Scars on wrist
The deep blue night blurred the outlines of the world, and it wasn't just the world that was blurred.
The snow, piled up like a small hill, would crunch underfoot if you weren't careful. In the hazy light, Chen Sizhe stood in front of the passenger door and opened it for her. Wen Dai raised an eyebrow, glanced at him, and got in. "Why are you suddenly being so kind? Can being sick bring out your humanity?"
The door slammed shut with a soft "thump," and Chen Sizhe, who had gone back to the driver's seat and gotten in, fastened his seatbelt. His voice seemed even hoarser: "If you can't speak, you can choose not to." What a clever way to give someone a taste of their own medicine. Wen Dai used to say that to him.
Instead of returning the hand that was fastening the seatbelt, Wen Dai stretched out her arm and placed her palm on Chen Sizhe's forehead.
The hair on his forehead was suddenly brushed aside, and a slightly cool hand touched his forehead. Chen Sizhe's hand, which was resting on the gear lever, paused.
But his hand pressed even closer to his forehead without any sense of boundaries, and her voice echoed in the closed car: "Tsk... It's so hot, this must be the legendary temperature where you could cook an egg by cracking it. You're really good at enduring things, Chen Sizhe. Your head is burning up like this and you still drive out to help people. You're the real Ninja Turtle." Her voice was clearly sweet and crisp, but the words that came out were not so pleasant to hear.
He raised his hand from the steering wheel and grabbed her wrist, tossing her hand back. Then, he took over the car's controls with both hands. "Do you know what professionalism is?"
The Bugatti, now in motion, absorbed the light of the night, which flowed across its surface.
However, the interior of the car is not as luxurious as the exterior.
Wen Dai, who kept nagging, said, "You have a fever and you're still so dedicated to your profession? Besides, this isn't even your main job. And with your status as a partner in the law firm, and your consultation rate of eight thousand per hour, you're not short of the money you earn from fortune telling and performing rituals. If you spent the time you spend on these things on handling your cases, you could earn so much more. Aren't you just doing charity?"
Chen Sizhe's head, still burning with fever, needed to fight off drowsiness and confusion. With a pearl bird in the passenger seat, he snorted, "I think you'd be better suited to singing stand-up comedy or playing the clapper." His tone was quite sarcastic.
"What? You don't appreciate my kindness? I'm just trying to prevent you from passing out while driving, you know? After all, I'm quite worried about having a sick person drive... But,"
Wen Dai turned her face to him. In the dim light, she could only see that his skin on the side had a pale white hue, with a slightly darker color on top, which she guessed was a flush from the fever. "How high is your fever? Can you really stay awake? Have you taken any medicine? With this temperature, I think you should see a doctor. Or we can stop the car and call a designated driver. I don't have a driver's license, so I can't take your place."
Chen Sizhe gave Wen Dai a cold laugh, his eyes not blinking. He stared straight ahead, his hands expertly swerving the steering wheel. "What you really wanted to say is what came next. It's only 39 degrees Celsius. It's only medication that's making me drowsy. Don't you know most cold medicines have a sedative effect? There's no need for me to see a doctor unless I pass out. Do you think I'm a three-year-old?"
However, the person in the passenger seat suddenly fell silent, lying there for a moment. Chen Sizhe frowned, turned to look at her, and raised his voice, revealing his displeasure: "You wouldn't be asleep...?"
When his gaze fell on her, his displeasure vanished abruptly. Chen Sizhe slammed on the brakes and turned to stare at the person beside him with a furrowed brow. "What's wrong with you?"
Wen Dai, lying on the passenger seat, was clutching her stomach. Her wrinkled features conveyed a sense of painful endurance. She managed to squeeze out a voice from her throat: "Go...go to the hospital...my stomach hurts."
"Okay, just bear with it a little longer." Chen Sizhe pressed the accelerator again, his weary mind jolted awake, and he sped toward the nearest hospital.
After arriving at the hospital, Chen Sizhe parked the car in the parking lot, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got out. He hurriedly went around to the passenger side, and after the door opened, he bent down and leaned in, startling Wen Dai.
The hand briefly left her abdomen, and Wen Dai's peach blossom eyes widened in horror as she stared at the face that had suddenly loomed large in front of her. Her shoulders instinctively shrank back into the chair. "What are you doing?"
Her pale, bluish-black brows furrowed on her sickly red face. Chen Sizhe lowered his fox-like eyes to meet hers. "Can you walk by yourself?" There seemed to be genuine worry in his dark pupils.
After a moment of stunned silence, Wen Dai put her hand, which had been resting on the outside of her down jacket, back down. She lowered her head again, gasping for breath, and said, clutching her stomach, "I can walk by myself... could you move aside?"
