A tall winged man in black, armed with a sword was raising his arm to the sky, and lightning crackled across the sky. The man was shouting but he could not hear the words clearly. People were trying to stop him, some even begging. The lands around his feet had turned snowy. Although the memory wasn't particularly clear, he felt the desperation of the man and the pain going through the man's chest.
Tian Yu had a strange dream. When he finally came to, he was lying on a bed with white sheets in an unfamiliar room with cream coloured walls. An oil painting of a basket of coloured fruits with a gold-coloured frame was hung beautifully on one of the walls.
"You probably shouldn't have been drinking with your health condition," a feminine voice said. Who was this girl, and where was this room that he was in right now? "Who are you?" he asked.
"It seems you have forgotten what happened last night at the club," the girl chimed, playfully twirling one of her curly locks around her finger. He didn't need to be reminded of how he had collapsed in the club.
"I haven't suffered a relapse in a long time," he admitted. "But thank you for your concern."
"High blood pressure isn't a joke," she warned.
"I don't normally drink that much," he explained. "It was just this one incident. But why are you so concerned?"
He didn't know this girl, and she was being so nosy, but yet she was rather cute. Though Tian Yu wasn't sexually inclined to her, he felt he owed her a big thank you. They had been having a conversation about the beaches in Bali when he felt breathless and toppled over. He knew he had gone over his usual drinking limit. The girl told him that his heart had stopped beating for a good fifteen minutes while he was being rushed to the nearest hospital.
"Am I in a hospital?" he guessed from the colour of the gown he was wearing.
The girl nodded. "You should have been more careful, especially when in a foreign country."
"How did you know I'm not from here?"
"The way you talk," the girl said like an expert. She was very charismatic that Tian Yu felt that she was a person whom he could trust. After all the confused thoughts that was in his mind now, perhaps gaining an ally was not a bad thing. Tian Yu seldom dealt with female clients and had few female friends, apart from his annoying little sister. "So, what are you here for? Are you on business?"
"I'm on a leisure trip," he explained. "I'm here with family." Tian Yu remained quiet, thinking of the images that he had seen in his head when he had supposedly passed out. Everything had felt like a strange dream. Were they visions? They also seemed like a memory. Then, after having the 'dream', everything had gone fuzzy, and he had woken up suddenly, dazed. The only thing he could see after that was people pushing him on a stretcher, shouting around him, and then he fainted again.
Yuwen peered at the man quizzically. "Hey, it's not everyday when I get to see a strange man fall in front of me. Are you really alright?"
"You don't talk like any of the locals here too," Tian Yu commented out of the blue. He was obviously, a very observant man. Though he chose to be emotionless to the people around him, Yuwen was actually one of the people who could actually see through his issues and how he had been hiding his emotions and trying to be 'tough' in front of everyone. She was actually a volunteer social worker and a counselor. However, her main identity was a reporter, and she had been in Bali on a trip to interview a famous Asian celebrity.
Chirpily she laughed, "Yeah, I never said I was. I'm here on work." She handed him her business card.
"You're from N City as well?" Tian Yu seemed surprised.
"Oh, yes. And what about you?"
"Ah, I forgot." Tian Yu reached into the crossbody bag on the bedside table next to him and produced his own business card. "Perhaps we could go for a meal sometime for me to give you my proper thanks."
"Sure. We all need friends, don't we?" the girl said with a smile. "But why were you drinking so much when you were aware of your own health condition?" When Tian Yu just shook his head, she continued, "If you need someone, I can talk. I've seen some people do that when they've just broken up and are feeling down."
Tian Yu looked miserably at the crossbody bag. It had been her last gift that she had given him before he had started avoiding her. He wondered how she had been for the last two weeks, and if Su Mo had made his move on her yet. He couldn't get the memory of how he had seen Su Mo look at his girl and put his hands on her. Every time he thought of that scene, he would feel so enraged that he had wanted to break anything fragile that was next to him. Fortunately there was nothing in the hospital room that was fragile within his reach. The mere thought of his Xiao Xun leaving him for Su Mo one day instilled fear in him. There had to be a way, he told himself. Xiao Xun was his, and he would not let Su Mo have her, but right now, he felt powerless.
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A few days ago, Tian Yin had waken up screaming realising she was lying, without a stitch on her, on the bed of her hotel suite bedroom. She had remembered partying and dancing with the charming Su Mo all night, and the very same night somehow her worst nightmare had happened. She vaguely remembered how high she had been under the effects of alcohol, and succumbed to the desires she had been holding back for so long. It had been the first time she had drunken so much alcohol, and tried different types at Su Mo's suggestion. Tian Yu had never let her around so much alcohol, and that night, if they had not been separated, he probably would have been watching her and kept her from drinking too much.
