He Kept Me as His First Love's Stand-In, but I Saved Him First novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Forty Degrees
"Then you want him to know," Yu said.
"I wanted to play it right."
"Right isn't yours to play."
Yu's voice shook, and he pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth to stop it.
"I'll tell him I taught it to you," he said. "At the guesthouse. That I hummed the last line and you must have heard it from someone in the kitchen."
"Tell him whatever you like."
"You're very brave for a man with a bandage."
He went out in a rush of white cloth and closed the curtain behind him with both hands.
Lu Wen drove Zhe back to the villa through the rain.
Zhe sat in the back with the handkerchief wound around his finger.
He felt strange. Cold at the edges, and hot somewhere underneath.
"Mr. Ning, are you quite well?"
"Tired."
"You should eat something."
"Yes."
He did not eat.
He climbed the lawn in the dark with his tool roll over his shoulder, got as far as the annex door, and sat down on the step because his knees had decided to.
The last thing he remembered was the rain on his collar.
He woke on the floor of the annex with the stove cold.
The ceiling swam. His skin hurt wherever it touched cloth, and somebody was saying his name from a long way off.
"Ning Zhe."
The voice was close and low.
"Ning Zhe. Look at me."
A hand slid under his head.
The face above him was upside down, then right way up, with a wet suit collar and a black fringe of hair stuck to the forehead.
"Mr. Shao."
"You're burning." The hand moved to his neck. "Forty degrees, at the least. How long have you been on the floor?"
"I sat down."
"Idiot." It was said so gently that Zhe barely heard the word.
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