“Nice down jacket. When did you buy it?”
“Two weeks ago… I’ve been wearing it for half a month. Are you my brother? You seem unfamiliar with me.”
“Have I been home this past fortnight?”
“I’m not the one who kept you training at White Mountain, preventing you from coming home. Why do you seem so resentful towards me?”
“Because a few months ago, I inquired about the prosthetic limb price you wanted, and it scared me so much I couldn’t sleep well for a week. I was thinking about how to raise the money… Besides buying a lottery ticket whenever I passed a welfare lottery shop, the most effective method was to participate in some competitions I wouldn’t have bothered with before. Don’t these competitions require training? Don’t frequent competitions lead to frequent training? Now, guess why I haven’t even had time to go home these two weeks?”
“…You’re more likable when you’re less talkative.”
“Do I need you to like me? Who bought you the down jacket?”
“…Mom.”
“She only bought one for you? Where’s mine? Isn’t White Mountain colder than home? Is her son training hard away from home not her child anymore? Her favoritism—”
“Your heart is in the center of your chest. It’s normal for favoritism to be biased— What are you doing? Don’t tell me you’re tattling to Mom now, just for a down jacket!”
In the hospital corridor, the girl in the wheelchair tilted her head to look at the person sitting beside her. The young man next to her had delicate features, his handsome, youthful face bearing an inexplicable vague resemblance to her expression…
At this moment, he was expressionlessly looking down at his phone, his thick eyelashes concealing the emotions in his eyes. His cold demeanor contrasted sharply with the girl’s gradually widening eyes and lively expression just a meter away.
Shan Chong’s eyelashes quivered slightly as he lazily lifted his gaze from his phone, glancing at his visibly nervous sister beside him. “Mom says she didn’t buy it for you.”
Shan Shan: “Are you interrogating me?”
Shan Chong: “I wasn’t before, but now I’m starting to want to.”
Shan Shan turned her head away: “You must have some issues. Are you a control freak? Do I need to report to you when I buy a down jacket… Don’t I, as a blossoming young woman, deserve some privacy?”
“Underage blossoming young women indeed don’t deserve privacy.”
“Then try reading my diary, and see if the police will intervene when I report you!”
“Forget it, I wouldn’t bother listening even if you read it to me.”
“…”
As her fair cheeks gradually reddened with anger, just before the girl’s face puffed up like a goldfish, the rehabilitation room door was pulled open from the outside. A young doctor in a white coat poked his head out, calling Shan Shan’s name and interrupting the siblings’ conversation.
“Shan Shan!” The doctor’s voice, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, sounded gentle and friendly. “It’s your turn. Do your best today!”
Shan Shan had fixed rehabilitation room sessions three to four days a week for rehabilitation therapy—aimed at adapting to her prosthetic limb.
In truth, Shan Shan didn’t particularly enjoy this entire process.
Her previous resistance to prosthetics stemmed not only from a self-destructive belief that what was lost couldn’t be regained—that even an artificial replacement wouldn’t be the same—but also because she despised all the preparation leading up to it.
Every time she entered the rehabilitation room, facing various instruments and equipment, donning the required rehabilitation attire, it felt as if her wound was being reopened.
Raw and bleeding, with nowhere to hide.
The gazes around her would always linger on her face before moving to her legs, people’s looks turning sympathetic…
The worst part was that although everyone was equally pitiful, she seemed to become the most pitied due to her youth or having a nice face.
These were things she had once been proud of—how they became what she most despised facing.
Life is strange, with all sorts of people able to have all sorts of outlandish life scripts, each more varied than the last.
Inside the rehabilitation room, the heating was on full blast.
Despite wearing light clothing on top, with her arms hanging on the parallel bars, the girl at the end of the bars had a bit of sweat on her face. Her bangs clung to her face in disarray, and her cheeks were flushed with fatigue.
Her hands rested on the parallel bars, the biceps in her arms secreting lactic acid, waves of soreness washing over her.
Her elbows had lost feeling from supporting her body weight.
Her legs were mounted on rehabilitation prosthetic aids. These public devices, though disinfected, couldn’t compare to the comfort and precision of custom prosthetics. At first, it was just unfamiliarity, but as time passed, unfamiliarity turned into discomfort—
It felt as if the amputated part of her bone was exposed again, separated only by thin skin and blood vessels, repeatedly chafing… Those old wounds seemed to split open once more, bleeding profusely beneath seemingly intact skin.
It was very painful.
The last time, it had even broken the skin, nearly causing an infection.
“Three more rounds, then we’ll rest,” the rehabilitation room doctor said in a gentle voice, but Shan Shan didn’t absorb a single word—
“I can’t,” the girl lifted her head, a strand of hair sticking to her cheek from sweat. Her voice carried a nasal tone, “It hurts too much.”
It sounded a bit like whining, but it could also be genuine distress.
On a rare weekend, high school students on break would arrange to watch movies, buy stationery they liked, eat ice cream, or stroll in the park…
Surrounding her were only cold rehabilitation equipment and the strong smell of disinfectant.
Just thinking about it made her want to cry from frustration.
“Shan Shan, last week you only did three rounds of rehabilitation before refusing to continue,” a cold male voice came from nearby. “This week, you should at least show some progress and do four rounds.”
Standing at the end of the parallel bars, the young man who was her older brother had his arms crossed. His handsome face showed no impatience, but his pitch-black eyes were dark and cold, almost inhuman—
“Am I spending my good rest day here instead of lying at home just to watch you whine?”
He couldn’t even say one kind word.
Shan Shan was silent for three seconds.
