Chapter 10: Three Steps

It was only the dinner tray.

The day nurse had left it on the table in the outer room, and gone away again without knocking.

Lin Zhi sat down at it with a red face.

Zhaoran lay back on his pillow with his eyes shut and an expression of terrible innocence.

Neither of them mentioned the kisses.

Both of them thought about nothing else.

At six, someone knocked on the outer door, and Lin Zhi opened it a hand's width.

The cousin stood in the corridor with a basket of fruit and an expression of deep regret.

"Cousin Zhi, I'm sorry about the video. My father made me."

"Did he," said Lin Zhi.

"I'd never do that to you."

He smiled, and put a warm hand over Lin Zhi's wrist on the door frame.

"You were wonderful, you know. Everyone was talking about it."

"Thank you," said Lin Zhi.

"If you ever want company, I'm two floors down."

Lin Zhi took the basket and took his wrist back, politely.

"That's kind," he said, and shut the door.

Beyond the inner door, a monitor had begun to beep rather fast.

Lin Zhi went in, locked it, and found Zhaoran staring at the ceiling with a muscle jumping in his jaw.

"Two floors down," said Zhaoran.

"You heard."

"I heard him touch you."

"You're jealous," said Lin Zhi, delighted.

"I don't get jealous."

"Your pulse is a hundred and four."

"It is a coincidence," said Zhaoran, and did not look at him for a long while.

In the dead of the night, Lin Zhi pulled back the sheet.

"Up," he said.

"Is that a rule?" asked Zhaoran.

"It's physiotherapy. Rule two is suspended during physiotherapy."

"You made rule two," said Zhaoran.

"I can suspend it. I'm a lawyer. Almost."

He had looked after his grandfather through a stroke, and he knew what a dead leg looked like and how a living one came back.

The long legs swung off the bed and hung there, white and thin, and the feet did not reach the floor.

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