An unexpected arrival

Shen Wangjing opened his eyes.

There was none of the confusion of waking in those dark eyes. He looked so alert it was as though he had never been asleep.

He held Jiang Xun by the wrist, his palm dry and rough. His grip was not particularly strong, but the angle made it impossible to pull free.

Caught red-handed, Jiang Xun showed no trace of guilt. "You were pretending to sleep."

"Your finger was practically poking my eyeball. Did I need to pretend?"

"I was checking whether you were still breathing." Jiang Xun gave his wrist an entirely unrepentant tug, but failed to free it. "Let go. I brought you food. Is this how you repay a favor?"

Shen Wangjing glanced down at the boxes of self-heating rice on the floor, then back up at Jiang Xun-his face was still pale, his lips had not regained their normal color, and his voice was as raspy as sandpaper, yet he still had the leisure to worry about whether Shen Wangjing had eaten.

He released him and pushed himself upright against the chair.

The movement exposed the scrape on his knee. Blood had clotted messily over the wound, its edges red and swollen. One look made it clear it had never been treated.

Jiang Xun's brows knitted instantly.

"What happened to your leg?"

Shen Wangjing tugged his trouser leg down. "Just scraped it."

"Just scraped it?" Jiang Xun crouched for a closer look. The edges of the wound were abnormally red, a sizeable patch of skin had been scraped off, and fluid could faintly be seen seeping beneath the scab.

"When did this happen? Why didn't anyone bandage it for you?"

"It's a small scrape. It's fine."

Jiang Xun straightened, his delicate brows drawn tightly together. He stared at Shen Wangjing for two seconds, said nothing, then turned and ran outside.

After two steps, he doubled back, snapped the lid off Shen Wangjing's box of self-heating rice, and slapped a pair of chopsticks onto it.

"Eat first. Finish it before I get back."

His tone was downright commanding. Even with his hoarse voice, he sounded rather imposing.

Shen Wangjing watched him run off. The heating pack was still bubbling beneath the rice container, and the smell of braised beef kept wafting into his nose.

A clatter of rummaging came from the corridor. Before long, Jiang Xun rushed back carrying a white first-aid kit.

He was running so fast that his slipper caught on the threshold. He stumbled forward, nearly pitching into the room along with the kit.

He set the first-aid kit by Shen Wangjing's feet, crouched, and began rummaging through it-povidone-iodine, cotton swabs, gauze, adhesive bandages. He pulled them all out and spread them across the floor.

"Move your hand." Jiang Xun unscrewed the bottle of povidone-iodine and dipped a cotton swab into it.

Shen Wangjing did not move. "No need."

"What do you mean, no need? The edges are already red. What if it gets infected because you leave it untreated?" Jiang Xun tipped his face up and glared at him. "Are you made of iron? Even iron rusts."

In silence, Shen Wangjing rolled up his trouser leg.

Jiang Xun lowered his head and carefully dabbed around the wound with the cotton swab. Once he finished applying the povidone-iodine, he opened a bottle of Yunnan Baiyao.

White medicinal powder sifted onto the wound. Worried that it would not spread evenly, he leaned closer, puffed out his cheeks, and blew gently.

That breath was light and soft, brushing over the burning scrape on Shen Wangjing's knee. A few inches above his knee, his muscles involuntarily tightened.

Shen Wangjing lowered his eyes.

Jiang Xun's lashes trembled slightly, the shadows beneath his eyelids fluttering softly along with the powder. His pale pink lips were slightly pursed as he concentrated on blowing over the wound.

He crouched between Shen Wangjing's legs, his head very close. The loose collar of his T-shirt exposed a small stretch of strikingly white skin at the back of his neck.

Shen Wangjing's Adam's apple bobbed. At this ill-timed moment, the fabric of his trousers suddenly felt somewhat tight.

