Where Winter is Warm Where Summer is Cool

My wrist was gripped tighter and tighter until I started to feel some pain.

“Xi Xichen!”

The man looked at me with no words, no movement, but he didn’t let go either.

“Xi Xichen, what do you want! What is going on in your head?”

I’d never been so loud in my life.

Finally, he spoke.

“Disgusted?” He suddenly reached out and stroked my cheek with his other hand. I felt a cold chill run through my body, but I was strangely unable to react in the slightest like trying to avoid his touch or smacking the hand that I hated so much. Instead I froze dumbly in place.

“What are you…doing?”

“If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter if it’s a little more.” He suddenly sounded like he’d figured something out, his voice strangely calm. “Come on, don’t you have someone you need to see?”

I gritted my teeth at his self-righteousness.

“Xi Xichen, you can’t understand human language, can you? Your behaviour is simply…simply inexplicable.”

He lowered his eyes and said, “Come on, you’re going to be late.”

“You’re unbelievable!” I was furious.

“Then,” his eyes darkened, “it’s okay to ignore it.”

If killing someone could be done without going to jail, then I would have killed the man in front of me right then. I glared at him with hatred.

“Xi Xichen, I don’t want anything to do with you, not before, not now, not ever! I don’t know why you want to mess with me. I’m asking you to stop this nonsense!”

I was about to break free of those hands again when a sudden dizziness hit me, and the next moment I was in infinite darkness.

I distantly felt someone picking me up and smelled a clean, faintly minty scent.

I woke up in the hospital, and I smiled bitterly.

“According to the report, she must have been in a traffic accident before. The accident has done a lot of damage to her bodily functions, and she has a fairly poor system. Getting sick and fainting seems to be a common occurrence, so try to limit this in the future.”

“Awake?” Xichen walked a couple steps towards my bed.

The young physician in the white coat followed him.

“It’s fine if she’s awake. I tell you she’s fine and you’re still–”

“Dr. Lin.” Xichen said.

“Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

Xichen gave him a look. “You can go now.”

The young physician walked to the door, but before closing it behind him, he turned back and said with a smile, “Old classmate, it’s the first time I’ve seen you nervous like this.”

Xichen wrinkled his eyebrows.

There was a long beat of silence before he finally spoke.

“How do you feel?” His voice was back to the cold tone I was familiar with.

I turned my head to look out the window, not wanting to say anything.

“You’ve spent two days in the hospital, you need to rest.”

Two days!?

I looked back at him, seeing his usual high and mighty expression on his face.

I sat up and pulled the IV out of my hand, then got out of bed, slipped on my shoes, grabbed my jacket off the back of a chair and opened the door to go out. He didn’t try to stop me.

“Jian Anjie.” I heard someone call out to me just as I stepped out of the hospital building.

“Pei Kai?” I stopped in my tracks, my voice a little wispy.

Pei Kai jogged over. “Why are you here? Sick again?”

“Nope.” I smiled, thought quickly for a couple of seconds then said, “Pei Kai, can you take me home?”

“Huh? Oh, okay.” Pei Kai looked a bit overwhelmed. “Well…wait for me, I’ll go and hand in some information.” He pointed to the building on his left.

“Okay.” I said.

I walked to a wooden chair not far away and sat down for a few minutes.

Pei Kai came back out, “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. We can go now.”

I got up. “Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble. I was only here to hand in a report and was planning to leave anyway.” Pei Kai walked ahead, leading the way.

His car was a grey commercial vehicle. I pressed my fingers against my temples as I went around to the back seat.

“I’ll sit in the back.” I got in the car and laid down straight away.

Pei Kai followed me into the car. “Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look so good.”

“Let me sleep a bit.” There was not much strength in my voice.

“Oh, okay. I’ll let you know when we get there then.”

I heard him talking to Piao Zheng on the phone through a haze, and I sighed softly. It looked like I was going to hear a lot of noise about this later.

I was shaken awake from my restless daze and opened my eyes to see a familiar face.

“Hi, Piao Zheng.”

After glaring at me for a long time, my words turned into a helpless sigh, “I don’t even know where to start!”

I got out of the back seat and put my arm around Piao Zheng’s shoulders for support. Turning my head I thanked  Pei Kai.

“You’re welcome.”

After seeing Pei Kai off, Piao Zheng helped me upstairs.

“Want something to eat or just go to bed?”

“Sleep, I’m so tired.”

“Then I’ll make the bed and you take a bath.”

“En.”

I wasn’t sure how long I slept. At first I kept drifting between drowsiness and wakefulness, with no discernible time frame.Then I felt myself floating and dreaming about something, but every time I tried to focus on what it was about, it would slip away.