Chapter 96: Cage Heart Track

Is it a disaster, or a heartbeat? She can no longer distinguish the line between danger and tenderness.

In the military camp in northern Myanmar, the wooden house was filled with a faint smell of blood and medicine. Savika was leaning against the head of the bed with his upper body naked, and the bandage wrapped around his right shoulder was oozing dark red.

Su Lixia was changing the bandage for him. Her fingers trembled slightly as she wiped the edge of the wound with a cotton swab dipped in disinfectant.

"What are you afraid of?" Savika suddenly asked, "Didn't you take out the bullet yourself?"

Su Lixia bit her lip: "I'm a medical student, not a butcher."

“In northern Myanmar, there’s no difference between the two,” Savika sneered.

Su Lixia pursed her lips, did not refute, and continued with her hands.

After a long while, she spoke softly, "When you're better...can you let me go home?"

Savika chuckled, her uninjured arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close to her chest. "Why are you bringing this up again?"

Su Lixia fell onto his strong chest, the tip of her nose being hit by the smell of gunpowder mixed with blood. She struggled to move away, but he held her tighter.

"I still have my studies to do. I want to be a doctor and save lives in the future...not just be stitching up your wounds in the barracks every day!" She raised her head, her eyes slightly red, but with an unprecedented determination, "Why are you locking me up here?"

"Because of this." He guided her hand to press it against the strap on his right shoulder. "Because of this." His right hand touched the kiss mark on her collarbone. "And because you kept silent at the Bangkok cocktail party when you had the opportunity to ask Madam for help."

Su Lixia froze.

"That's your 'dearest' senior." Savika's fangs brushed against her earlobe. "As long as you say 'senior, save me' and Madam asks, I can let you go right then and there."

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

"Why didn't you say it then?" He stared at her for a few seconds, his tone playful yet profound. "Were you afraid I wouldn't agree? Or were you afraid... that I would really let you go?"

Yeah...why not say it?

He clearly wanted to ask for help the moment he saw Senior Xingchen, so why did he end up remaining silent?

"Let me tell you why."

Savika pinched her chin, his eyes as dark as a wolf's. "Because you can't bear to leave." He took her hand and pressed it against his violently beating heart. "Subconsciously, you have already decided on me, but you just won't admit it."

Su Lixia stared at him blankly, her words of rebuttal stuck in her throat, and a kind of panic of having her secrets exposed gripped her heart.

Tears suddenly fell, but Savika suddenly softened his movements and wiped away her tears with his fingertips: "You missed your only chance to leave, so don't even think about escaping in this life."

He bent down and kissed her wet eyelashes, his voice carrying a rare gentleness: "Aren't we supposed to save the dying and the wounded? Here, there are gunshot wounds, explosion wounds, and insect bites every day... It's much more interesting than the mannequins you faced at Huaguo Medical College."

Su Lixia turned her face away: "You don't understand at all..."

"I don't need to understand." Savika pinched her chin, forcing her to turn her head. "After we clean up the Naga scum, we'll go back to Yangon and get married. Or, do you like the pagodas in Bagan? Or the cherry blossoms in Taunggyi?" He chuckled. "Little Mongla is fine too. I have an emerald mine there. You can play around with it every day."

He kissed her lips and said, "Just stop thinking about China. From now on, Myanmar is your country. My side is your home."

"…madman!"

"Um."

Su Lixia closed her eyes in a shudder. Suddenly, she thought of the sunlight at the medical school, and then, a second later, the bloody explosion as he blocked the bullet flashed before her mind.

Two lives torn apart, she couldn't tell whether this was a Stockholm syndrome or her heart's involuntary sinking, just like she couldn't tell whether the hand against her waist was the handle of a gun or his burning fingertips.