Chapter 10.2 (1/2)

Candle: Another short chapter, another 2-part-er

Right when I woke up a streak of lightning flashed across the window, followed by a rumble of thunder. The room was a swath of darkness, and I was no longer holding Yin Li's hand. Feeling around, I realized that I was alone.

This feeling of abandonment suddenly scared me. Once again, unfamiliar faces began unremittingly flas.h.i.+ng in my mind. My feelings continued to grow, and I felt panicked.

I didn't want to stay here a moment longer. I climbed out of bed by myself, and feeling my way forwards, I blindly made my way out of the room.

”Yin Li! Yin Li! Yin Li, where are you?” Without even putting on my slippers, I had rushed out. I just wanted to escape from that room of nightmares. But in my frenzy, I forgot to turn on the lights, and I could only wander the dark hallway calling Yin Li's name. My distressed voice echoed with an eerie vibrato.

Disregarding everything, I called out his name like a despairing traveler lost in the jungle.

”I'm over here.” Then I finally heard the voice I was waiting for.

Yin Li walked around the corner of the stairs. I stopped him just as he moved to the light switch. ”Don't turn the lights on.” I didn't want him to see my face that was currently covered in tears.

”I only left to get a gla.s.s of water. Don't worry, I'm here.” Yin Li didn't make a fuss over my strange behavior, he only tenderly rubbed my head.

I hugged him, leaning against him without a word.

Outside, as sheets of rain poured down from the sky, lightning flashed and thunder rolled. I lay in his lap, breathing in the faint scent of tobacco on his clothes. But I could sense that I was in a dangerous situation. I had already come to depend on Yin Li too much.

I couldn't discern when this dependence and intimacy had began to take root. Perhaps from the moment I opened my eyes in the hospital. Or perhaps when he had gently scrubbed the kitten's ears. Or perhaps it was now. Regardless, I knew it was irrational.

Just like my past, Yin Li was impossible to unravel. I didn't know how much of what was between us was real or fake. I didn't know whether he was a flawless actor or whether he was showing his true self. I didn't know anything.

I had chosen a bad time to develop feelings for someone I shouldn't have considered. But as I lay in his arms, I somehow felt that this development wasn't the worst thing to have happened.

In the darkness, Yin Li held my hand and led me through the hallway, through the courtyard, and finally back to my bedroom, where he helped me back in bed.

”Get some sleep, Yan Xiao.” Yin Li tucked the blankets in for me and then quietly sat by my side.

After the tumultuous events of the evening, I closed my eyes yet couldn't fall asleep. Upon opening my eyes, I found that Yin Li was silently looking at me with a complicated expression. In the depths of his eyes, there seemed to swim a murderous severity. When he saw that I'd opened my eyes, his eyes flashed and his expression quickly changed back into a warm, harmless one, as if what I'd just witnessed was all merely part of a nightmare I'd now awoken from.

”Why did you wake up?” Perhaps because of a lack of sleep, his voice was low and ambiguous.

I looked at that male silhouette in the dark and suddenly felt as if time was warped backwards. As if in the past, he'd never belonged to me. This realization sent my heart into a panic. My mind was a mess. Those memories were like the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and every piece was currently trying its hardest to return to its rightful spot. But the image they wanted to complete didn't seem to be what I wanted to see.