Only after sitting down did Sui Mi realize this really was an excellent little corner.
A streetlamp stood right in front of her, and lush trees to one side blocked the occasionally drifting, cool evening breeze.
Behind her was the circular plaza, leaving the laughter and chatter of a few teenagers playing around safely behind her ears.
Sui Mi shifted her feet, and seeing Xi Jianbai follow her over, she kicked off her shoes while muttering apologetically under her breath.
“I honestly didn’t think it hurt. I must have been sitting at the restaurant so long it went numb.”
“I was already planning to head home. Good thing you brought band-aids.”
“Why do you even carry these things around with you……”
The hand she reached out to take the band-aid was dodged by Xi Jianbai.
Sui Mi blinked at him, wide-eyed and bewildered. Thinking he hadn’t registered what was happening, she waved her open palm again and reminded him, ”The band-aid.”
Xi Jianbai lowered his eyes and glanced at her delicate, fair palm.
“Let me.”
Sui Mi: “You’ll…… huh? You’ll what?!”
Xi Jianbai had already bent his knee, half-crouching in front of her, elbows braced on his knees, his back perfectly steady, not swaying in the slightest.
He kept his head lowered, showing Sui Mi only a head of dark, fluffy hair.
The man was cold as ice, but his hair was unexpectedly soft, his bangs falling lightly over his brows and eyes.
The next second, her ankle was in his grip.
The young man’s fingertips were warm, covered with a layer of rough calluses. His thumb pressed into the hollow just below her ankle bone, his long fingers crossing her skin and tightening slightly.
The instant that scalding palm made full contact, Sui Mi felt like a kitten seized by the scruff of its neck.
Starting from that small patch of skin where they touched, a jolt of electricity crackled through her, leaving her whole body tingling with an indescribable itch.
She curled her fingers and instinctively drew her leg back. “I can do it mysel——”
“Don’t move.”
Xi Jianbai’s voice was low.
The strength of his encircling fingers was just right—the web of his thumb locked around her ankle bone, not squeezing painfully tight, yet leaving no room for escape.
A circle, a pull closer.
She had already kicked off her sneakers herself.
Xi Jianbai brushed his thumb over the skin at her Achilles tendon, slipped it into the mouth of her sock, and pushed it down a short distance, exposing the reddened, scraped wound.
His brow furrowed, ever so slightly.
His light eyes darkened as he stared fixedly at the wound for several seconds, as if looking at something unbearable, something deeply displeasing.
“……You just bumped it. It’s not serious, right?”
Sui Mi was nearly infected by his frost-covered, grave expression—she almost believed she had some critical illness requiring immediate amputation.
She looked closely.
A tiny wound that wasn’t even bleeding.
The kind where you’d race to the hospital at top speed, only for the doctor to say, why did you take so long? Any later and it would’ve healed on its own.
Sui Mi suspected Xi Jianbai had a condition where seeing other people get injured gave him sympathetic phantom pain.
In her previous life, there was a time she went into the mountains to gather inspiration and slipped and fell. It was nothing serious—she’d just banged her thigh and knee against a tree trunk, leaving a big bruise.
When she got home, she hopped through the door on one foot, limping, said goodbye to the friend who’d driven her back, and the moment she turned her head, she met Xi Jianbai’s pitch-black face.
Sui Mi was so startled she snapped to attention like a schoolchild.
Then she was stripped of her right to hop around, pressed down to rest at the edge of the bed, and lived a life of being waited on hand and foot—her only daily duties being lying in bed playing games and reading manga—until she had fully recovered and not a trace of bruising remained on her leg.
Not gonna lie, those days were pretty great.
As Sui Mi was thinking this, she heard Xi Jianbai give a low “mm.”
He verbally agreed with her that it wasn’t serious.
But his hands didn’t slacken in the slightest.
Putting on a bandage was a two-second task, yet he lowered his long lashes and, with grave seriousness, dug another small pack of wet wipes out of his pocket.
He pulled one out and carefully wiped his fingers, like performing pre-surgery disinfection.
