The conversation didn’t continue after that. The hand propping up her chin slipped, and the alcohol finally surged over her completely.
Her mind turned warm and hazy.
A faintly sweet fragrance of liquor still rose from the jug on the table. She narrowed her eyes and stared at it for a long while, trying to determine whether there was one jug or two. She couldn’t tell anymore.
“I’m going back to… the bedroom.”
She braced herself against the edge of the table and stood. The legs of the chair scraped across the floor with a shrill sound.
Her whole body lurched to the right, and her shoulder collided with something hard and warm—Jiang Ce’s chest.
Jiang Ce reacted instantly, reaching out with one large hand to steady her upper arm.
With his other hand, he took the half-finished glass from her and set it on the table.
“Can you walk?”
His voice came from above her head.
Jiang Nuan murmured an indistinct “Mm.”
Reality proved that she had overestimated herself.
The stairs were only a dozen steps from the dining room, but she staggered all the way there.
Jiang Ce half-supported, half-led her forward. His hand moved from her upper arm to the small of her back, practically holding her whole body steady against his side as they walked.
His body heat seeped through their clothes, warm enough to make her sleepy.
On the stairs, Jiang Nuan missed a step. Jiang Ce immediately tightened his arm and hauled her back.
“…I’m fine,” Jiang Nuan mumbled.
“Mm. You’re especially fine.”
Jiang Ce’s tone was gentle, but his hand didn’t loosen in the slightest.
Jiang Ce helped the unsteady Jiang Nuan to the bedroom.
He switched on only the warm orange bedside lamp.
Jiang Nuan tumbled headfirst into the blankets and lay face down.
She could feel Jiang Ce pull the other half of the blanket over her, covering her shoulders and back. His movements were incredibly gentle.
When the edge of the blanket brushed her cheek, she drowsily tilted her head, and her forehead rubbed against a warm hand.
Jiang Ce’s movements paused.
That hand lingered beside her face, as though he had hesitated for a long time. His fingers barely had time to brush over the faint flush on her cheek from the alcohol before withdrawing.
Then came the lights going out, followed by the soft sound of footsteps heading toward the door.
He paused.
Then gently closed the bedroom door behind him.
He really was a man who made people feel safe.
Under the influence of the alcohol, Jiang Nuan drifted into sleep.
*
She didn’t know how much time had passed.
Jiang Nuan was jolted awake by the cold.
This wasn’t the kind of chill that made you reach for an extra blanket. She felt as if she had been thrown into an ice cellar.
Jiang Nuan shivered and drowsily reached for the bedside lamp switch.
Warm yellow light flooded the room. The alcohol still lingered in her system, leaving her head heavy.
She remembered the note Zhang Qiang had left behind.
She turned the heating valve all the way down again and waited ten minutes, but the radiator remained freezing cold.
The terminal showed that it was eleven-thirty. Outside, the wind and snow had grown fiercer, the pellets of snow striking the window with a sharp, crackling hiss.
It was too late to call Zhang Qiang, and with the snow coming down so heavily, she didn’t want to trouble him.
She curled back up in bed and tossed and turned, but her hands and feet remained cold and numb.
Maybe Jiang Ce would have a solution.
The thought had barely surfaced before Jiang Nuan acted on it without hesitation.
In this unfamiliar place, amid the howling wind and driving snow, Jiang Ce’s very presence offered an overwhelming sense of security.
She simply draped the quilt around herself, slipped her bare feet into her slippers, and opened her bedroom door. Then she went to the door of Jiang Ce’s room next door.
The door wasn’t locked.
It opened with a push.
Warm yellow light spilled from the bedside lamp, illuminating the room. It was the same size as hers, except that there was an extra towel, crumpled into a ball, on the nightstand.
There was no one inside.
But water was rushing in the bathroom.
Maybe she should go back and wait?
Before she could turn around, the water stopped.
The bathroom door opened.
Steam billowed out first, followed by a person.
Jiang Ce had just finished showering. He was wearing only a pair of loose black trousers.
He hadn’t had time to put on a shirt. He held a dry towel in one hand and was rubbing his hair with it.
His hair was only half-dry, hanging messily over his forehead. Droplets of water still clung to his shoulders and neck, slowly sliding down over his muscles.
He stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a wide back.
Without the cover of his combat uniform, the body shaped by years of high-intensity combat training was exposed to the air.
The muscles of his arms ran in clean lines from his shoulders all the way to his forearms. When he lifted his hand to dry his hair, the lines of his lower abdomen shifted with the motion.
Jiang Nuan had no idea where to look.
It was the first time she had seen Jiang Ce so directly, without a combat uniform, a shield, or the protective filter that came with seeing him as her guardian.
With damp hair falling over half his brow, he didn’t look like a teammate.
