Chapter 6

Take six bites.
“Doctor Zhou, you’re done with surgery—why are you still here? Why haven’t you clocked out?”
Zhou Chaoli had just come off the operating table. He hadn’t left yet; he was flipping through a chart. Hearing the question, he smiled gently.
“I’m just tidying up,” he said, then corrected himself with a soft laugh. “I’ll organize a bit and head back soon.”
“You’ve worked hard,” the head nurse sighed. “I don’t know what kind of cursed day this is. Didn’t you just finish debriding and stitching a girl’s jaw from a traffic accident? And now they just brought in another crash victim. The male driver looks pretty bad—skull fracture. He’s been transferred from ER to orthopedics, and neurosurgery rushed over for a consult.”
“Oh.” The head nurse suddenly remembered. “I think I just saw your patient over in the ER too—the girl who came in last time for an extraction. What was her name… Tao something?”
“Ying Tao?” Zhou Chaoli’s brows knit. “She’s in the ER?”
“Yeah.” The head nurse nodded. “She came in with that male driver from the accident. When the ambulance arrived, they said there were two injured. That crash was brutal—the front of the sedan was smashed in and deformed.”
“Doctor Zhou—”
The head nurse had barely started when Zhou Chaoli rose to his feet. In the next second, he was already gone.
In the ER lobby, Ying Tao sat on a long bench in a daze. Even her eyes were red. Her apricot knit cardigan was stained with blood; there was blood on the back of her hand too, already dried and tacky against her skin. She could only peel it off bit by bit.
“Tao-tao?”
Zhou Chaoli hurried over.
Ying Tao looked up. Seeing him, she went blank for a moment and called out stupidly, “Little Uncle?”
Zhou Chaoli crouched down and examined her. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
Hurt?
Ying Tao finally came back to herself. “No.”
“Then all this on you…”
Zhou Chaoli looked at the blood on her clothes, then checked her hands and legs carefully. There were no obvious wounds.
Ying Tao understood what he meant. “It’s not mine. It’s from the driver they just brought in.”
She’d called the traffic police and the ambulance immediately. She was fine, but the sedan that had come straight at them lost control, rammed their car, then collided head-on with a cargo truck.
The scene was horrific. The front end was crushed almost beyond recognition. When they pulled the man out, he was covered in blood—bone showing.
Ying Tao’s hands and feet were ice-cold. The moment she thought of it, nausea rose hard.
She covered her mouth, jumped up, and rushed to the trash can. She dry-heaved for a long time but didn’t actually vomit.
Zhou Chaoli went to get a cup of warm water and brought it back. He patted her back, frowning.
“Better?”
Ying Tao held the disposable paper cup and nodded faintly. Her face still had no color. “Mm.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at school at this hour?” Zhou Chaoli glanced at the time. It was almost dawn. She should have been on campus.
“How did you get into a car accident?”
Ying Tao’s face was blank. She didn’t want to talk.
Zhou Chaoli saw how white she was and didn’t press. “Alright. As long as you’re okay. It’s too late to go back now anyway. I’ll take you.”
“Huh?” Ying Tao reacted a beat late.
Before she could answer, a voice came from behind—low, cool, and familiar.
“Shrimp. Come here.”
He Mingye walked out of the treatment room. His right hand was wrapped in bandages. He wore a clean, cold black outfit; the windbreaker was zipped all the way up, showing only a narrow strip of pale jaw. Under the harsh hospital lights, his long phoenix eyes held a faint, cold edge of mockery—deep, dark, unreadable.
Ying Tao immediately jogged over, worry overriding everything. She checked him anxiously.
“Are you okay? Is your hand bad?”
Earlier, he’d still had the nerve to joke, leaning there with that lazy attitude, and she’d actually thought he wasn’t hurt. Only after they arrived at the hospital—after she noticed he kept his hand lowered—did she realize he’d taken a serious hit protecting her.
She didn’t even know if the bone was damaged.
He Mingye lifted a brow. “Worried about me?”
“Obviously.” Ying Tao was so scared she was almost crying. She glared at him with red-rimmed eyes. “How is your hand? Is the bone okay? Will it affect normal life later?”
His hands mattered. For a musician, hands were what they were for a surgeon—his livelihood, his life.
If something went wrong and he couldn’t play again…
While she waited on the bench for his X-ray, her thoughts had spiraled out of control. She was helpless, panicked, unable to settle.
“It’s pretty serious.” He Mingye’s mouth curled as he looked down at her. “Shrimp, are you going to take responsibility for gege?”
“Serious?” Ying Tao’s panic doubled. She wanted to touch him but didn’t dare. Her voice shook. “What is it, exactly? Do we need to go to another hospital and get it checked again?”
“Fracture.” He Mingye lifted his hand like he wanted to touch her cheek.
Her eyes were so red. Tears slid down the corner. His fingertips paused near her eye, and a darker shadow flickered through his gaze. Then, as if nothing had happened, he moved his hand up and rubbed her hair twice, casual and familiar.
“One month of rest and it’ll be fine,” he said. “Crybaby.”
“Mingye.”
Zhou Chaoli walked over. Seeing how naturally close the two of them were, his brows tightened unconsciously—only for a moment. His gaze slid to He Mingye’s right hand.