Having wiped them meticulously, he pulled out another one and cleaned the skin around her wound.
Only then did he finally tear open the bandage’s packaging.
Sui Mi breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he could finally put it on.
Then she realized she’d relaxed too soon—
Xi Jianbai held the bandage, carefully gauging the angle and position, like a germaphobic perfectionist who couldn’t tolerate the slightest flaw.
Sui Mi: “…”
Sui Mi moved her uninjured left foot, reached forward, and gave a light, not-too-hard kick to Xi Jianbai’s bent knee, her tone soft and gentle. “Isn’t that about enough?”
Kicked, Xi Jianbai’s movements paused.
His bangs covered his brows and eyes; only the faint bluish veins standing out on the back of his hand were visible, his fingertips pinching the edge of the bandage with a bit of force.
His chest rose and fell twice, and a muffled “mm” rolled from his throat.
Then, with a face cold as frost, he snapped the bandage down over the wound in one motion.
Sui Mi regretted kicking him the moment she did it.
The person in front of her wasn’t her almost-ex-husband, just an unfamiliar schoolmate.
He was kindly helping her, after all.
Surely he wasn’t holding a grudge?
Sui Mi secretly glanced at his profile. When Xi Jianbai let go, she bent down, slowly pulled her sock back up, and put her shoe on.
Her dark almond eyes blinked, and she tilted her lips up in a winning smile, her voice unbearably soft. “Thank you.”
Xi Jianbai remained crouched in place, motionless for a moment.
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he gave a sound of acknowledgment.
After a pause, he added, “Don’t get hurt again.”
The wound had never been big, and with the bandage on, walking no longer hurt at all.
Sui Mi was even in the mood to watch a few people practicing skateboard tricks in the open space, wheels rumbling across the ground, hems of clothes lifted by the wind into graceful, free arcs.
She watched for a while.
A girl, one hand in her pocket, glided smoothly past her.
After skating some distance away, she suddenly turned her head and met Sui Mi’s gaze.
Before Sui Mi could react, the girl stamped the tail of her board, turned sharply, and came back, tipping up her baseball cap to reveal smiling eyes.
“Want to try?”
Sui Mi was a little tempted. “What if I can’t do it?”
“I’ll teach you. It’s easy,” the girl said, leaning in to hook her finger. “Come on, give it a try.”
The few people behind the girl all looked up, clapping and whistling and egging her on: “Try it! Try it!”
Sui Mi wasn’t shy about it either, stepping forward openly.
“Actually, I’ve learned a little.”
She took the skateboard the girl handed over, her eyes curving with a smile, and raised her hand to indicate a tiny bit. “I fell a few times after that, so I never kept learning.”
Sui Mi had always lived by the philosophy of never making things hard for herself—wherever she fell, she’d just lie down.
Skateboarding was the same.
Others fell, felt the pain, and still had the willpower to continue; Sui Mi fell once and gave up with a perfectly clear conscience.
The girl asked with a laugh, “How far did you get? Ollie?”
Sui Mi shook her head.
“I learned to get on the board.”
She set the board down and hopped lightly onto the rumbling deck.
“Turning.”
She pressed down with her foot, steering the board into a light turn, carving a smooth arc across the ground.
“Jumping.”
She found her moment, jumped with both feet, and spun around on the small skateboard.
The sequence of movements showed her inexperience, but she was beautiful, with long arms and legs, and a natural lightness and grace.
Low marks for technical difficulty, high marks for freedom.
The girl clapped first, and the others cheered loudly, calling Sui Mi a genius.
Sui Mi was amused by their exaggerated tone and words, her eyes curving into smiles—then her gaze suddenly shifted, and she spotted Xi Jianbai standing not far away.
He stood silently beneath a tree, staring unblinkingly in her direction.
Perhaps it was an illusion from the streetlight’s reflection, but his pale eyes seemed to ripple with waves, like quietly burning flames.
Gliding against the wind felt so free and unrestrained.
Without a second thought, Sui Mi pushed off hard and adjusted her direction, skating toward him.
