Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
The man’s voice carried something, falling like cold, hard iron smashing to the ground.
Jiang Se lifted her eyes, her misty, tearful gaze losing its haze, regaining most of her clarity.
The palm-sized little face was deathly pale, making her pupils look especially dark.
At this moment those pitch-black eyes were looking back at him.
Lu Huaiyan thought she was going to say something, but she only said lightly, “Your suit jacket is still in the viewing pavilion outside the warm greenhouse.”
Earlier her consciousness had been blurred, the only bit of will she had used to resist the drug’s effect, so she naturally hadn’t noticed that he was only wearing a shirt.
On such a cold snowy day, and in the deep night, even Jiang Se, wrapped in a thick coat, felt cold, let alone him.
Her voice was weaker than her complexion, light and soft, like a wisp of smoke that would scatter with one stir.
But Lu Huaiyan heard clearly.
He looked at her for a while, then asked without pain or itch, “Do you want me to praise you for having a conscience?”
“Go ahead.” Jiang Se lifted her chin slightly toward the foot of the bed, saying, “After praising me, if you feel cold, you can sit over there and share a quilt with me.”
Before leaving, the nurse had brought Jiang Se a clean cotton quilt and carefully covered her legs.
This ward was an exclusive single room, the bed was big, the quilt was big, enough for two people.
Lu Huaiyan lifted his eyelids to look at her.
A figure swayed past the corridor outside, vague voices drifting by with the passing shadow, making the ward seem even more silent.
He said faintly, “I’m not cold, next time.”
Jiang Se half-closed her eyes, no longer continuing her kindness, nor pondering the meaning of that “next time.”
She leaned against the back pillow and asked, “How did you find your way there?”
“I went to the viewing pavilion and saw my suit jacket.” Lu Huaiyan looked at her. “I knew you wouldn’t casually throw my jacket outdoors.”
So he guessed something must have happened to her. While walking back along the path, he happened to run into Aunt Zhang hurrying out of the restroom. After stopping her to ask, he learned Jiang Se had run into trouble.
Jiang Se said, “The one who drugged me wasn’t Aunt Zhang.”
“I know. If you didn’t trust her, you wouldn’t have let her go back to the banquet hall to find your little aunt. So Jiang Se—”
The man’s heavy gaze pressed down on her, but his voice was calm. “Why didn’t you look for me then? Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was waiting for your call. In a moment like that, you didn’t even think of me at all, did you?”
Jiang Se’s eyelashes lowered. She didn’t speak.
Lu Huaiyan’s legs were long; even sitting with his legs open on the chair, there was still a distance from the bed.
Maybe he felt this distance was unnecessary. After asking, he stood up, and the chair, pulled by its wheels, rolled back with a clatter.
The light dimmed. He sat down beside her, the soft white quilt sinking a few folds.
Lu Huaiyan raised his hand and gripped her chin, leaning in. Looking into her eyes, he asked, word by word, “Weren’t you planning to use me? Your way of using people is really terrible.”
“Sese,” he called her nickname in a low, deep voice, “do you want me to teach you how to use me, use Lu Huaiyan?”
The emotions he had held down the entire way slowly leaked out through his especially low voice.
The calm on his face, like a storm about to break, seemed ready to tear open the next moment.
The two were extremely close, breaths tangled, air mingling.
Jiang Se didn’t avoid his pressing gaze, nor did she retreat.
Separated only by the cold glint on his glasses, two pairs of similarly colored eyes quietly stared at each other, neither speaking.
No one knew how much time passed before Jiang Se suddenly let out a soft laugh, tilting her head to look at him, a faint mocking curl lifting at her eyes and brows.
“In a moment like that, why would I look for you?”
“On what grounds should I look for you, Lu Huaiyan?”
“On your momentary urge to conquer me, or that shallow bit of liking?”
Her mood tonight was completely ruined, like a balloon pumped to the extreme. The hostility buried deep in her flesh and blood was swelling, impatiently seeking an outlet to slowly leak out.
