Chapter 16 Chapter 16 "Are you afraid of me?"...
The stone lion in front of the small building looked at the scene in silence. Suddenly, a rumbling sound was heard in his ears.
Dark clouds are gathering and a storm is about to come.
The raindrops sliding down from the umbrella soaked the glass on the ground. Pei Lanqing squatted down and picked up a piece. The phone in his pocket vibrated, but he ignored it and carefully identified the marks on the glass fragments.
It was like blood, staining a pool of clear water.
The phone vibrated again. Pei Lanqing put the broken pieces back where they belonged. Following up on Lin Qianyuan's response, she added, "Auntie Wu isn't here. Come up directly."
There were no lights on in the attic.
Lin Qianyuan was wearing all black and sitting in front of the easel in the corner. At first glance, Pei Lanqing thought he was back to the day they first met.
Lin Qianyuan was looking at him, her eyes filled with complex emotions yet seemingly indifferent. Before their gazes met, she lowered them, avoiding his gaze.
Pei Lanqing walked into the attic.
The distance between them was getting closer and closer, and his unconvinced eyes were increasingly eager to find her hand.
The cuffs of Lin Qianyuan's skirt are designed to look like blooming flowers, and her left hand is placed naturally on her knee, completely out of sight.
Pei Lanqing sat down next to her.
There was a new painting on the easel, and he knew its name: "Venus and Adonis."
Pei Lanqing had read Shakespeare's work of the same name before when he was young. Out of curiosity about the "symbiosis of love and destruction" in the poem, he consulted a large number of books and materials on this subject.
The two mythological figures in the painting are originally from the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses. The female figure is Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty and love, corresponding to Aphrodite in Greek mythology. The male figure is Adonis, the god of spring vegetation, representing the spirit of spring plants.
The Venetian painter Titian Vecellio titled his work "Poetry and Flowers." It depicts Venus embracing the advancing Adonis with all her love. Even so, Adonis refuses to stop, nearly leading Venus to the ground. Venus, a symbol of beauty and love, loses all her magical power over Adonis.
"Teacher Pei," Lin Qianyuan called him with a smile.
Pei Lanqing came back to his senses and looked at her, asking what was wrong.
Lin Qianyuan stared into his eyes for a long moment, then curled her lips and chuckled. Since he knew the painting, it would save her the trouble of introducing it to him.
Lin Qianyuan turned sideways, busy as if looking for something. As she looked, she asked, "Teacher Pei, do you know the ending of the person in the painting?" After asking, Lin Qianyuan's eyes suddenly lit up, and she grasped the knife and faced the canvas again.
Pei Lanqing handed the phone to her and said, "I know."
[Adonis, obsessed with hunting, ignored Venus's advice and eventually died while hunting a wild boar.]
Lin Qianyuan nodded and smiled, "Yes."
She slowly cut open the painting with a knife, pointing the sharp end at the pleading Venus in the painting. Behind the painting was another work, "The Awakening of Adonis" by British painter John William Waterhouse.
Lin Qianyuan said, "I heard that there were no red roses in the world, only white roses. After Adonis died, the grief-stricken Venus rushed down from heaven. Her feet were pricked by the thorns of a white rose on the way, and her blood dripped onto the rose petals. From then on, red roses as red as blood have existed in the world."
"Like this."
Lin Qianyuan suddenly used a knife to gently scratch the thenar eminence of her left hand. Blood came out from the tip of the knife, but she seemed not to feel the pain. The corners of her lips rose slightly, and she turned her head and met Pei Lanqing's gaze.
Lin Qianyuan raised his eyebrows slightly, put down his knife, looked at the painting thoughtfully, and asked, "Teacher Pei, if Adonis had listened to Venus's advice and stopped hunting, would he not have died?" After waiting for a long time without an answer, Lin Qianyuan turned around and asked, "Teacher Pei?"
Pei Lanqing stared at her intently, then lowered his head to type. [No. Venus's lust is aggressive. The wild boar that killed Adonis was actually transformed by her lover, the god of war, Mars. Even if Adonis gave up his nature and stopped hunting, he would most likely die from Mars' jealousy.]
So you think it's Venus' fault?
[Not entirely. They are all wrong. Love that goes beyond the boundaries of loyalty is itself wrong and there is no need to protect it. Even if they choose to lose themselves, even if they use the name of love, it is not worth forgiving.]
Lin Qianyuan nodded. She picked up the knife again, pointing the sharp end at the Venus in the painting. After completely destroying the painting, she smiled and said to him, "Then let them die together."
"Teacher Pei," Lin Qianyuan dropped the knife in her hand and stretched out her left hand. "Could you please bandage this for me?" She lowered her eyes, not daring to look at him. She looked harmless and innocent. "Auntie Wu is not here. It's inconvenient for me to do it alone."
Pei Lanqing looked at her hand. Without the cuffs blocking it, he could clearly see her left hand. Not only was her thenar cut, but there were also some small cuts on her palm, as if she had clenched something and then cut herself.
Pei Lanqing wanted to say something, but when he looked up and saw her like this, he suddenly couldn't say anything.
He went downstairs to get the medicine box, gently held her wrist, and looked carefully. He found that there were glass fragments hidden in the untreated wound on her palm, which were invisible to the naked eye.
Pei Lanqing glanced up at her, found the tweezers, and after briefly disinfecting them with alcohol, he told her, "I'll try to be gentle. If it still hurts, tell me."
Lin Qianyuan stretched out his hand in front of him without hesitation, "It's okay, I'm not afraid of pain."
