“The only way to stop disappointing them,” Jiang Hansheng said, “is to break free from the addiction.”
“You don’t know anything!” A’Juan clenched her jaw and fixed him with a resentful glare. “All you people ever do is throw around weightless, glib words. What can you actually do to help me? Do you have any idea what it feels like? Sometimes I think I’d be better off dead.”
“I know.”
A’Juan froze, staring at Jiang Hansheng in disbelief.
His expression was as placid as still water, but he said nothing more. He found a pen and a scrap of paper, wrote down his phone number, and handed it to A’Juan.
“This is how to reach me. If you ever need help, you can call at any time.”
A’Juan took the slip of paper with a dazed expression. “Does that mean you also…”
Jiang Hansheng inclined his head slightly, a gentle light stirring in the depths of his eyes. “Trust me. You’re going to be okay.”
A’Juan stared at him for a long moment, then slowly closed her fingers around the paper. “How… how did you get through it?”
It was as though, from some hidden and lightless corner, a thick, dark weight had crept up and pressed down hard across his spine, seeking to swallow him whole — and yet there he stood, his shirt still white as snow, his posture still perfectly upright.
He said: “There was someone I desperately wanted to see again. Someone I hoped to walk up to, one day, in good health.”
A’Juan bit her lip, hesitating. “…Is that person Officer Zhou?”
Jiang Hansheng did not answer. He simply responded with a slow, quiet smile.
A’Juan understood.
Truth be told, from the very first time she had met Jiang Hansheng and Zhou Jin at the Sichuan restaurant, she had already been able to tell — Zhou Jin didn’t care much about him.
A’Juan suddenly looked at Jiang Hansheng with a flicker of sympathy. “Then you’re in for a hard time. Officer Zhou is a wonderful, wonderful person, but in matters like this she seems a bit… oblivious.”
Jiang Hansheng’s smile deepened slightly. “It’s fine.”
“Let me do something for you — consider it my way of saying thank you.” A’Juan muttered under her breath and shot a glance through the hospital room door at the faint silhouette just visible outside.
A gleam of mischief surfaced in her eyes. She stretched her arms open toward Jiang Hansheng and made her request: “Can I have a hug? Don’t worry — I have no interest in married men. Once I’m clean, I want to fall in love properly.”
Jiang Hansheng looked at her the way one looks at a student — composed and entirely transparent to her scheme. One flicker of her eyes, and he had already seen through exactly what she was scheming.
He shook his head. “Focus on your treatment.”
A’Juan’s eyebrows arched. “Not even that? Listen to me — a woman only realizes how important someone is to her when she’s jealous.”
She was so young, and yet she spoke of these things as though she had lived a hundred lives.
Jiang Hansheng declined politely. “Thank you.”
No one understood the taste of jealousy better than he did. And he did not want Zhou Jin to ever feel that way.
After saying goodbye to A’Juan, Jiang Hansheng walked out of the hospital room.
Zhou Jin stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. Her short-sleeved top had been soiled with a large patch of vomit by A’Juan, and now she wore only a fitted spaghetti-strap undershirt.
When she saw Jiang Hansheng, her gaze traveled along his shoulder and down. “Your arm — shouldn’t you get that looked at?”
Jiang Hansheng glanced at the bite wound. It wasn’t serious; the bleeding had already clotted.
“It’s fine,” he said.
He pressed his lips together, not giving a second thought to the wound on his arm. His fingers moved to his shirt buttons, already preparing to take the shirt off and give it to Zhou Jin.
Zhou Jin suddenly said, in a cool, flat tone: “…Come here.”
Jiang Hansheng paused. He studied her expression — unreadable, neither clearly pleased nor displeased — and found he couldn’t quite work out what she was feeling right now.
Even so, he did as he was told and walked over to her.
The moment he reached her, he felt a tug at his throat. It drew him into a slight bow.
Zhou Jin had grabbed his tie and pulled him down. She tilted her face up — and kissed him squarely on his thin lips.
First a bite. Then a deep kiss.
She was not lost in it, not swept away. It was purely a fierce, impulsive release — a venting of something turbulent. Jiang Hansheng closed his eyes and received the full force of Zhou Jin’s fervent, unguarded emotion.
He let Zhou Jin bite his lip until it broke. He did not pull away.
Jiang Hansheng clasped her waist and drew her closer, afraid that the next second she would come back to her senses and pull all of this emotion back inside herself.
He couldn’t bear that.
He had never seen Zhou Jin like this before.