Chapter Eleven
Dust-Bound Ties Thin as Paper (2)
His fingers slipped in from the nape of her neck, sinking into the roots of her hair.
The pads of his fingers gently grazed her scalp, and Zhaozhao suddenly felt a tingling sensation shoot downward, all the way to her tailbone. She squirmed a little.
Just as she thought. Every time he had washed her hair before, his fingers kneading at the roots had always made her feel restless. Her feet would rub lightly against the floor a few times. It turned out it wasn't uncomfortable. It felt too good.
His fingers caressed the roots of her hair, and gradually, blood rushed to Zhaozhao's face. She was like a koi fish he'd fished out of a pond and dropped onto the floor, able to slip a long way with a single slick wriggle. She, too, felt as though there were water beneath her, and she was sliding downward.
Shen Ce lifted her up from where she'd slid onto the floor, and the two of them went from sitting to lying down.
Their bodies tangled together in an act that served no practical purpose, repeated again and again. They simply wanted to be like this.
She felt as though he were pressing her down into the sofa, sinking into it with her, as if they were lying in soft red silk, his weight pinning her legs down.
Footsteps came without warning.
Her scalp prickled. She held her breath and stayed still. The person whose lips were on hers neither pulled away nor moved.
"Little Uncle?" It was Shen Yan. "They said you haven't had dinner. Would you like me to have someone prepare a late-night snack and bring it over?"
"No need." He replied without the slightest change in emotion.
Just beyond a single folding screen stood a living, breathing person. His nephew.
The space between her brows twitched again and again, as though a needle hung suspended in front of her, refusing to fall...
Only when the footsteps receded did she become aware of the heat engulfing her. She hurriedly pushed him away.
Shen Ce seemed to want to kiss her some more, but after thinking it over, he let her go.
The cup of tea he had poured for her earlier was picked up by him instead, and he drained it in one gulp.
She went from lying down to sitting up, watching his profile as she wondered what exactly the two of them were doing. Could this be considered a secret rendezvous? From this angle, his gaze seemed deep and somber, his lips still faintly pursed. He was rugged, but not rough, with the purest masculine definition to his features.
“Ge,” she called softly.
He looked at her.
“What did you major in? At university?”
“Anthropology. Why?”
“Nothing.” Zhaozhao's face was still warm as she spoke. “I don't even know what you majored in, or whether you'd graduated.”
“I graduated last year.”
“Then you started studying pretty early.” She smiled. “Were you in a hurry to come back and help your dad?”
Shen Ce suddenly smiled.
What was he smiling at? Zhaozhao wondered.
That night in Hong Kong, when she'd been drunk, she'd asked him all these questions already. Of course, he wasn't going to expose her. Zhaozhao's temper was the same as ever. If he pointed it out, she'd turn on him. The atmosphere was just right at the moment, and he had no desire to spoil it.
She watched him drink, watching his Adam's apple move gently up and down a few times.
She had never paid serious attention to this particular male feature before. She glanced at it once, then again.
Shen Ce had guessed what she was looking at, too.
That night in Hong Kong, she'd touched his Adam's apple. She'd kissed him there, too.
“Did you like that incense?” he asked suddenly, his voice lowered, like wind passing through a bamboo grove, rustling and whispering.
“Mm.”
She did like it, but why had he suddenly brought up incense out of nowhere?
“I'll have some sent to your room tomorrow.”
Shen Ce set down the cup, then came over and held her again. There was something different about the way Shen Ce embraced her, something different even from the way her other brothers did. The moment she settled into the crook of his arm, both her body and her heart would sink, turning soft and pliant.
His lips and tongue were even slicker after the tea had moistened them, Zhaozhao thought.
This time, she wasn't nearly as at ease as before. The moment she thought of Shen Yan having come by just now, she imagined someone else might show up next, inviting their little uncle, their little maternal uncle, to join them for a late-night snack. She felt as though Shen Ce had pushed her off the shore and onto the surface of the water, where only a thin layer of ice held her up. She didn't dare put any weight on it. At any moment, it might shatter beneath her, and she would sink.
At last, Zhaozhao could no longer bear the oppressive sense of danger. She shook her head and fled from beneath his lips.
“I have to go upstairs.” Like a thief, she explained to him in a low voice, “If I sneak out after ten, my sister will come looking for me.”
She had been there for less than fifteen minutes and was already leaving. It made him seem like a faithless lover who abandoned someone as soon as their secret rendezvous was over.
Zhaozhao met his gaze, sinking into that deep, rich blackness. She said softly, “Let's meet a little earlier tomorrow.” That way, they would have plenty of time to spend together. “We can go out, too.”