Pei Lanqing didn't say anything. He lowered his head and helped her clean the wound carefully. After cleaning, he let go of her wrist.
Just as he said, Lin Qianyuan didn't make any noise during the whole process, and didn't even blink, staring at him the whole time.
Pei Lanqing put on the Band-Aid and noticed that the wound on her fingertip had not healed yet. Looking down, he couldn't help but look up at her.
Perhaps because he wasn't confident about what he was about to say, the emotions in his eyes kept changing. [Just because you're not afraid of pain, you can treat yourself like this?]
Even if it's your left hand, it's still part of your body.
Words have no emotions, and Pei Lanqing actually didn't mean to blame her.
He clearly knew in his heart that as long as it didn't hurt others, whatever others did was their own choice and they had to bear the consequences themselves, but he always failed to understand the situation with her.
She is good at many things, but the best of them all is how to hurt herself.
Unexpectedly, after reading it, Lin Qianyuan simply asked, "Are you scared?"
Pei Lanqing thought she didn't understand what she meant, but Lin Qianyuan seemed extremely stubborn about this question. When he didn't respond, she kept asking, "Are you afraid of me?"
Pei Lanqing remained silent. He felt that she was still a good person. Although she might hurt herself, it was only to herself. Perhaps she had chosen the wrong way to vent her emotions. Even though she was so skilled with a knife, he still considered her a good person.
"Won't."
Lin Qianyuan stared at him. They were both sitting on the edge of the sofa. If she were to get a little closer, she could force him into a corner. She had a strong aura and spoke in a completely different tone. "Teacher Pei, I didn't mean to hurt myself."
She pointed to the glass bottle on the desk. The candies inside were dirty, just like her uncleaned palms.
"The glass bottle that contained the candy was accidentally broken, and I was trying to pick up the candy, so that's why I did this."
"Accidentally?" Pei Lanqing felt that his brain was not so confused that he could believe such words casually.
The liar was very sure. She lowered her body and smiled at him, "Yeah, I was just careless."
They were too close, and Pei Lanqing felt like his remaining rationality was completely gone. Just as he was about to get up away from her, he heard a series of obvious gurgling sounds in the air.
The two looked at each other, and Lin Qianyuan's original two-meter-eight aura disappeared, and a strange hint of red appeared on his fair face.
Pei Lanqing had never seen her like this before. After looking at her for a few more seconds, he lowered his head before her, with an unconcealable smile on his lips.
Lin Qianyuan knew from his expression that he must have made a sound. She stepped back, her face still blushing, but this did not prevent her from saying to him in a vicious tone: "It's not my belly."
"Also, you are not allowed to laugh."
Pei Lanqing had been able to hold it in for a while, but after hearing these two sentences, he couldn't help but burst out laughing. Fortunately, she couldn't hear him, so he quickly adjusted his expression and typed, "Are you hungry?"
Lin Qianyuan glanced over and frowned, "No."
Pei Lanqing nodded meaningfully. "Can I borrow your time for another hour? I'll give it to you tomorrow morning." He said, "I'm a little hungry now."
Lin Qianyuan would never contradict herself, so she emphasized: [Wu Ma is not here.]
Mother Wu, who was playing with her sister in the backyard, sneezed.
The young lady told her not to come to the front hall no matter what noise she heard today. She didn't understand why, but she had to do as she was told.
Lin Qianyuan emphasized this, looking very conflicted. "Are you really hungry?" She said with reluctance. "Okay then. I'll order food and have it delivered."
"No," Pei Lanqing was already apprehensive about her order after the pricey dinner he'd just had. He explained, "Can I borrow the kitchen? If you'd like, you can try some of my cooking."
"You can?" Lin Qianyuan asked in disbelief.
"Well," Pei Lanqing said, a little embarrassedly, "I just learned a little bit."
Pei Dejun always pushed people out of the kitchen on the grounds that it would affect their studies, but he was always not at home, and Pei Lanqing took this opportunity to learn a little.
What do you want to eat? I don't know a lot.
Maybe it was because she had only eaten one meal in the past two days, or because she suddenly felt relieved, but Lin Qianyuan was indeed hungry. She was not picky about home-cooked food, so she was very easy to talk to. "Anything is fine."
Pei Lanqing planned to go downstairs to check out the ingredients before deciding what to cook. As he was going downstairs, Lin Qianyuan seemed to suddenly remember something and followed him, "I was wrong just now. I don't want to eat anything. I'm not hungry at all."
"Why are you asking me that?"
She was actually tricked by him. Realizing this, Lin Qianyuan felt very unhappy. "I'm serious! I'm really not hungry!"
Pei Lanqing pursed her lips slightly, suppressed her laughter, and did not answer.
She kept mumbling around him. Pei Lanqing opened the refrigerator, took a quick look, and asked, "How about the sweet and sour poached eggs?"
After closing the refrigerator door, he squatted down again and opened the freezer. "Do you want to eat meat?"
Pei Lanqing thought for a moment and decided, "I can cook some noodles first to fill my stomach, and then wait for the sweet and sour spareribs."
“Why is it always sugar and vinegar?”
Pei Lanqing stood up, looked at her, and asked sincerely: [Don't you like sweet things?]
So that's how it is. Lin Qianyuan nodded reluctantly, "It's okay."
Pei Lanqing looked at her carefully, and finally answered the question she had asked on the stairs, "So you're still hungry, right?"
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The author has something to say: If the sky falls, they will hold it up (Uncle Benshan is scratching his head)
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