Heartbeat Command - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: You seem to really like him.

Tears still hung on Jiang Luo’s eyelashes, and his eyes were wet. Seeing the bloodstain on the bridge of his nose, Gu Shiyue couldn’t help but frown.

“Do you have iodine in your dorm?” Gu Shiyue asked him.

Jiang Luo shook his head.

At this hour, the school infirmary was certainly closed. Gu Shiyue took out his phone and ordered a delivery from a pharmacy, purchasing some antiseptic supplies.

Jiang Luo watched as Gu Shiyue pulled his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, tapped the screen a few times rapidly, and then looked up to say, “Go back and disinfect it.”

“Huh?” Jiang Luo was stunned.

“I bought the iodine; it will be delivered to the school gate in a moment.”

Gu Shiyue’s efficiency was incredibly high. Jiang Luo hadn’t expected that in the few moments Gu Shiyue had been fiddling with his phone, he had already bought the antiseptic for him. While Jiang Luo was still sitting there blankly, Gu Shiyue raised an eyebrow: “Didn’t you hear me?”

Jiang Luo hurriedly stood up: “I heard you.”

Gu Shiyue gave a “Hmm”: “Go to the school gate to get the medicine—the south gate.”

“Uh-huh, okay.” Jiang Luo turned around and grabbed his badminton racket and backpack from the chair.

Cheng Jiashu looked a bit bewildered, looking at Jiang Luo and then at Gu Shiyue. Seeing Jiang Luo pick up his bag to leave, he said, “I’ll go with you.”

“No need. If you leave, there will be one less person. It’s fine, keep playing. Don’t worry about me; I’ll go back and put some medicine on it.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me to accompany you?”

Jiang Luo laughed: “I didn’t injure my arms or legs; why would I need you to accompany me?”

Cheng Jiashu glanced at the bridge of his nose: “Does the bridge of your nose hurt? Are you sure you didn’t damage the bone?”

Jiang Luo nodded: “I’m sure. If a single badminton shuttlecock could break my nose, I’d be way too fragile.”

“Fine, if you don’t want me to go, then forget it,” Cheng Jiashu said. “Send me a message when you get to the dorm.”

“Okay.”

Jiang Luo carried his backpack and walked up to Gu Shiyue: “Senior, you…”

“Let’s go.” Gu Shiyue turned around.

Jiang Luo was taken aback: “You… are you coming with me?”

Gu Shiyue didn’t look back, walking straight ahead: “Yeah.”

“Aren’t you going to keep playing?” Jiang Luo trotted to catch up with him.

“I’ve had enough.” Gu Shiyue hadn’t really come here to play ball today; Xiang Qin had called him, and he had intended to deliver a charm, so two things had happened at once. Playing ball was just an afterthought.

“Thank you, Senior.” Jiang Luo smiled, but the movement tugged at the wound on his nose, and he hissed in pain.

Gu Shiyue glanced at him. Jiang Luo had just hissed, but was now looking at him with a beaming face again, his nose red, with fine beads of blood emerging from the wound.

“You still have the mood to smile,” Gu Shiyue remarked.

“Actually, I want to cry right now,” Jiang Luo said.

Gu Shiyue raised an eyebrow.

“I’m a little worried about being disfigured. I have to rely on my face to make a living.”

Gu Shiyue offered a faint smile.

Jiang Luo always felt a sense of accomplishment whenever he could make Senior Gu laugh. He looked at Gu Shiyue, smiled, and said, “You look good when you smile, Senior.”

Gu Shiyue turned his head away and continued walking: “Is that so? Then I must look bad when I don’t.”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” Jiang Luo said with a smile. “You look good whether you’re smiling or not.”

As they spoke, Gu Shiyue’s phone rang—it was a call from Xiang Qin.

“Hello?”

“Where are you going with our junior?” Xiang Qin asked. “You’re done playing?”

“Done.”

Xiang Qin was silent for a few seconds, then laughed: “What’s the meaning of this?”

“What meaning?”

“I’m talking about you and little Junior Jiang Luo,” Xiang Qin chuckled. “Since when have you gotten so close to our junior?”

Xiang Qin wouldn’t have found it strange if it had been anyone else, but this was Gu Shiyue; he wasn’t the kind of person who was easy to get close to.

“Do I need to report to you who I’m close to?”

“Is that what I meant?” Xiang Qin laughed again. “I just think… you seem to really like him.”

Gu Shiyue didn’t deny it: “I do like him, so what?”

Xiang Qin laughed. Now that Gu Shiyue had admitted it, it didn’t seem so strange anymore: “True, our little Junior Jiang Luo is indeed quite likable.”

“Go play your game,” Gu Shiyue said. “I’m hanging up.”

As Jiang Luo and Gu Shiyue walked out of the gymnasium, Jiang Luo noticed that the crowd by the basketball court had dispersed a bit, with groups of people walking in their direction. They were likely fangirls who had come to watch Gu Shiyue play, and with him gone, they were scattering.

