Shen Yue noticed the man’s condition wasn’t good. After asking a couple of times with no response, she gently nudged his face.
He wasn’t feverish.
Looking at the delicate, snow-white face before him, Sang Fan’s pupils trembled.
The thorny vines that had spread and constricted his heart moments ago had vanished, along with his frenzied thoughts.
He simply opened his eyes, greedily gazing at every subtle expression of Shen Yue.
Then, catching Shen Yue off guard, he embraced her legs, swaying slightly before steadying himself.
Sang Fan was tall, but now his firm, powerful arms tightly held her legs, like a heavily wounded, immensely burdened lion.
Shen Yue stood stunned for a moment before coming back to her senses. Her hands froze in place, unsure whether she should push him away.
Her slender, delicate fingers rested on his shoulders, gently pushing him twice, not with much force.
Just like her voice.
Very gentle.
“What’s wrong?”
After a long pause, Sang Fan finally raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, and he hadn’t let go. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, his expression laced with a barely perceptible wariness. He stared intently at the girl, his voice deep and hoarse, as if squeezed from his chest.
“C-can I hug you?”
Shen Yue gently refused, “No.”
Sang Fan immediately began to act erratically, like an ant thrown onto a hot pan, his entire body in a frantic, scorched scramble.
He couldn’t be rejected by the girl before him.
Rejection made his heart ache immensely.
“Why?” His distinct fingers irritably and forcefully clutched Shen Yue’s pants. Had Shen Yue not been slender and her pants tight, he might have torn them off.
The air seemed to be filled with flammable sparks, ready to explode at any moment.
“Why can’t I hug you?”
He didn’t seem to think it was wrong to ask for an intimate embrace upon their first meeting.
Shen Yue lowered her eyelashes, half-obscuring her dark, moist eyes. But her soft voice and the approachable aura emanating from her were almost irresistible.
Her strength was meager, as she lightly pushed Sang Fan’s shoulders.
“You just can’t.”
Her clear, gentle voice remained beautiful.
Soft enough to fill one’s heart.
However, to Sang Fan, it sounded jarring.
He unconsciously thought, why couldn’t he hug her? Then who would she let hug her?
Shen Yue’s pushing motion was like cotton laced with poisonous thorns, soft yet harboring deadly venom.
Sang Fan’s entire body went rigid as iron, as if his vital point had been grasped. When Shen Yue pushed again, he slowly let go like a rusty machine. His originally fierce eyes now looked at her with helplessness and panic.
As Shen Yue took a step back, almost instinctively, he wanted to cling to her, but Shen Yue’s gaze stopped him in his tracks.
Shen Yue seemed to have encountered a problem, her eyes lowering in confusion and bewilderment, looking down at the man sitting on the grass.
Her eyelashes quivered slightly. Her skin was so pale it seemed as though it could shatter at any moment.
She said, “You’re acting very strange.”
She meant his inexplicable behavior, and something else.
“This puts me in a difficult position.”
As she said this, Shen Yue was gentle and soft, showing no impatience, as if stating a fact.
He seemed to have displeased the girl.
Receiving this answer, Sang Fan felt a pang of bitterness in his throat. He felt it shouldn’t be this way. Countless grievances surged into his heart. His protruding Adam’s apple bobbed, and his dark pupils spread with crimson.
However, Shen Yue’s words also served as a wake-up call.
Indeed, the two of them were not familiar at all.
He didn’t even understand why he had lost composure to such an extent.
It was too messy.
Sang Fan stood up, brushing off the dirt from his clothes. When he looked up again, he had regained his cold, sharp demeanor.
He wasn’t a polite person, yet he now apologized courteously for his earlier loss of composure: “I’m sorry.”
Sang Fan was tall. It was fine when he was sitting on the ground, but as soon as he stood up, Shen Yue had to tilt her head to see his face.
“It’s alright.”
She was always gentle, yet carried a sense of distant, detached coolness.
She looked at the man before her, her expression undisturbed by his actions.
She said it was alright.
But Sang Fan didn’t want to hear that. He couldn’t help but wonder if she would say “it’s alright” with the same gentle expression to another stranger who acted like him, embracing her.
Sang Fan’s crimson, violent eyes feigned indifference, his voice hoarse, “My name is Sang Fan.”
Having given his name, Sang Fan left without looking back.
Shen Yue tilted her head, finding the man brimming with strangeness. She didn’t dwell on this small interlude.
—
The temperature during the summer solstice was always suffocatingly high, and also unpredictable, making it difficult to fathom.
Just days prior, the sun had been shining brightly, but on this day, it suddenly rained. It was a thunderstorm, with no warning. Raindrops pattered against the windows, creating unlovely sounds.
Shen Yue had been reading for a while, her eyes a little sore. Her phone was placed to the side.
Ding dong—
Her phone’s notification chime rang.
Shen Yue instinctively glanced at it, then tapped it open. It was just an advertisement push.
Her phone contacts were pitifully few. Throughout the day, besides her parents and Jiang Bainian’s daily routine check-ins on her health, there was no one else.
And the person who had added her previously hadn’t chatted in a long time. The last conversation had been the previous week.
Shen Yue scrolled through the chat history, discovering that most of it consisted of the other person’s greetings or attempts to initiate conversation; she had never initiated anything.
Perhaps due to the rain making her mood less than pleasant, or perhaps out of sheer boredom, Shen Yue sent a message.
Shen Yue: What are you doing?
After sending the message, Shen Yue turned off her phone, no longer wanting to read, and went to sleep.
It was two days later when the sky cleared, as if everything had been renewed. The air was filled with a damp scent, pleasantly cool.
Shen Yue ventured out, which was rare. The weather after the rain hadn’t turned cold; high summer always carried a bit of heat, yet Shen Yue was wearing long sleeves and pants.
She didn’t walk too far, just strolled nearby.
She enjoyed the fresh air after the rain.
She took pictures with her phone, capturing beautiful moments.
When she grew tired, Shen Yue squatted beside a flowerbed to rest, lamenting that her physical condition was worsening, feeling tired after just a few steps.
Too weak.
Shen Yue looked up at the blue sky, and suddenly heard a rustling sound from the flowerbed beside her. She instinctively turned her head to look. After a while, a nameless kitten with snow-white fur and blue eyes emerged from the pile of grass.