Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I didn’t eat any of the food I stir-fried last night. Every last bite went into the trash.

Hunger and pain tangled together until I finally passed out on the bed.

Someone knocked early in the morning.

Still foggy, I slid off the sofa and went to the door, opening it just a crack. The instant I saw who was outside, all my sleepiness vanished.

The woman’s brows and eyes looked rimed with frost, her face as expressionless as ever.

I instinctively yanked the door shut. The deafening clash of metal cut us off from each other in an instant.

I rushed back to my room, threw on an outer layer, and changed into long pants.

When I opened the door again, Jiang Yu’s gaze landed on my face-so cold it bit.

“What do you want?”

I skipped the polite back-and-forth.

Her eyes slid down to my wrist where my hand gripped the doorknob. A small patch of colorful tattoo showed there.

Jiang Yu narrowed her eyes, voice indifferent. “You even got a tattoo on your arm?”

I didn’t answer. Jiang Yu seemed to take it as tacit admission, and the blank calm on her face stirred again.

“You just have to keep hanging around that hoodlum, huh? You want to turn yourself into the same kind of trash?”

I’d always known Jiang Yu’s mouth was vicious. When things between us were at their worst, our words were blades dipped in poison, stabbing without mercy.

But she didn’t get to talk about Zhou Wei.

Because she was my only friend-my best friend.

That faint perfume on her slipped into my nose, the vein at my temple jumping hard enough to make me want to retch.

The abdominal pain that had gone quiet came roaring back. I clamped down on the handle, shaking and shaking-and in the end, I still couldn’t hold it in.

But the slap I expected to land never did. Instead, she grabbed my wrist tight, the old scar there pressed against the warmth of her skin.

I saw the split-second shock on Jiang Yu’s face. “The scar on your wrist…”

She didn’t finish.

A slap landed.

Her head tilted slightly to the side, a wide patch of red spreading across her pale face. I’d put a lot of force into it.

Thin strands of tobacco scent tightened around my nerves. A clammy, bone-deep fear rose from the soles of my feet and, bit by bit, crawled over my entire body.

I wrenched free. My wrist was already blotched red.

I locked my hands together hard, just so I wouldn’t shake quite so badly.

“Jiang Zhe…”

“Get out.”

I kept my head down, staring at my feet.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Get out!”