“I didn’t expect your tattoo to actually be able to bluff people.”
The group successfully finished paying the bill and came out of the barbecue restaurant. Han Ling was walking with floating steps, not yet to the point of being completely drunk, but she turned around and gave Chen Zui a thumbs-up: “Too awesome!”
Chen Zui gave her a supportive push: “Awesome, awesome, awesome, walk properly, I’m not supporting you!”
If a tattoo couldn’t bluff people, what did she get it for? To look cool? Though the resulting effect was actually pretty good.
“Are you full?” Chen Zui asked.
Han Ling: “Full!”
“I didn’t ask you.” Chen Zui gave her a side-eye and leaned closer to Jiang Feiwan’s side, “Is Doctor Jiang full?”
Jiang Feiwan wore a smile, “Thanks to Boss Chen’s blessing, very satisfied.”
Chen Zui was both satisfied and unsatisfied, “You can call me Chen Zui, it’s more convenient. Otherwise, always ‘Boss Chen, Boss Chen’—anyone who didn’t know would think I was some kind of corporate CEO.”
She felt that calling her Chen Zui sounded smoother and better, mainly because it sounded very nice when Jiang Feiwan said it. It didn’t belong to the soft kind, but it was enough to soothe people’s hearts.
“You call me Doctor Jiang.” Jiang Feiwan raised an eyebrow.
“Jiang Feiwan.” Chen Zui had wanted to change how she addressed her for a long time.
Jiang Feiwan smiled: “Chen Zui.”
Hahahaha……
Chen Zui rejoiced in her heart.
She felt like an elementary school student.
Han Ling started getting sleepy after drinking alcohol, making a fuss about wanting to go home to sleep. With no other choice, Chen Zui supported the swaying drunkard back. Jiang Feiwan had to take the elevator one floor higher, and said goodbye to her inside the elevator. Chen Zui stared until the numbers jumped to the 21st floor before inputting her passcode to enter the door.
Without the gauze covering the wound, the fabric of her pants kept rubbing against it, and now it hurt unbearably. Chen Zui rushed back to her room to disinfect the wound again and came out wearing a pair of shorts.
“Han Ling, stop pretending.” Chen Zui kicked her leg, hoisting the person up from the sofa, “Believe it or not, I’ll throw you out.”
Upon hearing this, Han Ling swiftly sat upright, “Hehe, how did you know I wasn’t drunk?”
Chen Zui sat down on the sofa, her breathing somewhat uneven: “A drunkard who can polish off the better part of a bottle of whiskey, could she get drunk because of two bags of 4.5-degree beer?”
“Oh, sigh, wasn’t I creating an opportunity for you?” Han Ling showed absolutely no embarrassment at being exposed, “Who knew you were so straight, unable to seize even a single opportunity.”
“What opportunity?”
“Don’t you like that Doctor Jiang from just now?”
Chen Zui found it incredible: “Are you sick?”
Han Ling: “You are!”
“Can you throw away those GL (girls’ love) novels in your head, please? Stop fantasizing about these random things.” Chen Zui was speechless, thinking she was simply hopeless.
How long had she and Doctor Jiang even known each other? Let alone liking each other, they couldn’t even be called familiar.
“You! Just! Like! Jiang!” Han Ling reasserted with certainty.
“I think you like sleeping on the street,” Chen Zui rolled her eyes, “If you say one more nonsense word, you’ll be hugging your quilt and sleeping outside on the public bench.”
“Then I’ll go look for Doctor Jiang to make do for the night.”
“You don’t even know where she lives.”
“I do.” Han Ling proudly pointed her hand upstairs, “Upstairs!”
Chen Zui casually grabbed a throw pillow and prepared to fling it at her, “You dare!”
The pillow flew over symbolically and was easily dodged by Han Ling, though this time she didn’t dare to cross Chen Zui anymore.
Han Ling panted out a pout, scurrying back to her room to shower and sleep.
