CH 32

Half an hour later, I arrived at the hospital in a taxi. As soon as I found him, I immediately noticed an unhealthy gray pallor on his face.

“What’s the matter with you…?”

He smiled bitterly.

“I had a cold and fever when I went back last night and I thought it would get better if I slept. I didn’t expect it to be even worse in the morning…I was afraid of pneumonia, so I came to the hospital to get it checked out. Fortunately, it was just a throat infection and a high fever.”

In foreign countries, intravenous drips are not recommended, unless it is serious enough to require surgery, so the doctor only gave him an injection in his arm and then prescribed some medicine.

He fell asleep after taking the medicine. I sat in the chair next to him studying his face. His eyebrows were slightly narrowed and his face was tired. As I looked at him I realized that for the first time I had missed him.

I had to admit that he was more or less involved with me. In fact, this relationship had been going on for a long time,I had just never given in to it.

I looked at the scar on his palm, the wound from the tunnel. To be precise, he’d done it to himself. Thinking of that experience still made me feel flustered, but I couldn’t help but stretch out my hand and brush my fingers along the scarred wound.

I felt his fingers slowly close together, holding my hand in the palm of his.

“I thought you came reluctantly,” he said, his eyes still closed.

“Don’t always think that,” I sneered softly. “Don’t you know how to take care of yourself?”

In France, people often go to the hospital. Maybe he doesn’t need to be here.

“Yes, but when I’m thinking about some things, and those things make me feel depressed, I have no time to care about how uncomfortable I am physically.”

My heart couldn’t help but tighten.

“Do you ever feel pain like that?” He opened his eyes to look at me.

“Xi Xichen…”

“Do you think I’m shameless? It’s just a cold, and yet I used questions to make you come out.”

He really treated feelings like a child, cautious and extremely sensitive. He was emotional every time he tried and I refused him coldly. Then he would consciously retreat to the most suitable distance, before waiting for his next step.

How much better am I than him?

When I thought about it, maybe I felt that I hated him because of the anger and cowardly tolerance I had towards my father. When my grievances and resentment had nowhere to go, I selfishly passed them on to him.

“I have a pain.” My confession brought him a surprised look, and I sighed. “It’s also a little shameless.”

I knew I had something other than “grateful” for him.

Last night, I had thought a lot about my aunt, Piao Zheng, Ye Lin, Xi Xichen, mother, father, Shen Qingyu, Lin Xiaodi, Mo Jiazhen…

I thought about all the people who I had experienced getting along with. I didn’t know why I was so involved with Xi Xichen. Maybe it was the arrangement of fate, but the sad reality was that the coldness we both had made getting along with each other difficult. Expressing emotions easily or trying to find harmony had become like a kind of torture.

Until recently…

After the collapse accident, Xi Xichen became very soft, as if he had let go of something or had insisted on something more. It was just his failing emotional intelligence that made him wonder how to deal with this relationship.

I now clearly recalled the first time I had fainted abroad, when someone had picked me up. That face in the rain was exactly the same one before me now.

I had heard him call my name, over and over again, very softly and tenderly.

I had been afraid of living in an unfamiliar environment, with people I didn’t know, foreign classmates who were arrogant and wanton, and a kind of selfish life.

My first roommate had ​​helped me a lot when I was learning languages. Once, after a night of drinking, she’d accidentally said, “Anastasia, he told me to take you to dinner, take you to learn the plants and trees here, and walk you through the streets. I won’t let you get lost. If I had love as good as his, I wouldn’t be sad anymore.”

I’ve received a birthday gift every year without a name, and it was always the thing I needed the most at the time.

During the time I had been hospitalized after the car accident, I became sluggish and couldn’t sleep almost every night. I would lie awake for a long time until my eyes would be too sleepy to stay open, and only then would I finally sleep.

At one point I’d felt someone holding my hand. It had been a warm and tender hold. I didn’t know who he was, but he had strangely made me feel at ease. When I woke up, I’d found no one in the room, and I remembered feeling that something was missing from my heart.

“Anjie?” I heard a faint, gentle voice pierce through my thoughts.

I suddenly felt a sense of relaxation.

I said, “Xi Xichen, I’m here because I wanted to come.”

I think his expression became extremely joyful.

I knew the relationship between us would not be facilitated in this way. There were still many problems between us, but I just thought I should treat him better.

When it was time to leave the hospital, Xi Xichen and I went our separate ways because I still had to go see the tutor. Before I left though, he asked softly, “Can you come to the hotel to see me tomorrow?”

I finally agreed.

The second time I knocked on the door of 1507, it was still not him who opened the door, but a middle-aged man in a suit and leather shoes.

