Incurable Chapter 18 Part 2

Chapter 18 (2/2)

The next day, Mu Qing’s scenes were being filmed at Wencheng Hospital.

The production arrived in force and set up outside the inpatient building. It had still been raining in the morning, but by late afternoon, the rain had stopped. The clouds were beginning to thin, and the weather looked ready to clear.

Mu Qing reclined in a lounge chair the crew had provided.

Her previous scene had been ruined because she had not memorized her lines, and it needed to be redone. Now she was looking through her script with the phone still to her ear, her mother, Yan Mei, speaking on the other end.

“Don’t get so busy filming that you neglect Shen Cheng. I heard he sent you flowers yesterday?”

“Mm.”

Mu Qing drew on her yogurt through a straw and stretched her neck lightly. She had studied dance, and her figure showed it—long, clean, and lovely, even half-reclined.

Yan Mei sounded relieved. She went on asking a few more questions. Nearby, a plump supporting actress was talking on the phone, too. Perhaps because of that, Mu Qing suddenly remembered something and asked, “Mom, did Aunt Wu ever mention whether Mu Wan has a boyfriend?”

At the mention of that name, the phone line went quiet for three seconds.

Then Yan Mei’s voice came back, smoother than before. Mu Qing could imagine exactly what her expression looked like while speaking—brows tight, lips downturned, eyes holding one part disgust, one part contempt, and eight parts impatience.

“How she lives has nothing to do with the Mu family,” Yan Mei said. She had told her that more than once before.

Mu Qing thought of the man she had seen in the elevator the day before.

There had been something impossible to ignore about him. Nobility shone through his cool features from across an impossible distance, like some immortal above the clouds—aristocratic and detached from the world.

“Families of standing all care about background,” Yan Mei went on, her tone returning to normal. “With the conditions she has now, any man she finds will never compare to Shen Cheng.”

The tartness of the yogurt faded slowly on Mu Qing’s tongue.

She said she understood, then hung up and handed the bottle to her assistant before getting up to film.

Before the cameras rolled again, she let her gaze travel through the crowd toward the surgery building in the distance.

His presence was too distinctive. Even from this far away, Mu Qing recognized him instantly.

And beside him, standing there, was Mu Wan.

Mu Qing remained where she was, looking.

The corner of her eye lifted little by little.

The man was now in a white coat, which only made him look taller and more refined. His bearing was utterly clean, almost inhumanly removed from the ordinary world.

Oh.

So he was only a doctor.

Mu Wan had stolen a moment between scenes to go see Liu Qianxiu off.

Once he left, she gave a polite nod to the doctors beside him and then walked back with both hands tucked into her pockets.

As soon as she did, she felt Mu Qing’s eyes on her.

She lifted her gaze once, met it, remained perfectly calm, then lowered her eyes and kept walking.

After her break, Mu Qing seemed finally to have managed her lines. She said to the assistant beside her, “Ready.”

The entire crew had been waiting for her to finish memorizing.

The moment she said it, the director looked all but grateful and called for the cameras at once.

Though the fever had gone down in the morning, fevers had a way of returning. Mu Wan continued taking medicine for several more days. She filmed in a half-dazed state until her body finally recovered, and by the time her health was fully back, her scenes were done.

On Friday afternoon, Mu Wan boarded the high-speed train back to Xiacheng.

Time was strange that way.

When filming, it seemed to rush by.

On the train, it crawled.

Mu Wan stayed awake the entire time, waiting station by station for the train to arrive. Once it finally pulled into Xiacheng, she got off and took a taxi home first.

By mid-July, the real oppressive heat of summer had finally arrived.

Mu Wan sat in the taxi with the air-conditioning blowing directly at her and sent Liu Qianxiu a message.

Mu Wan: Liu Qianxiu, where are you?

He seemed to be busy. She only received a reply after she had gotten home.

Taoist Liu: At the hospital.

Then, almost immediately after:

Taoist Liu: You’re back?

Two messages in a row.

Mu Wan smiled.

Her fingers tapped lightly over the screen.

Mu Wan: No. I’m only coming back tomorrow morning. I’m going to your place to see the cats.

She stepped into the stairwell and opened the building door with her key. At that same moment, her phone vibrated again.

Taoist Liu: All right.

Mu Wan put the phone away and went inside.

After a week away, the apartment held a faint dampness. She put down her luggage, opened the windows for air, stripped off her clothes, and headed into the bathroom.

She took a shower, put on light makeup, then went into the dressing room and came back out with a ginger-yellow slip dress that Lin Wei had bought her on their shopping trip the other day.

The material was imitation silk. Thin straps bared her shoulders, and the dress skimmed tightly over her body, setting off her narrow waist, full hips, and long legs.

Mu Wan suited slip dresses perfectly.

Her bone structure was beautiful. Her shoulders were slight, her collarbones straight and fine. Her long black hair was thick and abundant, falling in waves over the narrow line of her back. When she walked, the curls moved and lifted, exposing flashes of cold white skin and the delicate shape of her shoulder blades.

A slip dress needed heels.

Mu Wan took out a pair, slipped her narrow foot inside—and frowned.

When she pulled it back out, a red mark had already been rubbed across the top of her foot.

She set that pair aside and chose another.

By the time she was done getting ready, it was already four in the afternoon.

Mu Wan stepped outside and hailed a cab.

“To Tang’er Hospital.”

Once she arrived, she went straight to Liu Qianxiu’s office.

The corridor stretched long, full of patients and nurses moving back and forth. Standing at his office door, the height of her heels brought her just high enough to see through the square window in the door.

He looked no different.

And yet, as she stood there looking at him, Mu Wan felt the same startled wonder she had felt the first time she saw him.

He was wearing his white coat, head slightly lowered, his clear, fine-boned face carrying that same far-mountain coolness after mist.

Mu Wan tilted her head and smiled.

The long corridor was cool with air-conditioning, but her face was warming again. She lifted a hand and knocked lightly.

A voice from inside answered.

Mu Wan opened the door, walked in, and sat down at his desk.

“Doctor,” she said, “I’m injured.”

The pen between his fingers paused.

Liu Qianxiu looked up.

The woman seated across from him had both elbows on the desk, red lips lifted, eyes bright. He set the pen down and looked her over once, his voice low.

“Where is it?”

Clearly, she had come prepared.

The moment he asked, she moved both legs. Beneath the ginger-yellow dress, her calves were long and cleanly shaped. She crossed her right leg over her left and slipped off one high heel, revealing her pale foot.

Across the narrow arch of it was one faint red mark.

Liu Qianxiu’s gaze settled on it.

He regarded the mark with complete composure for a long moment.

Mu Wan, on the other hand, seemed already impatient. Looking at the scrape on her foot, she asked,

“Doctor, is it serious?”

He lifted his eyes and gave her a light glance.

“Very serious,” he said. “If you’d come one step later, it would have healed.”

The office was filled with the sound of a woman laughing.

Both her arms spread across the desk, pressing down over the papers he had been reading only moments earlier.

“Liu Qianxiu,” she said, “I’m back.”

After she spoke, Liu Qianxiu looked at her quietly.

Then, after a while, he stood behind the desk and walked over to the exam bed. He took a metal pair of forceps and used them to lift a bright red cotton swab. Looking up at her, he said,

“Come here.”

Mu Wan did not move.

Her heart was lifted just a little too high, her throat faintly tight.

“Didn’t you just say it was about to heal?”

“Mm,” Liu Qianxiu said, glancing at her lightly. “Before it heals, it still needs to be treated. Otherwise it will hurt.”

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