mask.

The only thing that could be confirmed was that the glasses Yun Huaizhu had found in the gap by the bedside table did indeed belong to that person—the surveillance clearly showed her wearing glasses when entering the hotel and not wearing them when leaving.

*

Meanwhile, the cleaning lady responsible for the hotel's housekeeping was disinfecting the washing machines in the laundry room when she suddenly found something wrapped tightly in what looked like a silk handkerchief inside one of the drums.

Curious, she opened the handkerchief and found only a black object the size of a peanut inside. She took one look and tossed the water-ruined, thoroughly broken thing into the trash, keeping the handkerchief for herself.

……

Lin Meng hadn't heard anything from the listening device since the plan was carried out. The device had turned out to be single-use—if the plan hadn't gone so smoothly, she would have given it a one-star review for sure!

Although the listening device was dead, the tracker still worked. For the past two weeks, the tracker had stayed in the same spot without moving. If it hadn't suddenly moved five kilometers in a straight line today, Lin Meng would have suspected the tracker was broken too.

Yun Huaizhu had just gone through differentiation and her heat, so it was understandable that she hadn't wanted to move much lately. But if she didn't want to move, wouldn't Su Yutang have called her over anyway?

Something felt off.

Just then, a class group chat Lin Meng didn't even remember joining suddenly popped up on WeChat—"Chinese Language Class 2001 Group." Someone had posted an address link followed by: [Dear classmates, next month on the 2nd I'll be hosting a class reunion at the city's most upscale hotel, the Shenghe Grand Hotel. All expenses are on me. It's been so long since we've all seen each other—don't forget to come!]

The moment Lin Meng saw the words "class reunion," she wanted to swipe past it. She had no interest in reconnecting with old classmates—there was no need, and she didn't like crowded, lively places anyway.

Just as she was about to exit, the person named "Wen Ting"—the one hosting the event—sent Lin Meng a private message: [Lin Meng, I've prepared a surprise for the reunion this time. You have to come!]

Lin Meng originally wanted to type "Can I not go?" but then she thought about how she hadn't seen those people in a long time. If she coldly refused and this person kept pestering her with messages...

And if she deleted Wen Ting, wouldn't that be a hassle? After all, Wen Ting was hosting the entire class. If she got other classmates to persuade Lin Meng, that would be even more annoying.

Lin Meng glanced at the calendar. The 2nd happened to be a Sunday.

Fine, she'd go. It wasn't like she hadn't been to plenty of company team-building events. She'd just find a corner, be invisible, eat her fill, and that would be that.

Lin Meng replied with a single word: [Mm.]