Wild wind drove huge raindrops against the glass windows, making a patter-patter racket.
Lin Ci sat in the last row of the classroom, looking at the pitch-black sky outside, inexplicably irritable.
The senior-year evening major elective had just ended.
With the teacher’s “class dismissed” from the podium, the time already pointed to 8:30.
He pulled out his phone, swiped the screen, and sent Gu Mianmian a WeChat.
[It’s raining. Did you bring an umbrella?]
Two minutes after the message went out, the interface did not move at all.
Lin Ci directly placed a voice call.
The receiver rang seven or eight times, then hung up automatically.
“Damn.”
Lin Ci could not help cursing, grabbed his bag, and strode out of the classroom.
He sprinted all the way back to the dorm building, snatched a big black umbrella from behind the door, turned, and ran for the school’s south gate.
The rain was even fiercer than he had imagined.
It smashed into the cement ground and threw up sheets of spray.
Wild wind blew straight into his face.
The umbrella in Lin Ci’s hand was almost flipped inside out.
By the time he ran to the night-market street outside the south gate, his sneakers were already full of icy rainwater.
The jeans clung wet to his thighs and knees, heavy as hell.
Standing water on the whole night-market street had risen to the ankles.
Stalls on both sides had already packed up.
Shops one after another pulled down their rolling shutters.
Lin Ci stepped through the muddy water and hurried forward, and finally saw the sign for Old Zhao’s Skewers.
The shop’s big iron door had been pulled more than halfway down, leaving only a gap a little taller than a person.
Lin Ci bent and ducked in under the shutter.
The light inside was a little dim.
The grill had long since gone out.
Gu Mianmian was squatting in a corner of the back kitchen, soaked through.
That washed-pale old hoodie clung to her thin, weak body and outlined the slender line of her back.
Black long hair stuck wet to both sides of her cheeks.
Water droplets fell from her chin one by one.
She hugged her knees and curled into a tiny ball.
Her lips held a faint bluish-white.
Boss Zhao Dayong was wiping tables and tossed out a line without even lifting his head.
“Rain’s too heavy today so we closed early. Wages tomorrow.”
Zhao Peng leaned on the doorframe beside him, a cigarette between his fingers, his eyes roaming back and forth over Gu Mianmian.
“Little Gu, rain this big, how are you getting back to school?”
Zhao Peng blew out a mouthful of smoke and sidled over with a grinning face.
“Why not just stay the night in the shop. There’s an empty room on the second floor. Bro will find you a clean quilt.”
While talking, he took half a step forward and reached out, wanting to pull Gu Mianmian’s arm.
“Get your dirty hands off.”
A cold, clear voice rang out at the shutter doorway.
Zhao Peng jumped.
The cigarette in his mouth nearly fell onto his pants.
He turned his head and crashed straight into Lin Ci striding in.
Lin Ci folded the black umbrella in his hand.
Long hair was soaked by rain.
A few strands clung to the pale, slender side of his neck.
The loose white short T-shirt was more than half soaked through, faintly showing the outline of the clothes underneath.
But there was not a trace of gentleness on his face.
A pair of jet-black eyes stared coldly at Zhao Peng.
“I came to pick her up. She’s going back with me. Get your dirty hands off.”
Lin Ci walked forward and blocked in front of Gu Mianmian.
Zhao Peng rubbed his nose and was pressed back a small step by the aura on Lin Ci.
He opened his mouth, wanting to throw out a couple of harsh lines, but looking at Lin Ci’s extremely cold and striking face he simply did not dare make a sound.
The memory of being shoved over by Lin Ci last time still ached faintly in his lower back.
“Senior… you… why are you here?”
Gu Mianmian squatted on the ground, her voice as thin as a thread.
Lin Ci turned around, held the black umbrella over her head, and casually offered his palm toward her.
“Less nonsense. Get up. Back to the dorm.”
Through wet, messy bangs, Gu Mianmian stared blankly at the hand stopped in front of her eyes.
That hand had long fingers.
The skin was snow-white and fine.
The fingertips still carried Lin Ci’s distinctive warmth.
The rims of Gu Mianmian’s eyes turned red without any warning.
Growing up in an orphanage, she had taken too many dirty looks and cold shoulders.
Whenever a rainstorm hit, other people’s parents would wait at the school gate with umbrellas.
Only she had always charged through the rain alone with a schoolbag over her head.
No one had ever specially run over in a downpour just to pick her up.
Never.
Gu Mianmian sniffed, stretched out her ice-cold palm, and placed it into Lin Ci’s warm one.
Lin Ci pulled her up in one motion.
Gu Mianmian’s body swayed.
