Chapter 122: Just Dating, and the Whole World Became My Romantic Rival (22)

After work, the research building was empty.

Bai Yao walked in with a bag in her hand, inside it a metal lunchbox. By habit she should have gone back to the dorm to bring dinner to her boyfriend, but by some odd impulse she found herself heading toward the laboratory building.

Dr. Ma often stayed in the lab and never let anyone come near him, and many people had begun to suspect he was running some questionable experiments.

Ma had been taken away, and Bai Yao found the lab key in his drawer. She went up to the third floor and took the key out at the door of a lab room.

At once, the person inside startled awake; one pair of dark, glossy eyes fixed sharply on the doorway.

“Yao Yao!”

Bai Yao heard a voice behind her. When she turned, a lively boy came running and grabbed her in a hug.

Fu Huai brushed against her as he spoke under his breath, whining, “I waited for you for so long. Why don’t you ever come looking for me? It’s cold and dark here. I hate it.”

She could hardly bear his clingy, puppy-like insistence. She gently pushed him away so she could speak normally.

“Okay, let’s go back and eat.”

Fu Huai brightened. He took Bai Yao’s hand and happily told her how perfectly obedient he’d been in his room that afternoon, how he had missed her so much that he even took out her clothes and hugged them.

Inside the lab, the slender boy was on the floor in panic, both hands pressed hard against the cold tile, while through the crack under the door only the girl’s shoes could be seen, slowly walking away.

And to make things worse, her shoe was paired with another pair—his sneakers. In his brisk steps there was a bright, almost flaunting claim: only he could stand so close to her.

How jealous. How jealous. How jealous.

The girl’s shadow was gone.

In the blurred light and shadow of the lab, the boy’s emotion was so fierce that his figure seemed to split in two.

The staff dormitory at Lanshan Hospital was not large, but because everyone living there kept it so neatly, it felt warm and comforting.

Fu Huai sat obediently at the table and ate. Bai Yao went to wash her hands and planned to wash the laundry she had not done yet, but when she opened the dirty-laundry basket it was empty. She came back out. “Where are my clothes?”

Fu Huai bit into a rib and muttered, “I hung them on the balcony.”

She went to the balcony and looked up. The line held several garments still not fully dry. She lifted her gaze and examined them; the fabric was wrinkled and looked ruined anyway. She reached out and pulled at a skirt. The moment she saw it, her face darkened.

Fu Huai had come up silently and now stood behind the glass door, shoulders drawn in, small and pitiful, helpless.

Bai Yao turned and glared at him.

He said softly, “There are mud spots on top. I tried to wash it clean. I swear I wasn’t rough; it was so fragile, just a little and it tore.”

“This was my favorite skirt,” Bai Yao said.

Fu Huai lowered his head, fingers worrying at the hem of his own shirt in restless circles. Under his white, broken-looking hair, his lashes trembled helplessly, and at the corner of his mouth he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Bai Yao heard him apologize for the first time.

She pressed her hand to her forehead. “Forget it.”

Fu Huai edged closer, stepping slowly. He timidly hooked his little finger through hers, anxious as a frightened young wife. “Yao Yao, I’ll buy you a prettier skirt next time.”

“Where would you get money?” Bai Yao asked.

“I can—”

“If you dare to say you’ll go out for a spin, I bet people will line up to give you money and ask for a turn.”

Fu Huai shut his mouth, but, stubborn as a duck that won’t open, he soon said, “I can work. I can earn money.”

Bai Yao waved it off. “Never mind. I’m afraid you’ll end up driving some shop into bankruptcy.”

Fu Huai pressed his lips and sulked; Bai Yao had only spoken the truth, and he had no argument.

So after dinner, instead of doing what he usually did—clinging to Bai Yao and dragging her into bed—Fu Huai took out his phone and opened a video tutorial on mending clothes. He sat alone at the edge of the bed, phone in both hands, watching with unnaturally careful concentration.

He did not offer the bed as usual. Bai Yao, uneasy for once, finished washing up, climbed into bed, and nudged him with her foot. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”

He did not even look up. “I have to study.”

She lay down, but sleep would not come. She turned her head and looked at him. He had drawn his legs in and leaned half toward the headboard; his clean, bright eyes flickered with light from the screen.

