Twenty Minutes Later
“All right, I need to rinse,” Mu Wan said. “I’ll get dressed and bring you breakfast.”
She quickly ended the call.
The sink was in the bathroom, but she had left her glass on the living room table while brushing her teeth.
She grabbed it and hurried toward the bathroom.
The moment she stepped through the door, there was a violent crash.
Her body hit the floor.
Glass shattered.
For several seconds, the apartment went silent.
Then a low groan came from inside the bathroom.
Twenty minutes after confidently declaring that she was perfectly healthy and would not be visiting the emergency department, Mu Wan arrived at the emergency department.
It had happened almost immediately.
Her foot had slipped on the wet bathroom floor, pitching her forward. Instinctively, she threw both hands out to catch herself.
The glass in her left hand shattered.
She came down directly on the broken pieces.
Several shards cut into the left side of her chest.
Mu Wan called Lin Wei at once.
Lin Wei called an ambulance.
Then, despite having undergone surgery only two days earlier, she somehow managed to rush back to Mu Wan’s apartment with the emergency crew.
The moment Lin Wei saw the blood diluted across the wet bathroom floor, she stood in the doorway crying and stamping her foot.
“Holy shit! Are you going to die?”
The paramedics were lifting Mu Wan onto the stretcher.
Pain twisted her features, but she nearly laughed anyway.
They brought her to the emergency department.
The morning air inside carried the damp chill of the rainy season, and people were already moving constantly through the room.
As the first rush of adrenaline faded, the pain sharpened.
Mu Wan’s head buzzed.
Through the noise around her, she heard Lin Wei speaking urgently to a doctor.
“Doctor Liu, hurry and look at my friend! She got stabbed near the heart!”
Apparently, when fate decided to interfere, there was no stopping it.
Mu Wan lifted her head.
Her gaze met Liu Qianxiu’s.
Dark.
Still.
Unfathomable.
“Meow.”
Mu Wan smiled.
Her lips had gone pale from biting down against the pain, yet the smile itself remained bright and vivid.
The young nurse beside Liu Qianxiu looked up at her in confusion.
Lin Wei, however, knew exactly what she was doing.
Caught between anger and laughter, she stared at Mu Wan.
“You’re injured and you still have the energy to joke?”
Liu Qianxiu remained completely composed.
His lashes lowered, and his attention shifted to Mu Wan’s injury.
“Move your hand.”
His voice was calm.
Mu Wan obeyed.
There was no heavy bleeding. The glass did not appear to have penetrated deeply enough to threaten her heart. Her breathing was rapid and shallow from the pain, but there were no obvious signs of a pneumothorax.
For the moment, the injuries appeared superficial.
After showering that morning, Mu Wan had put on a cream-colored camisole.
Blood had soaked through the padded fabric over her left breast.
Liu Qianxiu carefully drew the camisole aside, pulling the fabric lower so he could inspect the wounds.
The raw cuts were exposed to the cool air.
As he leaned closer, Mu Wan caught the clean, sterile scent of disinfectant.
A sharp sting ran through her chest.
She sucked in a breath.
Beside her, Lin Wei covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
The left side of Mu Wan’s chest looked far worse than the injuries actually were.
Several ragged cuts crossed the skin, and tiny fragments of glass still clung to the wounds.
Fortunately, the glass had shattered into small pieces.
None of the cuts appeared especially deep.
Mu Wan and Lin Wei were both staring at the injuries.
Liu Qianxiu, however, was looking at something just below them.
A flash of vivid red showed beneath the streaks of blood.
It resembled a slender bamboo leaf.
The mark was brighter than the wounds around it, startlingly vivid against her skin, almost luminous beneath the blood.
And there was more than one.
Beside the first, half of another red bamboo-leaf shape was visible.
Liu Qianxiu’s expression remained unchanged.
Still holding the edge of her camisole, he drew it slightly lower.
The second bamboo leaf had not yet been fully revealed when another hand closed around his.
Mu Wan’s.
“That isn’t a wound,” she said.
Liu Qianxiu lifted his eyes.
“A birthmark?”
The location of her injury was awkward.
If he pulled the camisole much farther down, nearly her entire left breast would be exposed.
Liu Qianxiu did not appear particularly concerned about that.
Instead, he seemed far more interested in the birthmark.
Mu Wan was hurting too badly to answer properly.
Lin Wei answered for her.
“Yes, it’s a birthmark. Doctor Liu, does it affect the wound?”
“No.”
Liu Qianxiu’s gaze returned to the half-hidden red bamboo leaf.
His dark eyes remained as unreadable as ever.
Then, in the same calm voice, he said,
“I just thought it was pretty.”
— End of Chapter 2 —
no, i love the author's theater at the end!! hahahaha thank u for the chapter~
ReplyDeleteThank you, just discovered this novel hehe
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