His Possessiveness Can No Longer Be Hidden
After Su Qing admitted her feelings, nothing changed on the surface.
She still studied medicine with Shen Henian every day, still made trips to the black market to sell goods every few days, and still used her spiritual spring water to keep her skin glowing pale and bright.
Yet something was shifting—subtle, like dark currents flowing beneath winter ice, slowly but surely altering the course.
For one, she’d started noticing his hands.
Lu Zhanye’s hands were large, with prominent knuckles and thick calluses across his palms and the webbing between his thumb and forefinger—worn there by ten years of holding a rifle.
Before, when she looked at those hands, she’d thought: These hands are strong enough to keep me safe.
Now, she found herself thinking: When he brushed my cheek yesterday, his palm was warm.
A dangerous shift.
Su Qing warned herself not to get distracted.
But the warning did almost nothing.
If anything changed more, it was Lu Zhanye.
To be exact—his possessiveness was swelling, impossible to miss.
It all started with a small incident.
That day, Su Qing was tending to a male educated youth in the courtyard of the station. His name was Zhou Minghui—twenty, decent-looking, and one of the few who’d been kind to her from the start (though now everyone treated her well). He’d twisted his ankle working in the fields two days prior, so Su Qing knelt to examine the injury.
It was a perfectly normal checkup: she pressed two fingers gently to his ankle, gauging how badly the ligaments were strained.
Lu Zhanye happened to be driving past just then. He saw it all.
The jeep pulled over. The engine stayed running.
He sat in the driver’s seat, staring through the window at the scene in the yard.
Su Qing, kneeling before another man. Her fingers resting on that man’s ankle. That man, looking down at her with a smile.
Lu Zhanye’s hands tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles cracked. His expression darkened so fast that Xiao Zhao, glancing over from the passenger seat, nearly jumped out of his skin.
“C—Commander?”
“What is she doing.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Educated Youth Su is… seeing a patient? That looks like Zhou from the station—”
“A man.”
“Uh—sir?”
“She’s touching a man’s foot.”
Xiao Zhao’s mouth fell open. It’s a medical exam, sir! It’s perfectly normal for a doctor to check a patient’s ankle! Just because he’s a man doesn’t mean—
He swallowed the words. Lu Zhanye had already shoved open the door and stepped out.
Su Qing was explaining the injury to Zhou Minghui: “No tear, just a mild strain. I’ll wrap it with a support bandage—stay off it for three days—”
A shadow fell over them. Huge, swallowing both of them whole.
She looked up. Lu Zhanye stood behind her, face unreadable, eyes like ice. But the cold wasn’t for her—it was all for Zhou Minghui.
The moment that gaze swept over him, every hair on Zhou Minghui’s arms stood on end. He instinctively pulled his foot back.
“G—Good morning, Commander!”
Lu Zhanye ignored him. He looked down at Su Qing.
“Finished?”
“Almost—just need to wrap—”
“Let the medics do it.”
“The clinic is five kilometers away.”
“Then let him wrap it himself.”
“He won’t get the angle right—if it slips—”
“Su Qing.”
He said her name, low enough that only she could hear. But the storm churning beneath those two words was so strong that even Ma Hongmei, sweeping the yard nearby, froze. She immediately pretended to hear nothing, sweeping faster than ever, eyes fixed on the ground.
Su Qing looked back at him. His jaw was set so tight it looked like it could snap steel wire. Veins throbbed faintly at his temples. His eyes were cold—but she saw the truth.
It wasn’t coldness. It was jealousy. Pure, concentrated, undiluted, one hundred percent jealousy.
She almost laughed out loud. She bit it back—she knew if she did, this man would tear down the station wall right then and there.
“Alright,” she said, standing up and handing the bandage to Zhou Minghui. “Try it yourself. Cross it in a figure-eight pattern—if you’re unsure, ask Sister Ma for help.”
Zhou Minghui took the bandage as if it were a ticking time bomb. “I’ve got it! Thank you, Educated Youth Su!” He hopped away on one foot, moving far faster than anyone with a sprained ankle should.
Soon the yard was empty save for the two of them.
Su Qing looked up at him. “You scared him.”
“He shouldn’t have been smiling.”
“…What?”
“He was smiling at you.”
Su Qing blinked. Then she really did laugh—couldn’t help it. “I told him a joke to distract him from the pain. It’s a patient care trick.”
Lu Zhanye fell silent. The tips of his ears turned pink. He still refused to admit what was obvious.
“I’m not jealous.”
Su Qing didn’t ask why he felt the need to say that out of nowhere. “Right. You’re not.”
“I’m just—” he ground the words out like he was biting down on iron “—reminding you to be careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“…Safety.”
“How is checking an ankle unsafe?”
“…”
Lu Zhanye gritted his teeth. He knew how ridiculous he sounded. But he couldn’t stop himself. The second he saw her kneeling before another man, something inside him snapped. It hurt worse than any PTSD flare-up—burning, searing, spreading from his heart to his fingertips.
He wanted to hoist that man up and throw him over the wall. He wanted to pick Su Qing up, tuck her into the jeep, and lock the doors. He wanted to stamp her forehead: Lu Zhanye’s. Touch her and you die.
But he couldn’t do any of it. Because she wasn’t his. Not yet. He hadn’t even properly confessed.
He was just a fool—climbing over the wall every other night to linger beneath her window pretending he was “passing by,” too clumsy to unwrap a candy for her, too nervous to hold her hand.
That’s what he called himself, in his head. And it only made him more irritable.
Su Qing looked at his stormy face and thought: Cute. So very cute.
A six-foot-three man, broad-shouldered as a wardrobe, strong enough to flip a jeep single-handed—now turning red with jealousy, yet stubbornly refusing to say a word about it. The contrast was adorable beyond words.
She sighed. “Lu Zhanye.”
“…Mmh?”
“I’m a doctor. Treating people is what I do.”
“I know.”
“And there will be other male patients.”
“…I know.”
“You can’t get like this every time—”
“I know,” he cut her off, voice thick. “Stop talking.”
Su Qing held back her laughter for three seconds. Then she did something that completely short-circuited his brain.
She stood on her tiptoes, reached up, and flicked the brim of his military cap.
“Don’t be mad,” she said, soft as cooing at a ruffled dog.
Lu Zhanye froze. The mind that had made split-second life-or-death decisions a thousand times over, that reacted in milliseconds—crashed entirely. She’d flicked his cap. She was soothing him. She—
“I’m heading in,” she said, already turning toward the door. “See you tomorrow.”
Lu Zhanye stood alone in the yard as the north wind blew. He reached up and touched the spot where she’d flicked his cap. He stayed there for a long time—so long that Xiao Zhao finally leaned out of the jeep, nervous.
“Commander? Are we… going?”
“…Yeah.”
He climbed back into the car, not saying a word the whole drive. But Xiao Zhao noticed one thing: the corner of the Commander’s mouth had curled up, just a little.
That night, Su Qing spotted the familiar olive-green scarf through the crack in her window again. He didn’t knock this time—but there was something new on the sill: a small paper bundle.
She unwrapped it to find a pair of thick, grey cotton gloves, stitched by hand—messy, crooked stitches, clearly not the work of anyone skilled with a needle. Tucked inside was a scrap of paper, four words written in sharp, heavy strokes that nearly tore through the page:
Wear these from now on.
Wear them from now on. So that when she treated patients, she wouldn’t have to touch anyone else’s skin.
Su Qing held the homely, lumpy gloves and laughed until her shoulders shook. She pressed them to her cheek—rough cotton, scratchy, but warm.
Fine then, she thought. I’ll take this jealous, stubborn fool.