Chapter 21 (2/2)
Shu Xiaoman was worried about Lin Wenxi, but upon seeing Zhao Yuan and him enter the tent together, she felt somewhat excited. She exchanged a look with Zhang An’an, and then they approached the tent sneakily. They peeped through a narrow opening near the tent zipper and saw something that they could hardly forget in their lives.
Lin Wenxi knelt on the quilt with his back toward Shu Xiaoman, and Zhao Yuan squatted down to help him take off his shirt. Lin Wenxi clenched his fists, seemed to be hesitant. Zhao Yuan smiled and gleefully whispered something into his ear, making him unclench his hands. He let Zhao Yuan unbutton his shirt and take it off slowly. Shu Xiaoman saw his shoulders first. The skin of his shoulders was white and soft. It looked as if it were glowing like the moon in the darkness. After that, she saw his shoulder blades tremble a little and could not help but worry about him. Gradually, Zhao Yuan took off Lin Wenxi’s shirt, revealing all of his back.
Lin Wenxi’s back was well-shaped, and his shoulder blades and spine were held just in place by his muscles. Shu Xiaoman thought even Chen Wanxin, who was an excellent dancer, did not have such a good-looking back. Lin Wenxi was not muscular as Zheng Kai or saggy as Wang Xiang. His muscles were not big or bulging like those of Zheng Kai. They looked like the barely visible mountains in a Chinese ink-wash painting. As he wore a belt, Shu Xiaoman could see clearly that he did not have any fat around his waist. He looked like a person who exercised regularly. The scratched area on his back was quite big and distinct. Some dead skin curled up but still adhered to his back. Upon seeing the wound, Shu Xiaoman was so worried that she wanted to break into the tent right now. When she saw Zhao Yuan apply some merbromin on the wound directly, she could not help but crawl into the tent.
Lin Wenxi was startled and turned to look at her. She was impressed deeply and fell to the ground when seeing the front of Lin Wenxi’s body. She covered her mouth and looked at him in surprise. He had prominent collarbones, slightly-bulging chest muscles, and six-pack abs. “Wow, this feeble-looking Lin Wenxi turns out to have a quite masculine body, and his body looks just fine. If he gets fewer muscles, he’ll not look like a man, but if his muscles get bigger, he’ll look too muscular,” Shu Xiaoman thought and completely forget about what she wanted to do here.
When they played basketball together under a scorching sun, Zheng Kai and Zhao Yuan did not care much about going topless, and they would even whistle at some girls nearby to catch their attention. Lin Wenxi would never do anything like that.
Even at home, his father Lin Ziwei would never go topless or let him go topless. Lin Ziwei believed that a man had to be elegant and have a good taste. Once, when Lin Wenxi had said that he just wanted to go topless to cool himself down, Lin Ziwei replied, “You can only do that in your room. Don’t go topless in the living room.”
Lin Wenxi retorted, “What’s the problem? You and mum saw me naked when I was a child.”
Lin Ziwei was upset and said, “That’s because you were a small child back then. Now you grow up. When you’re a child, you’re a blank sheet of paper. When you grow up, you have to be careful to draw on this paper. Do you want to become a cheap scrawl or a great picture?”
Lin Wenxi twitched his mouth and said, “I just want to draw whatever I think and feel. I want an impressionist painting.” Upon hearing that, Lin Ziwei rapped sharply on Lin Wenxi’s head with his knuckles.
Lin Wenxi had read extensively since his childhood and was good at debating. When Lin Ziwei failed to defeat his son by logical discussion, he would subdue him physically. Lin Wenxi would pretend to agree with his father, but never really accepted his ideas. One day, Lin Wenxi took off his shirt and played Nintendo in the living room while cooking rice in the kitchen. Lin Ziwei came back and knocked on the door. Lin Wenxi was too absorbed into the game to notice that until he smelt that something was burnt in the kitchen. He hurriedly went to turn off the gas and open the door without putting his Nintendo away. His father punished him by making him cook “satisfactory rice” for a month. Once his father or mother found the rice he cooked not satisfactory enough, he would have to cook for one more day. In the end, he cooked rice everyday during the summer vacation. After this incident, he never went topless in front of other people again. He became a well-principled and somewhat conservative young man.
Before Shu Xiaoman recovered from the shock, Lin Wenxi had already put his shirt back on. When he was about to button the shirt, Shu Xiaoman hurriedly stopped him. She suddenly stood up and nearly broke the tent. After that, she bent down and got close to Lin Wenxi.
“Zhao Yuan, what you’ve done is not enough. This is not some small scratch. You should cut the dead skin off from his back and disinfect the wound before applying some merbromin to it. Otherwise, his wound will be infected.” With these words, Shu Xiaoman took out tweezers and a bottle of medical alcohol from the medical kit. After sanitizing the tweezers, she used it to clean Lin Wenxi’s wound.
In Zhao Yuan’s eyes, Shu Xiaoman moved too gently and slowly. He thought it was too troublesome. When he sat on the floor with his leg crossed, he carefully observed her and realized that she was treating Lin Wenxi professionally. She never applied the medical alcohol to the worst wounded part directly and treated the wound very tenderly. When she needed to clean some part of the wound, she would tell Lin Wenxi in advance to give him some time to get prepared for the pain. It took her a long time to clean the wound. She was so concentrated that she broke into a sweat. Lin Wenxi broke into a sweat too because of the pain.
“Can you stand the pain?” Zhao Yuan asked and grabbed Lin Wenxi’s hand. Lin Wenxi grabbed Zhao Yuan’s arm tightly without moving a little or saying a word.
When Shu Xiaoman finished applying the merbromin to Lin Wenxi’s back, she sighed, “Wenxi, how could you remain silent all the time? I…” What she wanted to say was “I nearly fall in love with you”, but on second thought, she felt that it was quite strange to say something like that at such a moment. In the end, she said, “I know it’s troublesome to clean the wound, but only in this way, you won’t get many scars on your back. Look at Zhao Yuan, he has scars all over his body.” While saying this, she pointed out all the scars in Zhao Yuan’s face, neck, arms, and calves. Most of them were light, but a few of them were heavy and probably caused by knife cuts.
She shook her head and sighed again, “I really hope that you guys can cry out in pain like Wang Xiang, but Lin Wenxi just remained silent no matter how much pain he felt. As to you, Zhao Yuan, how did you get so many scars and knife cuts? Now you, you’ll probably get a few more scars!” With these words, she managed to take Lin Wenxi’s fingers off Zhao Yuan’s arm. She shook her head helplessly and asked, “Do you boys just like to abuse yourselves?” She turned around and crawled out of the tent.