As she climbed out of the passenger seat and walked towards the hospital's emergency department, Wen Dai's hands never left her abdomen. Her shoulders were hunched inward, as if she were enduring excruciating pain, but she still walked quite briskly.
Once inside the hospital's outpatient building, Wen Dai, who had followed Chen Sizhe to the registration window, changed her expression. She stopped Chen Sizhe, who was about to speak with the clerk, by pressing her hand against her abdomen. Her hunched shoulders relaxed, and she grabbed his arm, pulling him behind her. She rushed over to face the clerk, pointing at Chen Sizhe, who was standing there dumbfounded, "Hello, he has a fever of 39 degrees Celsius. Please register him for the fever emergency room."
Seeing the blank look on Chen Sizhe's face for the first time, and not having a chance for Wen Dai to take notes, she patted his arm and urged, "Phone, phone, do you have an electronic medical card here? If not, get electronic medical insurance."
Chen Sizhe, who had just turned the corner, pursed his lips. He glanced at the person with the matter-of-fact expression, reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and soon handed it to her.
After a series of tests, including taking his temperature, measuring his heart rate, measuring his blood pressure, and drawing blood, Chen Sizhe, who was sitting in the infusion room, had finished his skin test and started receiving an IV drip. Beside him was Wen Dai, who had staged a clever trick to lure the enemy in.
"Does the skin test hurt?" Having achieved her goal, Wen Dai was in a good mood and tilted her head to chat with him.
Meeting those captivating, almond-shaped eyes with their fluttering eyelashes, Chen Sizhe shifted his gaze from the gleaming pupils, his expressionless face barely moving as he smirked, "Why don't you try it yourself and see?"
You could tell he was very unhappy.
With an innocent expression, Wen Dai shrugged and blinked, saying, "I don't have a fever, and I'm not a patient. There's nothing I can do if I want to do a skin test. We can't waste medical resources."
"Heh." Unable to stop his sneer, Chen Sizhe glanced at her sideways, his face sour as he mocked, "It seems that performing crosstalk and clapper talk would be beneath you. With such good acting skills, it's a real pity you're not in the film and television industry."
As if oblivious to his sarcasm, Wen Dai leaned back in her chair and said leisurely, "It's a pity there's nothing I can do about it. I'm destined to be someone the film industry can't have."
"Ha." This wasn't a sneer; it came from anger. Chen Sizhe rubbed his cheeks, his other, still-functioning hand supporting his phone. His thumb rapidly tapped across the screen, sending a message home explaining his current situation before turning off the screen.
It wasn't even the end of the first month of the lunar calendar, and there were only the two of them in the hospital's infusion room. The light from the incandescent bulbs was initially glaring, but after a while, it felt like they were being hypnotized.
Bored, Wen Dai was watching a silent cartoon on her phone when suddenly she felt a weight on her head. She paused, then cautiously glanced at her side and saw the relaxed, curled-up hand hanging down beside the man's thigh.
She's asleep...
I want to take a picture of it.
Startled by her own first reaction, Wen Dai instinctively opened her eyelids, her peach blossom eyes widening in a daze. She slowly switched to the cartoon playback page, tapped the camera with her finger, then held the phone up and pressed the shutter button with her thumb.
Hehehe, I won't leave any dark history unrecorded.
Unfortunately, the photo displayed on the retracted phone screen hardly qualifies as a "black history" (a term used to describe embarrassing or embarrassing moments in one's past). The man in the photo is leaning slightly to one side, his head resting on hers. Beneath his soft, tousled hair are his eyes, closed in weariness. A beauty mark at the corner of his eye adds an indescribable charm, and his long, dark eyelashes resemble those of a Western doll. The pale red hue against his fair skin, combined with the rosy lips of his face (a model of a man who has undergone cosmetic surgery), adds a touch of allure.
What a wonderful graduation thesis on Nuwa.
Wen Dai gritted her aching back teeth, turned off her phone, and put it back in her pocket. In the last moment before the screen went out, the time displayed made her decide to take a short nap.
As if in retaliation for the head pressing down on her, Wen Dai simply used Chen Sizhe's shoulder, which was closest to her, as a pillow, tilting her head and leaning against it casually.
When she closed her eyes, all she could think about was waking up before him; she couldn't bear the thought of being choked by him the moment she opened her eyes. But despite not thinking she was sleepy, she soon drifted off to sleep.
When the nurse who came to change the IV drip saw the two of them snuggling together and sleeping, she unconsciously softened her movements, and the corners of her lips couldn't help but turn up in a smile.
