CH 4

“No need.” 

Without even thinking about it, I refused. I stretched out my hand to Shang Muxiao, and motioned for him to return the phone.  

“You’ve thought about it? It’s hard to get a car at this time here.” He looked out into the rain, and his eyes fell on a black Hummer parked not far away. 

The pitch-black behemoth stood in the open space like a monster, filling the space with its existence. 

“I finally drove a ‘big car’.”

I continued to reach out to him, unmoved.  

He snorted, threw the phone back to me, and backed away to the wall. 

The rain was still falling, and I didn’t know when it would end. Droplets of water dripped down intermittently from the eaves.

And I still wasn’t able to catch a taxi.

It was as if all the taxis in Qingwan had bypassed here, and I had been pulled into a blacklist of refusals without even knowing it. 

Shang Muxiao put his hands in his pockets, leaned against the wall, and looked into the curtain of rain for a long time.

I didn’t know why he didn’t leave, but he simply didn’t. Not only did he not leave, but he was also quiet like a mass of air. 

I wasn’t sure if he was in a daze, or if he was enjoying the rain, or something less virtuous —  watching my pitiful state.

As time passed, I lost hope of getting a taxi and stopped looking at my phone.  

“I said, it’s hard to get a taxi around here.”

With just a slight sigh, Shang Muxiao spoke with a hint of schadenfreude. It was as if he was paying attention to my reaction all this time. 

The hardship I suffered today will be counted on Shen Luoyu’s head in the future. 

“Come over here.” I stuffed my phone into my jacket pocket. 

Shang Muxiao tilted his head and looked over, “Huh?” 

The protracted tone wasn’t a surprised tone at all. I was sure he heard me speak and understood it, but just really wanted to make me repeat it again. 

As for saying it a second time, it didn’t really make a difference to me. 

Overstepping boundaries was the difference between zero and ∞. The same should be true for showing weakness.  

“Drive your car here and let’s go.” I looked  at him, with my chin pointing towards where the Hummer was. 

Shang Muxiao stood up straight, with a triumphant smile on his face. He took two steps forward, then stepped back and stretched out his hand towards me. 

“Give me the umbrella, I hate the rain.”

It was okay if he didn’t explain, but once he did, I couldn’t help but think more. 

Handing over the umbrella hanging on the armrest of the wheelchair, I asked hesitantly, “You didn’t insist on sending me just because of my umbrella, right?” 

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Although I still have a slight sensation in my lower limbs, Shang Muxiao’s car was too high to get up into on my own.  

I suspect that he calculated this point and wanted to watch me struggle here.

Standing still, I didn’t move for a long time. The dark carriage was like the mouth of a giant shark, opening sinisterly towards me. Either way, it was giving me bad vibes. 

“Need help?” Finally, Shang Muxiao seemed to have had enough of the show and decided not to disguise himself as a human-shaped mushroom attached to the door, extending a helping hand to me. 

I glanced at You Sen’s “Giant Mouth”, and then at Shang Muxiao. It wasn’t a good idea, everyone knew it, but I was still going to have to throw myself into the trap. 

“Excuse me, can you help me?” I held out my hand, showing weakness again, and found myself getting used to it more and more. 

Even with the help of Shang Muxiao, the process was still not smooth. 

Twelve years ago, a serious car accident damaged my spine and paralyzed my lower limbs. My legs were completely paralyzed from that day on. I had already accepted reality when I realized that I was destined to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. 

For the first two years, the doctor told me to actively rehabilitate, thinking that although I could no longer walk as freely as a normal person, I might be able to stand for a while and occasionally walk around the house with a cane.  

I didn’t think it was any better, but my parents insisted, and so I had to start a painful recovery. Then, all attempts ended in failure. For the first time in my life, I realized that not all hard work pays off. The untold disappointment on my parents’ faces was more torturous than the frustration of failure. 

Rehabilitation was stopped, and I no longer made any efforts. It only took two months for my parents to go from being angry at first, to giving up on me completely.

In hindsight, they may have figured it out in two months that instead of wasting time on me, a disabled person, it was better to have another child, bring them up again, and make them more reliable. So the next year, Bei Yan was born. 

“I can’t walk like you do.”  

If I had known there would be a day like today, I would have paid more attention to rehabilitation. 

Half of my weight was on Shang Muxiao’s neck. He was brought to the side by me, and he supported the handle of the wheelchair with a twisted posture. His tone had become impatient. 

“Then you can think of a better posture.” I hooked his neck with both hands, trying to keep myself from falling. But just a second after my voice fell, my whole person became light. Before I could react, I was caught by Shang Muxiao as he carried me in his arms. 

I stared at him in shock, unable to say a word.  

“This posture is good.” He smiled and escorted me firmly into the back seat. 

When it was implemented, my overly frightened heart slowly returned to its normal rhythm. 

“How do you fold this?” Shang Muxiao asked, groping for the wheelchair’s structure. 

I came to my senses and instructed him how to properly fold the wheelchair. He quickly got the hang of it, putting away the wheelchair and stuffing it into the trunk.  

I gave him the address and he set up the navigation. We never communicated after that. Whether it was the conversation regarding an “opportunity” that day or everything in the support group just now.

