Chapter 3

The blade came closer and closer.
Her whole body locked up, every muscle rigid. The cheek nearest the knife even began to go numb.
Just then, Eric’s thumb slid upward to press against her jaw, and he forced her mouth open.
—So he really was going to drive the blade through her throat.
Fear peaked so sharply that she couldn’t even scream. She could only watch as he pried her jaws apart and then…tapped the edge of the knife against her teeth.
He wasn’t planning to kill her.
Then what was he doing?
He tapped her teeth again with the blade. His eyes were still flat and empty, but Bo Li suddenly understood.
He was telling her to keep talking.
Her legs gave out. She sagged to the ground, limbs turning to jelly from head to toe; even her fingers felt too weak to lift.
Breathing hard, with a choked, post‑catastrophe sob in her throat, she stammered, “…I—I’m sorry I treated you like that before. You know too many things, I can’t compare to you at all… Nanny always praises you while she’s beating me, I just didn’t want to be hit anymore… I didn’t know Mike would do that to you… I’m really sorry…”
Maybe it was sheer survival instinct, but for the first time she delivered her “lines” with such raw sincerity that even she almost believed herself. “I’m sorry… I really do want to help you. This is medicine from my hometown. If you don’t believe me, I can use it on myself first.”
No response.
Eric didn’t say a word.
After a long moment, he sheathed the knife and hauled her to her feet.
Only then did Bo Li have the chance to really look around the tent.
Eric’s bed was a little better than hers—at least it was a real bed, not a sleeping bag—but there was no pillow, no quilt, just two thin blankets.
At the head of the bed sat a metal bucket full of cloudy, bloody water. Apparently he’d already done some rough first aid on himself.
He seemed to like making masks. The tent’s only decoration was a wooden rack covered in them—a whole array of different designs, each labeled with a date in red ink, and every single one unsettling in its own way.
For some reason, one white mask in particular caught her eye. He’d painted delicate features on it, but that only made it more disturbing.
Bo Li was about to look at the others when two dull thumps sounded behind her, making her jump—the hilt of Eric’s knife knocking twice against the headboard, signalling her to turn around.
She really wanted to ask: Can’t you talk?
But then she remembered—he had spoken to the manager before, and Mike’s group had said he could sing and do ventriloquism.
Obviously, he just didn’t want to talk to her.
When she turned, Eric slid the knife back into his boot and shrugged out of his shirt, baring his mangled back.
He was shockingly thin, but his injuries were worse than his frame—the skin on his back had been stripped away as if burned, exposing raw, wet flesh streaked with red. Dirt, gravel, and bits of grass were stuck in the mess.
…With wounds like that, he shouldn’t be alive at all.
Yet not only had he survived, he’d hobbled in on a ruined leg and taken her down with one hand.
How was that possible?
Then again, she’d time-traveled—why was she worrying about this?
Bo Li took a deep breath and dug out some ibuprofen from the first-aid kit—partly for him, partly for herself. Her back was still throbbing dully.
She popped out a capsule and held it out to him, then swallowed one in front of him. “It helps with pain.”
Eric watched her for a moment, then took the capsule from her hand and swallowed it.
Bo Li had been about to tell him she had electrolyte solution he could drink it down with, but his Adam’s apple bobbed and he’d already forced it down dry.
She swallowed her words instead, took out an iodine swab, dabbed it over the scrapes on her own arm first, then looked up. “Is this okay?”
He gave a slow nod.
Bo Li found tweezers, scissors, and some hemostatic powder in the kit and began cleaning his wounds.
Good thing she’d watched so many first-aid videos while packing her hiking bag. Otherwise she’d have had no idea how to even start on this.
Some areas had already fused into clumps of brown-red dead flesh; she had to trim that away before she could medicate and bandage him properly.
What surprised her was that Eric never made a sound—not a groan, not a hiss. He lay there like a quiet corpse.
She couldn’t help asking, “…Doesn’t it hurt?”
No reply.
She shut her mouth and kept working.
She didn’t know if the ibuprofen was working for him, but it definitely was for her—when he’d slammed her to the ground earlier, the flare of pain had almost brought her to tears. Now, at least, it had faded.
Bo Li sped up.
She regretted not buying injectable chitosan; rumor had it that stuff could stop bleeding in three seconds. Some of his wounds were big enough to make her dizzy. She had no idea if a little hemostatic powder would be enough.
But the moment she sprinkled it on, the blood stopped.
His ability to heal was terrifying. His leg was broken, yet aside from a slight limp it didn’t seem to hinder him at all.
With a body like this, was he even human?
Eric, however, didn’t look the least bit surprised.
He picked up the packet the powder had come in and seemed far more interested in the ingredient list.
Bo Li regretted it even more—why had she bought imported hemostatic powder? The whole package was in English. He could read it.
What if he handed the packet to the manager and they decided to call the villagers together and burn her as a witch?
“…Don’t worry,” she forced herself to explain. “It’s just for stopping bleeding. Hardly any side effects… Once a scab forms, it’ll fall off on its own.”
He still didn’t say anything, but he did hand the packet back.