Lu Huaiyan seemed to see again those sharp edges hidden in her bones.
“You ask me on what grounds,” the man’s tone was still unruffled by the eight winds. He said in a low, steady voice, “just on the grounds that every time in a moment like that, I’m the one who finds you first.”
Jiang Se’s eyelashes trembled.
By her ear, those two lines rang again—
“Cen Se, it’s me.”
“Jiang Se, it’s me.”
She blinked, and the aggressive mockery in her brows and eyes disappeared in an instant.
Lu Huaiyan kept looking at her, ink-dark eyes seeming to burn with a hidden fire.
It felt like something in the air was sticking together, until a vibration from the phone finally shattered the dead silence.
It was Jiang Se’s phone on the bed.
Lu Huaiyan lowered his gaze and glanced at the caller, then released her. “Your little aunt.”
Those unspoken emotions settled down at once.
Jiang Se picked up the phone with her uninjured hand and calmly answered, “Little Aunt.”
Just as she answered, a man in a jacket happened to walk past the window, knocked on the door outside, and called quietly, “Lu Huaiyan.”
As if recognizing who it was, Lu Huaiyan glanced at Jiang Se, picked up the test report on the table, and walked out of the ward.
Jiang Se lifted her eyes toward the door that had closed and said mildly, “I’m fine. I reacted in time. There’s no major problem anymore.”
Her voice was still weak. After finishing one sentence, she paused, then continued, “I’ve already reported it to the police on my side. Let me guess, Chairman Cen and Mrs. Ji want to smooth things over again, burying this matter quietly? After all, at their Cen family’s banquet, how could a scandal like the former foster daughter being drugged be allowed to happen.”
Cen Mingshu didn’t deny it, her tone dark as water. “Don’t worry. With me here, I won’t let this go.”
Jiang Se lowered her eyes and smiled lightly. “You’re just a marginal figure in the Cen family. If the Chairman and Mrs. Ji don’t cooperate, even if you tear your face with them, it won’t matter. Back when I was still their daughter, they didn’t choose me. Now that I’m not even their daughter anymore, there’s even less reason for them to stand up for me.”
Those calm, airy words were like a bucket of cold water instantly extinguishing the anger burning in Cen Mingshu’s heart.
“I’ll go talk to them right now. Sese, this time Little Aunt is here, Little Aunt is right here. If they won’t stand up for you, Little Aunt will stand up for you. You wait, I’ll send someone over to pick you up right away.”
Jiang Se stared at a crease on the blanket, and said: “No need to waste your breath on them, and no need to come pick me up, I still have to do a written statement at the hospital in a bit. Tonight, I won’t go to your place.”
Cen Mingshu frowned: “Don’t you hate hospitals?”
Jiang Se pressed her lips. She indeed hated hospitals very much.
That pungent smell of disinfectant, that glaring white light, that whole suffocating white.
Back then it was also in this hospital wasn’t it.
This teaching hospital funded by the Lu family to tackle difficult and rare diseases had the best privacy in Beicheng.
After she was rescued, Lu Huaiyan had sent her here.
However, once she returned here.
That anger, that unvented anger surged in her flesh like a beastly flood breaking its dam.
The violent emotions churned inside her weak body, yet Jiang Se’s expression remained calm, her breathing didn’t even fluctuate.
She reached out to smooth the crease on the blanket, and said to Cen Mingshu with a smile: “Little Aunt, I’m no longer who I was at sixteen. Some things, I can stand up for myself.”
–
The police officer who came to take Jiang Se’s statement had the surname Mo, and was an old acquaintance of Lu Huaiyan’s.
When Lu Huaiyan was eight or nine, the old man had thrown him into a military camp to train for a while. The old man had arranged a devil-like instructor specifically for him, and Mo Jichen was that instructor’s son.
This floor was the hospital’s exclusive VIP ward area, and the two stood in the stairwell talking.
Mo Jichen had one hand in his jacket pocket, lazily teasing: “Dragging me out to work late at night, and on New Year’s Eve no less, do you really think everyone’s like you, not needing to date?”
