Chapter 37 (2/2)

Luckily, the house wasn’t big. and the villagers had stopped taking it apart when the accident had happened. After the grave robbing incident, no one else had come to this area. Shen Yu walked around the site a couple of times and used her feet to kick aside bits of broken glass. She bent over and picked up a wooden stick. Using the stick, she sorted through the ruins and yellowing photos slowly came out from the dirt.

She could feel her heart pounding heavily as she squatted down to pick up the photos. Each photo was inspected individually, but she could’t find the image that had scared her so much that previous morning. Before she could search more, she heard Tang Can in the distance hollering her name.

She quickly threw the pictures down on the ground frantically to hide what she was doing. She threw fistfulls of dirt on them to cover them up again. In her haste, her left hand accidentally brushed against a piece of broken glass and a cut opened up. She ignored the pain and continued to work quickly. By the time Tang Can came over, she was holding her hand carefully as she stepped out of the ruins in a couple of steps.

“Why did you come here?” asked Tang Can, full of worry. He looked disheveled, as if he had run all over the place looking for her.

Shen Yu’s finger on her left hand pulsed with pain. The injury had to be of a decent size but she gritted her teeth and tried to endure it. “I was bored so I wanted to walk around a bit.”

Tang Can didn’t try to lecture her, “In the future, if you want to walk around, give me a holler first! I’m afraid you’ll run into trouble by yourself.”

Without knowing why, Shen Yu felt her heart tremble slightly, as if something had slipped in. In the darkness, she stared at Tang Can for a bit before finally lowering her head. Her cheeks felt hot and red.

Tang Can reached out to grab her hand, as if in habit. He managed to hold onto her injured left hand. Involuntarily, Shen Yu squirmed out his hold and yelped in pain. It hurt so much that she could feel cold sweat dripping down her forehead.

“What wrong?” asked Tang Can, his voice full of concern. He used a flashlight to inspect her hand. When he saw the long, jagged cut on her middle finger he tsked in sympathy. The light also showed shards of broken glass in her wounds. Seeing her injured again made his heart twist in pain.

When they got back to the branch secretary’s home, Tang Can asked the man’s wife if she had any sewing needles and candles. The plump women quickly came back with the items that he requested. Using the needle, the young officer carefully picked out the small pieces of glass out of her finger. Shen Yu tried to writhe away from him at first, the pain from the pricking needle was agonizing, but he grabbed onto her wrist with force and dragged her hand down. No matter how much she yelped in pain, Tang Can kept her in his iron grip as he methodically picked out all of the glass from her hands. Picking out the debris was just the first step for him. He then grabbed some alcohol and poured it onto her wounds to disinfect them. Shen Yu almost jumped through the roof when it touched her. She screeched, “Oh my god that hurts so much!”

Tang Can held her wrist with a vice-like grip and calmly used a clean cloth to bind her injury closed.

“It hurts…” sobbed Shen Yu pitifully. She cried like a child and clear mucus dribbled out of her nose.

Tang Can let out a long sigh as he slowly relaxed his frown. He smiled and tried to comfort her, “It’s okay, be good, it’ll only hurt a little more!”

He wiped away her tears and snot with a clean handkerchief. Afterwards, he gently pulled her into his embrace.

Muffled laughter came through the nearby window, but only Tang Can heard it. He raised his eyes to look at the window. Immediately, he could hear the sounds of someone scampering away.

When he was sure that the person spying on them had left, Tang Can started to get ready to leave the room. He planned on having Shen Yu rest in the room for a little bit. He bent down his head to look at her one last time. Under the bright, yellow incandescent lamp, Shen Yu looked delicate and soft. Her eyebrows curved as gracefully as the ones found in paintings and her neck looked tender and white. Entranced, he stared at her for a bit before he came back to himself. It felt like he had just received a full body shock and his chest felt heavy, as if there was something stuck there…