Chapter 167. The Red Panda and Its Keeper 4 "This is its first kiss..."
After the deafening roar of the avalanche subsided, the world fell into utter silence.
Shen Yanxing struggled to escape from the collapsed snowdrift. All he could see was pure white and desolate, and the sound of his own rough breathing after being rescued echoed in his ears.
However, Shen Yanxing's state of relief after surviving the ordeal did not last long before she was suddenly pushed away by a tight embrace.
That noisy yet familiar voice, like sparrows falling from the snow, chirped and chattered in her ear, full of anxiety: "Shen Yanxing! You scared me to death! Are you alright? Why didn't you run faster? This is so scary! Run faster!"
Lu Shi'en was terrified, and his words of reproach were full of lingering fear.
Perhaps for this reason, she hugged him very tightly, so tightly that Shen Yanxing could hardly breathe.
The sun slanted down, casting its light across the mountains, and the white snow subtly reflected a warm glow.
The scent emanating from the young girl became an invader in this bland world, tightly enveloping Shen Yanxing and casting a shadow of disbelief across her face.
She was hugging herself.
She was surprisingly worried about herself.
"I'm sorry to have worried you." Shen Yanxing paused and raised his hand to gently stroke Lu Shi'en's tense body, his tone still carrying a lighthearted joking tone: "Your sister and I tried our best, but we still couldn't outrun the avalanche."
Upon hearing Shen Yanxing's words, Lu Shi'en immediately realized that his words had sounded somewhat harsh, and quickly said, "That's not what I meant..."
“I know.” Shen Yanxing nodded, looking calmly at Lu Shien’s slightly reddened eyes. “You’re just too impatient.”
Whether he was genuinely frightened or not, Lu Shi'en showed no anger or embarrassment even after Shen Yanxing had once again exposed his secret.
The biting wind had already turned people's cheeks red. Lu Shi'en was stunned for a moment, his eyes filled with panic. He turned his head and saw that the ski resort's rescue personnel had already run over with a stretcher.
"Ms. Lu, please leave the rest to us," the rescue worker said.
"Okay." Lu Shi'en nodded and released Shen Yanxing, but couldn't help but add, "Be careful, she might be injured."
"Don't worry," the rescuers assured them, and quickly and professionally lifted Shen Yanxing from the snow onto a stretcher.
.
Although the inspection and maintenance of snow-capped mountains are not very reliable, the ski resort is equipped with a very comprehensive hospital.
The hospital in the city has all the necessary equipment, and a full-body check-up took until the afternoon as expected. Fortunately, both of them had good results and there was nothing seriously wrong. Lu Shizhen had minor abrasions, while Shen Yanxing's injury was more serious, with a mild fracture in his forearm.
With her fractured arm immobilized by a brace and her other hand having just received an IV drip from the nurse, Shen Yanxing looked at the tablet propped up on the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lu Shizhen eating the apple that Xu Shiyue had given her on another bed, and she felt a little resentful.
She also wanted to eat an apple.
She also wanted someone she liked to feed her...
Just as Shen Yanxing was thinking this, the door to the ward was pushed open from the outside.
The light from the corridor intertwined with the light from the room door, and Lu Shien walked in carrying a bag of milk tea in the bright light.
The little girl's movements were somewhat awkward. She first glanced at Shen Yanxing by the bedside, and then walked to Lu Shizhen's bedside: "Sister, how are you feeling? I bought milk tea, the flavor you and sister-in-law like."
"Thank you for your hard work, Xiao En." Lu Shizhen said as she took the milk tea and reassured Lu Shi En, "I'm fine, it's just a minor injury, I don't even need a needle."
"That's good." Lu Shi'en nodded, but his expression did not relax.
With keen observation, Lu Shizhen noticed that there were two cups of milk tea in the bag Lu Shien was carrying.
Having witnessed what happened on the snow mountain, she reacted quickly this time, saying to Xu Shiyue beside her, "By the way, Shiyue, didn't Mom say she needed to talk to us? Let's go find her, so we don't keep her waiting."
"Things" was, of course, an excuse to leave the ward, and Xu Shiyue quickly received Lu Shizhen's signal.
She calmly placed the fruit knife on the table and nodded, saying, "Okay."
Lu Shi'en could clearly sense that Lu Shizhen and Xu Shiyue were playing a riddle game, but the two of them retreated so quickly that she could only watch them leave.
The once cozy double room suddenly fell silent, with the plastic bag making a soft rustling sound as it was gently clenched by a hand.
Lu Shi'en let out a soft breath, turned to look at Shen Yanxing sitting on another hospital bed, and noticed that the tablet on the table was playing information about ski resort management.
The little girl frowned slightly, looking somewhat displeased.
So he immediately expressed his opinion: "How can you still work with a fractured bone?"