Xi Xichen was sitting on the sofa, looking through documents. His white cotton shirt and silver-rimmed glasses were indescribably gentle and elegant. It was my first time seeing him like that.

“Mr Xi, someone is looking for you.”

Xi Xichen raised his head, and when he saw me, he put down the file in his hand and walked towards me with a faint smile on his lips.

He first said to the man: “This project is okay, it can be implemented. Go back and have a meeting with them.”

The man nodded, took the papers on the coffee table and left.

I put the bunch of lilies I’d bought into the vase in the room.

After all, I’ve come to visit a patient.

“Working while sick is bad.”

Xi Xichen was taken aback for a moment, and the smile on his face grew bigger. “Can I take these words of yours as concern for me?”

“…”

Xi Xichen sighed softly. “I know you are just trying to accept me now. I am too eager…”

He looked at me directly, “But, Anjie, my heart has always been greedy,”  he smiled wryly, ” and I’m afraid that I can’t control it now.”

“What do you want me to do?” I sighed. I forgot that he sometimes looked like a child, and the child is best at trying to cross lines and playing tricks. I never knew that the aloof Xi Xichen had such a side. In fact, I had never imagined him like this at all.

Xi Xichen’s smile spread even wider, and he lifted my long hair hanging at my waist.

“No, you know, you don’t have to do anything. I will not force you, nor will I try to cheapen your life and your ideas. In fact, this version of you now is a gift to me, but a person’s greed is endless, especially when he thinks about such things for so long…”

He raised his head with a gaze that was both bold and presumptuous.

I suddenly became a little nervous and unconsciously straightened up, staring back at him. “I just hope that when I respond, you don’t push away and don’t make me feel like I’m performing a one-man show.”

He looked down and saw my hand, “Is your hand hurt? Why?” He pulled up my left hand, frowned slightly, and looked at the slightly deep wound on the outside of the back of my hand. I could see he wanted to touch it, but didn’t.

I tried to break free, so I could let him go, “I accidentally scratched it when I bought the flowers.” Ye Lin always liked to send me flowers, and would never miss a single festival. Later, when I came to France, I continued it myself, and it became a habit of mine to buy flowers.

The wound on my hand had been caused by a glass vase at the flower shop I regularly frequented. I hadn’t noticed the crack in the vase at the time.

Xi Xichen glanced at the bunch of fresh lilies on the table in front of the window, thinking quietly for a moment, before announcing he would take me out for dinner.

We went to eat at the hotel restaurant. On the way, he continuously covered his mouth to cough. As soon as I sat down in the bright restaurant, I asked the waiter to pour him a glass of warm water. I really didn’t understand why he was coughing like this.

“Have you taken your cold medicine?”

“I took it last night, but not today,” he replied.

After we ordered the food, the waiter told us, “You lovers are so beautiful.”

The French are romantic and speak with impunity. I hoped he hadn’t understood, but obviously I always underestimated him.

Xi Xichen looked at me with a slight smile on the corner of his mouth.

I now became a little skeptical of the truthfulness behind “only a little French”.

He seemed to be able to see through me. “I really only know a little French, I can understand some, but my speaking and writing are basically not good.” His eyes softened, “He said that we are lovers, you have no objection?”

I just didn’t think I needed to explain myself to strangers about misunderstandings or facts. Anyway, it was just fate.

But he seemed to have grasped the key. “Anjie, I’m very happy.”

I self-consciously folded the napkin under the table, “Yeah.”

“We are together now, are we?”

Since we literally were sitting together, I would not refute it. But I knew what he meant…

“Xi Xichen, when did you start to become so concerned about gains and losses?”

“Because it is you, I will suffer from gains and losses.” He took my hand across the table, his eyes dark, “Anjie, have we already started? At least, I think you have allowed me to start.”

I was a little flustered. My hand twitched, but I didn’t pull it out of his grasp.

“Don’t you think…it’s too fast?”

“I do not think so.”

“Can I say that you are in trouble?” I couldn’t help sighing.

He took my hand to his lips, closed his eyes and sighed softly.

“I really…miss you, miss you very much.”

I seemed to be under some sort of drug, and I let him kiss my hand motionlessly. I don’t know how long it took and I didn’t remember how I answered him. I only remembered vaguely hearing him say, “Don’t buy flowers in the future. Although I want to cherish all your things, please let me give you the flowers.”

After lunch, I wanted to go back to school. At first he insisted on accompanying me back, but I objected. He still had a bit of a fever and his voice sounded hoarse. He finally relented in the end, and I went back alone.