He didn’t look like an older brother.
He didn’t even look like the big boy who had smiled and handed her potato chips.
He looked like a fully grown man who had just stepped out of the shower, bare-chested and intensely imposing.
Jiang Nuan’s heartbeat quickened, and she hurriedly tried to turn away.
But her feet tangled beneath her. The corner of the quilt trailing along the floor caught around her ankle.
The instant she lost her balance, an arm tightened around her waist.
Jiang Ce’s reaction was as fast as it had been on the battlefield. With a single arm, he caught her around the waist and lifted her effortlessly off the ground.
Both her feet dangled in the air.
She instinctively grabbed onto his shoulders with both hands.
His skin was still damp and radiated the heat left by the shower. The muscles beneath her palms tensed slightly, as though her icy fingers had startled him.
Jiang Nuan was held suspended in midair by one of his arms.
His right arm curved around her back, his palm steady against her waist. She sat on his forearm, both legs hanging freely, while one corner of the quilt dragged across the floor.
…Wait a second.
She was sitting on someone’s arm.
Just one arm.
She might not have been heavy, but she was still a grown woman weighing well over ninety pounds. And he had scooped her up one-handed without even wobbling?
Was that physically possible?
Jiang Ce lowered his head to look at her. Damp strands of hair fell forward as he walked to the bed and carefully set her down on its edge.
But after putting her down, he didn’t immediately let go.
Instead, the hand supporting her waist tightened slightly.
His palm pressed against her waist through her pajamas, scorching hot.
He leaned his upper body toward her and looked down.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
His voice was half a note lower than usual, as though he were desperately restraining something.
Jiang Nuan stammered, “N-no.”
She quickly scooted backward and wrapped herself tightly in the quilt.
The quilt carried Jiang Ce’s scent—a clean fragrance mixed with something like sun-warmed fabric.
Jiang Ce grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it on in one swift motion.
But that only made things worse.
The pure black T-shirt was close-fitting. His upper body hadn’t fully dried, and the dampness of his skin made the fabric cling tightly to him.
Soaked through by the water, the outlines of his chest and abs were now faintly visible beneath the material. It was somehow even more devastating than before, exuding a restrained, sensual allure.
By the time Jiang Nuan realized what she was doing, she had already been staring for quite a while.
She abruptly shifted her gaze away and began studying the corner of the quilt in front of her.
Only after several seconds did she feel the air flowing through her lungs again.
“The heating in your room is broken?”
Jiang Ce picked up the towel and casually rubbed his hair as he sat down beside her.
The mattress immediately sank deeply beneath his considerable weight.
Jiang Nuan’s body tilted helplessly toward him along the slant of the floor. She quickly used both hands and feet to sit upright again.
“Mm.” She tried to make her voice sound normal. “Turning the valve doesn’t help.”
“I noticed the water temperature was unstable when I was showering just now. There’s probably a problem with the heating pipes.” Jiang Ce draped the half-damp towel over the nightstand and turned to look at her. “Give me your hand.”
Jiang Nuan pulled one hand out from under the quilt.
The heater in Jiang Ce’s bedroom was still working, but she had been so cold earlier that her fingers were still pale.
Jiang Ce reached out and took her hand.
His palm was like a little heater. His broad, dry hand enclosed all five of her icy fingers.
The heat of his palm was almost scalding. Warmth shot from her fingers all the way to her wrist.
“So cold.” He frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? You could’ve stayed in the other bedroom.”
“…Oh, right.” Jiang Nuan muttered groggily, then said with complete calm, “I forgot.”
Jiang Ce let out a low laugh and said nothing more. He took hold of the ankle she had left outside the quilt.
His fingers touched her foot, and Jiang Nuan shivered.
“This one’s freezing too.”
He gently pushed her foot back under the quilt, then continued warming her hand in his.
The two of them simply sat there.
He slowly dried his hair beside her. She curled up under his quilt, her hand clasped in his.
They chatted intermittently.
Just like all those countless times they had sat shoulder to shoulder amid the ruins or inside the armored vehicle.
Only now, they were far too close.
The light was far too dim.
There was no longer any smell of blood or gunpowder in the air. Only the crisp, damp scent of shower gel and the lingering trace of alcohol on her.
Jiang Ce lowered his eyes, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the back of her hand.
“I never told you what happened to the captain of White Crow afterward…”
Jiang Nuan listened quietly.
“It was because of the sudden outbreak of an S-class restricted zone.” Jiang Ce’s breathing grew heavier. “The entire area fell far too quickly. The ten of us went in, and when the core of the restricted zone exploded…”
The fingers holding her hand tightened unconsciously, then relaxed.
“I did everything I could, but I couldn’t protect my teammates. The whole team… only two of us survived.”
The room fell silent except for the howling wind and snow outside the window.