“Go out to do what?” he asked with a low laugh.
She couldn't very well say they could go out and find somewhere no one knew them to fool around.
Afterward, Zhaozhao could barely remember how Shen Ce had let her go. Her mind was hazy, and she recalled little of it.
When she returned to her room, she discovered that her sister had gone out with their mother again. She should have guessed. Her sister rarely got to see their mother throughout the year, so whenever their holidays happened to coincide, their mother did everything she could to take her out and show her around. Macau was full of places to spend money around the clock anyway. Although her sister was still too young to enter the public gambling establishments, there were always other places to go.
Lying on her bed, Zhaozhao actually found herself regretting having come back so early.
There was a white telephone beside her pillow. She didn't know how to use it to call his room, and she didn't have his mobile number.
She had thought that once day broke, he would surely call.
But the white telephone on the bedside table remained silent. Zhaozhao wondered again whether he had planned to see her in person today and thought there was no need to call. Yet he wasn't at the breakfast table, either.
After breakfast, as Shen Yan was seeing to the guests, he mentioned in passing that his little maternal uncle wasn't feeling well today and asked everyone to excuse his absence.
He said this while everyone was bowling on the top floor. There were two lanes, and balls kept rolling away with a rumble before crashing into the pins with a bang, sending several flying. Normally, Zhaozhao quite liked the sound of the balls striking the pins, but today she found it noisy. Even Shen Jiaheng could tell that her mind was elsewhere. Smiling, he asked whether she was finding Macau too stifling and whether it was less free than being at home.
“Hasn't Shen Ce taken you around?”
“He has,” her sister chimed in from the side. “Though obviously, I went out a lot more than she did.”
“Your new older brother,” Shen Jiaheng began conversationally, “is a man of deep calculation. He knows how to get things done.”
“Didn't our maternal great-granduncle say that even at a very young age, he was unfathomable?” Her sister remembered, too. “That's what he said, right? Anyway, I think he's very...” She couldn't find quite the right word, so she smiled and asked Shen Jiaheng to tell them more.
Among the Shen children, Shen Ce was the most doted on, largely because he had suffered so much from such a young age.
Shen Jiaheng had heard about what happened before he turned three, but things hadn't settled down after that, either. When he was six, he was kidnapped. The Shen family raised the ransom in cash and paid over a hundred million to get him back, but he had suffered terribly and had nearly died. Then, when he was eight, the same gang, having tasted success, tried to pull off another job. They failed, but Shen Ce's driver at the time was killed in the incident.
The gang had committed murder and fled to Thailand. After that, there was no trace of them.
This had happened before the handover.
Later, the Shen family sent him to study in Britain at an early age. As the years passed, no one mentioned the matter again. It was simply kept in mind as a lesson to be learned. That was until last year, when Shen Ce was overseas and suddenly began tracking down the people involved one by one, following the trail back to the original perpetrators. Those who owed a life paid with their own; for the rest, he gathered all the evidence of their crimes and sent them wherever they belonged. Of course, those who had abused him when he was a child had to pay him back first.
This wasn't something that could have been planned and carried out thoroughly in a day or two. No one knew how long he had kept it in mind or how long he had spent making arrangements. And he absolutely refused to leave the matter in someone else's hands. No matter how many people he delegated tasks to along the way, in the end, he would always appear in person.
A cold case from when he was six had been brought to a close when he was twenty. Fourteen years of waiting. Everything had its day of reckoning, whether it took ten years, twenty, or thirty.
He wasn't afraid to wait. He could take his time. Sooner or later, every debt would be settled.
Who would dare cross a man like that?
Her older sister listened with her heart pounding and hurried over to pick up a bowling ball, sending it rolling down the lane.
But Zhaozhao was thinking about Shen Ce in the boxing ring. No wonder he trained in boxing, practicing year after year. She could more or less imagine how he had made them pay him back.
Shen Yan said he should make an appearance after dinner, since there would be an important guest visiting.
Still, he didn't show up.
Zhaozhao couldn't wait any longer. After some indirect questioning, she managed to find out which room Shen Ce was staying in.
When she reached the door, Uncle Shen and her mother happened to be coming out of the room. At the other end of the corridor, her mother spotted her, too, and asked, “Come to see your brother?”
“Ah, yes,” Zhaozhao said. “I heard he was sick.”
Her mother smiled and said something to Uncle Shen. From the looks of it, the two seemed to get along well.
The door in front of her suddenly swung open. Zhaozhao's hand was still resting against it when it abruptly gave way beneath her palm. Her heart gave an involuntary jolt, and she looked past the door. In the unlit room, his silhouette stood behind it, looking at her from the darkness. Yet, strangely, he seemed almost as though he hadn't seen her at all...
