Chapter content warning: sexual harrassment of a child. I’ve surrounded the section with *****, so you can skip it if you want to. You will not miss any important plot point.
Xu Qichen found this scene to be quite familiar.
Moreover, he had subconsciously begun to feel guilty and wanted to explain. When did he form such a habit?
Seeing the gloomy expression on Su Lin’s face, Xu Qichen rolled his eyes. His hands, which had been hanging awkwardly, openly hugged Xiao Zhang’s back, and he smiled very widely.
“Thank you~”
He had expected that Su Lin would approach them.
However, when he looked up again, he found that he was actually leaving.
No way, really?
Seeing this situation, Xu Qichen patted Xiao Zhang on the shoulder twice, “I have something to do, so I’m leaving first.” He then left the rehabilitation room, hopping on one foot.
“Ai! Xiao Xuan, your crutches…”
Xu Qichen ran out and found that Su Lin had not gone far, so he rushed forward, calling out ‘Dr. Su!’ with every step. Su Lin ignored him as if he was deaf. When the distance between the two of them was still one step away, Su Lin turned around suddenly, catching Xu Qichen by surprise, and causing him to fall right into his arms.
Su Lin subconsciously caught Xu Qichen’s arm to steady him.
Xu Qichen raised his head slightly, looked into his eyes, and smiled, “Dr. Su, you came to see me?”
Su Lin tilted his head to the side, avoiding his gaze. But Xu Qichen grabbed his shoulder with his hand, and leaned close, “Dr. Su, you don’t look very happy?”
He did not reply.
“Why aren’t you speaking?” Xu Qichen tilted his head and stared at him, his eyes full of triumphant challenge, “Dr. Su, are you angry?”
Su Lin let go of his hand, wanting to step back a little, creating some distance, but Xu Qichen refused to let that happen. So he jumped up to him, “Dr. Su, help me, I still can’t walk on this leg.”
Su Lin blurted out, “Weren’t you walking fine just now?”
“You saw me?” Xu Qichen laughed, “How long had you been standing outside?”
Su Lin didn’t answer, Xu Qichen stepped forward and grabbed his wrist, “Help me, my leg is a little uncomfortable after all that walking.”
He didn’t reply, so Xu Qichen took that as acquiescence. Just like that, Xu Qichen hopped beside Su Lin all the way to the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor.
The two stood side by side. In the light reflected by the walls of the elevator, Xu Qichen secretly observed Su Lin’s face, his expression seemed to be a little more relaxed than before, but given Su Lin’s personality, it was only a change from negative 50 degrees to negative 30 degrees. It was still very cold.
Xu Qichen looked up and glanced at the red numbers counting down.
6.
He turned around slightly, leaned his back against the side wall of the elevator and faced Su Lin, looking at his profile.
5.
“Dr. Su, look at me.”
4.
Upon hearing his name, Su Lin subconsciously turned to look at him.
3.
Xu Qichen reached out and grabbed the lanyard hanging by Su Lin’s neck.
2.
Su Lin’s body was suddenly pulled towards Xu Qichen, the distance between them shortened suddenly, and Xu Qichen’s breath lightly fell on his cheek.
1.
The feeling of weightlessness while in descent made him feel light-headed while his heart beat faster. Xu Qichen smiled, and quickly gave him a peck on his lips. Then he put his hands on Su Lin’s shoulders, straightened his body and turned him to face the elevator door.
Deed done, he quickly turned to face the door himself, leaning his shoulder against the elevator wall.
The next moment, the door slowly slid open, revealing several doctors in white coats outside.
Xu Qichen stepped out first. The doctors all greeted Su Lin warmly.
“Hey Dr. Su, clocking out?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Xu Qichen lifted his injured right leg slightly, stretched forward a bit, extending his left hand slightly to keep his balance. The posture made him look childish and adorable.
The windows on the first floor of the hospital were very high, letting the spring light slant in from upper right corner and hitting Xu Qichen’s face, blurring his features slightly.
Su Lin walked over. Though he didn’t reach out, he still stood beside him.
Since that day, Xu Qichen would go to the hospital for rehabilitation, but he would not go to the orthopedics department to find Su Lin, instead he would directly go to the rehabilitation department for training.
Even Dr. Wang of the orthopedics department began to joke, “Xiao Lu is really cute. He has become one with the doctors and nurses of the rehabilitation department in just a few days.”
“Do you know, Xiao Su, I had lunch with Xiao Zhang from the rehabilitation department in the hospital canteen two days ago. He kept talking to me about Xiao Lu, saying that he was good and serious. It looks like this guy is going to treat our Third Hospital as his own home. If all the patients in the world are like this, our job would become easy!”