Gu Shiyue walked quickly the whole way. With his long legs, Jiang Luo had to pick up his pace just to keep up. The delivery location Gu Shiyue had chosen was the school gate nearest the gymnasium, and the delivery arrived quickly. Before they even reached the entrance, the delivery driver called.

Gu Shiyue answered: “Hello?”

The school gate guards didn’t allow deliveries to be left for students, so the driver had to wait for him to pick it up.

“Two minutes,” Gu Shiyue told the person on the other end.

Jiang Luo couldn’t keep up with Gu Shiyue anymore; Gu Shiyue was moving at high speed, so he had to start jogging with his backpack on.

Gu Shiyue got the medicine at the gate, then turned to see Jiang Luo panting slightly.

“Why are you running?” Gu Shiyue asked.

“I can’t keep up with you if I don’t. Your legs are too long; you walk like you’re flying.”

Gu Shiyue walked over and pulled a pack of alcohol wipes from the bag: “Clean the wound first.”

Jiang Luo blinked: “Right now…?”

Gu Shiyue raised an eyebrow: “How long is it going to take you to walk back? You want to wait until you’re back in the dorm to disinfect it?”

Their school was huge; it would take Jiang Luo at least twenty minutes to walk back to the dorm from there.

“Oh, oh.” Jiang Luo took the wipes from him, glanced at them, and saw they contained alcohol. He looked up at him with wide, pleading eyes: “Can we skip this step, Senior? Alcohol stings a bit.”

“Switch to the wipes then.” Gu Shiyue handed him the whole bag.

Jiang Luo took the bag and realized Gu Shiyue hadn’t just bought iodine; there were alcohol wipes, regular wipes, bandages, and sterile dressings. Jiang Luo put his racket on the ground and pulled out a wipe, gently pressing it against the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t see his own wound, so he was cleaning it by feel. The bloodstains had already dried, so Jiang Luo’s light pressing didn’t clean it well. As he prepared to use the iodine, he wanted to ask Gu Shiyue to turn on his phone’s front-facing camera so he could use it as a mirror.

“Senior, could you open your front camera so I can look at my face?”

Gu Shiyue didn’t pull out his phone, only saying, “Give me the iodine.”

Jiang Luo was stunned: “Ah?”

Gu Shiyue took the iodine directly from his hand and took a step closer. They were under a street lamp, and the light from above made the wound on Jiang Luo’s nose very clear.

Gu Shiyue took a clean wipe, leaned in, raised his hand, and pressed it against Jiang Luo’s wound. Jiang Luo instinctively closed his eyes, his eyelashes trembling slightly.

“Does it hurt?” Gu Shiyue asked.

Jiang Luo opened his eyes: “No, it doesn’t.”

He kept his eyes open, his face tilted slightly upward, his gaze falling into Gu Shiyue’s eyes. Gu Shiyue looked down, meeting his gaze. Jiang Luo’s pupils were very light, a distinct amber color under the light. His eyelashes were long, making their trembling quite noticeable.

Gu Shiyue gently wiped the blood from the bridge of his nose: “It doesn’t hurt, yet your eyelashes are trembling like that.”

Jiang Luo smiled: “That’s just a reflex. Don’t your eyelashes tremble when you close your eyes?”

“They don’t.”

“For real?” Jiang Luo laughed. “Then close your eyes and let me see.”

“No.”

Jiang Luo looked up with a smile as Gu Shiyue silently helped him clean the wound.

Gu Shiyue stared at the wound; Jiang Luo stared at Gu Shiyue.

Gu Shiyue’s gaze flickered upward, and their eyes met.

“Senior, is my wound deep?” Jiang Luo asked him.

“It’s fine.” Gu Shiyue’s gaze dropped back down.

Even though Jiang Luo wasn’t vain, he cared quite a bit about his image. What he had said earlier was true—he really was worried about being disfigured.

“Do you think I’ll be disfigured, Senior?”

Gu Shiyue said, “I don’t know.”

Jiang Luo’s nose crinkled slightly; his expression looked genuinely troubled.

“Afraid of being disfigured?” Gu Shiyue asked.

“Yeah, I am.” Jiang Luo blinked.

“Can’t tell,” Gu Shiyue remarked. “You seem pretty unbothered to me.”

“No, I care a lot. I have a really heavy ‘idol burden’ (concern for appearance).”

Jiang Luo laughed as he said it, and he also caught the faint trace of a smile in Gu Shiyue’s eyes. Once the bloodstains were cleaned, Gu Shiyue used a cotton swab dipped in iodine to disinfect the area. Iodine wasn’t as harsh, so Jiang Luo only felt a slight sting.

Gu Shiyue was very close to him, and he could smell the faint, pleasant scent on him. Even though he had just finished playing ball, Gu Shiyue didn’t have any smell of sweat on him; he just smelled nice.

The dim yellow street light cast a soft golden border around Gu Shiyue’s pitch-black hair, making his whole demeanor seem very gentle.