Chapter 14 (1/2)
By the time Mu Wan arrived, the woman in the red dress at the table had already let her expression flicker.
For one instant, her eyes dimmed. Then she lifted her glass and took a sip of lemon water. When she looked over again, her face was composed once more, and that faint trace of disdain had returned.
The corner of Mu Wan’s red mouth lifted slightly.
She followed Liu Qianxiu to the table. A server drew out a chair, and she sat down smoothly beside him.
It was a high-end Western restaurant, quiet and tastefully understated. Their table sat in a corner of the dining room, almost like a private alcove separated off by branches. The people inside could be glimpsed only faintly through the screen.
Within the alcove, the crystal chandelier cast bright light. Several oil paintings hung on the walls. The cutlery on the table was spotless, and the whole small enclosure carried refinement in every detail, touched with a kind of wealth that did not need to announce itself.
When Xiao Tan saw that Liu Qianxiu had brought someone—and that the someone was a woman—his gaze moved between them.
“And this is...?” he asked.
“Hello. My name is Mu Wan.” Mu Wan introduced herself neatly. “I needed to speak to Dr. Liu about something. He heard I hadn’t eaten, so he brought me along.”
Then she turned her head slightly and nodded to the female doctor at the table.
“Thank you, Dr. Xiao.”
Xiao Yun smiled faintly, light and proper on the surface.
“It’s nothing.”
As she spoke, though, her back straightened imperceptibly, and a layer of heat crawled over her skin.
So she really did linger like a ghost.
Xiao Yun was wearing a vivid red dress that evening, bright and striking. Mu Wan, by contrast, wore only a black halter top and dark brown harem trousers. The pleated waistband tied into a generous bow beneath her flat stomach, setting off her narrow waist, full hips, and nearly perfect proportions.
She had not done much makeup. Her brows were dark and long, her wavy hair falling around a small, pale face and red lips. She looked like a Hong Kong actress through the filter of another era—naturally alluring, coolly glamorous, impossible to ignore.
When the server came over, Mu Wan ordered without hesitation.
Liu Qianxiu had brought her here to eat. There was no reason for her to hold back or feel awkward about it. After she placed her order, Liu Qianxiu ordered the same.
The moment Mu Wan arrived, the meaning of the evening shifted. What had been meant as a meal of thanks turned into nothing more than a simple group dinner.
Xiao Yun was the first to steer the conversation toward several recent surgeries, speaking in a stream of medical terminology. Mu Wan could not follow it and had no way to join in. She propped her chin on the back of one hand, looked at the oil paintings on the wall, and waited for the food.
Watching Mu Wan’s silence at the table, Xiao Yun slowly regained some confidence.
The restaurant was known for refined dishes, which meant the pace of service was a little slower. After waiting for some time, Mu Wan got up and went to the restroom.
When she came back out, she saw Xiao Yun at the sinks, washing her hands.
That small space was flooded with light. The faucet reflected it sharply, and under it the red dress looked even more vivid.
Mu Wan did not like Xiao Yun much. Xiao Yun looked down on her, considering her frivolous. But they were at the same dinner table, and Xiao Yun had paid for the meal, so Mu Wan walked over to the sink and greeted her.
Xiao Yun straightened.
She and Mu Wan were roughly the same height, both slim, though Mu Wan’s figure curved more distinctly. Xiao Yun gave her a casual look and said in a mild voice, “You must have been pretty bored at the table just now.”
Her tone was acceptable enough, so Mu Wan did not respond too stiffly. Water streamed over her hands from the tap as she gave a vague sound of agreement.
“Doctor gatherings are always like that,” Xiao Yun continued, half casual, half pointed. “The conversation never strays far from surgeries, patients, papers... It’s all very specialized. Outsiders can’t really join in, so naturally it feels dull.”
She let the implication hang there, then smiled.
“But doctors themselves don’t notice it. Doctors understand other doctors. We always end up enjoying ourselves.”
Mu Wan turned off the tap.
Only the two of them stood there.
When the water stopped, a few last droplets fell from the faucet and tapped softly into the porcelain basin.
As the “outsider” in question, Mu Wan lifted her eyes and looked at Xiao Yun.
That little speech had been entirely in character—false propriety, self-importance, superiority, contempt. Xiao Yun was implying that she and Liu Qianxiu were not the same kind of people.
The corners of Mu Wan’s lips lifted. Her smile was composed, almost courteous. She gave Xiao Yun a slow up-and-down look and said, “The red dress looks nice on you.”
Xiao Yun’s jaw twitched.
She had bought it specifically because Mu Wan had worn red so beautifully the other day. She thought Liu Qianxiu might like that look.
Drawing a paper towel, Mu Wan kept smiling. She dried her fingers with deliberate slowness and said, “But Dr. Liu has already seen me wear red. After that, he usually won’t bother looking at how it looks on anyone else.”
Then she lifted her eyes.
“I’m an actress. When it comes to faces, I don’t lose.”
She wiped away the last trace of moisture, dropped the used towel into the bin, and left the restroom smiling.
By the time she returned, Xiao Tan and Liu Qianxiu were still in the middle of their conversation. Once they had started talking about surgery, they had simply followed the thread onward. Mu Wan had just resumed her seat when she heard Xiao Tan say,
“Would you be interested in going to the research conference at Wencheng Central Hospital next week?”
