Incurable Chapter 6 Part 1

Chapter 6 (1/2)

Liu Qianxiu drove Mu Wan and Zhongfen to a pet hospital.

The moment they arrived, Mu Wan explained Zhongfen’s condition to the vet. The kitten was taken away for examination, and Liu Qianxiu and Mu Wan were shown into a waiting room to sit.

The waiting room was divided into small glass cubicles. Inside, there was a round table and two chairs. Through the glass door, they could see the vet examining Zhongfen in the next room.

After coming home from the set, Mu Wan had a mixed formula and fed all three kittens. Datou and Ertong had eaten well enough, but Zhongfen’s appetite had been poor. It drank only a little—then vomited all of it back up.

That wasn’t all.

Zhongfen was clearly listless. While the other two rolled and scrambled around in the cat bed, Zhongfen had buried its head in one corner, leaving only its tiny backside sticking up. Mu Wan tried feeding it two more times, and each time it threw up again. Only then did she truly panic.

Newborn kittens without a mother’s milk had almost no resistance at all. One careless moment and they could die.

Zhongfen was throwing up milk, and it looked as though it might not make it.

Mu Wan changed clothes, wrapped the kitten up, and was about to take it to the pet hospital when she happened to run into Liu Qianxiu outside.

From the moment they entered the waiting room, the two of them sat on opposite sides of the round table, both with their eyes on the examination room, and for quite a while neither of them said a word.

The room was quiet.

Mu Wan was the first to break it.

“How did you find my place?”

The question landed abruptly in the silence. Liu Qianxiu turned his head slightly. Across from him, Mu Wan sat with both hands clasped on the table, looking at him directly. When he met her gaze, she smiled a little, the line of her lips lifting.

“When an ambulance brings a patient to the ER, the address is recorded,” Liu Qianxiu said.

“Oh.”

Understanding dawned on her. Mu Wan lowered her eyes, lightly pinched her own fingertips, then looked up again with the expression of someone entering a negotiation.

“The last time I asked you in the hospital, you said the cat wasn’t yours.”

Which meant, unspoken: you have no right to take the kittens back.

“Mm.”

Liu Qianxiu had understood the implication. His face remained calm as ever.

“But you can’t raise them well.”

He said it lightly.

The blow landed perfectly.

Mu Wan wet her lower lip almost without thinking and turned her head toward the examination room. The vet was still checking Zhongfen. Its tiny paws kicked weakly in the air. The glass door blocked out the sound, but even from the movement alone, Mu Wan could tell it was meowing.

“It’s my first time raising cats,” she said. “I’ll do my best.”

“They’re too young. Kittens this small die easily.”

And just like that, Mu Wan had nothing to say again.

Because he was right.

She had barely slept the past few nights. The kittens were in her bedroom, and she woke several times every night just to check on them, terrified that if she wasn’t paying attention, one of them would die. She had never been softhearted, had never kept pets before, and had never wanted to. These three kittens were tiny, fragile, hard to raise—and ordinary local cats like them were everywhere. She could hand them back to Liu Qianxiu, then go out and buy herself a pedigree kitten instead: prettier, easier, simpler.

But it wasn’t the same.

These three had already been with her for days. They had entered her empty life and settled there. She jokingly called herself their stepmother, but in truth, she felt more like their real mother. Their own mother had died the moment they were born, and they depended on her completely. That dependence gave Mu Wan a strange, deep sense of fulfillment.

Every morning, she woke to their tiny meows.

Those soft, milky little cries were more comforting than the first ray of sunlight.

Attachment came easily.

Detachment never did.

Mu Wan wanted to keep these three.

She searched for an argument and found none. After a moment, she calmed herself and let her thinking shift toward Liu Qianxiu instead.

What she couldn’t understand was why he had come all the way to her home to ask for the cats. He had only fed the calico from time to time. Why was he so unwilling to let go of the kittens? The calico had never entrusted them to him. And weren’t Taoists supposed to be detached from worldly entanglements? Free of desire, unconcerned with things that weren’t theirs?

When she got nowhere with that line of thought, she gave it up. A faint crease formed between her brows, like a fold pressed into clean snow.

“So what do you want to do?” she asked.

Liu Qianxiu met her eyes. The beautiful eyes looking back at him held a sharper light now, stripped of the easy politeness from before.

He didn’t seem bothered by it at all. His voice remained low and steady.

“I’ll keep them for now. Once they’re a little stronger, you can take them back. If you’re worried, you can come to my place and see them anytime.”

The air-conditioning in the waiting room was set low.

Liu Qianxiu sat there in the cold air, skin cool and pale, features clear and fine, his frame long and spare. He seemed almost perpetually expressionless, like some distant immortal in a smoke-veiled temple hall—silent, remote, untouched.

Mu Wan braced her forearms on the table and leaned toward him.

She stopped when only a fist’s width remained between them.

“Dr. Liu,” she said lightly, like a ribbon skimming over water, leaving only the faintest ripples behind. “Did you know me before this?”

Her elbows rested on the table. Beneath the dark green halter top, her skin was pale as snow. One exquisite collarbone showed. Her shoulders were narrow and beautifully straight. Her black eyes were bright and clear, reflecting his face.

She was studying him.

Her gaze traced over his brows and eyes with patient attention, like a green snake newly down from the mountain, curious as it coiled on a river rock and watched a meditating monk across the water. There was something contradictory and seamless in her expression at once—aloof as mountain streams, yet lingering as mist.

Liu Qianxiu lowered his eyes.

The faint fragrance of a woman drifted toward him. He looked at the redness at the corners of her eyes, the slight dampness in her gaze, and when he spoke, his voice was low and resonant, like spring water striking stone.

“Why would you ask that?”

Why would she ask that?

Mu Wan leaned back again and tapped one finger lightly against the tabletop.

Lin Wei had said he was distant, someone who barely formed ties with other people. Yet from the time Mu Wan entered the ER, to the moment he noticed her birthmark, to the dinner where he took her back to the hospital, and now this—coming all the way to her home over three kittens—none of it quite fit the image of an utterly indifferent man.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he wasn’t especially indifferent to her.

And yet everything he had done could also be explained.

He might have mistaken the birthmark for part of the injury.

He took her back from the dinner because she was his patient.

He came to her apartment because she had refused to give him the kittens over the phone.

He wasn’t here because he especially wanted the cats.

He was here because he didn’t want her to raise the calico’s kittens to death.

Mu Wan did not answer his question.

Instead, she said, “You still haven’t answered mine.”

“I didn’t know you before,” Liu Qianxiu said. “I just want them to stay alive.”

Mu Wan drew her arms back from the table, opening up the distance between them once more. Then she smiled—soft, bright, and easy.

“All right,” she said. “Then thank you.”

The two of them had gone back and forth like parents negotiating custody.

She wanted to keep the kittens, yes—but she also knew they needed to survive first. They both wanted what was best for them, and there was no point turning each other into opponents over ownership.

A little later, Zhongfen’s test results came back.

There was nothing seriously wrong. The kitten had no mother’s milk and poor immunity. A bit of chill had been enough to upset its stomach. But it was still too small for medicine, so the vet wanted to keep it for observation for two days.

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