"Shouldn't I take the task assigned to me seriously?" Shen Yanxing said dismissively. "Luckily, your sister and I are skilled enough to avoid it this time. What if it were someone else? This would be a major safety hazard."
As soon as he finished speaking, Lu Shi'en looked at Shen Yanxing's sling arm without any attempt to hide it and complained, "Skilled enough... My sister's skill is truly excellent, she's perfectly fine."
As Lu Shi'en spoke, his face, which had been hesitant and unsure of how to behave, now skillfully displayed disdain.
Perhaps the conversation had helped her rediscover the way she used to interact with Shen Yanxing. Lu Shi'en plopped down on the edge of Shen Yanxing's bed and reminded her, "You have to ask your uncle for compensation for this. How can you almost lose your life while doing someone else's research? Isn't that scary?"
As Lu Shi'en spoke on behalf of Shen Yanxing, he vaguely sensed a smile creeping across his face out of the corner of his eye.
She stopped abruptly and turned her head, only to see that Shen Yanxing's usually extremely calm eyes were now curved in a smile.
The afternoon sun had already weakened, and the sunlight wasn't very good.
It just so happened that the light shone on Shen Yanxing's face, and the dim light made her smiling face look somewhat gentle.
Lu Shien paused for a moment, and that burning sensation surged from her blood to her face once again.
Not wanting his reaction to be seen through, Lu Shi'en preemptively asked Shen Yanxing without any politeness, "What are you doing? Did you fall and get stupid? What are you grinning about?"
Upon hearing this, Shen Yanxing's smile became even more undisguised: "I'm laughing because you're actually thinking of me and standing up for me."
Lu Shi'en was somewhat unconvinced and raised her head: "What, in your eyes, am I so incapable of distinguishing right from wrong?"
Shen Yanxing shook his head: "No."
Lu Shi'en pressed on, "What is that?"
"cute."
Before Lu Shi'en could recover from the relentless questioning, Shen Yanxing suddenly changed the subject and gave her an unexpected word.
Lu Shien was stunned, blinking his eyes.
Then she heard Shen Yanxing repeat to her, "In my eyes, you are very cute."
The voice was different from the calm tone just now, and from the usual teasing and joking tone.
Perhaps because they usually spend too much time together, Lu Shi'en could easily sense the gentleness and seriousness in Shen Yanxing's words.
She genuinely felt that way.
It's a word that's usually used to praise children, but when applied to adults, it carries a sense of ambiguity.
It was as if a flood of data had suddenly poured into Lu Shi'en's brain, and she couldn't keep up, so she stammered, "You, you, what nonsense are you talking about!"
"I'm not lying, I really like your cuteness." Shen Yanxing took a light breath and calmly looked up into Lu Shi'en's eyes. "I like you too."
Lu Shi'en was stunned for a moment, his eyes filled with a bewildered expression, unsure of how to react.
Is this... a confession?
"My mind went completely blank when the avalanche happened. To be honest, there are many things I don't regret, but there is one thing I'm very unwilling to accept."
Before Lu Shi'en could recover, Shen Yanxing's voice rang out again.
Her tone remained serious, and her gaze toward Lu Shi'en became even more earnest: "So you must say it before you die."
At this point, Shen Yanxing paused slightly.
It would be a lie to say she wasn't nervous, but whether she was nervous or not, she didn't want to hide her thoughts anymore.
Especially after experiencing the avalanche just now, when Lu Shien abandoned Lu Shizhen who was nearby and ran towards him.
"I like you, Lu Shi'en."
The seven simple words struck Lu Shi'en's ears, and her face instantly burned.
She didn't know how Shen Yanxing could say those words so calmly. She just felt like her brain was overloaded and her heart was pounding.
It's like...
It's as if I have the same thought about the other person.
Just as she heard the staff rushing over from the foot of the mountain to tell them about the avalanche that had just occurred in the area where Lu Shizhen and Shen Yanxing had been skiing, her mind went completely blank, as if something had suddenly blocked it.
Her reaction at that time was no less intense than when she heard that Lu Shizhen had perished in the fire a few years ago, and perhaps even more so.
It seemed as if another death had been thrust before her, but this time the one that caused her intense grief was not her sister, but Shen Yanxing.
So when she saw Lu Shizhen crawling out of the snowdrift, she wasn't happy; instead, her heart sank.
Because she didn't see the person who kept popping into her head the whole way.
For over a decade, Lu Shien had never regretted arguing with anyone as much as he did today.
She desperately suppressed the bad feeling in her heart and ran off the bus faster than anyone else.
She really, really didn't want to break up with Shen Yanxing like this.
Perhaps because they saw each other almost every day, Lu Shi'en never imagined that she and Shen Yanxing would separate.
I don't know if it's because of this close daily interaction that people feel that this person will be by their side for a lifetime, and even the feelings that were planted early on are only realized when they are about to face death.
Lu Shi'en learned a lot about liking people from his older sister, who was switched at birth by that arrogant and naughty kid.