Using the force, she barely stood steady.
Lin Ci did not glance at Zhao Peng beside them.
He opened the big black umbrella and took Gu Mianmian out through the shutter.
The downpour outside still poured in sheets.
Lin Ci tilted most of the umbrella toward Gu Mianmian’s side.
His own left shoulder was quickly smashed through by rain.
Rainwater slid along the collarbone into the collar and made Lin Ci shiver.
The two of them stepped through ankle-deep standing water, walking toward the school one step at a time.
Just as they reached the little alley halfway there, Gu Mianmian’s steps suddenly slowed.
Her body swayed.
Her footing was hollow.
Every step felt like treading on cotton, slower and slower.
Lin Ci sensed something wrong behind him, stopped, and turned to look at her.
Gu Mianmian’s face was deathly pale, without a trace of color.
Her lower lip was bitten with a deep mark.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Lin Ci reached to pull her wrist.
The moment he touched it, he jumped at Gu Mianmian’s scalding skin.
Lin Ci lifted the back of his right hand and pressed it to Gu Mianmian’s smooth forehead.
The temperature was frighteningly high.
“You’re running a fever?”
“N-no… I’m not…”
Gu Mianmian protested in a small voice.
Her lashes trembled violently.
The words had not fully fallen when her legs went soft and her whole person pitched forward, strength gone.
“Holy shit!”
Lin Ci burst out a curse, eyes and hands fast, stretched out a long arm, and scooped her slim waist in one grab.
Gu Mianmian’s whole person leaned limp against him.
Her head rested weakly on his shoulder.
Hot, burning breath sprayed against Lin Ci’s collarbone, carrying a scorching heat.
The rain grew heavier and heavier.
There was not even the shadow of a taxi on the street.
Lin Ci clamped the umbrella handle between his neck and shoulder, quickly turned around, and squatted down.
“Don’t dawdle. Get on. I’ll carry you.”
Gu Mianmian half-opened dazed eyes, both hands bracing against his back, and weakly shook her head.
“Senior… you… you can’t carry me…”
Lin Ci was so angry he laughed.
He directly reached back, hooked her thighs, and hoisted her up.
“Don’t look down on people. You don’t even weigh seventy jin all told. I used to lift two buckets of purified water with one hand.”
Gu Mianmian’s whole person was forced flush against Lin Ci’s slim, long back.
Two soaked bodies pressed tightly together.
Although Lin Ci still had a guy’s strength foundation, this female skeleton was slender after all.
As he walked, Gu Mianmian’s thin, burning chest pressed tight to his back, rising and falling lightly with her breathing.
Lin Ci only felt a stretch of warm softness and heat on his back, and even his heartbeat skipped two beats.
He clenched his teeth, left hand holding the umbrella, right hand supporting Gu Mianmian’s thighs, and took big strides running through the storm.
Rain smashed on the umbrella surface with a muffled roar.
Gu Mianmian lay on Lin Ci’s back, her consciousness a little blurred.
The storm was cold.
The wind was chilly too.
But pressed to Lin Ci’s nape, that faint milky fragrance cut through the wet rain and drilled straight into her nose.
Gu Mianmian stretched out limp arms and tightened them bit by bit, greedily looping around Lin Ci’s long neck.
She buried her burning cheek in Lin Ci’s wet hair, as if afraid this warmth would run away, and the force in her hands unconsciously increased a few degrees.
“Senior.”
Her faint voice spilled from her throat and was almost swallowed whole by the rain.
“What?”
Lin Ci gasped hard and sped up at the same time.
“You’re really so warm.”
Lin Ci was so soaked the rain made his whole body go numb.
He could not help roasting in his heart.
I’m about to freeze into a popsicle and you call this warm?
This unlucky little junior is probably delirious from the fever.
“Shut up. Save your strength for the IV.”
Lin Ci strode through Jiangcheng University’s north gate and raced all the way toward the campus hospital.
Through the tree-lined path, the bright lights of the ER hall finally appeared ahead.
Lin Ci kicked the ER glass door open with one foot and strode in.
“Doctor! Help! Someone here passed out from a high fever!”
Lin Ci’s voice echoed through the hall.
The ER doctor on duty pushed up his glasses and walked out.
When he saw the scene in front of him, his whole person froze on the spot.
A tall, coldly stunning beauty, soaked through, was steadily carrying another girl on her back.
And she had not even finished evening out her heavy breathing.
Her stride was ridiculously steady.
The doctor took off his glasses, wiped them, and looked at Lin Ci with a face full of disbelief.
This girl looked soft and weak.
How was her strength this terrifying?
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