Hisaki did not answer immediately.
She reached out her hand. The blood on the back of her hand, stained with too much dust and other people’s blood from the fierce fight just now, was already showing signs of drying.
She opened her palm and gently covered Rinna’s eyes.
Her palm pressed over Rinna’s eyelids, blocking all the faint light.
“Not yet. You can’t see this scene right now, Rinna.”
Hisaki’s voice was very soft, so soft it was almost drowned out by the low moans of someone lying on the floor.
Then with her other hand, she took Rinna’s hand, threading her five fingers through Rinna’s, clasping them together with neither too tight nor too loose a grip.
She led Rinna toward the only one-way exit.
The sunlight was a little dim… probably because a thin cloud had drifted by outside, blocking the fierce afternoon sun, so the light no longer reflected harshly off the glass curtain wall.
Rinna obediently followed, step by step. The soles of her little leather shoes occasionally stepped on some liquid on the ground, but she only tightened her grip on Hisaki’s fingers, not lowering her head to look.
The thick smell of blood settled throughout the entire corner.
And behind her, the painful low moans, whimpers, gasps, and the rough scraping sound of finger bones dragging across the plaster from those people sprawled haphazardly on the floor—those sounds had already told her… Hisaki had fought one against a hundred, and won.
The moment her feet stepped back onto clean tiles, she finally smelled a different scent.
It was fresh air, the sweet, greasy aroma of baked bread wafting up from some bakery on the mall’s lower floor, and the iodine-like moisture from the fountain downstairs, invading her nose along with the damp breeze.
Food, milk tea, the faint melody of music floating in the air… these bits of information from the normal world rushed back into her mouth and nose, cluttered and familiar, brushing against her skin.
Hisaki also signaled that Rinna could open her eyes.
She lowered the hand that had been covering Rinna’s eyes, lightly wiped the back of her hand against the part of her skirt near her knee, cleaning the small streak of dried blood on her palm against the seam of her pants.
Her fingers gently withdrew from between Rinna’s, and she placed her hands at her sides.
Rinna slowly opened her eyes.
It stung a little… probably because she had squeezed them too tightly.
What first entered her sight was the afternoon sunlight streaming down through the glass dome above, a little dim, no longer dazzling, but with countless thin beams of light crossing and scattering on the gray-white corridor tiles.
Then the light gradually focused, and in front of her was Hisaki, half a head taller, facing her.
Hisaki’s face was covered with mottled bloodstains, but her small face gently looked down at her.
That dignified, calm face seemed as if the one-against-a-hundred fight had never happened.
The moment she saw Hisaki’s face, Rinna felt something twist violently in her chest.
Those images starting with “what if…” uncontrollably invaded her mind… What if Hisaki hadn’t been fast enough? What if something had gone wrong with Hisaki? What if Hisaki got hurt because of her? What would she do then?
Her throat tightened, choked, unable to get out a second sentence.
She didn’t hesitate.
She tightened her arms, lunged forward, and wrapped them around Hisaki’s waist.
Her face pressed against Hisaki’s thin black long-sleeved T-shirt. That heat-absorbing black fabric was dry in some places, wet in others from sweat and other people’s blood.
Hisaki’s body heat passed through the fabric that was nearly torn, reaching Rinna’s cheek. It was real, warm, and still here.
The fringe of Hisaki’s red cape gently swayed from the edge of Rinna’s elbow, bending slightly between their bodies.
“Xiao Xiao, thank you for protecting me today.”
Rinna raised her hand, extending her pale fingertips—pale from chronic anemia—and touched the wound on Hisaki’s face that had been scraped by the edge of a steel pipe during the fierce fight just now.
That scratch, less than two centimeters long, ran across the area between Hisaki’s left cheekbone and the base of her ear. It had broken the epidermis, the blood just beginning to clot.
The edges of the wound were slightly curled up with tiny, fine skin fragments, and the surrounding skin was faintly flushed due to the mobilization of inflammatory factors.
Her fingertips paused just near the edge of the wound.
Afraid that her fingers were too cold and would hurt Hisaki.
“Does it hurt?”
In that moment, Hisaki’s eyes moved slightly.
Not the instinctive flinch from being touched by fingertips, but the bewilderment of being asked “does it hurt you?”—something she had never been directly confronted with before.
She seemed to want to say it didn’t hurt, but her throat suddenly lost its voice.
All she could do was swallow the words she wanted to say, extend her right hand, and gently cover the back of Rinna’s hand that touched her cheek, wrapping her fingers softly around Rinna’s cool knuckles.
“It doesn’t hurt. Rinna is my painkiller.”
As she spoke, her thumb brushed extremely, extremely lightly across the back of Rinna’s hand—the gentlest pressure those clearly defined knuckles, covered in fine calluses and today’s new wounds, could allow.
“And Rinna doesn’t need to thank me… Never.”
When Rinna heard that, she was deeply moved, her mind going blank for three seconds.
In those three seconds, all the repressed emotions surged into her heart and eyes, like a liquid tank suddenly having its seal pulled out, in a way she couldn’t defend against.
There was so much she wanted to say.
She wanted to say don’t take such risks anymore, she wanted to say I don’t want you to get hurt for me, she wanted to say what would I do without you, she wanted to say you’re the best Xiao Xiao in the whole world.
But all those words clumped together in her throat, and in the end, only the clumsiest, most straightforward, most unadorned sentence came out.
“Stupid Xiao Xiao, you’re going to make me fall in love with you and give myself to you!”
Then the tears uncontrollably streamed down.
It wasn’t the silent kind of emotion—it was sobbing, her body trembling in waves, her eyelashes covered in tears, the drops sliding down her cheekbones to the corners of her mouth, salty, splashing on her pale lips, made pale by her monthly cramps.
Her past life self and her present life self—two completely different life trajectories—but the simple reason that made her lose her mind at this moment was the same.
There was actually someone in this world willing to stand between her and over a hundred enemies with a pair of steel pipes, and the moment she closed her eyes, no longer able to do anything, put all her sense of security without reservation on her, this frail girl.
Hisaki watched Rinna cry like this, let out a soft sigh, and wrapped both arms around Rinna’s back, pulling her even closer.
The skin on the inside of her arms was unharmed, so even pressed tightly against Rinna’s back, it only transmitted the gentle warmth of her muscles without getting dust and blood on Rinna.
Then she carefully wiped the tears from Rinna’s face with her thumb, avoiding the sensitive skin around her eyes.
Hisaki didn’t take advantage of her vulnerability.
She didn’t seize the moment when Rinna blurted out “give myself to you” in emotional breakdown, using the favor and Rinna’s helplessness to forcefully push their relationship forward.
She didn’t even ask, “Was what you just said true?”
She just brushed her right hand over Rinna’s tear-stained cheek again and again, and stood there quietly.
Let Rinna turn all the grievances from the entire noon, from her entire menstrual period, from this whole life chased by system points, into tears, soaking her own blood-stained T-shirt.