Up to now, her mind was still fixated on the fact that she had just given herself to a stranger whose face she could not remember. She assumed that she must have met the man in the club after Su Mo had left. While she couldn't recall his looks, she remembered clearly what had happened between them. His touch on every part of her body had been so wild, causing herself to be so aroused to the point that she could not bring herself push him away. She had never expected herself to have that needy side of herself, and was disgusted with herself. She had opened her door and allowed him in, and now she was reaping the consequences of her idiocy. Her lower body was churning with pain and her favourite dress had been slightly streaked with blood. Her own blood. Her brother would have killed her and that man if he had known what had happened.
What trouble had she just brought herself into? Her body didn't feel like hers any more, and she had really messed up. She had wanted to save herself up for Fang Qi, and even before she could have him, she had lost herself to someone else. She was also in risk for getting a STD from having a drunken affair with a stranger. She didn't dare to go to the doctor, lest her brother found out about it. Would it be too late for her to have herself checked for a STD after they had their flight home?
She didn't know who she could speak to about it. She didn't have any friends who would be able to understand the situation. All her friends had been stuck-up rich girls who didn't have a boyfriend due to the different social status they had. If they knew she had just thrown herself at some stranger, who knows, they would even unfriend her. So the only thing she could do was to hide the truth, and be the good girl everyone expected her to be.
But for now, she had to find her brother first. It wasn't like him to go missing for days. She knew he was troubled by the appearance of Su Mo as a potential suitor for Zhi Xun, but then she was his sister, and he would not abandon her all alone in a foreign country.
It dawned on her that perhaps Su Mo could help, but if her brother saw Su Mo, he would probably get angry. So she left Su Mo as the last option, and patiently waited. Two hours later, she was taken by surprise to see her brother enter their shared hotel suite with a girl. Though the girl was nowhere close to Zhi Xun in terms of appearance, she had been so charismatic and adorable that even Tian Yin envied her. While she admired her brother's new friend, she couldn't help but feel that Tian Yu was about to make a big mistake. If he had spent the last three days with this new friend, what were the possibilities that he had already cheated, Tian Yin wondered. She felt bad for the woman she called her future sister-in-law. But it wasn't her place to interfere with his relationship with Zhi Xun. She could only hope that he hadn't done anything to hurt Zhi Xun. Although she knew, she had done worse by befriending Su Mo.
She watched as they entered one of the rooms in the suite, and locked the door behind them. What she didn't know was that the girl was actually giving her brother a private counselling in one of the rooms (it was not a bedroom) and he had locked the door as he had not wanted his sister to know the problem with him. It had seemed so suspicious to her. She didn't know her brother's intention of bringing the girl back to their suite, and jumped to the conclusion that he had met a new girl he was interested in. If her brother was this kind of person that would cheat behind his girlfriend's back when on holiday, she felt she could no longer trust and look up to him. She could not believe what had been happening to her since the night at the club. First, she had hooked up with some man, and now her brother had taken some girl back to their shared suite. Why their suite, though?
She heard her phone ring. It was Zhi Xun. She quickly rushed to take the call in her own personal space.
"Sis Xun."
"Ayin, you finally answered my call."
"Did you call earlier?"
"I couldn't get through to you. Your phone was either turned off or was out of service."
"Oh, I must have forgotten to charge it. Is there something up?"
"Yes. I tried to look for you at the condo, but I lost my access card. The guy in security said you and your brother went abroad on holiday."
"Ah. Yes." She quickly invented a lie. "It's because I wanted to look out for universities in other countries. So my brother took me out of the country to relax and at the same time, find a good place for me."
"But he could have told me, or even sent me a message. I was waiting for his calls, and three times I went to the condo but there was nobody at home, and after I lost my access card, then I knew both of you had left the country." She was right. Tian Yu could have told her, but chose to ignore her and her calls. He could have accepted her calls if he wanted to, as well, but he was in fact, ruining the sweet relationship between them.
"On behalf of my brother, I'm sorry," Tian Yin apologised, thinking of how Zhi Xun would react if she knew Tian Yu brought an unknown woman into the suite.
"I'm not mad with you or him, Ayin. I'm just very tired. I don't know what to do about your brother anymore. It's almost a month, and he just left me like that. I admit I was busy with my exams, but I've been texting him for hours everyday. He chose to filter me out. I just need to know what's wrong."
While Tian Yin had wanted so much to explain to her about Su Mo, she knew there were things that her brother chose to not tell. She knew very well what kind of person her brother was. He was sensitive and disliked people meddling in his affairs. Tian Yin also felt that there was no merit in telling her about Su Mo's existence because after all, she was a bystander, and it was best if Tian Yu spoke to her himself on his issues. As a couple, they had to clear their own misunderstanding, and Tian Yu had to man up and stop acting like a coward. Furthermore, she felt bad that she had allied with Su Mo and provided him information on Zhi Xun for the sake of her own freedom.
Things were just about to get more complicated, she thought.
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