Seeing Su Lin sitting at his desk, fidgeting with his ball-point pen and staring at the withering asparagus on the table, Dr. Wang said, “By the way, he hasn’t come to our department recently. He used to come here several times a day asking for you. What happened?” Then Dr. Wang began to laugh, “Xiao Su, could it be that you’ve lost favor?”
The pen in his hand fell onto the table with a snap.
Dr. Wang looked at his face and said, “Xiao Su, have you been too tired recently? Why do you seem a little angry? Why don’t you go and see Director Li from the Internal Medicine Department?”
“I’m fine,” Su Lin poured himself a glass of water and downed it in one go to calm himself down.
“You young people are always so stressed, you don’t get out enough,” Dr. Wang drank from his thermos of herbal tea. “You should play more with cheerful children like Xiao Lu.”
Su Lin’s mind was currently replaying the scene he saw last time in the rehabilitation room, in a loop, so he could not hear anything Dr. Wang was saying.
That guy invited himself into his house.
Fed his blood to him.
Said he liked him.
And even kissed him in the lift.
Then he just ran off without a word, without a backward glance.
Su Lin sighed. He felt that his brain had become a narrow little house, in which there was a naughty cat. Its fleshy paws were playing with a ball of wool, scratching and circling. The ball of wool became more and more messy, and finally became a big jumble that coud not be made sense of.
However, the lovely troublemaker only gave a silent meow, jumped out of the window of the small house and disappeared without a trace.
After training, Xu Qichen came out of the hospital and recalled that Su Lin had no surgery today, so he would probably go home directly after work in the afternoon. After thinking about it, he decided to sneak into his home after buying some groceries to cook a meal, and to give him a surprise.
As he walked, he was thinking about the plot line of the world. Most of the time, he adhered to the original plot, but there were always some small details that would change, leading to his uncertainty about whether the overall plot line had changed or not.
According to the original story, he would encounter a car accident this month, be sent to the hospital by passers-by and be declared an invalid after the rescue, leading to Su Lin embracing him finally.
Thinking of the car accident, Xu Qichen still had a deep shadow in his heart. When he had written it, he was not really immersed in the character Lu Xuan, so he dared to write the plot of the car accident. But now, he was afraid.
While deep in his thoughts, he had unconsciously walked to the nearby subway station. He bought a bag of potato chips at the vending machine. Waiting for the subway, he tore it open and ate a couple of pieces. When the door of the carriage opened, he rolled up the bag’s mouth and walked in.
There were not too many people in the subway at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Xu Qichen found a seat and put on his earphones. When there were no acquaintances around, he could be himself, listening to music in silence, without wearing Lu Xuan’s ever-present smile on his face.
When the subway arrived at the second station, the door of the carriage opened, and a little girl in school uniform came in. She looked like a fifth- or sixth-grader of primary school. The school uniform she was wearing was very cute, and was similar to the uniform in Japan. It was a green skirt with a white coat. Xu Qichen was a little envious. After all, his school uniform in primary school was too ugly to look straight at.
*****
The little girl sat in a small empty seat diagonally opposite him, and on her right was an aunt who was about 50 years old and was busy looking down at her mobile phone. Then a man in his thirties wearing an old suit came up and sat down on the girl’s left side.
The little girl was sandwiched in the middle. She put her hands on her knees, and stared at the route map on the subway with round eyes.
Xu Qichen was bored. He looked down at the packaging text on the potato chips, and then glanced at his leg that was healing. When he looked up to read the news broadcast on the subway, he found that the little girl had shifted so she was invading the aunt’s personal space. The aunt was a little plump, and was even more upset when squeezed by the little girl. She looked down and clicked her tongue.
Xu Qichen frowned slightly, and found that there was a gap of three or four centimeters between the girl and the man. There had been no gap when he sat down just now. He turned off the music, opened the camera and began to record, while staring intently at his mobile phone screen.
On the screen, the man’s hand crept out quietly, like a mouse, waiting for an opportunity to move in the dark. While everyone was not paying attention, he rubbed against the little girl’s leg. The little girl moved her leg, and the man took it back. It was not long before his hand shot out again, but this time his hand quietly went around the back and squeezed into the back of the little girl.
“Xiao Ya,” Xu Qichen suddenly spoke to the little girl, raising his voice. The little girl’s shoulder shook and looked at him. Xu Qichen stood up with a crutch and put the potato chips in his hand into her arms. “Exchange seats with your brother. You can see the TV from here.”
The girl, who had been casually given a random name, grabbed the bag of chips and stared at Xu Qichen.
