Incurable Chapter 20 Part 1

Chapter 20 (1/3)

The cool, dry palm wrapped around the artery at her wrist.

That artery led straight back to her heart.

And now it felt as though Liu Qianxiu had taken hold of that, too.

When he held her, her heart stayed still.
When he let go, it began to race.

This heart belonged to him now.

Mu Wan looked at him quietly.

Thinking of what she had just said, she heard the rain suddenly begin to crackle against the window outside. The weather had turned noisy, and so had her heart.

“I’m not afraid,” Mu Wan said. “You’re a doctor. You can heal any wound I get.”

Liu Qianxiu looked up at her once.

She looked right back at him, certainty bright in her beautiful eyes.

His lashes shifted.

Then he released her wrist.

He turned on the faucet. The rush of water covered the sound of the rain outside. The storm made the air feel damp, and under the kitchen lights, everything seemed wrapped in a faint mist of warmth.

Mu Wan did not go back to washing dishes.

She simply leaned against the sink, her presence strong but never intrusive, as though she had always belonged in his life.

Liu Qianxiu washed the remaining dishes with slow precision.

When he turned off the tap, the kitchen fell quiet again. Outside, however, the rain was growing heavier.

Mu Wan shifted her gaze to the window.

“The rain’s getting worse,” she said. “Can I wait here until it stops?”

Taking a paper towel, Liu Qianxiu dried his hands and gave a quiet assent.

The two of them left the kitchen together.

Liu Qianxiu’s life followed an almost rigid order. After dinner and the kitchen, he always returned to the living room to read or meditate in quiet.

That night, he opened a book.

Mu Wan picked one up, too.

This time it was the I Ching.

Three minutes later, her eyes had already left the page.

This one was even more unbearable than the Tao Te Ching.

She lifted her head and looked at Liu Qianxiu instead. Beneath the lamp, his outline seemed even more tranquil. His eyes were lowered to the page, lashes casting a faint shadow, the black of his eyes full of quiet concentration.

Mu Wan did not disturb him.

She lowered her gaze to the book again.

This time, she lasted all of two seconds.

Then she looked up once more.

First at Liu Qianxiu.

Then out the window.

And finally, at Zhouyi, who was walking toward her.

This Zhouyi was much more interesting than the other Zhouyi.

Mu Wan’s eyes widened slightly. Tilting her head, she curled the fingers of the hand hidden beneath the table and beckoned twice.

“Come here,” she mouthed silently.

Zhouyi seemed to understand.

The black pupils in its pale gold eyes narrowed gradually as it approached her. By the time its eyes had become vertical slits, it had reached her side. Mu Wan lifted a hand to pet it.

Instead, Zhouyi pushed off the ground and landed lightly in her lap, then settled there.

“Ah.”

The sudden weight of that soft, furry body on her knees made Mu Wan gasp.

The sound broke the quiet enough for Liu Qianxiu to look up. Mu Wan leaned slightly to one side and showed him the cat now lying across her lap, her eyes full of delighted astonishment.

“Liu Qianxiu, it likes me.”

Zhouyi was not affectionate by nature. Even with Liu Qianxiu, it only occasionally jumped into his lap when it happened to feel like it. Liu Qianxiu set his book down and looked at the cat stretched across her knees.

“Mm.”

Mu Wan’s skin was very white.

Zhouyi was very black.

Against that sharp contrast, there was unexpectedly a kind of harmony.

From before dinner, when Zhouyi had first let her pet it, to now, when it had climbed into her lap of its own accord, Mu Wan’s happiness rose in wave after wave.

Zhouyi was getting used to her.

And if Zhouyi could get used to her and come to like her, then one day Liu Qianxiu would, too.

Flowers seemed to bloom in her chest.

Still stroking Zhouyi, she smiled to herself. Liu Qianxiu was no longer reading. Seeing that, she asked, “You don’t have work tomorrow, right? Then... can I come over tomorrow afternoon?”

The moment the question left her mouth, she felt it needed a more respectable reason.

So Mu Wan immediately dragged out the three little kittens as her excuse.

“I haven’t seen Datou and the others in so long,” she said. “I want to spend more time with them.”

Liu Qianxiu’s gaze shifted from Zhouyi to her face.

She was sitting very straight. Her slender arms led into narrow shoulders, and the shadows of the lamp made her collarbones look finer still. She sat within the circle of the light like some little spirit, entering bit by bit.

“I’m meeting a friend to play basketball tomorrow afternoon,” Liu Qianxiu said.

It was not a direct refusal, but it was still a refusal enough.

The light in Mu Wan’s eyes dimmed slightly.

She lowered her head and stroked Zhouyi once.

“All right...”

“Text me before you come,” Liu Qianxiu added. “I’m not sure when I’ll be finished.”

Mu Wan looked up again.

That single sentence seemed to brighten her at once. The light in her eyes came back stronger than before. Smiling at him, with the rain outside deepening the sweetness of her voice, she said,

“Liu Qianxiu, so you play basketball too?”

Only then had she thought to ask.

Mu Wan had no work that weekend.

She slept until ten the next morning, then called Lin Wei. The moment Lin Wei picked up, she let out an exaggerated little cry.

“Well, well. You actually have time to call me? Not spending the whole day with Taoist Liu?”

“I’m seeing him this afternoon,” Mu Wan said. “I can’t cling to him all day. He’ll get annoyed.”

“So now you’ve learned balance?”

“Less nonsense. Hot pot?”

“Obviously.”

“Then let’s go.”

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