In this deep blue night, not only the outlines of things become blurred, but also the unspoken boundaries between the two people.
The high walls that had been erected opened their gates that night.
The daylight suddenly broke, and Chen Sizhe was the first to open his eyes.
His neck, which had been crooked all night, was sore, and his right shoulder was also stiff and sore.
Only then did Chen Sizhe realize the sensation of the hair against his skin. He paused for a moment, then lowered his head and saw a fluffy head resting on his shoulder, the faint fragrance of the hair lingering in his nostrils.
The woman's breathing was very shallow; even at such close range, he couldn't hear her breathing clearly. But the head on his shoulder was quite heavy.
Chen Sizhe felt as if his body was frozen by the cold air outside the window. His whole body stiffened. He lowered his gaze. The back of his hand, which had been inserted with a needle, was now covered with a medical bandage. On the other side, Wen Dai's hand had fallen down and was touching his thigh.
Her other right hand was tucked into a warm pocket, but her left hand had been out there for who knows how long.
Feeling strange with her hand touching his thigh, Chen Sizhe reached out to put her hand back in her pocket. As he lifted her wrist, the cuff of his down jacket slid down her slender wrist, revealing the scar on her fair inner wrist.
Thin, flesh-pink scars crisscrossed the fabric. The hand holding her wrist froze in mid-air. Chen Sizhe's eyes were filled with complex emotions. He moved his gaze to her face and stopped.
The first thing Wen Dai did upon waking was to rub her neck. Her aching neck was being massaged, and her head, which she slowly raised, was still not fully awake. The sensation of her hand being thrown back forced her to step out of her dream and into reality. Her bewildered gaze instinctively turned to the face of the person who had thrown her hand.
Chen Sizhe rubbed his sore and aching shoulder, glanced at Wen Dai, and sneered, "I really don't know if you're the patient or I am. You've been pressing on my shoulder for hours. And your hand that was outside, if I didn't want you to have yours right after I finished my IV drip, I wouldn't have given you my pocket."
Her misty, peach-blossom eyes still stared blankly at him. Wen Dai blinked and instinctively asked, "I don't think I asked you anything, did I? What are you so anxious to explain?"
"Also, you were the one who put your head on me first. Just because your shoulder hurts doesn't mean my head hurts. Besides, shouldn't the head be more important than the shoulder?" As Wen Dai's eyes gradually cleared and her mind became more lucid, she straightened her spine and retorted.
Wen Dai, who thought she had the upper hand, was easily defeated by Chen Sizhe's next sentence—
"You just woke up and haven't brushed your teeth yet, your breath smells bad. Don't talk, it's awful."
With her eyes wide open, Wen Dai jumped up from her chair, glaring at Chen Sizhe, her voice rising involuntarily: "Stop throwing mud at me! What do you mean? Do you think I'm the only one who doesn't brush my teeth after waking up? I don't have bad breath, you're probably just crying wolf!"
Leaning back in his chair with an air of nonchalance, Chen Sizhe slowly raised his eyes to look at her, his voice trailing off with a hint of mischief: "You seem to be in a hurry. Usually, only the person who is right will be in such a hurry."
The drawn-out tone, coupled with the casual twitch of one eyebrow, conveyed the utterly despicable intent to Wen Dai.
Taking a deep breath and trying to calm her agitated emotions and the hand that wanted to punch his face, Wen Dai said calmly, "Chen Sizhe."
"Hmm?" He raised an eyebrow at her.
With a formulaic upturn of her lips and dimples appearing on her cheeks, Wen Dai gritted her teeth and said, "Why don't you pick an auspicious day that you like and die by yourself? Otherwise, I might not be able to resist sending you to the Western Paradise myself at any time. It's better for you to end it all yourself, so that everyone can be better off."
...
After delivering the person to the entrance of an old residential area in Feng'an District, the Bugatti sped away. Carrying breakfast she'd bought in Changhai District, Wen Dai, who had just stepped out of the warm air, felt a stinging cold wind on her face.
It's really fortunate that Chen Sizhe didn't lose his humanity and abandon her in the hospital. Before arguing with him, she should have thought about who would take her home afterward, since it's better to save on the fare back from Changhai District.
With only a few pitiful fingers sticking out of her sleeve, holding her breakfast, and her other hand coming out of her pocket to rub her face, which was frozen stiff, Wen Dai pulled the hood over her neck to cover her head and subconsciously raised her chin.
My gaze went straight to the house I'd seen before leaving late at night, where a figure stood by the window. In broad daylight, compared to the balconies of the other houses, it was still slightly lit, and I could tell the lights were on. The figure standing by the window was still there.
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