“Move, move, don’t you always want to watch the TV?”
The girl then obediently took his seat.
Xu Qichen sat in the little girl’s seat, and the aunt beside him rolled her eyes at him impatiently. “It was tight enough with a little girl, and now there is a disabled person taking the seat.”
“Auntie, a kind-hearted person like you, the Bodhisattva will certainly protect you from disasters in your life and never let you get injured or ill,” Xu Qichen said with a smile, and turned to look at the man. “Sir, please move over a little, there’s not enough space here. You can also pick up your suitcase.”
The man pursed his lips, took down the bag in his left hand and put it on his leg with an ugly face, looking at Xu Qichen with displeased eyes.
Xu Qichen leaned back in the chair, and the aunt next to him wore her earphones to continue watching the TV dramas. He sat quietly in the middle for a while, and then spoke in a very soft voice.
“I advise you not to do such a thing again.”
The man was stunned and his face changed. “You…”
“Do you really think that no one will care about such behaviour? As long as you stand in the sun, you will have countless eyes staring at you. I don’t care what kind of morbid purpose you have, but I must tell you that you can go to jail for indecent behaviour towards children. I have taken pictures of what you just did, so don’t think you can muddle through with luck.”
Xu Qichen looked into his eyes. Although he still kept a smile on his face, every word he said was like a sharp blade to the man. “And don’t even think about using an excuse like ‘It’s no different from having ordinary kinks’. You are committing a crime.”
The man’s clenched fists shook, Xu Qichen didn’t say anything more. He smiled reassuringly at the little girl on the opposite side.
At another stop, the little girl stood up from her seat and looked at Xu Qichen. Xu Qichen also stood up and left the carriage behind the little girl.
As soon as he got out of the carriage, Xu Qichen went to the little girl. He wanted to squat down, but his leg was injured, so he could only bend slightly to speak to her. “You must have been very frightened.”
The girl nodded.
“If something like this happens again, you should get away as soon as possible, get off to find the uncle and aunt in uniform at the station, and ask them for help.” Seeing the little girl listening quietly, Xu Qichen said again, “After you go home, you must tell your mother about it. Then ask her, what parts of your body can’t be touched by others, understand?”
The girl nodded obediently.
Xu Qichen smiled at her and then took the potato chip bag she was holding.
“And finally, you must never eat anything a stranger gives you, even if they look like a good guy.”
Watching the little girl leave, Xu Qichen followed her slowly at a distance of several meters, and watched the little girl walk to the downstairs of her house. She hesitated to climb several steps. Xu Qichen was about to turn back, and heard her clattering footsteps.
He turned around to find that the girl had ran to him. “Gege, thank you.”
Xu Qichen smiled, “You’re welcome. Remember what I told you.”
She nodded vigorously, then asked, “Gege, why did you help me?”
Her tone of questioning was naive, and it was also a little unexpected to Xu Qichen. Xu Qichen stood up straight and the sun blinded him.
“Because… I saw someone had helped others like this before. If he were here today, he would have stepped forward.”
After seeing the little girl off, Xu Qichen walked out of this neighborhood. This area was far from Su Lin’s house, and Xu Qichen was not very familiar with it. He stood at the intersection and thought about it, but decided to take a taxi back to school, and then go to the hospital to meet Su Lin the next day.
*****
On Friday morning, Su Lin had a meeting with his colleagues. After the meeting, he went back to his office for out-patient consultations.
Not long after he sat down, he found the medical record book on his desk. He opened it and saw that it was empty and there were no appointments for today. He put the medical record book aside, only to find that there was a small Post-it note on the table covered by the medical record book just now, with a line of words written on it.
[Good morning Dr. Su. Don’t remove me~]
Su Lin stared at the beautifully-written words for a while, then decisively removed the post-it. Unexpectedly, he found another one below.
[Dr. Su, I’ll be waiting for you at the Rehabilitation Centre. (There’s nothing on the next piece~)]
What was this about… Su Lin frowned habitually, and simply tore off this one, but his hand holding the discarded post-it note was paused in the air.
He was slightly stunned, and the frown that he had originally wrinkled was also involuntarily relaxed.
The next piece, which was supposed to be empty, also had some words on it.
[I like you.]
He muttered to himself and threw the post-its in his hand in the bin, then looked again at the one that was still on the desk. He gently removed it, open his drawer, and kept it in a thick medical book.
At the end of the morning’s consultation, Su Lin got up and left the department. He stood at the door and hesitated for a moment. The doctor next door saw him, “Xiao Su, taking a break?”
Su Lin nodded.
“Shall we eat together?”
