Chapter 40: Make it hurt
When they came out of the Public Security Bureau, the weather had turned cooler. Cheng Lan had a jacket draped over her shoulders. The bureau had made quite a haul that day and naturally had no time for the two of them. Wang Weiwei and his companions had been picked up at the entrance by their formidable driver.
"Your jacket..." Cheng Lan tried to return it to Su Can, but he stopped her. "Keep it. It's cold. You should head home early too."
There was not the slightest lecture or sigh. Su Can remained as calm as ever, as though Wang Weiwei's smashing up Ding Sheng Karaoke City, their fighting the security guards face-to-face, and even the armed police charging in with loaded weapons had never happened.
Was this the same skinny, small, utterly unremarkable boy from middle school?
Cheng Lan's eyes had been red the whole time. The fright she had suffered that day had almost made her mature considerably overnight. She reached out and touched Su Can's cheek, looking a little forlorn. "You've helped me twice now. Don't you want me to repay you?"
Her hand was a little cold. Beside the brightly lit, pleasure-filled street was a "Fat" sign, one of Xiahai's earliest generation of signs to incorporate English.
"You think I'm a bad girl, don't you?" Cheng Lan smiled and rolled up her sleeve. Under the streetlight, her normally fair arm was covered in crisscrossing red welts and bruises. "Some were from my parents. Some were from other people beating me because I wanted to hold on to my boundaries. I'm stupid, aren't I? Even with all this, even when people misunderstand me, I still want to protect what I think matters most. Now, if you want it, I can give