“We'll go downstairs first. Make sure you keep your brother company,” her mother called from a distance.
Zhaozhao answered in agreement.
Although no one had noticed anything amiss, she remained silent until the corridor was empty. Then she asked softly, “You haven't turned on the lights?”
Shen Ce lowered his head and smiled at her. “Why would I turn them on?”
“Without the lights, I'd think you were up to something bad.” Zhaozhao teased him with a smile.
He smiled.
“Or have you got someone hidden in there?” Zhaozhao pretended to peer inside. “And you won't even let me in.”
There was no one, of course. The curtains fitted tightly into the corners of the walls, covering the entire wall without letting in the slightest bit of light.
Shen Ce stepped aside and let her into the room. He seemed hesitant, as though unsure which light to turn on. In the end, he switched on the desk lamp, adjusting it to its dimmest setting.
Zhaozhao wanted to use the light to get a better look at him, but Shen Ce gave her no chance. Instead, he picked a random book from the shelf and began flipping through it.
“You could have called me earlier. I would have come to see you.” Watching his back, Zhaozhao couldn't shake the feeling that he was deliberately avoiding her.
He didn't answer.
Zhaozhao went up behind him and rested her cheek against his arm, asking with an amused smile, “Why are you ignoring me?”
His arm trembled slightly. Without betraying anything, he raised it to reach for a book on the top shelf, using the movement to avoid her.
Zhaozhao froze for a moment.
“I can't keep you company tonight,” he said with a smile. “There's a phone call I have to wait for.”
Zhaozhao tried to steady her feelings. His face was visibly pale, and he really did seem unwell. “You're sick and still have to wait for a call? Is it that important?”
He fell silent again.
Zhaozhao had wanted to use his illness as an excuse to stay longer, to keep him company and take care of him. But Shen Ce didn't seem to appreciate the gesture. Even though he knew she wanted to stay, he kept pushing her away with excuses about having plans, waiting for a call, and reading his book.
“Then I'll come back after you've finished the call?” Fine. There was no point arguing with a sick person.
Shen Ce still wouldn't look at her. “I really don't have time.” His voice already carried a note of fatigue, along with a resistance to saying anything more, but he still managed to keep it steady. “I'll see you another day.”
“Another day?” She was no longer smiling. “Wasn't it supposed to be tomorrow?”
Shen Ce smiled. “You want to see me that badly?”
Before she'd arrived, he hadn't even turned on the lights. Now that she was here, he seemed perfectly content to stand there flipping through book after book. Irritated by his coldness, Zhaozhao leaned against the bookshelf and stared at him, wanting to see just how much he loved this particular book.
Shen Ce returned the book to the shelf and moved on to a third, then a fourth... He was forcing himself to be patient, waiting for her to leave.
Zhaozhao's expression gradually changed. She lowered her head, wanting to say something, but in the end, she decided to preserve what little dignity she had left. Raising her head with a smile, she said, “Take your time reading.”
The last of Shen Ce's willpower vanished when Zhaozhao closed the door behind her.
He could no longer slide the book back into place or hold himself upright against the bookshelf. He crashed to the floor, swallowed whole by an unrelenting, all-consuming pain.
Amidst billowing clouds of smoke, the horse beneath him galloped toward the flames. His eyes, scorched by the smoke, could no longer see. Only streaks of fire flashed past him. His body tilted as he lost his balance, and he fell to the ground. In an instant, every wound across his body split open again, as though a hundred thorny branches had lashed his flesh.
Someone lifted him. Someone shouted orders. Someone called for a military doctor. In the darkness, only the pain was real, tearing at his will...
The instant his broken leg was set, his body convulsed uncontrollably. A muffled groan escaped him.
The military doctor's hands were shaking. “Tiger bone, dried turtle shell, bi cao, xu duan... Hurry! No! No, not yet! We need something to keep him alive! We need ginseng!”
Bi cao (萆草): The precise identification of the plant species is uncertain, though the character 萆 appears in historical botanical terminology and in the names of medicinal plants, such as bi xie (萆薢).
Xu duan (续断): Dipsacus root, the root of Dipsacus asper, traditionally used to help mend fractures and injuries to tendons and bones. The name literally means “restore what has been severed.”
Someone roared, “Is the Vanguard Commander still alive?!”
He couldn't see the military doctor. He grabbed blindly at the shadow in front of him, his teeth clenched and bloody, his eyes bloodshot as he threatened, “I still have a younger sister. I can't die, understand...”
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