Qin Peiran looked at the two people in front of her, finding the scene indescribably bizarre.
Lou Fan had smooth, straight black hair like silk, wore a velvet slip dress, and stepped in soft lambskin low-cut flats, yet she was holding an electrical baton with extreme incongruity. It was the one Qin Peiran had thrown on the ground after the fight.
Yan Li wore four or five colorful hair clips pinned into her chestnut-brown curly short hair, dressed in casual clothes while hugging a speaker that was comically large.
It seemed this was the so-called police siren.
“Get up, we’re going to the hospital.” Lou Fan squatted down in front of Qin Peiran, turning her head back slightly. “I’ll carry you on my back.”
“No need.” Qin Peiran stood shakily against the wall, coughed twice, turned her head away, and darted her eyes nervously. “I can walk by yourself.”
“You child.” Lou Fan didn’t care about childish shame. She stretched out her arm and used her sleeve to wipe away the ash-mixed blood on Qin Peiran’s face. “Afraid of losing face?”
Her thoughts laid bare, Qin Peiran’s already injured face flushed even redder. She opened her mouth. “I didn’t.”
Lou Fan ignored whether Qin Peiran was willing or not. Without even listening to her excuse, she grabbed one of her arms and heaved her onto her back.
Just like that, with Lou Fan carrying Qin Peiran on her back and Yan Li holding the huge speaker, they slowly walked toward the car parked by the roadside.
Perched on Lou Fan’s back, Qin Peiran felt somewhat unaccustomed to it.
It seemed this was the first time she had ever been carried like this by someone. After all, she had no parents and had spent a very long time alone before finally meeting her grandmother.
Lou Fan’s back felt a bit slender, her bones slightly pressing against her, and her body temperature was cool as usual, yet Qin Peiran still leaned her entire body forward.
Her cheek rested against the shoulder blade, trembling slightly with every footstep.
Qin Peiran closed her eyes, opened them again, and looked at Yan Li walking beside them.
The chestnut hair was far too blinding under the sun, and the curly hair never looked as comforting as straight hair. There were simply too many hair clips of colors that clashed too messily, making one’s heart feel annoyed.
Qin Peiran turned her face away.
Carrying the large speaker, Yan Li sensed that less-than-friendly gaze from the side and cast a puzzled look at the back of Qin Peiran’s head before murmuring softly a moment later, “Must be my imagination.”
The three people and one speaker quickly arrived at the hospital. Aside from external injuries, Qin Peiran likely suffered considerable internal damage, so the doctor recommended staying overnight for a full body checkup.
“You head back first. I’ll drop the speaker off at your place tomorrow,” Lou Fan patted Yan Li’s shoulder. “Thanks for your help today. Be careful on the road.”
“Yeah.” Yan Li glanced at Qin Peiran, then back at Lou Fan. “Don’t be too hard on your younger sister. Her health comes first.”
After seeing Yan Li off, Lou Fan took Qin Peiran through X-rays, blood draws, and a complete battery of examinations. It wasn’t until the sun was setting in the afternoon that they finally settled down.
Finding the general ward too noisy, Lou Fan arranged a single private room for Qin Peiran. She lifted up the table board at the end of the bed and placed two open boxes of takeout meals on top.
“Did you eat this morning?” Lou Fan asked.
Qin Peiran shook her head and accepted the disposable chopsticks Lou Fan handed over.
“I knew it.” Lou Fan muttered as she reached out to tap her forehead, but halfway through, her arm paused and hung in the air.
Who knew what was going on with the injury on her head, so it was better not to touch it.
Qin Peiran lifted her eyelids, looked away just as casually without a word, and lowered her head to eat.
Both of them harbored words in their hearts yet refused to speak them aloud, competing with each other in silence. Until they finished eating and Lou Fan was cleaning up the table board, Qin Peiran finally spoke up.
Her eyes drifted toward the window, her voice muffled: “Why are you hanging out with her?”