He unobtrusively shifted the hand resting on his knee downward, pressing it against the side of his thigh.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Jiang Xun looked up, his bright eyes gazing straight at him. "Does it hurt? Say so if it does. It's not like I'll laugh at you."

Shen Wangjing remained silent.

Jiang Xun did not wait for an answer either. Finished applying the medicine, he tossed the cotton swab aside and rummaged out a roll of gauze from the first-aid kit.

The gauze would not cooperate. After two unsuccessful tugs, he simply bit it, tore off a length, and wound it around Shen Wangjing's knee.

Those beautiful eyes were intensely focused, his brows slightly knitted and his lips pressed into a line. The two dimples in his cheeks formed shallow indentations as he pursed his mouth.

The air in the room grew a little stuffy. Sunlight slipped through a gap in the curtains and fell across that stretch of skin at the back of Jiang Xun's neck.

He was still fussing. "There, all bandaged. Be more careful next time. You're a grown man, and you still manage to fall while walking..."

A sudden, deafening putter came from outside the courtyard gate.

It sounded exactly like a tractor on the verge of being scrapped, mustering its final breath to charge toward the Village Committee.

The noise set the entire courtyard humming. Several crew members crouched on the ground counting equipment all looked up toward the gate.

What was heading their way was indeed a tractor on the verge of being scrapped.

A layer of fertilizer crumbs remained in its bed, and half-dried yellow mud caked its body. An old farmer wearing a straw hat sat in the driver's seat, a tobacco pipe between his lips, looking perfectly calm.

The person who jumped off was considerably less calm.

Jiang Yanchu wore a khaki trench coat, its hem spattered with mud. One cuff had been torn somewhere.

His hair was a windblown mess, and dark bruised circles sat beneath his eyes. He looked as though he had endured eighty-one trials and tribulations.

At the height of last night's downpour, he had been stranded in the only hotel in a town thirty kilometers from Shiban Village.

The phone signal kept cutting in and out. He crouched beside a charging socket in the hotel lobby, charging his phone while frantically refreshing the Metamorphosis livestream page.

The livestream had cut out at eight that evening.

The image froze on the crooked wooden door of Shen Wangjing's house, rain blurring the lens. One last viewer comment drifted across the screen-"Lost the signal? It's raining so hard in the mountains. Nothing's happened, right??"

Clutching his phone, Jiang Yanchu refreshed the livestream page every ten minutes and called the director every half hour.

Thunder rolled outside the window. At daybreak, he finally came across an announcement posted by the Metamorphosis production team on Weibo.

All guests and crew had been safely relocated to the Village Committee. One guest had developed a fever after getting caught in the rain, but was now out of danger following prompt treatment.

The accompanying image showed the Village Committee courtyard. Sunlight spilled through gaps in the clouds, and puddles in the courtyard reflected a sparkling light.

Jiang Yanchu enlarged the photograph again and again, finally finding half a blurry figure bundled in clothing in one corner.

The figure was huddled beneath a military overcoat, with only a small tuft of hair sticking out.

His hand trembled around his phone. He rushed to the intersection at the edge of town and stopped an old farmer who had driven his tractor into town to collect fertilizer. Emptying all the cash from his wallet into the farmer's hand, he said he needed to go to Shiban Village.

The old farmer looked at the stack of red banknotes in his hand, tossed the fertilizer sacks into the bed, and started the tractor with his tobacco pipe between his lips.

The tractor puttered over the mountain road, which the rain had soaked into mush. Jiang Yanchu swayed and lurched in the bed, both hands gripping the iron railings tightly as mud flew from beneath the wheels and splattered all over one trouser leg.

The road was cut off in three places. The tractor detoured onto a dirt track that did not even appear on the map, and got stuck in a mud pit along the way. He and the driver jumped down and pushed for more than ten minutes before they got it out.

Only when the tractor's engine stopped outside the Village Committee courtyard gate did the old farmer tuck his pipe into his mouth and drawl, "We're here."