Lu Huaiyan ignored him, handed over the test results, “What did the Cen family say?”
Mo Jichen pulled his hand from his pocket, took the test sheet, skimmed it roughly.
“The Cen family banquet hasn’t even ended, the hosts won’t let my people in at all. That mansion’s packed with a hundred or so people, all of them people with status. It’s really not easy to investigate in there. Speaking of which, what’s the girl who got drugged to you? You know very well this kind of case isn’t even my jurisdiction, yet you stir up a whole fuss to call me over? Don’t tell me she has nothing to do with you.”
Lu Huaiyan said faintly: “Someone I want to protect.”
“Someone you want to protect?” Mo Jichen half–joked, “Don’t tell me it’s someone you like?”
Lu Huaiyan didn’t respond, but didn’t deny it either.
This attitude more or less carried a sense of default.
Mo Jichen never expected his casual nonsense to hit the mark. He lifted his eyes in surprise, like seeing a ghost: “You can like someone?”
Catching Lu Huaiyan’s glance, he snorted: “Fine then, I’ll follow up on the case. I’ll go get a statement from your girl first.”
When Lu Huaiyan brought him to the ward, Jiang Se had already ended her call.
Most of the IV fluid had dripped, and her demeanor had gradually returned to normal, calm, composed, elegant.
But when Lu Huaiyan stepped into the ward he narrowed his eyes a bit, tilted his head slightly, staring at her without looking away.
Mo Jichen took out his police ID, introduced himself briefly, then began asking questions, taking out pen and paper to record.
They were all standard routine questions. Near the end, he lifted his eyes and sized up Jiang Se.
This girl was very different from the victims he’d encountered.
Too calm, and her thoughts were extremely organized.
By right, it had only been a little over three hours since she was drugged. Even if the drug’s effects had worn off, her thinking shouldn’t be this precise and clear.
He clicked the pen, smiled and asked: “Miss Jiang, how are you able to stay this calm? Not going to lie, I’ve met quite a few victims with similar experiences to yours, and very few can respond like you, so calmly, like you’re not afraid at all.”
Jiang Se looked at Mo Jichen, curved her lips slightly, and said: “When I was sixteen I was kidnapped, probably because of that experience, I’m a bit braver than others, and also have some experience handling things.”
Kidnapped?
Mo Jichen’s eyes moved, “So you’re a survivor of a kidnapping case. Were the kidnappers who took you back then all arrested?”
“They all died.” Basically.
All died?
一 kidnapping case where the victim survives, but all of the kidnappers die.
Pretty rare.
A case like that, he shouldn’t have not heard of it.
Mo Jichen opened his mouth, wanting to ask something more, but Lu Huaiyan happened to look at him just then, a cold gleam sliding across the gold-frame glasses.
Afraid he’d stir up the girl’s trauma?
Tch, fine, he wouldn’t ask. He could just check once he got back to the bureau.
Mo Jichen put away his pen, and said: “Thank you, Miss Jiang, please rest well. I’ll contact you again when the case has updates.”
After he finished speaking he sensibly got up, and before leaving, cast Lu Huaiyan a meaningful look.
The ward quieted for a moment.
Jiang Se had two missed calls on her phone: one from Cen Li while she was on the way to the hospital, and the other from Fu Yun, the call that rang when Lu Huaiyan appeared outside the restroom door.
But she didn’t want to deal with any of them; best if no one bothered her.
Exiting the call log, she looked up at Lu Huaiyan: “Come here.”
Lu Huaiyan looked at her, then stepped to the bedside, standing beside her.
Jiang Se said again: “Bend down a little.”
Lu Huaiyan did as told, slowly bending down, his gaze fixed on her, watching as she lifted the blanket, shifted from sitting to kneeling. Then with the hand that had the IV needle, she lifted his collar where he had undone one button, bringing her nose close.
She closed her eyes, almost greedily drawing in that faint agarwood scent on him.
Sick, twisted.