The rain was getting heavier and heavier, gradually forming a pouring trend. Except for the consistent mechanical sound of the wipers, there was nothing else in the car.

I opened my phone and looked at the weather forecast. The probability of thunderstorms at night was close to 80%. It seemed that the rain was still going to fall.

It took half an hour to enter the underground parking garage. Shang Muxiao took me directly to the elevator. 

When I got out of the car, he still carried me down. This time, I was mentally prepared, and I remembered to say thank you to him.

But what surprised me was that after Shang Muxiao put me down, he didn’t drive away immediately, but locked the door and stared at me.

“What?” I asked him, frowning.

“I’m a little thirsty, can I go up and have a cup of tea?” His tone was like the damn kid who walked into a convenience store and asked the boss for McWhirlwind, which was perplexingly self-entitled. 

“I’m sorry, I can’t.” I flatly refused, then controlled the wheelchair to go to the elevator. After walking out for a while, looking back, I found out that Shang Muxiao was actually still following me.

I turned the wheelchair to face him and reiterated, “I said, no.”

“I heard.” With his hands in his denim jacket, Shang Muxiao looked a little like a rascal.

I even made up his subtext – ‘I heard it, but so what? Can you break my legs so I can no longer follow you?’ 

I couldn’t.

I looked at him for a while, but there was nothing I could do about it , so I simply ignored him.

Shang Muxiao directly followed me, took the elevator all the way, went upstairs, and came to the same door as me.

When I unlocked the door with my fingerprint lock, he leaned against it and looked at me. 

“Aren’t you defensive at all?” He seemed incredulous. “What if I want to kill people and get rich?”

The door opened for a while, and I looked at him oddly.

“You drive cars worth millions and you want to take my money?”

He may have also realized that this matter is a bit unreasonable, and said in a different way, “Then…..to steal your innocence?” 

Opening the door, I listened to him and laughed.

“You told me not to have any ideas about you a few days ago.”

When I entered the room, I turned on all the lights in the living room. Looking back, I saw  Shang Muxiao come in by himself.

“Your house…there are so few things.” He looked around, and his words were very polite. I think he should have wanted to say, “shabby”. 

I lived alone in this house, and it only had a total of more than 50 square meters. It had one bedroom and one living room, and the space was limited. It wasn’t suitable for someone in a wheelchair to pile up things at home. I always only buy necessities.

“Leave immediately after drinking the water.” I didn’t say anything, went to the kitchen to pour a glass of water, and went back to the living room to see that he was studying my telescope.

“Don’t touch it.” I patiently reminded him and put the glass of water on the coffee table.

“I can’t see anything.” He put one eye on the eyepiece and didn’t see anything after looking through it for a long time. He felt bored, so he decisively gave up on the “toy” and sat down on the sofa. 

“It’s raining today, and the clouds are so thick that you can’t see anything.” I tried hard to justify my telescope. 

“What can you see when the weather is good?” Shang Muxiao asked as he raised his water glass. 

“Stars.” 

“Stars?”  

“It’s an astronomical telescope.” 

He nodded, not very interested. 

Suddenly, his jacket pocket vibrated. He frowned and took out his phone, hesitating for a few seconds, and finally answered. 

“Sister.”  

I still remembered how violently his mood shifted the last time he got a call from his sister. This time, he seemed to be a bereaved dog that had been soaked in the rain. 

“Mn, I know, it’s raining… I’m outside, I’m…” He glanced at me and said without changing his expression, “At a friend’s house. He will accompany me. No… not Yin Nuo and the others, it’s a new friend.” 

I remembered the name Yin Nuo. In my elective student list, it should be one of his two classmates. 

Five minutes later, Shang Muxiao hung up the phone. He watched the phone go out for a while, then looked out the window again.  

The raindrops pelted the windows slantwise, rendering the neon in the distance into colorful spots. 

“I hate rain.” 

“I hate rain too.” 

Shang Muxiao raised his eyebrows and looked over with a suspicious look on his face. 

“There are no stars when it rains.” I pointed to the Celestron facing the sky and explained, “Although I can’t travel around the world, I can fly in the universe.” 

“Sounds interesting.” He said insincerely. He sank into the sofa and wrapped his arms around himself. “Let me stay for a while. I’ll leave when the rain stops.” 

Obviously, drinking water was just an excuse. 

I looked at the time. It was half past ten at night. Driving the wheelchair, I decided to leave him alone and go to sleep on my own.  

“Don’t forget to close the door when you leave.” 

When I reached the door of the bedroom, and just as my hand touched the doorknob, the voice of Shang Muxiao came from behind. 

“Professor Bei, I changed my mind.” 

I looked back at him.  

Shang Muxiao closed his eyes and leaned against the sofa cushion. This sofa was purchased for me by Shen Luoyu. Although it was useless to me, she said that the guests would definitely like it. Once she sat down, it was like sitting among the clouds, and she didn’t want to get up at all. 

I didn’t know if Shang Muxiao was in such a state, but his voice did sound drowsy and confused. “I think I can accept your unspoken rules.” He said lazily, slowly opening his eyes. Contrary to his voice, there was no sleepiness in his eyes, and he couldn’t be more awake. 

He was actually regretting not taking my “opportunity”.