She had originally meant to playfully scare him.
But to her surprise, as the skateboard cut through the wind at high speed, the young man still didn’t move. His gaze, like a locked-on anchor point, stayed fixed on Sui Mi, without the slightest hint of backing away.
This guy! Isn’t he afraid of getting hit?
Sui Mi was somewhat stunned. Terrified of actually crashing into him, she quickly stretched out her leg, dragging it against the ground in a hurry to stop her momentum.
But she wasn’t skilled to begin with, and in her panic, her body wobbled along with the skateboard.
The girl and a few friends chased after Sui Mi, shouting, “Jump off the board!”
Sui Mi obeyed, about to leap aside.
Xi Jianbai finally moved, stepping aside in one stride and reaching out to catch her.
Bang.
The skateboard slammed into the tree trunk with a dull thud, flipping over sideways, its wheels still rattling and spinning.
Sui Mi was held completely in Xi Jianbai’s arms, her heartbeat still racing, pounding in her ears.
She instinctively clutched at the fabric of his shirt, feeling as if her soul were still floating behind her, chasing after her.
Then, between quick breaths, a faint, crisp scent was carried into her nose by the wind.
Xi Jianbai and his long-lasting scent.
That familiar mint hard-candy smell.
Not changed one bit.
At first whiff, it was cold and sharp, almost biting—only up close could one catch the subtle warmth coaxed out by body heat.
Three years of being together day and night, sharing the same bed, had influenced Sui Mi far more than she realized.
Her body had long since grown familiar with Xi Jianbai’s temperature and scent.
So, out of pure conditioned reflex, she went soft and limp—not only did she not pull away in a hurry, she even pressed a little closer to his chest.
When she tilted her face up, the corners of her eyes drooped pitifully.
“Why didn’t you dodge…”
Sui Mi complained in a small voice, the trailing note drawn out in a sticky, coquettish way, like a fluffy little cat’s paw lightly scratching at one’s heart.
“…”
Xi Jianbai’s breath caught almost imperceptibly, his long lashes lowering, the pupils shadowed beneath them dilating slightly, like some animal before the hunt.
A distance he had never imagined.
Through the thin layer of fabric, warmth passed intimately between them.
It made him nearly lose control, his arms tightening as his thin lips parted, his voice so low and faint it was about to scatter into the wind.
“I…”
“Are you okay!””Are you hurt?”
The girl and her friends rushed over anxiously, their concerned questions overlapping in a chorus—until they saw the two of them’s position, and the chatter slammed to a stop with an audible click.
Oh.
Whoa.
Disgusting couple.
Sorry to interrupt.
Just as they were about to politely retreat, the last person, who had lagged behind, finally arrived, shouting at full volume without any restraint, “What’s wrong? Did you sprain your ankle? Can’t stand up? Need someone to carry you?”
Everyone: “?”
Sui Mi: “?”
Sui Mi: “!”
Sui Mi sprang backward, stumbling several steps away.
As the cool evening breeze carried away the warmth and scent she’d picked up from the other person, her almond-shaped eyes darted to the skateboard, then to Xi Jianbai’s cold face.
“…”
In a flash, a misty blush spread from her cheeks all the way to her ears.
Good heavens, what on earth was she doing?!
That wasn’t even her Husband!!
Sui Mi didn’t even have the courage to sneak a glance at Xi Jianbai’s expression. She turned away, forcing her voice to stay steady as she apologized to the girl: “Sorry, I lost control and crashed into a tree.”
“How much was it? I’ll pay you back.”
The girl waved her hand breezily, picked up the skateboard, and gave it a casual once-over. “What could be wrong with it? It wasn’t that hard a hit—this board isn’t that flimsy.”
“Or how about this.”
She suddenly flipped her hand, pulled a flyer out of her friend’s jacket pocket, and briskly handed it to Sui Mi.
“You’ve clearly got a talent for this. Want to check out our skateboarding classes? Sign up now and you get a discount!”
Sui Mi: “…”
No wonder she was so enthusiastic.
She was selling classes!