When her cool nose brushed past the pulse on his neck, Lu Huaiyan’s body stiffened for a moment.
From this angle he couldn’t see her eyes. Just as he was about to lower his head to look, her cold nose-tip had already followed his tightened jawline up to his ear.
“Take me away right now, I don’t want to stay in the hospital, and I don’t want to be found by anyone.”
–
Snow was falling heavily.
A black sedan sped into the endless blizzard as fast as lightning.
When returning to Beicheng, Lu Huaiyan usually stayed at Ruidu Huafu, but considering that Yase* was noisy and didn’t know his own strength, afraid it would hurt Jiang Se, he simply brought her to the riverside villa.
* not sure why name changed for dog here
By the time they entered the living room from the garage door, it was already past three in the morning.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the New Year’s fireworks were still loud and magnificent, blasting bright light across the sky.
Jiang Se stood barefoot in the middle of the living room. The phone inside her coat kept vibrating nonstop. She couldn’t be bothered to look at it. Her hand slipped into her pocket and directly turned it off. After that, she took off her coat and walked to the window to watch the fireworks.
Lu Huaiyan watched her through the reflection on the window glass.
She was still wearing that gray-blue evening dress. Her beautifully shaped shoulders and neck were snow-white like jade, her waist cinched extremely narrow, and the skirt hem like a beautiful fishtail. Beneath the fishtail was an even more beautiful pair of jade-like feet.
Like a mermaid walking out of the river at night.
Jiang Se watched for a while, then lost interest. From the window, she met Lu Huaiyan’s gaze and said: “I want to shower.”
Lu Huaiyan lifted his chin toward the staircase beside them, “The bedrooms are on the second floor, pick any room you like. I need to make a phone call first.”
Saying that, he paused, turned, and took out a pair of brand-new indoor slippers from the shoe cabinet. He walked over and set the shoes in front of her, saying: “Make do with these for now, someone will bring shoes in your size later. Can you walk up by yourself?”
They were men’s slippers, very big. When her feet slipped inside, it looked like a child secretly wearing an adult’s shoes.
Jiang Se nodded and slowly walked toward the stairs.
Though the shoes didn’t fit, her footsteps remained light. When she reached the small landing at the turn, she slowed, resting a hand on the railing, lightly glancing toward the entryway.
The man stood tall and upright in the warm entryway light, his gaze fixed on her, his slightly turned face half in light, half in shadow.
The glance she cast was quickly caught by him.
After a brief moment of eye contact, Jiang Se turned her face away and continued going up.
Lu Huaiyan only withdrew his gaze when she reached the second floor and he heard her turn on the light. He took out his phone and made calls. By the time he finished several of them, nearly twenty minutes had passed.
He raised his wrist to check his watch, calculated the time, and walked toward the entryway. Not long after, the doorbell rang.
Jiang Se heard the noise downstairs, but didn’t respond, focusing instead on removing the accessories in her hair. Because her right hand was wrapped in gauze and couldn’t move, and her whole body lacked strength, her movements were far from efficient.
When Lu Huaiyan came in, she was struggling with the pearl earring on her earlobe.
Her injured hand was braced on the marble vanity, her body leaning forward, her pale face slightly turned as she tried to remove the right earring using the mirror.
Her face was angled toward the bathroom door, her shoulders to her waist and hips forming a graceful curve.
Lu Huaiyan was holding the gift bag that had just been delivered. Leaning against the bathroom doorway, eyelids lowered, he watched her. If she didn’t speak, he wouldn’t step inside.
He thought that with her stubborn personality, she’d at least struggle another three to five minutes before asking for help.
Unexpectedly, the moment she caught his reflection in the mirror, she took the initiative to speak: “Help me?”
From the mirror, Lu Huaiyan met her gaze. Placing the gift bag with skincare and clean clothes on the vanity, he cooperatively walked over to remove her earrings.
He had seen this pair before. On the day at the Tongcheng teahouse when they discussed the deal, she’d been wearing these very pearl earrings.
