“Youwei? Have you finished changing?” Shen Mo asked from outside the door again.

“Done.” Bai Youwei answered.

She scrubbed roughly at her tears, completely unaware that the mascara had smeared into dark tracks under her eyes. She pushed herself upright with both hands and climbed back into the wheelchair, drew a deep breath, then went to open the door.

When Shen Mo saw her, his expression flickered for a brief moment.

Bai Youwei tossed her hair back without a care and complained in a casual tone: “What was all that knocking about — made me rush so much I had trouble getting the dress on. This one’s difficult to wear, you know…”

Amusement quietly filled Shen Mo’s eyes. “You look beautiful.”

Bai Youwei blinked, looking at him, a faint trace of shyness creeping through before she could mask it: “…Really?”

“Yes, really.” Shen Mo nodded, stepped past her into the room.

He noticed the bedsheet had been changed and glanced toward Bai Youwei.

“The old one got dirty,” she said easily.

Crunch—

The word had barely left her mouth before his foot came down on something.

A shard of glass.

Shen Mo looked at her again.

Bai Youwei turned her face away, ill at ease. “Ah… this room hasn’t been cleaned in a few days, it seems.”

The corner of Shen Mo’s mouth tugged upward. He crossed to the window and reached for the curtain.

Rip—

The torn curtain, barely hanging by a thread, came away all in one piece the moment he touched it.

“You’re… being a bit careless there,” Bai Youwei said.

The excuse was so thin it barely existed, and she knew it. Her voice came out without much conviction at all.

Shen Mo looked at her — somewhere between a smile and not quite a smile.

Bai Youwei felt the awkwardness sharpen, and muttered quietly: “What are you smiling at?”

Shen Mo gave a soft laugh, let the curtain go, and came back to her. He lifted her from the wheelchair onto the bed, then pulled a few sheets of tissue from the box on the bedside table and slowly began to wipe the marks from her face.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back?”

“I was going to come back to change clothes — you were chatting with people from the organization and seemed to be getting along well, so I didn’t want to interrupt…” Bai Youwei half-improvised a reason, mixing truth with deflection. “And who knew you’d come back so fast. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bothered going to all this trouble.”

Shen Mo drew her into his arms, then touched his nose lightly to hers, and smiled: “Not a wasted effort — you really do look beautiful.”

This quiet, reserved, and reserved man had now complimented her for the second time today.

Bai Youwei was genuinely startled.

Her face hadn’t had time to arrange itself into an expression, so she just looked a little blank.

“What are you thinking about?” Shen Mo’s voice came from just above her, very close — close enough that when he spoke, his lips nearly brushed against her…

At his natural, unhurried intimacy, Bai Youwei found herself blurting out: “Have you been drinking?”

His thin lips curved upward, and he moved a little closer still — barely touching the corner of her mouth with a light, brief contact. “No. Maybe I picked up a trace of the smell from the dinner table… Does it bother you? Should I go wash up?”

Bai Youwei went even more blank: “…”

This was…

Was this…

…a k-kiss?

Surely it couldn’t have been an accident.

All at once her emotions tangled into something impossibly complex — nerves, excitement, and anticipation all rising together.

Something impossible prompted her — and she… she touched her own lips to his, just barely.

Her heart pounded wildly.

She said: “No… it doesn’t bother me.”

The warmth in Shen Mo’s eyes deepened. “Then shall we continue?”

Bai Youwei wrapped her arms around his neck. “Yes… yes, alright.”

She had no experience to speak of — but fortunately time was in generous supply, more than enough for any number of new discoveries…