Liu Qianxiu did not answer immediately. He sensed Mu Wan’s return and glanced at her first.
Mu Wan looked back at him, thinking about what Xiao Tan had just said. She was about to ask when the server approached with a polite greeting and began setting down the dishes.
By the time the food arrived, Xiao Yun had come back too. She had only touched up her makeup, yet there was no visible trace of disturbance left on her face. She was all gentleness and composure again.
The topic at the table remained surgery.
Mu Wan cut into her steak with the knife and kept glancing at Liu Qianxiu.
He looked back at her once.
Mu Wan chewed in small, quiet bites. Since she could not join the conversation, she had done nothing but eat, and by now most of the steak on her plate was gone. Xiao Tan asked Liu Qianxiu something, and Liu Qianxiu turned to answer him.
Without any outward sign of it, he slid the untouched plate in front of him toward Mu Wan instead.
He had not eaten the steak, but he had already cut it into neat pieces. A hand skilled with a scalpel was equally skilled with a dinner knife. The cuts were uniform, the edges clean, the small cubes lined up in tidy order.
With her cheeks still slightly full, Mu Wan looked at him and asked, “You’re not eating?”
“Mm,” Liu Qianxiu answered softly.
Sweetness spread through her chest at once.
Mu Wan pushed her empty plate toward him and said, “Then I’m eating all of it~.”
Liu Qianxiu took the empty plate and set it in front of himself.
“All right,” he said quietly.
The exchange between them was small, almost invisible. Xiao Tan did not notice. Only Xiao Yun, sitting across from them with her lemon water in hand, saw everything. Her lashes lowered, and her fingers tightened gradually around the glass.
After dinner, the group broke apart.
Mu Wan went back with Liu Qianxiu to see the cats. Since she had nothing to say at the table, she really had eaten two full steaks. Her stomach had rounded out so much that the ribbed fabric of her halter top was stretched slightly.
After fastening her seat belt, she gave up on trying to hide it and looked sideways at Liu Qianxiu.
He started the car. Noticing her gaze, he glanced back. Mu Wan lowered her eyes at her own stomach, and his gaze followed downward as well, landing on the soft little swell there.
Mu Wan laughed and joked, “Dr. Liu, take a look at this stomach of mine. How many months along do you think I am?”
Her figure was slender and long; with her stomach slightly pushed out, she looked almost unexpectedly adorable.
Though he was not an obstetrician, Liu Qianxiu still made a rough estimate.
“Four months,” he said.
Mu Wan thrust the little curve of her belly forward just a bit more, hands on her narrow waist.
“See? This is all territory you conquered.”
What she had meant was simply that it was Liu Qianxiu’s extra steak that had made her this full. But the moment the words were out, she realized they sounded far more suggestive—almost indecent.
Heat rose faintly across her face.
She sat up straighter and pulled her stomach back in. The streetlights beyond the car window passed in broken strips, too dim to show her expression clearly. Liu Qianxiu’s gaze paused once, his lips pressing together. Then he looked away and drove on.
When they got back to Liu Qianxiu’s apartment, Mu Wan went to see the kittens first, picking up one, rubbing another. While she was still there, the matter of going to Wencheng for filming came back to her.
She stepped out of the cat room.
At the bedroom doorway, Liu Qianxiu was just coming out after a shower.
He truly did dislike eating out. Not only did he refuse to eat outside food, but he also washed away even the smell of restaurants the moment he came home. There was not the slightest trace of worldly smoke on him.
His hair was half dry. He wore loose lounge clothes, long-sleeved and wide-legged, comfortable and flowing. On his tall, fine-boned frame, the effect was unmistakably ascetic. Beneath the dark hair, his black eyes and red mouth looked vivid and alive. A towel hung over his shoulder. He wiped his hair once more, then lowered the towel and saw Mu Wan.
He was far too clean in temperament.
Clean like clear spring water.
Mu Wan’s heartbeat quickened.
She pulled herself back and asked, “Are you going to the research conference in Wencheng next week?”
Liu Qianxiu listened without interrupting. Then he lowered his eyes to her, his gaze clear and bright.
Caught like that, Mu Wan felt a little guilty.
“I overheard it by accident,” she said quickly. “I’m going to Wencheng next week too, to film. Are you going to that conference?”
She asked again, looking up at him. There was eagerness in her eyes now.
They stood in the living room, their shadows thrown together on the floor. Mu Wan waited for his answer. Liu Qianxiu’s lashes stirred once, and he said quietly, “It depends on the hospital’s arrangements.”
Said like that, there was an eighty or ninety percent chance he would not go.
“Oh,” Mu Wan said.
Then she added, “If you do go, we might run into each other at Wencheng Hospital. My drama is filming there.”
Her right hand reached behind her back and caught hold of her left arm.
“If you go, then the cats really won’t have anyone to look after them. If you don’t go, then I won’t see you until the week after next...”
She had sunk into the feeling of it. The words slipped out before she could stop them. Her lashes lowered, and she looked faintly unhappy.
The moment she said it, she realized what it sounded like and hurriedly added,
“I mean... that’s when I won’t see Datou and Ertong again.”
The overhead light cast a soft shadow across her face. She looked down at the carpet. Because her right hand was gripping her left arm, her collarbones stood out all the more clearly.
She was not short, but she was so slender. Standing there alone, she looked as though her eyes held far more words than she had actually said.
Liu Qianxiu withdrew his gaze.
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
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