When Lily regained her consciousness, she felt a throbbing pain in her back as she began to survey her surroundings. Slowly, she tried to turn her body only to realize that she was lying on the ground and something was pressing on her body. She furrowed her brows and tried to wriggle free only to realize that she was trapped under Zhuo Jingren who had his arms wrapped around her protectively.
“Hey…” Lily tapped on Zhuo Jingren’s arms, her eyes trying to make out of their surroundings. If her guess was right, they were knocked out the road by what seemed to be a landslide. But it hadn’t been raining, so what could have caused a landslide?
“Hey.” She tapped on his arms once again.
“Hmn…” Zhuo Jingren let out a moan.
“Zhuo Jingren, can you hear me?”
“Hey! Are you alright?” Lily gently shook Zhuo Jingren’s arms. No response. Lily wanted to get up, so she tried her best to roll Zhuo Jingren over from her but she realized that it was not going to be easy. That’s because Zhuo Jingren had a big built from regularly exercising and he was also tall, at 183cm. Compared to Lily’s petite frame and standing only at 165cm tall, the man looked like a giant.
When she finally succeeded, Lily immediately sat up and tried to retrieve her phone from her pocket, only to discover that it is no longer there. She immediately searched Zhuo Jingren’s pockets and was relieved to find that his phone was still there. Lily pressed a button on the phone and the screen lit up. That was when she realized that the screen was cracked. At least the phone was still working. As Lily didn’t know the password to unlock Zhuo Jingren’s phone, it was still in locked mode but just the light on the phone was useful enough.
Lily focused the light from the phone on her surroundings and immediately furrowed her brows when she discovered they were no longer on the road and they seemed to have fallen off a cliff or a valley. All Lily could see were rocks and pieces of wood littered around them.
She lifted her head to look at the night sky and was a little appeased that she could still see the stars. At least, they were not trapped in some cave or something.
She then focused the light on the person lying motionless beside her. Fear instantly leaped out of her when she saw Zhuo Jingren’s ashen face. Lily’s cold hands immediately reached out to check his pulse.
‘Alive’
Lily let out a sigh of relief before she trailed down the light down his body to check if he had sustained any wounds. Then she discovered that his right leg was bleeding.
Without any second thoughts, Lily ripped her shirt and made a make-shift tourniquet and tied it around Zhuo Jingren’s wound. She then secured it with a piece of stick that she found nearby. Lily’s movement’s were fast and agile, her face was calm and serene but the occasional scrunching of her brows revealed her worries.
After making sure that the bleeding had slowed down, Lily covered Zhuo Jingren with his coat before she got up to walk around and survey her surroundings once again.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice a little hoarse. Then, she felt a small pellet of water had dropped on her face. It was immediately followed by a brilliant shock of white light ripping across the sky.
‘Damn’ she cursed inwardly when she realized that it had started to rain. ‘Why does it have to rain at times like this?’
Lily quickly made her back to Zhuo Jingren and slowly moved him away from the open area, towards a space that seemed to be untouched by the falling rain. It would be a perfect shelter from the rain.
After much half-dragging, half-lifting, Lily finally succeeded in shifting Zhuo Jingren to that space and she laid him to rest against a rock. That was when she discovered something bizarre.
Zhuo Jingren’s back was damp. She immediately used the phone to check out his back and widened her eyes to see it was littered with wounds. The back part of his once white shirt was drenched in blood and was in tatters. In a flash, Lily crouched down in front of Zhuo Jingren, straddling him before she hugged his body so it could rest against hers while she continued to examine the wounds on his back.
What she didn’t expect was his consciousness to suddenly return.
“If I have known that being wounded would make you hug me like this, I would have gotten myself injured that night we first met,” he whispered, surprising Lily. However, she remained composed and continued to check his wounds.
“Don’t move. You have lost a lot of blood and your wounds are still bleeding” she said before gently laying him back down against the rock.
“Yeah… I have mild hemophilia,” he calmly said.
“What?”
“Apparently, it’s hereditary.”
“I…” Lily lowered her head as a lightning lit up the sky, revealing her troubled expression. “I’m sorry,” she muttered,sitting down on the ground beside him.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “You should take the coat and cover yourself with it because it’s getting cold in this rain. It won’t take long before people find us here.”
“We are in the middle of nowhere and it’s dark and raining. They won’t even know that we have not returned to our villa,” Lily said as she sat down next to Zhuo Jingren.
“They will… my watch has a tracker that will update my secretary with my latest location every five minutes. Go Jichen will know that something is wrong if he sees that if I have not moved for a long time in a place like this,” he explained. Sensing that Lily was awfully quiet, he added, “It’s a part of his job to monitor my location. I have enemies in this country. So…”
“You protected me,” Lily interrupted him. “That’s how you got your wounds on your back…”
“It’s because you hugged me during the fall.” Lily added in a voice was soft.
“As your future husband… It is my duty to…”
“Oh shut up!” Lily hissed. “You are so stupid for protecting me. You know that you have hemophilia yet, you still protected me! You are so stupid!”
“If loving you is stupid then… I am indeed very stupid.”
A single tear instantly fell from Lily’s eyes as she let out a long sigh. “Stupid man! Everyone who had ever protected me is now dead. Do you want to become one of them? Do you want to die while saving me?”
…
Editor: Swaning
