Chapter 144 - 117: Visiting a Patient [Two-in-One]

Chapter 144: Chapter 117: Visiting a Patient [Two-in-One]

Huai Yu genuinely had plans to visit Zhou Qian.

But when visiting a patient—especially one she had nearly carved up like a roast duck—shouldn’t she bring a gift? However, after rummaging through her house for a good while, she came up empty-handed.

After all, she was truly poor. Previously, she had lived with just four bare walls. Later, during her one and only relocation, she acquired some furniture, but as for daily supplies...

Rice, flour, grain, oil, or pork cracklings?

Or perhaps Ke Taichiro’s round balls?

There were quite a few medicinal wild grasses in the Wilderness, but most merely cleared heat and reduced internal fire. Ke Taichiro chewed different plants every day and had already amassed a large basin of green balls in varying shades. However, there was only one empty pickle jar available. The leftover ones had to be left out in the open, and she wondered if they would lose their medicinal properties as a result.

On the other hand, there was a new basin of them. It was filled with pale pink balls, which Huai Yu had managed to coax from the Rose Corridor yesterday by shaking, rocking, and blowing on the vines.

She didn’t know whether they possessed medicinal properties, nor what effects they might have. But Ke Taichiro never refused anything, and a large basket of petals was enough for it to play with all day.

The final product was this basin of pale pink balls. Huai Yu had tested them the night before. Of course, she absolutely wouldn’t eat or drink them. She merely soaked her hands and feet in water dissolved with the balls, but nothing seemed to happen. After all, she had been resting and recovering for quite a while; her skin had gone from a sickly pallor to a normal paleness, so it couldn’t possibly get any whiter.

Thinking about the botanical properties of the Rose itself... there didn’t seem to be anything particularly remarkable either. Therefore, she categorized them as ornamental balls.

But now, these items were all tied to Ke Taichiro’s safety. Even if they were effective, Huai Yu didn’t dare bring them to Zhou Qian so casually. After all, a hospital was full of people and prying eyes!

Then... what should she bring?

Huai Yu thought it over and decided that as a weak, pitiful little orphan girl struggling to survive alone on the edge of the Wilderness, she should just bring something homemade! Therefore—

"What is this?"

Zhou Qian stared blankly as she took a stainless steel lunchbox and something wrapped in bamboo shoot leaves out of her woven basket. The worry he had been expecting to feel entirely vanished.

Before Huai Yu arrived, he had been anxious. He feared she might lose her composure and let slip things she shouldn’t say if she ran into his superiors, or that she might act recklessly and bring that miraculous medicine... But after tossing and turning for two or three days, the little girl had finally shown up, bringing items that were exceptionally down-to-earth.

"This is the hospital meal I brought for you!"

Huai Yu glanced at his face. After all, she had been looking at it for several days, and she was the one who had inflicted the wounds, so she wasn’t frightened. However, she still spoke with a guilty conscience. "Why hasn’t the doctor applied any medicine to these scars?"

Zhou Qian sneered—or at least tried to. The scars were stretched too tight, making the attempt unsuccessful, so he only managed to twitch the corners of his lips. "Thanks to you, the doctor said the scars formed by the trace amounts of the neurotoxin fusing with the skin won’t respond to ordinary medicine. So, they didn’t bother wasting any."

Huai Yu puffed out her cheeks. Although she felt guilty for slicing Zhou Qian up like this, she was the one who had dragged him back from the brink of death. Hearing him say that actually made her feel completely justified.

"You’re a grown man! What does a mere outward appearance matter?"

"Oh," Zhou Qian’s voice was steady. "My superior told me to introduce you to a potential partner. He has excellent qualifications and a very good character, it’s just that his face is a bit ugly..."

"No, no, no!" Huai Yu refused three times in a row, shaking her head frantically. "This... this... I’m too superficial!"

"Look at you!" Zhou Qian raised an arm and pointed at her. "You only like good-looking guys, don’t you? Well, I haven’t even married a wife yet, and my future wife will definitely like good-looking men too! Now look what you’ve done, I’m going to be a bachelor forever!"

Huai Yu fell speechless and shrank her neck back.

A moment later, she mustered her courage, raised her head, and said, "Be that as it may... you aren’t thinking of offering yourself to me in marriage to repay me for saving your life, are you?"

Her voice was weak, but her gaze was direct. This made Zhou Qian so angry that his fierce face twisted, the pulling on his scars causing a sharp, teeth-baring pain. Even his voice sounded like it was being squeezed through his teeth.

"YOU! LITTLE! BRAT!

"Do you have no idea how old you are?

"I want to marry a wife, not raise a daughter!"

"Oh." Huai Yu instantly broke into a bright smile, her voice sweet. "Brother Zhou Qian, I specially made this hospital meal for you. Have a little bit!"

Zhou Qian was left speechless. His emotions were incredibly complicated.

In just these past few short days, he had experienced suffering that ordinary people would find hard to endure. Whether it was the torture of the neurotoxin, the crisis of hanging by a thread, the joy of surviving a disaster, or the realization that he was crippled and disfigured... Any one of these things would take an ordinary person a long time to accept.