Her earlobe, soft as white jade, had already turned red from her earlier struggling.
Like someone had pinched it, or like someone had sucked on it.
Lu Huaiyan leaned slightly, the rough pad of his finger holding the soft jade-like lobe as he removed the clasp. His long fingers gripped the pearl while slowly pulling the stud out from her ear hole.
Jiang Se watched the mirror the whole time. As the earring was slowly pulled out, her eyelashes trembled almost imperceptibly.
The feeling was as if a beam of blazing sunlight shone precisely into her ear hole.
In the mirror, the man’s gaze was focused, his movements equally focused.
His cold and deep features took on a pale, porcelain-like sheen under the dim bathroom light. A few strands of hair dampened by snow clung to his forehead, his hair color close to his eye color, black like the night sea.
Jiang Se very untimely remembered something Guo Qian once said: Lu Huaiyan, whether it’s his face or his body, is exactly the type women most want to conquer.
Lu Huaiyan’s long fingers toyed with the pearl stud on his fingertip. After setting it down, he propped one hand on the vanity, looking at Jiang Se in the mirror, and asked: “Anything else you need help with?”
His low voice sounded like it had been ground through gravel.
Jiang Se said: “The zipper on my dress, help me pull it.”
Lu Huaiyan looked at her, his gaze shifting to her slender back. The gray-blue fabric clung to her seductive curves like a second skin. Her shoulder blades were hidden beneath it, covered by the dark, fluffy hair he had just moved aside.
He lifted his hand, gently brushing aside her hair, his fingers gripping the zipper head as he pulled it down along the line of her spine to the rise of her hips.
The tearing sound of the zipper made his mind sway.
He suddenly remembered the image of a long train cutting through salt-white snowfields, it should be cold, and yet it should be hot.
The slender metal tab between his fingertips instantly felt scorching.
The moment he let go of the zipper, Jiang Se’s calm, rippleless voice sounded again in the enclosed space.
“Continue, the bra clasp.”
Her cool voice had barely fallen when Lu Huaiyan slowly lifted his eyes, staring at the girl in the mirror.
Her evening dress cinched her waist tightly. Even with the zipper undone, only a small portion of fabric slid down. But that small shift already revealed a glimpse of lace hidden deeper inside and the ice-capped peaks beneath.
Lu Huaiyan’s gaze didn’t move downward, always fixed on the mirror, fixed on Jiang Se’s eyes.
Jiang Se seemed to have waited enough to be a little impatient, urging in a calm voice: “Hurry up, I can’t undo it with one hand.”
Lu Huaiyan’s jaw tightened for a moment, then he lifted his left hand and unhooked the four hooks on that row of clasps one by one.
He didn’t look at her back or anywhere else, his gaze always stayed in her eyes. When the clasp came undone with a “tah”, Jiang Se’s lashes didn’t even twitch half a bit.
“What else?” he asked, his voice without ripples, “where else do you want me to undo?”
“That’s it.” Jiang Se’s lips lifted a little smile, “I’ll do the rest myself.”
Whether intentionally or not, the room Jiang Se chose was the master bedroom, and that bathroom was the one Lu Huaiyan was used to.
When the door quietly closed, he stood outside the door until he heard the sound of trickling water inside, then lifted his foot and went to the guest bedroom next door.
Lu Huaiyan took a cold shower.
When he finished and came out, the sound of water at the master bedroom’s side still hadn’t stopped.
He turned and went to the study. Passing the loft beside the stairs, his steps paused slightly, and he took a bottle of cold water from the mini fridge.
A pile of messages needed handling on his phone. Mo Jichen had sent him a string of voice notes, all about work, except the last sentence which touched a bit of personal business: [Heard you took Miss Jiang away? Not that I want to say it, but even if the medicine’s worn off, the girl must still be weak right now. Be a decent human, yeah? Don’t bully her.]
Bully?
Lu Huaiyan gave a low laugh.
Between him and her, who exactly was bullying whom?
Half an hour later, Lu Huaiyan set down the phone and walked toward the master bedroom.