“I’m not hungry, I’m just going for a walk.”
Although he called it a walk, he unconsciously turned to the rehabilitation department. Since it was noon, the staff of the rehabilitation department had gone out to eat and rest. Su Lin walked to the door of the training room and saw Xu Qichen walking slowly along the bar alone. He did not dare to exert force on his right leg, only lifting it a centimeter or two and walking limping.
Su Lin looked thoughtfully until Xu Qichen turned around and found him. A smile immediately appeared on his face. “Dr. Su, you came.” He walked slowly to Su Lin without a crutch, “I thought you weren’t coming.”
Su Lin face remained expressionless, “You’re healing well.”
Xu Qichen suddenly said, “Excuse me for a moment.”
Su Lin thought he wanted to borrow his arm to lean on, but Xu Qichen instead lifted his right foot and rested it on his leather shoe.
Xu Qichen felt like he was stroking the whiskers of a tiger. He wondered if he had gone too far. However, he was surprised to find that Su Lin didn’t react negatively, and he couldn’t help feeling happy.
“Dr. Su, did you see my notes?”
Su Lin murmured, “I saw.”
Xu Qichen’s eyes brightened, “How many?”
Su Lin replied, “One.”
The small flame in Xu Qichen’s eyes immediately dimmed, “Why did you only see one? What about the two below?”
“I tore it all off together.”
Xu Qichen sighed, “Well, then you missed something precious.” Then he pulled Su Lin’s arm and said, “Dr. Su, I’m hungry. Let’s have lunch.”
Su Lin helped him to the exit, “My lunch break is very short.”
“Then let’s go to the convenience store. I want to have a rice ball.” After saying this, Xu Qichen asked deliberately, “Dr. Su, are you hungry?”
Su Lin did not even look at him, “No.”
Xu Qichen laughed, “It’s great being you, you only have to eat once a week.”
After buying a pile of food from the convenience store, Xu Qichen took a seat in the artificial lawn behind the store to eat.
This piece of lawn was surrounded by high and low bushes. At noon, there was almost no one nearby. Xu Qichen sat on the ground. The sun made him warm. He stretched out his legs and put a pile of delicious food in the middle.
“This is mine.” He took out a tuna rice ball and put it on the left, then placed a lemonade on the right. “This is yours.”
Su Lin did not even glance at it, “I’m not thirsty.”
Xu Qichen carried on as if he heard nothing, picking up a chocolate roll, “This is mine,” he put it on the left. Then he put a lemon flavoured lollipop on the right, “This is yours.”
Su Lin: “…”
He was splitting perfectly fine food as if it was stolen loot.
Xu Qichen took out two boxes of ice cream, looked at the package, and put one of them in Su Lin’s hand. “This is also for you.”
“I don’t like this flavour.”
Xu Qichen glanced at him and looked at him sideways with his hands on the lawn. “Really?”
Su Lin also looked at him calmly. “Yes.”
Xu Qichen couldn’t help chuckling, “Then, Dr. Su, do you like me?”
Su Lin was obviously surprised by this question, and his calm eyes flashed, avoiding the question. He lowered his head and opened the ice cream package. He bit open the package of the spoon, and pretended to calmly scoop a spoonful into his mouth to cover up the awkwardness of the moment.
Xu Qichen looked at him quietly and found the deeply hidden fangs. Su Lin never smiled, so he seldom got the chance to see this sharp tooth.
Xu Qichen lowered his head and unwrapped the rice ball in his hand, but he always unwrapped it wrong, leaving the seaweed and plastic package in a mess.
He felt discouraged, but he did not know whether it was due to the rice ball, or the ungiven answer.
After putting the rice ball back into the bag, Xu Qichen leaned over and touched Su Lin’s shoulder. His warm and soft breath seemed to spray on Su Lin’s cold neck.
“Dr. Su.”
Hearing his name called, Su Lin subconsciously turned his head, and their noses almost bumped.
The wind in April was soft, and the cherry blossom petals seemed to have melted in it, diluting the afternoon sun into a light honey syrup, brushing Xu Qichen’s slightly raised face bit by bit. When their eyes met, his eyes seemed to be filled with the spring air of ignorance, innocence, temptation, and reverie all mixed in one.
He blinked slowly and his lips opened slightly unconsciously.
His voice was light and soft.
“I want to try your ice cream.”
TN: Hi, I’m so sorry for the long gaps between updates! Life has been really busy for me lately, and I expect this busy-ness to go on for another month or so at least, so I’ll apologise in advance as well >-< I’ll still be updating this novel, just not weekly.
Thank you for translating this ♥
thanks for the chapter~