This trip to Yuncheng had been too lucky; among the randomly fished out small stones in the lake, there happened to be what someone needed. It was only a very small piece, but it should be more than enough to fulfill the job.
Chen Zui felt for her phone to reply to the other party’s email, asking for a detailed mailing address, and about ten minutes or so later, she received a reply and a bank transfer notification.
She transferred half of it to Han Ling and kept the remaining half deposited into her bank card.
She had spent some of the inheritance left by her foster parents when she was in school, but after starting work she gradually filled it back in, long since making up for the used portion and even ending up with a lot extra. Chen Zui didn’t bother with it, planning to find a time to donate it to an orphanage.
Chen Zui tilted her head back, staring at the off-white ceiling, and sighed.
If you talk about loneliness, it was indeed there.
After leaving the orphanage the second time, the time she spent enjoying the warmth called a “home” wasn’t very long. There was no blood relation, but they treated each other with enough sincerity. When her foster parents passed away, she had also wondered if she truly had no way to have a home like an ordinary person; it seemed as though heaven was always mysteriously obstructing her from moving toward happiness.
As time went on, she seemed to have fewer and fewer thoughts. When you’re alive, you do living things; whether it’s lonely or not, it’s just passing days.
When Li (Li Li) had persuaded her to settle down in Qingzhou back then, Chen Zui had been a little bit resistant. A balloon floating in the air had no right to choose where to land; wherever the wind blew her, she would land. She had never been a big tree that would take root; she was a plastic bag floating in the air, being caught by the wind, wrapping around the wind.
“Sigh—” Chen Zui shook her head.
The damned dark night made people sentimental.
She threw a little temper and was about to toss her phone off to the side.
The phone vibrated twice in her hand.
Chen Zui urgently reined in her movement and looked down at the message notification with feigned nonchalance.
Jiang Feiwan: [Is there any iodophor at home?]
Chen Zui sat up from the sofa with a sudden spring, seeing the second message pop up right after.
Jiang Feiwan: [I brought down two bottles of spare ointment, do you need it?]
Brought down?
Downstairs???
Chen Zui re-read this sentence, and in an instant, it clicked. Without even bothering to put on her shoes, she ran in three or two steps to open the door.
Outside the door, Jiang Feiwan was startled by her sudden door-opening action and instinctively looked at Chen Zui’s legs.
Her long pants had been changed into loose, mid-thigh shorts, and Jiang Feiwan’s brow knitted slightly: “Did you sweat and get the wound wet? Have you applied medicine?”
Chen Zui was still immersed in the inexplicable joy that she had actually come downstairs to deliver medicine to her herself. Hearing her ask this, she nodded and shook her head at the same time: “Why did you come down? You could have called me to go up and get it!”
Jiang Feiwan didn’t understand for a moment, “The meaning of nodding and shaking your head is…… you applied medicine or you didn’t apply medicine?”
“Ah, not yet, I just changed my pants,” Chen Zui lied without changing her expression, inviting her inside, “Come in, the air conditioning is on inside.”
Jiang Feiwan hesitated for a few seconds, “Your friend……..” She was afraid it might be inconvenient.
“She went back to her room to sleep, it’s fine.” Chen Zui didn’t take the bag she was handing over, determined in any case to get her inside.
“Alright.” Jiang Feiwan compromised.
There were only two pairs of slippers prepared at home; one pair had been worn away by Han Ling, and the other pair…….
Chen Zui patter-pattered over to the living room, picked up the slippers she had kicked flying, and then patter-pattered back, bending down to place them right by Jiang Feiwan’s feet: “You wear mine first, they’re also new, very clean!”
Jiang Feiwan frowned as she watched her running back and forth, “Is your injury on your leg?”
Chen Zui nodded, “Yeah.”
She pointed to the outside of one of her thighs, “Right here.”
“Walking as if flying?”
Chen Zui immediately started limping, “It hurts.”
Jiang Feiwan was helpless, “Are you applying medicine yourself?”
“I don’t have to do it myself; bending my waist is pretty uncomfortable.” Chen Zui said quite earnestly.