There was no one in the bathroom anymore, steam billowing, white everywhere.
The gray-blue haute couture gown had been tossed carelessly into the wicker basket, and on top of it lay two pieces of black lace fabric.
The gift bag with clothes on the marble vanity hadn’t been opened, but one of the robes hanging in the bathroom was missing.
—
Lu Huaiyan always preferred low-saturation cool tones.
No matter which house it was, the base colors were always cool, black-gray-white. When Jiang Se turned on the closet’s wall light, she wasn’t surprised at all to see rows of black and gray clothes.
The robe she wore, long enough to drag on the floor, was also black. Lifting a hand to gather the loose collar, Jiang Se walked toward the section where T-shirts hung.
By the time the man’s footsteps stopped at the closet doorway, Jiang Se had already chosen the T-shirt she wanted to wear.
She didn’t turn to look at Lu Huaiyan. Lifting her hand, she took down a black tee and said unhurriedly: “Borrowing an item of clothing. I don’t want to wear anything unwashed.”
Lu Huaiyan didn’t reply. Leaning at the doorway for a while, he then tossed the gift bag in his hand aside, stepped toward her, naturally took the hanger from her hand and hung it back up, then grabbed her right hand and examined it.
Under the hazy wall light, he looked for quite a while before lifting his head and saying: “It didn’t get wet?”
Jiang Se made a sound of acknowledgment, then looked him over from head to toe: “You’re going out?”
He had showered and changed into a new shirt and suit pants, obviously going out.
Lu Huaiyan answered with an ‘en’: “Going to the Cen house to get the coat you left there.”
As he said this, he lifted his eyelids to look at her, touched the dripping ends of her hair, and asked, “Didn’t find the hair dryer?”
Jiang Se had washed her hair but hadn’t dried it. Her hair clung damp to her skin, droplets falling continuously, some absorbed by the robe, some sliding along her white skin.
“Didn’t feel like looking.” The heating in the house was turned up; she truly didn’t feel like searching.
Lu Huaiyan’s gaze swept past the few water droplets hanging at her collarbone, and he said, “Wait,” before walking out of the dressing room.
When he came back, he was holding a black hair dryer.
Warm wind whooshed out of the nozzle, steam evaporated, and his distinct knuckles brushed over her scalp as they moved through her black hair again and again.
Jiang Se’s body was sensitive everywhere.
His fingertips were calloused, and the tingly sensation brought by his light movements combined with the warm air felt like wine fermenting.
Jiang Se didn’t look away, her dark pupils reflecting his sharply defined face. Lu Huaiyan would occasionally glance back at her, meeting her eyes for a breath or two before shifting his gaze again.
The man had patience, his movements unhurried, his force neither light nor heavy. When the last bit of dampness at her hair ends disappeared, he finally unplugged the dryer and set it down on the table where belts were kept.
Lu Huaiyan had dried her hair, but he hadn’t wiped away the droplets on her neck and collarbone.
With a “ka”, he unfastened the clasp of his watch and casually tossed the expensive diamond watch beside the hair dryer. Then he turned toward her, looking down at her from above.
Her freshly dried hair was fluffy and soft; her palm-sized face was buried inside it like a piece of white jade sunk into black ink.
The girl slightly tilted her face up, directly looking back at him.
Her pupils were very dark, the kind of destructive black like the mouth of a gun, the same he had seen before.
When she slid the grinding wheel to leave Cao Liang a cigarette burn at the club, when she saw Jiang Tang’s bloodied palm on the twenty-seventh floor of the Junyue, and hours ago, when she held a shard of broken glass to open the door for him.
And now.
Wearing his robe, looking at him now.
Only now, the emotion hidden deep in her eyes was somewhat different.
Those previous times, her kind of destructive urge had been outward.
But now, it was inward.
She urgently needed to destroy something, wanted to find a crack in whatever bound her inside and vent it.
Lu Huaiyan placed both hands by her sides, leaned down, met her gaze, and said in a low voice: “Help me take off my glasses.”