“Huh?” Lou Fan held a wet wipe, looking up upon hearing the question. A moment later, she realized she was referring to Yan Li.
Speaking of this matter made Lou Fan angry. She tossed the wet wipe into the trash can and waved her hand between the two of them. “You’re still talking? If it weren’t for her idea, there would be one more person lying in the hospital today.”
“Oh,” Qin Peiran replied flatly. “Thank her for me, please.”
“Fine.” Seeing the pitiful state of Qin Peiran lying in the hospital bed, Lou Fan had to let go of her anger whether she wanted to or not. She picked up an apple, inspecting it against the light streaming through the window. “I told you before, Yan Li might look like a kid, but she’s actually quite reliable when doing things, right?”
“Yeah.”
Lou Fan took a fruit knife and lowered her head to peel the apple, failing to notice Qin Peiran’s right hand secretly grabbing the IV tube.
“The blood flowed back.” Qin Peiran softened her tone, extending the back of her left hand toward Lou Fan.
“How did you manage this?” Lou Fan hurriedly dropped what was in her hand, cradling Qin Peiran’s hand right under her eyes to inspect it. The back of her hand was already bruised and battered from the injuries, and now a large section of blood had flowed backward, looking utterly pitiful.
“Keep your hand down, stop moving around,” Lou Fan instructed, bending over to press past Qin Peiran’s body to carefully lower her hand, while smoothing down the edge of the blanket. “Your hands are so cold. Should I turn the air conditioner up?”
“Okay.” Qin Peiran nodded obediently, letting her hand hang limply by the bedside without moving again.
After adjusting the air conditioner, Lou Fan saw Qin Peiran sitting quietly there, completely devoid of the stubborn, unyielding defiance she had shown at the shipyard earlier today. Half amused and half exasperated, she sat back down by the bedside and resumed peeling the apple. “Who did this? What happened?”
“No one.” Qin Peiran rubbed her blue-and-white hospital gown with her uninjured right hand. “Jie.”
Her voice cut off abruptly.
“Hm?” Lou Fan didn’t raise her head as a long strip of apple peel dangled from her hand.
Sister, am I being a huge burden? Qin Peiran wanted to ask, but feeling it sounded too overly emotional, she swallowed the words back down after rolling them around in her mouth.
Since Qin Peiran wouldn’t talk, Lou Fan had no intention of letting her off the hook. She shoved the peeled apple into Qin Peiran’s right hand with a firm tone: “Who did it?”
Qin Peiran took a large bite and ate in silence.
“Not telling me, are you?” Having lived through two lives, could Lou Fan really not handle her?
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll hire a bodyguard to escort you to school every single day. If she can get into the campus, she will; if not, she’ll climb the wall. She’ll follow you to class, follow you to meals, and when you go back to the dorm, she’ll stand guard right outside your room.” Lou Fan pulled out a tissue, meticulously wiping the juice off the fruit knife while shrugging. “Inseparable, sticking by your side every second to ensure your safety.”
“Even if you try to hide things then, she will report everything she sees and hears at school back to me word for word.” At this, Lou Fan returned the fruit knife to the drawer of the bedside iron cabinet. “Even if she exaggerates, I’ll accept every single word.”
Qin Peiran’s throat bobbed as she swallowed that small, unchewed piece of apple. She lowered her right hand holding the apple and sighed almost inaudibly. “Fine, I’ll talk.”
Clearly adhering to Occam’s razor, Qin Peiran trimmed the incident down to leave only the necessary parts before feeding the story to Lou Fan: “He stalked me a few times, and finally disguised himself as a designated driver to print screenshots from the dashcam and paste them on the bulletin board.”
She lifted her eyes, seeing that Lou Fan was still waiting for the rest.
“Later I beat him up, and he challenged me to a one-on-one fight.” Here, Qin Peiran gently bit her lower lip, her brows furrowed. “But he brought a whole bunch of thugs.”