Hanging onto one side of the parallel bars in an extremely undignified posture (not that she needed such a thing), she said: “Brother, you’ll probably end up with a skier for a girlfriend in the future. It’s hard to imagine if you ever find a girlfriend who can’t ski, whether she could survive even a day in your hands—”
She paused.
Then corrected herself.
“No, even an hour.”
Shan Chong raised an eyebrow.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You’d be too impatient to even teach her how to put on the board.”
“Why would someone who can’t even put on a board be my girlfriend?”
“…”
This person didn’t understand sarcasm.
He would only exert his straight-man advantages, following your sarcasm and indicating: Bet you didn’t expect it, but what you mentioned is nothing, I can be even worse.
Shan Shan’s face was expressionless: “I’m tired, can you see it? On my chin, a drop of bean-sized sweat forcefully hit the floor. I even heard a loud ‘plop’.”
She wasn’t lying; there was a splash mark from a drop of sweat on her feet.
Shan Chong looked down, and nodded, indicating he saw it.
Then he said: “Three more rounds, then I’ll let you rest.”
Shan Shan: “…”
Shan Chong raised his hand and patted the parallel bars, speaking in a tone as if coaxing a small dog, firmly: “Go.”
Shan Shan: “…”
Shan Chong: “Go.”
Shan Shan: “Screw you.”
Shan Chong: “I’ll catch you if you fall halfway through.”
Shan Shan’s only reaction to her brother’s promise was to instinctively shrink in the opposite direction—
She didn’t want to hear him making empty promises…
Or talking nonsense.
Shan Chong: “Really, I’ll count to three. My patience is limited. Three—”
Shan Shan: “I now reasonably suspect that with me being a disabled person missing arms and legs, you might not even have time for your first love in life—”
Doctor: “That can’t be, your brother is so good.”
Shan Shan: “Even if he’s good, can someone throw themselves at the flames just for a face?”
Shan Chong raised an eyebrow.
The doctor didn’t have time to answer this sharp question.
The rehabilitation room door was pushed open from the outside.
“Are you occupying the rehabilitation room just to hang on the bars and chat? Is the café downstairs closed? Or is the next person scheduled to use the rehab room, someone you dislike, so you’re occupying the toilet even if you’re not using it?”
A cool voice came through.
It was a voice familiar to Shan Shan.
…
Dai Duo leaned against the doorframe, looking at the three-person standoff in the rehabilitation room.
It seemed as if everyone wanted to kill each other immediately but was restrained by some moral code.
If possible, Shan Shan wouldn’t want to face her secret crush while covered in sweat like this. Some anime once said that women should be made of sugar, spice, and everything nice…
That doesn’t include sweat.
Shan Shan remained silent as Dai Duo’s gaze passed over her and landed on Shan Chong: “How long until you’re done?”
“Ask her,” Shan Chong said coldly. “The last set of three rounds, and she’s hanging on the bars like a monkey, refusing to move…”
“How far is one round?”
“From this end of the bar to that end.”
“…”
Dai Duo looked at the parallel bars that were no more than three meters long, then at the girl who was clinging to one side of the bars as if preparing to hang there for the rest of her life.
“Are you useless?”
The words were shocking.
Everyone present, except for the Shan siblings—including the knowledgeable rehabilitation room doctor—seemed stunned.
They hadn’t expected someone to speak so harshly to a mentally fragile and physically disabled girl.
Amidst everyone’s astonishment, the young man walked to the end of the parallel bars, pushed aside his friend and mentor, and stood at the end himself. He casually brushed his hand over the chalk-covered bars: “Hurry up, I’ll take you to buy cake afterward. Want to go?”
Shan Shan lifted her chin from the iron bar and looked at him.
“The limited strawberry slices at the shop in front of No. 18 Middle School,” Dai Duo said. “If you dawdle for three more minutes, they’ll be sold out.”
As soon as he finished speaking,
He saw the person who had been hanging on the parallel bars suddenly perk up.
The heavy equipment made a “thud thud” sound on the floor as the girl’s thin arms supported her on the parallel bars, propelling her body forward with all the parts she could control—
She swayed unsteadily.
The last step was particularly large.
Then, gently swaying, she fell into the embrace of the young man standing there.
Without any prompting, he naturally opened his arms and caught her, letting her collapse into his embrace, her cheek buried in the crook of his neck.
“Did you practice well?”
“…I did.”
“Three rounds?”
“Mm, I heard I gave up halfway last week, so this week I did a few more sets than last week.”
“Tch, you’re different when there’s food involved, suddenly so motivated.”
“Of course.”
“…You two,” Shan Chong said, “can you not speak so sarcastically?”
The young man and woman both turned their heads expressionlessly, glanced at him, then turned back.
They continued their dialogue fluently, and no one knew if they were just bantering and mocking each other or having a serious conversation.
But Shan Shan indeed worked very hard on her rehabilitation that day—
From initially being shy and hesitant, to later completely letting go of her inhibitions.
It was as if the moment Dai Duo appeared, she could suddenly face all the strange gazes in the rehabilitation room.
The question of youth is too difficult, from the initial simplicity and smoothness to later becoming painstakingly difficult…
Many, many times, she thought about erasing her name from that column and throwing away the pen, giving up completely.
But gritting her teeth and persevering for a while, she found that even bumpy answers filled the entire test paper.
The answers might not be correct.
But after the bell rings to end class, the bell for the next class will ring again.
So, it’s okay to fail a test occasionally, right?
She handed in her paper.
Because someone was waiting for her outside the classroom—
She couldn’t keep him waiting too long.
It wasn’t strawberry cake.
It was his embrace.