Wen Yanyu hummed a little cooking tune, casually wiped the blood around the wound twice, and, seeing that it had stopped bleeding, put on gloves and continued chopping vegetables.
Wen Yanyu actually wasn't short among men, but he was far too thin and frail. The little weight and vitality he had finally built up had vanished again after his recent illness.
Beneath his pale hair, his skin didn't look any darker by contrast. Instead, its pallor looked even more fragile.
He was all right when he was with those two. There was always a smile in the young man's eyes, and he seemed relaxed.
But when they weren't there, or even when he was merely farther away from them, the exhaustion and weakness seeping from his bones couldn't be hidden, however deliberately he tried to conceal them.
He only had to stand there.
And she could sense the sickness about him.
That lifeless exhaustion.
The exhaustion that had made her completely abandon the extreme idea she had once imagined in her mind.
As a mother who had raised and cared for a child, she had often found herself looking at him and thinking that this was a child who hadn't been properly cared for.
Until now.
Jiang Wanrou stood frozen, staring blankly at the young man's accustomed, utterly unconcerned manner as a film of tears gradually gathered in her eyes.
The thing she had deliberately tried to ignore and forget surged back into her mind. Reason told her not to ask, but instinct still made her speak.
"Does it hurt?"
She could hear how dry her own voice was, trembling slightly.
Hearing Jiang Wanrou's question, he thought the blood had frightened her.
Wen Yanyu shook his head casually, a smile in his voice. "It just looked like a lot of