She wiped at her sweat as she walked, paying no heed to a person that was walking towards her. The person had their heads dipped low, which made it hard to tell their gender, but they were walking at a considerably fast pace.
She wasn’t in private property and it wasn’t strange for someone else to be there, so she paid little attention until the person rammed right into her.
She felt a sharp pain at her scalp before she could say anything. It felt as though something was tearing at her scalp.
She reached out, touched her hair, and realized something had caught it.
“Stay still,” she said as she untangled her hair. She managed to extricate herself before long, though her scalp was still aching.
As she was about to say something, she realized that the person had ran off.
“Geez, not even an apology?” she complained as she massaged her scalp. It hurt really badly. The person must have pulled off a good amount of her hair.
Unbeknownst to her, the person who was wrapped in layers of clothes stopped at an empty place and opened their fist, revealing a lock of hair.
Yan Huan was stroking her head as she entered the Classical Garden.
A hand reached over and grabbed a hold of her arm. She tried to bat it away, but that only made her captor tighten his grip. She didn’t have to look to know who it was. The familiar fragrance could only have come from Lu Yi.
“What happened?” he asked. He was a lot taller than her, so he noticed her bleeding scalp the moment he looked down.
“It got caught when someone bumped into me,” said Yan Huan without putting much thought into it. Driven by pain, she touched her scalp again.
“Stop touching it. Your scalp’s bleeding,” he said.
Lu Yi pulled her down by the hand and pushed her onto the sofa. Yan Huan tried to wrench herself free, but Lu Yi’s firm grip made it impossible to move.
“Stop throwing a tantrum. I’m going to apply some ointment to your scalp.”
Lu Yi pressed her down on the sofa, retrieved a first-aid box, and began working on her scalp.
It hurt so much when the ointment touched her wound Yan Huan almost cried.
“The pain will go away in awhile,” assured Lu Yi. A stone-hearted man he was, emptying the entire vial onto Yan Huan’s wounds without any clemency.
Yan Huan felt a strong urge to share her pain, and soon her nails were digging deep into Lu Yi’s arms. Lu Yi kept going, apparently impervious to the pain, not making so much as a grunt.
Yan Huan loosened her claws when Lu Yi set down the ointment bottle.
“Are you not mad at me anymore?” asked Lu Yi, hunkering down before her. He always knew Yan Huan was stubborn, but the extent of her stubbornness still surprised him.
How long has she stayed mad at him already?
“What are you talking about?” said Yan Huan. She tugged at her hair. Her scalp still felt uncomfortable, but she wasn’t foolish enough to aggravate the wound further by touching it. She would have to avoid water too, she realized, and she wouldn’t be able to run the following day. She would have to inspect it thoroughly through a mirror later.
“You know what I’m talking about,” said Lu Yi, pulling her hand down. Yan Huan tried to wrench free, but in the end she realized it would only hurt herself if she did that, considering how tight Lu Yi’s grip was.
“Does you make you feel good about yourself to bully a widow?” she asked, looking up. Her tongue was as poisonous as the old Lei Qingyi.
“Am I dead to you?” asked Lu Yi, raising an eyebrow. He wasn’t in the least bit angry, of course.
“Aren’t you?” Yan Huan’s eyelashes drooped. Her husband even had a gravestone. She wrested her arm from his hold again. “He would never have forgotten about me. Neither would he team up with others to bully me.”
She thought about how good Lu Yi used to treat her; even amidst a flood, he didn’t hesitate to trade his life for a chance for her to live. The thought made her sad. How could this man be her Lu Yi? This jerk who had forgotten all about her and tried to marry another woman?
“I’m sorry…” said Lu Yi, stroking her hair.
I forgot. I couldn’t remember. None of these excuses could justify his actions.
“I’m not a jerk, though,” he said. He hated the word, a word Yan Huan had associated with his name. “So could you stop calling me a jerk in the future, Miss Yan?”
“If the shoe fits, wear it,” snorted Yan Huan. She stood up and raced to her room. To her, Lu Yi was very much a jerk.
Lu Yi rose and shook his head lightly. She hadn’t changed at all. He could never win her in an argument.
Yan Huan shut the door and examined her wound through a mirror. Carefully, she parted her hair, and almost immediately she winced from the pain.
Looking at the gash, it wasn’t a small wound either. She wondered just how much hair the stranger had ripped off her. Looks like she would do well to abolish any thoughts of having a shower on that night.
Knock, knock. Someone was at the door.
She opened the door, and tried to close it when she identified her visitor, but the man barred the door with his hand.
Yan Huan let go and sat back down on her bed.
“What on earth do you want from me? We’re divorced, remember?” She had enough of Lu Yi. They weren’t husband and wife anymore, but strangers who had nothing to do with each other. Why must he show up before her day after day?
She tried to touch her hair again, but Lu Yi stopped her.
“Stay still. You are injured,” he said as he stood up. He leaned forward and carefully spread her hair apart with his bony fingers. The pain made Yan Huan want to bite someone.
“Lu Yi…!” she kicked him hard. “Are you doing this on purpose?”
Forgetting she was sitting on the bed, she lost her balance and lurched back into the soft bed and covers. The impact would have robbed her of her wits had she crashed into the ground instead.
Instinctively, Lu Yi cushioned his hand at the back of her head. His hand hit the pillow first, followed by Yan Huan’s head. If that had been the floor, Lu Yi’s hand would have taken the brunt of the impact instead.
With him on top and her below, they found themselves in a lewd position.