“Your hand is injured? How bad?”
He Mingye hummed indifferently. “It’s fine. Won’t kill me.”
“Stop talking nonsense.” Ying Tao had been frightened enough tonight. She couldn’t stand the word “die.”
Zhou Chaoli was quiet for a long moment, then asked, “Do you want me to look at the films?”
He Mingye tugged the corner of his mouth. “Up to you.”
Ying Tao blinked, confused. “Little Uncle, aren’t you in dentistry? You can read ortho films too?”
Zhou Chaoli took the film and checked it against the light. He smiled and explained patiently, “Anatomy and the human body are medical fundamentals. No matter what specialty you choose, you need the basics.”
He lowered the film. “A mild metacarpal fracture. No obvious displacement. It shouldn’t be a big problem. Rest properly and you’ll recover.”
Only then did Ying Tao finally breathe. “Thank god. If not…”
“If not what?” He Mingye looked at her lazily.
“Nothing.” Ying Tao muttered. “I knew you’d be fine. Good people don’t live long; disasters last a thousand years. Someone like you will definitely live to a thousand.”
He Mingye gave a strange little laugh. “So you can’t bear to lose gege?”
Ying Tao reflexively wanted to snap back. But when she saw the bandages on his hand, she swallowed the words and only mumbled, “Stop being smug.”
He Mingye’s smile hovered. “Heartless little thing. Who do you think I got hurt for?”
“Who told you to mess with me?” Ying Tao shot back.
If he hadn’t dragged her out in the middle of the night, none of this would have happened.
Zhou Chaoli’s brows furrowed. “It’s late. If there’s nothing else, I’ll drive you back.”
Then he looked at Ying Tao with a gentle smile. “Tao-tao, are you going back to school?”
Ying Tao paused, then shook her head. “There’s curfew. The gates are probably closed. I’ll go back to the compound.”
“Mingye?” Zhou Chaoli asked for his opinion.
He Mingye’s attitude stayed cool. Compared with the other kids from the compound, He Mingye stood out sharply—more than just his looks, it was the expensive, lazy aura around him. You could imitate it on purpose and still never catch the right flavor.
And compared with everyone else’s polite warmth, He Mingye’s manner toward Zhou Chaoli was subtly different—polite on the surface, colder underneath.
He answered lazily, “Either is fine.”
Ying Tao hadn’t been back to the compound in a long time. At this hour, if she went home, she might run into Ying Zhaohui and Tang Huiru, and she would inevitably get questioned.
Standing by the curb waiting for the car, she frowned irritably, suddenly not wanting to go back at all.
When Zhou Chaoli drove up, she instinctively headed for the front passenger seat.
She’d taken only two steps when someone tugged the back of her collar and pulled her lightly back.
He Mingye’s expression was hard to read. The smile on his face was thin. “Why are you running?”
The collar tightened at her neck. Ying Tao covered her throat with an aggrieved look and shot him a glare.
He Mingye only chuckled, then patted the top of her head twice, lazily.
“Back seat.”
Ying Tao disliked his domineering tone, but she didn’t argue. She obediently climbed into the back.
On the way back, she thought about telling Ying Baiqing what had happened tonight.
But after the first words formed in her throat, she swallowed them.
When Ying Baiqing asked where she was, she only said she was in the dorm, then replied obediently, “Gege, I’m really sleepy. I want to sleep.”
Ying Baiqing never doubted her. “Sleep early. Good night.”
Ying Tao replied with a cute, clingy sticker. The moment she sent it, she covered her mouth and yawned.
Maybe because she’d been scared out of her mind, now that she finally relaxed, her nerves loosened all at once. Her eyes struggled to stay open, her mind drifting.
Her lids grew heavier and heavier. Her consciousness blurred. The moment her body tilted, she almost knocked her head on the window.
A hand came up to block it.
Wrapped in bandages, his palm caught her forehead—soft, full, warm. A small, sharp pain pulsed through his wrist, but he acted as if he didn’t feel it.
When he pulled his hand back, he guided her along with it, and her leaning body fell against him.
She frowned slightly, as if his shoulder was too hard. Her cheek rubbed once, twice, finding a comfortable spot all on its own.
Zhou Chaoli glanced into the rearview mirror.
As if sensing the look, the cold man in the back seat lifted his eyelids lazily. When their gazes met in silence, the air inside the car turned strangely heavy, suffocating.
Zhou Chaoli’s brows tightened. A moment later, he looked away first.
When the car reached the compound and stopped in front of the Ying house, Zhou Chaoli got out. He instinctively moved to open the door and carry Ying Tao inside.
His hand had just touched the door when it was blocked away.
He paused.
In front of him, the man bent down with calm indifference and lifted the sleeping girl out of the car.
The bandaged hand supported the bend of her legs; his palm covered the outside of her thigh. She was small, light—like a tame kitten curled into his arms.
Maybe she was uncomfortable. She let out two soft, muffled sounds.
He Mingye said lazily, “Thanks.”
Then he carried the fragile, newborn-kitten-soft girl away without looking back—possessive, controlling, absolute.
Zhou Chaoli found it strange.
Yet he couldn’t say what, exactly, was strange.