She used to think that possessiveness was a sign of liking someone, which is why she chased after Lu Shizhen so relentlessly, without even thinking there was anything wrong with it.
But now that I think about it, all of these views are too one-sided.
Liking someone involves a whole host of emotions.
"unlucky."
Suddenly, Lu Shi'en uttered two words in the quiet ward.
The words came so abruptly, yet they were so closely connected to the last sound just now that Shen Yanxing's heart stopped for a moment.
To her surprise, Lu Shi'en put her hands on her hips and adopted her usual haughty demeanor, pointing and gesturing at her: "I said, can you please stop talking about death all the time? It's so unlucky! It's just a fracture, not even broken, so shut up!"
So the unlucky thing isn't that I like her, but that I was just hanging on to death.
It was a false alarm.
Shen Yanxing felt that this was even more disorienting than the avalanche she had just experienced, and then she spat out "Pui pui pui" several times in response.
Seeing the complex emotions that Shen Yanxing had just displayed, Lu Shi'en's interest was piqued again: "Shen Yanxing, I already know that you like me. My response is..."
Lu Shi'en paused for a long time, intentionally.
Finally, after the second hand had turned ninety degrees, he said to Shen Yanxing, "Passed, and issued a positive feedback signal."
The words were somewhat obscure, but Shen Yanxing understood them perfectly.
A smile rose in her heart, layer upon layer, but before it could all be reflected on her face, Shen Yanxing felt a soft touch on the side of her cheek.
Unexpectedly, Lu Shien leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
Shen Yanxing paused for a moment, then asked as if to confirm, "Is this... a kiss from my girlfriend?"
"Mmm." Lu Shi'en nodded, his face flushed red as he awkwardly and shyly reminded her, "And it was your first kiss too."
"Actually..." Shen Yanxing said, his voice suddenly dropping.
Lu Shi'en couldn't hear him at all and thought Shen Yanxing wanted to whisper something to him, so he leaned closer and said, "What... um..."
Before the question could be finished, it was met with another gentle warmth.
With both hands immobilized, Shen Yanxing cunningly used her voice to tug at Lu Shi'en's head.
The kiss was soft and gentle, lingering and ambiguously caressing the lips.
Her untouched nerves kept sending trembling signals to her owner, who had long since surrendered due to a breakdown in her programming.
The first kiss ended there, lukewarm and brief. Shen Yanxing looked at Lu Shi'en and leaned close to her ear to complete what she had said earlier in a deliberately low voice: "This is the first kiss."
A soft voice enveloped Lu Shi'en's youthful ears, and a gentle warmth instantly made his face turn bright red.
She was like a system that had never been programmed with love, because this kiss from the person she liked completely crashed.
The sunlight slanted, casting the image of the two people leaning together onto the wall.
The tender affection lingered, and no one noticed the figure outside the door stop and then pass by.
Lu Shizhen pulled Xu Shiyue's hand and walked away into the distance, a hint of pride on her face: "Oh my, I didn't expect Shen Yanxing to have this side to her. It seems their relationship has progressed by leaps and bounds since we left. That's great."
Xu Shiyue turned her head slightly to look at Lu Shizhen and asked, "Lu Shizhen, who did you give your first kiss to?"
"Of course it's you." Lu Shizhen answered decisively without any hesitation, "Have you forgotten that when I was six years old, you unexpectedly kissed me?"
Before she could finish speaking, the stairwell door, which hadn't been opened in a long time, opened along with the sound of Lu Shizhen jumping.
Xu Shiyue pulled Lu Shizhen into the emergency exit on the side, and a warm, soft kiss landed on her lips.
The familiar scent of alcohol lingered on Xu Shiyue's body and landed on Lu Shizhen's lips. She could hear the nurses pushing a trolley by outside. The slightest noise was always magnified infinitely in the most tense moments.
Outside, the sound of footsteps, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, constantly reminded Zhen and the others of their location upon landing.
She was pressed against the cool wall by Xu Shiyue, and Xu Shiyue's warmth kept reaching her neck.
The wind blew into the hallway through an open window on some unknown floor, bringing with it a chilly winter air, yet also a hint of the ambiguous warmth of summer.
The kiss, hidden in the shadows, grew more intense, their gentle breaths alternating in an aggressive manner, and a thin layer of sweat appeared on the neck pressed against his palm.
Finally, when both of them were almost out of oxygen, Xu Shiyue released her hand from Lu Shizhen's waist, and instead brushed a strand of long hair past her face, saying casually yet with a hint of smugness, "It seems I'm still better at taking things by surprise."
Lu Shizhen, still breathing heavily, leaned on Xu Shiyue's shoulder and smiled.
Her crimson lips brushed against the slightly sweaty, damp side of her neck, and her unsteady voice held a hint of flattery: "Yes, Madam's unexpected technique is first-rate."
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