Incurable Chapter 18 Part 2

When Mu Wan woke, the light was still on.

By the sink, Liu Qianxiu was washing his face. He must have sensed her stirring. With both hands braced on the counter, he lifted his gaze.

His eyes looked as if they’d been rinsed clean too—dark, clear.

Once he confirmed she was awake, he grabbed a towel, stepped over, and asked, “Did I wake you?”

“No.” After a night of fever, Mu Wan felt weak but much better. The burning heat was gone. She sat up slowly.

Liu Qianxiu finished wiping his face, then raised his hand and placed his palm against her forehead.

His palm was cool, damp with leftover water. Mu Wan’s heart jumped. She tilted her face up at him. He looked down at her, too, confirming the result.

“The fever’s gone,” Liu Qianxiu said, pulling his hand back.

But she was still foggy from being sick. Mu Wan stared at him, dazed. The laptop on the desk was still lit. Beside it were two glass cups—one holding the cotton candy, one with half a cup of water left, clearly something he’d been drinking.

Mu Wan felt warm again, not from fever this time.

Like a small wild thing buried in snow, she looked at Liu Qianxiu with bright eyes and asked, “You didn’t leave last night?”

Liu Qianxiu, in the middle of shutting down the laptop, turned his head to look at her. His expression was calm.

Mu Wan snapped back to herself.

Leave where? This was his room.

“I just got back,” Liu Qianxiu said lightly.

“And I slept in your bed again.” Her voice was thin with lingering weakness, crisp like paper. Mu Wan slid off the bed and looked at him. “We didn’t eat last night, and I still made you bring me back and take care of me. Let’s eat today. That same restaurant.”

The sincerity in her words was obvious. She lifted her face to Liu Qianxiu. After a night of fever, the redness was gone, leaving her pale and translucent, with only a small touch of red on her lips. Even like that, she still didn’t lose her vividness.

Liu Qianxiu picked up the cotton candy and handed it to her. As he collected the cups, he said evenly, “No need.”

Holding the cotton candy, Mu Wan smiled. Sweetness fizzed from tongue to chest. She looked at him and asked, “You don’t want to eat? Then what do you want?”

Liu Qianxiu watched her. Her smile hooked at her lips, light flickering in her eyes. The question sounded innocent—yet not entirely innocent.

“I’m leaving,” Liu Qianxiu said after a brief pause. “I’ll leave Wen City at noon today.”

The light in Mu Wan’s eyes slowly dimmed. She stopped smiling.

The research conference wasn’t only held in one city. After leaving Wen City on Wednesday morning, Liu Qianxiu would go to Jingcheng to continue. The conference would finish Friday morning, and only then would he return to Xiacheng.

It really was a week-long conference, but it wasn’t a full week in Wen City.

The balcony door was cracked open; damp air drifted in. Mu Wan’s nose felt blocked again. With a faint nasal tone, she asked, “What time are you leaving? I’ll come see you off.”

Liu Qianxiu’s lips pressed together. Looking at her still-weak color, he said, “We’ll see each other soon.”

“This is faster,” Mu Wan insisted.

His gaze paused.

Mu Wan lifted her head, looking into his clean, handsome face. On a gray day, even the lamplight didn’t fully sharpen his features—his brows and eyes were deep and refined in shadow.

She smiled, eyes bright.

“The later we separate,” she said softly, “the sooner we’ll meet again.”

It was a kind of “soon” only she could calculate. If they separated in the morning, there were still three and a half days until the next meeting. If they separated at noon, there were only three.

Whether Liu Qianxiu could follow her logic, she didn’t know.

But after she said it, she saw his throat move slightly.

And he answered in a low voice.

“Okay.”

The next day, Mu Qing’s scenes were at Wen City Central Hospital. The crew arrived in force and set up in front of the inpatient building. It had rained in the morning, but by late morning it stopped. The clouds thinned, and the sky looked like it might clear.

Mu Qing sat in the lounge chair the crew had prepared. She hadn’t memorized her lines for the earlier scene, so she had to reshoot. She was reading the script now, her mother Yan Mei’s voice still in her ear on the phone.

“Don’t just focus on filming and neglect Shen Cheng. I heard he sent you flowers yesterday?”

“Mm.” Mu Qing sipped yogurt through a straw and rolled her neck. She’d trained in dance. Her body was beautiful, long and delicate, even half-reclined in a chair.

Yan Mei sounded satisfied and asked a few more things. Nearby, a chubby supporting actress was on a phone call. Mu Qing seemed to remember something and asked, “Mom… did Wu Ma ever mention whether Mu Wan has a boyfriend?”

At that name, the line went quiet for three seconds. Then Yan Mei’s voice came back, smoother but edged.

“Whatever she’s doing has nothing to do with our Mu family.”

Yan Mei had said it countless times.

Mu Qing thought of the man she’d seen in the elevator yesterday—an aura of wealth that couldn’t be ignored. Through calm brows and eyes, across impossible distance, he’d felt like someone from the Ninth Heaven: noble, untouchable.

