Chapter 19 (1/3)
The office was silent.
From the corridor outside came the occasional rush of a gurney being pushed past, wheels rattling in a hurry, mixed with the patient’s low groans and the young nurse’s soft, steady reassurance.
Mu Wan sat on the examination bed.
Her hands were braced at either side of her, her shoulders lifted slightly, her slim collarbones standing out, forming two delicate hollows. With lowered lashes, she looked down at the foot she had raised.
On its pale top was now an utterly ordinary adhesive bandage.
Its edges lay neatly in place, covering not only the red mark but also the cool red antiseptic that had just been applied beneath it.
Doctors were often said to be prone to cleanliness obsessions and compulsive habits.
Liu Qianxiu was not exactly like that.
He was simply intensely self-disciplined, and so everything he did came out particularly clean—without a trace of excess, without a single wasted motion.
She wiggled her toes and looked up at him.
“Will it heal before you get off work?”
She had come early. It was only four-thirty now. There was still a full hour before Liu Qianxiu was due to finish. She had no intention of leaving. She meant to stay right here and wait for him—in her capacity as a patient.
Liu Qianxiu lifted his eyes to her, set down what was in his hand, and answered, “Mm.”
He had tacitly agreed.
Mu Wan lifted her foot higher and smiled.
Standing outside the door, Xiao Yun looked in.
The woman inside sat on the exam bed in a fitted ginger-yellow dress, waist so fine it seemed it could be circled in one hand. Her long black hair covered her back and left only the slender line of one shoulder bare. She was tall and yet slender, the sort of woman whose every grace could be felt even from the outline of her back alone.
A woman’s charm was never something clothes gave to her.
It was she who gave the clothes their charm.
The red dress before, this ginger-yellow dress now—put them on anyone else, and it would have been a poor imitation.
Xiao Yun lowered her eyes.
When she came over, she had already heard the nurses talking: there was an exceptionally beautiful woman in Dr. Liu’s office. There had been envy and admiration in their voices. Yet all their conclusions had come down to the same thing—
Dr. Liu would never pay her any mind.
Liu Qianxiu was not an ordinary man. He had a breadth and depth of spirit that ordinary people did not possess. A person like that would never be shallow enough to fall for nothing more than a glamorous face.
Looking at the woman’s back, Xiao Yun’s eyes flashed with faint disdain.
Then she lifted her hand and knocked.
The two people inside turned together.
Xiao Yun opened the door and stepped in.
“Dr. Liu, the department head wants you over there,” she said. “They want to go over the plan for next week’s surgery.”
After speaking, her gaze flicked toward Mu Wan. She gave her a polite smile, then withdrew it again.
Whatever unpleasantness had passed between them at Masyale was left, by silent agreement, as something gone with the wind.
Mu Wan did not smile back.
She was looking at Liu Qianxiu, worried about something else entirely.
“Will it take long?” she asked.
Liu Qianxiu stood.
The light from outside the window fell behind him, and he lowered his eyes to her.
“Not long,” he said. “Wait for me here. We’ll leave together afterward.”
His voice was low.
The words were meant only for Mu Wan, yet the office was too open, too bare to hold sound back, and so they carried freely.
Xiao Yun heard every word.
He stood right by the examination bed. Mu Wan still had both hands braced beside her, her face tipped up toward him. Even without sunlight, her eyes were bright—dark as ink, clear to the bottom.
“Okay.”
Liu Qianxiu withdrew his gaze, picked up the file on the desk, and said to Xiao Yun, “Let’s go.”
Her expression flickered. Xiao Yun came back to herself and answered, “All right.”
Only when she reached the door did she look back at Mu Wan properly.
Mu Wan was smiling at her.
In that shining dress, she looked like some little wild cat—sharp with Xiao Yun, soft and playful only with Liu Qianxiu.
Sharp toward her.
Playful toward him.
Once outside, Xiao Yun fell into step beside Liu Qianxiu. Nurses passed by, greeting them as they went. Xiao Yun looked at him and said with a light smile, “Dr. Liu, I don’t think it’s very appropriate to leave Miss Mu alone in your office.”
Liu Qianxiu glanced sideways at her, his gaze like a passing wind brushing lightly over her chest.
Something shifted in Xiao Yun’s eyes. Her smile weakened.
“I’m only reminding you,” she continued. “A doctor’s office isn’t somewhere just anyone can come in... unless they’re someone fairly close.”
“Mm,” Liu Qianxiu said, taking his eyes off her again. “Then she has no problem.”
Something caught sharply in Xiao Yun’s chest.
Her throat trembled once.
She lowered her gaze.
Liu Qianxiu had not lied.
Mu Wan played two rounds of Plants vs. Zombies on the exam bed before he came back. The door sounded. She looked up, and her eyes immediately lit.
“You’re back.”
She put her phone away and hopped down from the bed.
Her foot was no longer an issue. She slipped her shoe back on, leaving a sliver of the bandage visible. Liu Qianxiu’s eyes swept over it once. Then he answered, set the file on the desk, and took off his white coat.
“So can we go now?” Mu Wan asked.
“I can leave early.”
He had only returned from his trip that morning. Strictly speaking, he had not been meant to work that afternoon, but the hospital had called him in for something. Hanging up the white coat, Liu Qianxiu said, “I need to stop by a friend’s place to pick up the cats first. Coming with me?”
Without the white coat, he was dressed in a shirt and trousers—still cotton-linen, as usual. His style never changed much: pale, comfortable, understated, with that same faintly unearthly air.
Mu Wan’s eyes lingered at the hollow above his collarbone.
Instead of answering directly, she asked, “A male friend or a female one?”
Liu Qianxiu lifted his eyes and looked at her calmly.
Under his gaze, Mu Wan felt a flicker of guilt. She was just about to speak when he answered.
“A man. But the cats were being looked after by his wife.”
“Oh.”
She had only just quieted the little stir of restlessness inside her when something sweet rose there again. Mu Wan answered evenly enough, but did not quite manage to hide her satisfaction.
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