Jiang Feiwan carried the bag, and after making sure she sat down properly, she took out a pair of cotton swabs and a newly unopened bottle of iodophor from the bag. Just as she was about to make a move, she looked doubtfully at Chen Zui, “Is it convenient?”
Convenient!
It wasn’t wounded on her chest, what would be inconvenient?
Even if it were on her chest it would be convenient, they were both women, what was there to be inconvenient about?
Chen Zui nodded like a pounding pestle, chua flipped open the hem of her shorts, revealing a thigh with a square, thick piece of gauze patched squarely onto it: “I’ll have to trouble Doctor Jiang!”
Jiang Feiwan squatted down, her gaze landing on that fair leg of hers.
Because of years of exercise and climbing, Chen Zui had obvious muscle lines on her legs, and her body fat should also be quite low, because it was obvious just from standing.
Jiang Feiwan pressed her lips together and gently peeled back the gauze—a wound about 7-8 centimeters long abruptly appeared before her eyes, with obvious stitching traces all over the surface. This was a new injury; at the very least, it wouldn’t be more than three days old.
How deep of a wound would it take to reach the point of needing stitches? Jiang Feiwan knew clearer than anyone else. She knitted her brows, her gaze obscure and unclear, only blindly softening the movements of her hands.
Applying medicine on yourself and having someone else help you apply medicine are two different feelings…….
No.
Applying medicine on yourself, having someone else help you apply medicine, and having Jiang Feiwan help you apply medicine seemed like entirely two different feelings.
For the first two, the sensation was ordinary, just feeling a cotton swab circling round and round on your own flesh—if it hurt you made it lighter, if it wasn’t smeared well you made it heavier.
For the latter, Chen Zui kept her head lowered, seemingly without even needing to look; she could feel the cotton swab soaked in brown iodophor brushing past the vicinity of the somewhat painful wound inch by inch, each time lighter and gentler than the last.
Or perhaps….. she couldn’t feel anything at all, her senses had lost their equilibrium, and her focus wasn’t on her leg anymore, but rather in the center of her chest, right at her heartbeat which was growing stronger with every beat.
Chen Zui couldn’t help but swallow her saliva, feeling like someone free-solo climbing to a mountain peak, experiencing the heart palpitations of looking back to see a ten-thousand-foot abyss below.
“Alright.” Jiang Feiwan didn’t re-cover that patch of gauze for her, but instead stood up and instructed: “Since you’ve just finished applying the medicine, don’t rush to cover it with gauze. Wrap a layer of plastic wrap around it when you shower later, don’t let it get wet.”
She gave a few more instructions, and the cotton swabs and iodophor were placed back into the bag by her.
Raising her head, she saw Chen Zui in a daze, and called out: “Chen Zui?”
“Ah, oh, okay!” Chen Zui snapped back as if returning to her senses, pulling up her pants leg without letting go and giving her a salute: “I will definitely follow the doctor’s orders!”
Jiang Feiwan left the medicine and walked away, the bag still neatly placed beside the sofa armrest, and her pants leg still clutched tightly in her hand.
Should she go see her off?
After all, the person ran down from upstairs just to deliver medicine to her.
It seemed the person had already been gone for a while, too late to see her off now.
Chen Zui blinked, her body giving a slight shudder, as if her soul had only just thoroughly returned to its shell. She raised her hand and covered the right side of her chest.
——So soft.
Ah no.
She moved her hand toward the middle.
Why is it beating this fast.
Really fast.
Chen Zui pinched her fingertips.
The bedroom door creaked open, and wet-sounding slipper footsteps walked in. Han Ling came out after showering, wiping her hair as she asked: “Chen, did someone come just now? Why did I faintly hear the door open…….”
Han Ling’s gaze paused. Seeing her hand movement clearly, she stamped her foot: “You have zero self-control! Why are you touching yourself!”
Chen Zui glared at her and threw the throw pillow over again: “Don’t you wash your chest when you shower! Making a fuss over nothing!!!!”