Because he’d used Bai Yao’s skincare products, he had forgotten to remove the pink hairclip from his forehead. Focused on the phone, he was so obedient, so docile.

The stiller he grew, the more restless Bai Yao became.

She sat up. Fu Huai opened his arms and drew her close, but his eyes never left the screen. It was obvious his embrace was only instinct, nothing more than reflex.

She slipped her hand beneath the hem of his shirt and hovered near his waist, and then, moving closer, she kissed the corner of his lips. “Fu Huai.”

He half-opened his mouth in return, gave her a perfunctory kiss, and answered with a distracted “Mm,” one hand still stroking her back while his eyes remained on the screen.

Bai Yao had no patience left. She pulled the phone from his hands and threw it aside, then pushed him down beside her and began pulling at his clothes with rough urgency.

Fu Huai came to himself and looked at her in a daze. “Yao Yao?”

She snapped, fierce and sharp: “You owe me your dues.”

It was deep midnight, and all things were silent.

The white-haired boy, covered in mud and water, moved crookedly through the sheets of rain. His limbs twisted at wrong angles, and he was still trying to force his broken hand back straight.

Covering half his face, which looked as if it had been shattered in a fall, he fought to keep blood and flesh from mixing with the cold rain and dripping to the ground.

Broken and unrecognizable as he was, he kept pressing forward with stubborn certainty.

At last he reached the entrance of a dormitory building and stared hard at a room on the upper floor.

I want it—

By then, the third page of this moment had arrived.

That utter, unconditional devotion, that right to be adored to the fullest, should have been his—should have belonged to him alone, not to that counterfeit taking it from him.

A bolt of lightning split the sky. In the rain, the boy saw someone with his very same face.

Yet the difference was everything. He was caked in filth, his limbs broken and torn, like a rag doll thrown into a dump.

The boy in the room was clean, orderly, and handsome: a flawless face and a provocative smile, the kind only someone pampered by a lover can wear.

The room was suddenly split by thunder. Bai Yao woke from her dream. She felt an empty space beside her and sat up, looking toward the door.

She turned on the flashlight on her phone and, with its faint beam, stepped out into the corridor to search for him. On the first floor, in the stairwell, she found a hunched figure.

A flicker of light and shadow glimmered over his filthy body.

With broken and crooked fingers, he held a pink hairclip, trying again and again to pin it into his dirty hair, where the original color was no longer visible. The color had gone from his strands. Because his fingers had no strength, he failed each time.

He did not mind. He kept trying with delighted persistence, even as those already-broken fingers twisted further.

When the light caught him, he lifted his head and saw a girl on the stairs. Mud and water streaking his face, he broke into an innocent smile and cried, “Yao Yao—”

He rose and ran toward her. His unhealed left leg, broken and crooked, wavered sideways. He collapsed with a hard thud onto the cold concrete, likely in agony.

But he did not pause. He hauled himself forward again on both hands. In his glossy black eyes was nothing but desire for her, and he called out, breathless, “Yao Yao, Yao Yao, Yao Yao—”

Bai Yao watched calmly as he crawled to her feet.

He stretched out a hand to touch her, but when he saw the stains on his own hand, he showed a flicker of defeat and slowly withdrew it.

Bai Yao knelt and took his hand.

He raised his eyes to her; through his misty gaze she was the only image.

“How did you make yourself like this?” she asked.

He did not seem to know what to say. He only tightened his grip on her hand, then held out the other, still gripping the hairclip, and said with difficulty, “Yao Yao, I can’t get it on.”

The delicate pink hairclip, all girlish and bright, lay absurdly in his twisted fingers, an unbearable contrast.

Bai Yao picked up the clip and gently fastened it in his hair. “There.”

The boy climbed awkwardly to sit by her feet. He lifted his hand and touched the hairclip, as if imagining himself neat and perfect. His lips curved up, clean and pure with joy.

He braced himself with his hands and edged a little closer, carefully leaning against her foot. He knew he was filthy and feared dirtied her, but even with only that cautious touch, his face, held up toward her, shone with complete contentment.

Bai Yao watched him for a few seconds more, then sighed softly and spread her arms to pull the grime-covered boy into her embrace.