Chapter 4 (2/2)

I had thought that the shampoo was for him so I didn’t expect him to wash my hair first. Habitually, I closed my eyes, if not it would have hurt a lot if the water and lather went into my eyes.

Pokerface began to ma.s.sage my scalp with such even pressure I almost fell asleep. However, his hands moved down towards my temples. He applied a bit more pressure and drew circles around them. A very soothing feeling washed over my mind and helped to sober me up.

As he ma.s.saged me, I thought to myself, from what I have seen through our interactions, he doesn’t seem like the type to know how to care for others. At least he doesn’t know how to take care of himself, does he?

My thoughts started to wander and for some reason I thought back to the carca.s.s cave. I recalled that after we had left the cave, Big Kui had fainted from fright while Pokerface had, too, from the blood loss. I changed his bandage once while he had been unconscious and when I had seen the wound I was stunned. The cut was so deep that I could see the fat layer! He had been so reckless that it seemed as though he had not been cutting himself but some other person. I wondered whether he would even treat the injury or just let it flow freely and get infected while being completely oblivious if no one had been there to look after him.

My head was hanging low. I blinked my eyes a few times and several drops of water got shaken off, allowing me to see what was in front of me: Pokerface’s collarbone. There was a distinct dip where the bone connected to his sternum.

A confusing image flashed through my head. This area had once been dyed red with blood and also had a tattoo of what might have been an animal. Although the tattoo hadn’t appeared for long, it had left such a striking impression that I couldn’t forget about it even if I tried to.

“Xiaoge,” I leaned my head against the fair surface that had nothing on it so far. “Where’s theqilin?”

His hands stopped moving. “What?”

The water was still running. It streamed through my hair and onto him, leaving lots of white lather.

Huh, what did I just say?

Drunk people had horrible memory and would forget what was just said a second ago.

“Qi…Ki. Lin.” Cream?

I was fairly sure that I was spouting nonsense. My linguistic capacities were a complete mess. But after I said it, I discovered that Pokerface’s skin was indeed very smooth, kind of like cream. I nuzzled my face in his neck and the fact that I was just being a nuisance did not even occur to me.

Clunk. The water stopped coming from behind. I felt Pokerface placing his hand on my waist after turning the tap off.

Why? Why has he turned the water off? Is he leaving?

He held me by the waist with one hand and put the other up in front of my face, sticking a few fingers up. “How many fingers, Wu Xie?”

I squinted at his slender, long fingers, pressing my face closer and then drawing it back. They became a few shadowy outlines in my dilated pupils. It looked like there were four…or maybe only three? Then I blinked my eyes and it became five, six, seven, eight…

This made me even more confused, so I impatiently let out a ‘tsk’ and tackled his hand.

“Kylin.” Okay, I finally got it right.

That was not what I had wanted to say but it was what I wanted to say then. Qilin, cream, Kylin—I wondered if he ever noticed that his name sounded like a lot of things.

With his hand in grasp, I moved it downwards towards my stomach where my manhood was just starting to awaken.

<script>