Jiang Nuan’s heart felt as though something had seized it and wrenched it hard.
Then, wrapped in the quilt, her body tilted slightly to the side. Her forehead came to rest lightly against Jiang Ce’s upper arm.
Jiang Ce let her lean against him and remained silent for a long time.
“After that, I gave up on myself,” Jiang Ce said softly. “I stopped going outside and shut myself in at home every day. I didn’t even open the curtains.”
Jiang Nuan rubbed her forehead against his shoulder. “And then?”
“Then Lu Shiyan came.” Jiang Ce said, “He came three times.”
“I didn’t open the door the first two times.” He gave a quiet laugh. “The third time, he kicked it in.”
Jiang Nuan lifted her head to look at him.
“He walked straight in, dragged me out of bed, and beat me up without saying a word.”
She knew Lu Shiyan was a rough and forceful man.
But this was just so… Lu Shiyan.
“I didn’t fight back at first.” A trace of nostalgia appeared in Jiang Ce’s eyes. “But then he pushed me too far, so I fought him.”
“Two men nearly six foot three spent half an hour fighting in the house and smashed all the furniture.”
“When it was over, the two of us sat on the floor with bruised and swollen faces, drinking the alcohol he’d brought.” He chuckled. “He told me that being strong didn’t mean never failing. It meant being able to stand up again even after failure.”
“After that, I joined Unit Zero.”
So that was how Lu Shiyan had pulled him out of the abyss.
With alcohol-softened laughter, Jiang Nuan said, her voice sweet and lazy, the ending lifting upward, “Lu Shiyan’s way of recruiting people is way too violent.”
“His methods have always been simple and brutal.” Jiang Ce smiled too. “But they work.”
Jiang Nuan tried to imagine what Jiang Ce must have looked like with a bruised and swollen face. The image was so amusing that she tilted her head, unable to help herself.
She reached out, and her fingers landed on his cheek.
The skin beneath her palm was warm. She traced the curve of his cheek, finding no obvious scars.
Jiang Ce’s entire body suddenly went rigid.
As if he had been singed by a spark.
His eyes darkened at once, a dangerous emotion surging within them.
As Jiang Nuan’s fingers continued to stroke his cheek, his breathing changed, as though he were desperately suppressing something about to break free.
Jiang Nuan realized what she was doing and immediately tried to pull her hand away.
But she didn’t succeed.
Jiang Ce covered the back of her hand with his large hand, roughened by thin calluses.
His hot palm pressed against her skin, his fingers slipping between hers.
It was gentle, yet it left her completely unable to move.
He didn’t let her withdraw her hand.
The alcohol had heightened all of Jiang Nuan’s senses.
The searing heat of his dry palm. The shiver that ran through her when the thin calluses on his fingers grazed the back of her hand.
The faint scent of his shower gel, so close she could almost taste it.
The curve of his lashes when he lowered his eyes to look at her, casting a small fan-shaped shadow beneath them.
All of it surged toward her in the stillness of the deep night.
And the ache in her heart, stirred by his story, had yet to fade. She felt a little distressed, pained by the thought of how much unbearable weight lay hidden beneath the acceptance with which he now recounted it.
Then her gaze drifted downward, beyond her control.
The lines of his body beneath the T-shirt. The faint rise and fall beneath the fabric over his chest.
She suddenly remembered going shopping at the mall a few days earlier, when a crowd of girls passing by had secretly stolen glances at Jiang Ce.
Now that she was seeing him from this close, Jiang Nuan silently admitted that he really did have plenty to show off.
“When you look at me like that…”
Jiang Ce’s voice rose, carrying a husky laugh that seemed to roll slowly up from deep in his throat.
Jiang Nuan lifted her eyes. What she met was a pair of eyes much darker than usual.
In the lamplight, his pupils looked as though they had been scorched by something, leaving behind a dangerous gleam.
He was still holding her hand against his cheek.
“Actually, you don’t have the best angle.”
He slowly turned from his sideways, half-reclined position until he was facing her completely.
His broad shoulders and back cast a vast shadow in the light of the bedside lamp, enveloping her whole body.
He stood nearly six foot three, his shoulders almost twice as broad as hers. Sitting before her, he seemed like a mountain.
His slightly damp T-shirt clung to every contour of his body. The light shining from behind him outlined each of those lines with startling clarity.
Jiang Nuan swallowed.
His ears were a little red, and the flush continued burning down the side of his neck.
He was the one putting himself on display.
Yet he was also the one blushing.
Jiang Ce leaned forward slightly, closing the last sliver of space between them. Holding her wrist, he slowly guided her hand downward.
His burning breath fell across the hair at her forehead, trembling faintly.
In the quiet of the night, his hoarse voice sounded.
“Want to get a little closer and make sure?”
