"Ah... so tired..."
A few days later, Tang Wulin opened his eyes at that moment.
He first flexed his fingertips, the pads brushing against the soft cotton-linen sheets beneath him. Only then, as if he had finally regained control of his body, did he laboriously sit up.
As he moved, the thin blanket covering his waist slipped down onto his legs.
He raised both arms high and gave a heavy stretch—the muscles in his shoulders and back slowly pulled taut.
Then, a series of fine cracks traveled up his spine from bottom to top, like a rusted mechanism finally being oiled. Every joint seemed filled with the stiffness and sluggishness that had built up over the night.
He stretched so broadly that even his shoulders trembled slightly, as though he wanted to fling all the exhaustion accumulated in his bones out through his fingertips.
Yet even after stretching like that, his entire body still radiated an inescapable sense of weakness.
His eyelids felt as though two tiny lead weights were hanging from them, drooping slightly. Even lifting his gaze took effort. Faint dark circles surrounded his eyes, as if he had stayed up three or four nights in a row, and even the corners of his eyes were laced with faint bloodshot veins.
After leaning against the bedframe and recovering for a long while, Tang Wulin finally let out a long breath and raised a hand to rub his throbbing temples.
With his fingertips pressed against them, he could clearly feel his blood vessels pulsing. His mind felt like a crumpled sheet of paper, heavy and unable to turn.
There was no helping it.
No one would probably believe it if he said it—this bone-deep exhaustion was all thanks to Jin Qiu.
Before going to sleep last night, Jin Qiu