“Lu Wang.” Lou Fan’s long, graceful eyebrows hid beneath her neat bangs as she frowned in deep thought. “I only thought he was annoying the first few times, but I never expected him to be so shameless.”
“Really, bad luck,” Lou Fan said.
Even though Qin Peiran described it simply, Lou Fan wasn’t an idiot. A female college student who had just entered campus and only been enrolled for a few months suddenly had rumors exposed about her having an ambiguous relationship with someone from outside society.
It was even blasted in the form of high-impact photos pasted directly along the campus walkways.
Lesbian, old woman, kept woman. Lou Fan had heard enough of these vocabulary words in her past life. In this present life, Lou Fan thought, she was only grateful that the two of them merely shared a pure sponsorship relationship.
“Just based on a photo of the two of us sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder in the backseat, what does that even prove?” Lou Fan sneered. “Just because of his foul mouth spreading random rumors?”
Qin Peiran didn’t utter a sound, lifting her right hand to bite off another small piece of apple.
Aside from the humming drone of the air conditioner, the only sound in the hospital room was the crunching noise of Qin Peiran eating her apple. Lou Fan had originally wanted to elaborate further on the bad habit of contemporary teenagers spreading falsehoods and blindly following the crowd, but seeing Qin Peiran lower her brows and chew the apple at a sluggish pace, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything else.
True or false aside, the school bullying Qin Peiran suffered was as real as it could get.
Lou Fan’s heart twitched, a mixture of regret and relief sharing equal parts.
Who would willingly entangle themselves with a nearly thirty-year-old older woman? Qin Peiran had never explicitly stated it, but Lou Fan knew it clearly in her heart.
Fortunately, this lifetime wasn’t too absurd yet, and hadn’t disrupted a future that should have been bright and brilliant.
As for that Lu Wang, Lou Fan clenched her back teeth, keeping her expression restrained in front of Qin Peiran.
Taking the finished apple core from Qin Peiran, Lou Fan handed over another wet wipe for her to clean her hands, her tone inevitably carrying a hint of seriousness: “You shouldn’t have tangled with this kind of person right from the start. Not only did you bring trouble upon yourself, what would you have done if something actually went wrong? Today we arrived in time, but what about next time? What if he holds a grudge and stakes you out every day? Are you planning to get into a fight every single time before going to class? I give you money so you can study hard and graduate smoothly, not for you to buy an electrical baton to fight thugs.”
The more she spoke, the less calm her tone became. Remembering the dagger soaked through with blood on the ground when she arrived, Lou Fan shivered all over and couldn’t help scolding a bit harsher:
“I’ll handle this matter. You are not allowed to get involved anymore. If you disobey again, I will…” Lou Fan cut her harsh words halfway, pausing before speaking, “I won’t want you anymore.”
Qin Peiran lowered her head, gripping the used wet wipe tightly in her palm. Seeing her pitiful appearance resembling a rain-beaten white wood sorrel, Lou Fan found her heart softening.
Her heart melted, and before she could say anything else, a sudden warmth enveloped her chest.
It was Qin Peiran hugging her waist.
Her long hair hung down softly, brushing against Lou Fan’s palm, conveying an apology in the most subtle way possible.
“It won’t happen again.” Her drooped head buried completely into Lou Fan’s chest, refusing to lift it up. “I promise.”
Her tone had softened down with a rare vulnerability.
How could Lou Fan possibly utter harsh words facing this sight? She merely raised her hand and rested it gently on top of Qin Peiran’s head.
Perhaps because the tense string in her mind had finally relaxed, Qin Peiran’s body began trembling with delayed fear, prompting Lou Fan to stroke and comfort her slowly, humming an improvised tune under her breath.
Qin Peiran tightened her arms around Lou Fan’s waist even further, as if trying to knead her entire being into the other person’s body. In the thin clothing of October, Qin Peiran’s head brushed inadvertently against that soft warmth.
Lou Fan gripped her shoulders, gently pulling her slightly away.