“Big families care about background,” Yan Mei said, tone returning to normal. “With her conditions, any boyfriend she finds will never compare to Shen Cheng.”

The yogurt’s sourness faded. Mu Qing murmured. She understood, hung up, handed the bottle to her assistant, and stood to film.

Before stepping into the scene, she looked past the crowd toward the surgical building.

His presence was too distinctive to miss, even from far away. And beside him stood Mu Wan.

Mu Qing stood there watching, the corners of her eyes lifting.

The man wore a white coat, making him look even taller and straighter, his aura clean and otherworldly.

Oh.

So he was just a doctor.

Mu Wan found a moment between takes to see Liu Qianxiu off. Once he left, she nodded politely to the other doctors and walked back with both hands in her pockets.

As she approached, she sensed Mu Qing’s gaze.

Mu Wan lifted her eyes briefly. Their eyes met.

Mu Wan’s expression stayed calm.

Then she looked away.

After resting, Mu Qing’s lines seemed easier to memorize. She told her assistant, “I’m ready.”

The whole crew had been waiting for her. The moment she said it, the director looked as if he’d been saved. They started filming immediately.

Mu Wan’s fever stayed down, but fevers tend to return. She took medicine for a few more days, filming in a fog. When she finally recovered, her scenes were done.

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

Time was strange. During filming, days flew by. On the train, minutes crawled.

Mu Wan stayed awake the whole ride, counting stations, waiting. When she finally arrived at Xiacheng Station, she got off and took a cab home first.

By mid-July, the true suffocating heat of the hottest season arrived.

In the taxi, AC blowing, Mu Wan leaned back and texted Liu Qianxiu.

[Mu Wan]: Liu Qianxiu, where are you?

He seemed busy. He didn’t reply until Mu Wan got home.

[Liu Daochang]: At the hospital.
[Liu Daochang]: You’re back?

Two messages. Mu Wan smiled and tapped out a reply.

[Mu Wan]: Not yet. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’m going to your place to see the cats.

As she entered her building and unlocked her door, her phone buzzed again.

[Liu Daochang]: Okay.

Mu Wan put the phone away and went inside.

A week without being home left a faint, damp smell. Mu Wan dropped her luggage, opened the windows, then stripped and went to shower.

Afterward, she did light makeup and went into her closet to choose a ginger-yellow slip dress Lin Wei had bought for her when they’d gone shopping. The dress was faux silk, fitted through the torso. Slim waist, lifted hips, thin shoulders, long legs—everything on display.

Mu Wan looked best in slip dresses. Her bone structure was exquisite—shoulders narrow, collarbones straight. Thick black hair fell in loose waves down her back, curls bouncing as she walked, flashing a strip of pale skin and the sharp beauty of her shoulder blades.

A slip dress needed heels. Mu Wan picked a pair. Her narrow foot slid in, and she frowned.

She pulled her foot back out. A red mark had already been rubbed onto the top of her foot.

She set that pair aside and chose another.

By the time she finished, it was four in the afternoon. Mu Wan went out and hailed a cab.

“Driver, Toller Hospital.”

At the hospital, she went straight to Liu Qianxiu’s office.

The corridor was long, and patients and nurses were moving through it. Mu Wan stood at his door. The height of her heels brought her just high enough to see through the small square window.

A few days apart, and he looked unchanged.

But looking at him now, Mu Wan felt that first, sharp sense of wonder again.

White coat. Head slightly lowered—his profile like a distant mountain behind cool mist.

Mu Wan tilted her head and smiled. In the AC-cooled corridor, her cheeks warmed anyway. She raised her hand and knocked.

Someone inside answered.

Mu Wan opened the door and walked in, settling herself in the chair across from his desk.

“Doctor,” she said, “I’m injured.”

His pen paused.

Liu Qianxiu looked up. The woman across from him had both elbows on the desk, red lips curved, eyes bright.

He set the pen down and gave her a measured look. His voice was low.

“Where?”

She was clearly prepared.

Her legs shifted. Under the ginger-yellow dress, her calves were long and smooth. She crossed her right leg over her left, slipped off her heel, and revealed her pale foot.

Across the narrow top of it was a faint red mark.

Liu Qianxiu’s gaze settled there. He examined it with calm seriousness.

Mu Wan, impatient, asked with innocent eyes, “Doctor, is it bad?”

Liu Qianxiu lifted his eyes and looked at her once, flat and calm.

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

Mu Wan laughed out loud.

She leaned forward, arms spread on his desk, pressing down on the papers he’d been reading.

“Liu Qianxiu,” she said, “I’m back.”

He watched her quietly. After a moment, he stood and walked to the exam bed in the office. He picked up metal forceps, clamped a red cotton ball, and looked at her.

“Come here.”

Mu Wan didn’t move. Her heart lifted slightly, her throat tight. “Didn’t you say it’ll heal soon?”

“Mm.” Liu Qianxiu glanced at her, then said evenly, “Before it heals, it needs to be treated. Otherwise, it’ll hurt.”

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