Chapter 53 Sunflowers and Shadows
——She finally stood in the sunshine, but she didn't know that the sharp blade in the shadow was approaching quietly.
Three weeks after Professor Klein left, Bangkok's rainy season was still dragging on with its damp aftermath. The hot, humid wind, wrapped in the interwoven fragrance of roses and lily of the valley, blew across my face, bringing with it a uniquely tropical warmth.
After recovering from PTSD, Ruan Xingchen slowly began to embrace the sunshine as calmly as before, and pick up the subtle beauty in life bit by bit.
At that moment, she stood in the steaming halo, her fingertips gently fiddling with the plump disk of a sunflower. The golden petals were slightly curled by the strong afternoon sun, but they still stubbornly faced the direction of the skylight.
"I want to go to the Golden Triangle." Ruan Xingchen suddenly spoke, his voice softly filtered by the hot wind.
On a rattan chair not far away, Mo Xiaohan was reviewing documents. When he heard her speak, the tip of his pen paused slightly on the paper.
"What are you going there for?" He raised his eyes, his gaze passing through the swaying flower shadows and falling on her profile dotted with fragmented light.
"The place where we first met," she whispered, her fingertips resting on the seeds in the center of the flower disk. "I want to go see it. And... that whole field of wild sunflowers behind the old medical camp."
Mo Xiaohan's breathing barely registered for a moment. He stared at her drooping eyelashes, and the scene from seventeen years ago suddenly flooded back to him.
The five-year-old girl squatted in the muddy water of the Golden Triangle slums and carefully placed a piece of animal biscuit in his wounded palm.
And later, she held his hand and taught him how to draw a sunflower with crayons, little by little, outside the tent at the medical camp.
Mo Xiaohan put down the documents, stood up and walked through the shadows of the flowers, slowly hugged her from behind, and rested his chin on the top of her head.
"Okay." He turned his head and kissed the side of her face with the warmth of sunshine.
An abandoned church on the Myanmar border in the heart of the Golden Triangle
Khun Sa was polishing an old revolver, the barrel reflecting the sinister glint in his eyes. Candlelight swung in strange arcs on the mottled wall, casting his shadow on the faded cross.
"Are all Ruan Wenxiong's men here?" he asked without raising his head. The deerskin cloth rubbed against the gun barrel, making a rustling sound.
A man with tattoos all over his face stepped out of the shadows. "Twenty-seven of us are willing to follow you."
Khun Sa grinned, his gold teeth gleaming coldly in the candlelight. "Tell them the Dark Web bounty is worth an additional three million dollars."
"Still the same condition?"
"Take her life, eight million dollars." Khun Sa slowly loaded the gun, his fingertips rolling over the cold metal.
"If they are captured alive, the reward will be doubled." He suddenly sneered and paused. "Killing them with one shot is too easy for them. Letting Mo Xiaohan watch his little star... go out bit by bit, will satisfy my hatred."
The "click" sound of the bullet entering the chamber pierced the silence, startling a group of blood sparrows perched on top of the cross outside the window.
Late at night, Ruan Xingchen opened his eyes from his dream.
There was no screaming, no cold sweat, just a slight trembling of her eyelashes - this was the "end" that Professor Klein said when he declared her healed. The nightmares that had been haunting her had finally completely loosened the chains that bound her.
Mo Xiaohan, who was beside her, immediately tightened his arm around her waist, his voice hoarse from just waking up: "What's wrong?"
"It's okay." She shrank into his arms, her nose brushing against the collar of his pajamas, which smelled faintly of absinthe, and her hair tangled around his collarbone. "I dreamed that my cookies... were expired."
A low laugh shook his chest. Mo Xiaohan lowered his head and kissed the top of her head with a soothing warmth: "Ask the kitchen to bake fresh ones tomorrow and add your favorite chopped almonds."
Ruan Xingchen closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into his arms. The steady heartbeat in his chest hit her ears, and the crisp aroma of absinthe mixed with his body temperature drifted over, wrapping her like a soft blanket.
My consciousness quickly sank into a peaceful dream, with a faint smile on the corners of my mouth, and even my breathing became long and slow.
Mo Xiaohan kept his eyes open and looked at her for a long time, until the sky turned pale, then he gently kissed the corner of her lips.
Three days later, in front of the manor's helipad, A Tai was counting the weapons he had brought with him, the black gun bodies flashing coldly in the sunlight.
He lowered his voice and reported, "Boss, the military has already made arrangements and will clear the area along the way."
Mo Xiaohan hummed, but his gaze passed over him and fell on the greenhouse not far away.
Ruan Xingchen was bending over, explaining something to Malin, her skirt gently curved in the wind. The sunlight gilded her entire body, like a source of light that darkness could never erode.
She didn't know that the ambush point hidden in the shadows of the trees three kilometers away from the manor had just been cleared, and the last bit of cold metallic light was disappearing into the morning mist; she also didn't know that Khun Sa's bounty order had caused a bloody storm on the dark web, and countless pairs of eyes were following her trail and shining in the dark.
As Professor Klein said—
Recovered PTSD patients are often the most dangerous.
Because they forget that those dormant shadows never really leave, they just learn to hold their breath in the sunshine.
But he knew that under the same sunlight, Khun Sa's poison arrow was silently aimed at her back.
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