Joslyn asked Blair in a whisper, "How is it going between you and Wesley? He didn't even look at you. It's as if he doesn't even know who you are."
Blair twitched her mouth unhappily. "I suppose he has forgotten my name. Besides, he is the aloof type in nature."
"How could he forget your name? You told me that you kissed him. I thought everything was going great between you two," Joslyn commented with a wicked smile.
"I only kissed him on the corner of his mouth. It's not what you think." Blair's phone buzzed. She took it out of her pocket and unlocked the screen.
It was from Hartwell. "Hartwell is coming home in one or two days. What do you think of a get-together?" she asked Joslyn as she read his message.
Joslyn pondered for a while, and then asked, "Ideally speaking, how much older do you think a man could be than a woman in a relationship?"
Blair looked at Wesley, who was walking towards them now, and answered, "Four years." He was four years older than her.
Joslyn was pretty disappointed. "Four? But your cousin, Hartwell, is ten years older than me! Should I give up?" she asked with a pout.
Blair put her phone away and said in a hurry, "You and Hartwell are a different case."
As soon as she finished, Wesley came up to them. Standing straight, he commanded, "Attention!"
Blair and Joslyn stopped talking at once and stood straight as an arrow.
"Left turn!" Wesley commanded once again.
Initially, Blair had been standing to Joslyn's left, and now, she was face to face with her.
Joslyn burst out laughing. Blair realized she had turned the wrong way.
She turned around to her left quickly and stood to attention.
Wesley found her lovely and extremely funny. But as the strictest military training instructor, he kept telling himself not to laugh. "Quick time, march! Left foot first, 75 cm forward!"
'75 cm? How far is 75 cm?' Blair wondered, totally confused. She wasn't good with numbers. When she turned around helplessly to look at Joslyn, she found that her friend was even more puzzled than her.
A while passed and Blair still couldn't catch up with Wesley. Wiping away the beads of sweat on her forehead, she asked him quietly, "Wesley, can we not do this?"
While she was waiting expectantly, Wesley just said, "Five kilometers. At the double, quick march!"
The two girls had to start running. Wesley corrected them constantly. "Raise your arms to your waist. Keep your fingers closed and your thumbs between the first joint of your index fingers and the second joint of your middle fingers. And keep your forearms slightly inward."
Blair looked at her own waist, and asked Wesley out of the blue, "My waist? You mean the place where you put your hands the other night?"
Wesley kept his silence.
"Bwahaha!" Joslyn roared.
"Halt!" Wesley commanded.
Blair had an ominous feeling about what was to come. "Wait here!" he said to Blair and Joslyn.
He asked another military training instructor to replace him in training the freshmen, resolving to focus on supervising the two girls to finish their run.
"Stand with arms akimbo. Exercise your ankles alternately. Half squat. Exercise your knees with your hands on them." When the warm-up was done, Blair felt like she was about to have heatstroke. There was no way she would be able to finish the five kilometer mark.
That afternoon, all the students of Y City Language and Culture University saw Wesley train Blair and Joslyn. It was so hot that Blair collapsed onto the ground after a while. But Wesley wasn't going to give her a break. He pulled her to her feet and ordered her to keep running.
To everyone's surprise, Blair didn't stand up at all. She fell into Wesley's arms.
"Wesley, I can't do it. Please, let me go," she pleaded in a whisper.
Her voice was so soft that Wesley's brain went into fantasy mode.
When he came back to his senses, he pushed her out of his arms and made her stand up.
However, as if she were made of jello, she fell back into his arms. In the end, Blair fainted.
Soon, the news that a junior had sunstroke and passed out during Wesley's training spread throughout the university.
It was supposed to be a horrible piece of news, but when the girls saw Wesley running towards the infirmary with Blair in his arms, every one of them envied the unconscious girl. They announced that if they could be held by Wesley like that, they wouldn't mind going through his harsh training either.
In the infirmary, Blair woke up to find Wesley sitting by the bed and staring at her.
Seeing her awake, Wesley opened his mouth to say something, but he ended up reprimanding her with a long face, "You're too weak. You couldn't even run two kilometers."
Blair replied, "I'm not a soldier."
Wesley wasn't happy with that. "I'm your military instructor. Don't talk back to me."
Blair was quiet. Since she was feeling better, she tried getting out of bed. She could actually get up on her own, but she stretched her arms towards Wesley.
Wesley understood that she was asking him to lend her a hand. "Get yourself out of bed. The heatstroke was not that serious."
Blair said in disbelief, "I got heatstroke because you were too harsh on me during the training. You didn't apologize to me. And now you won't even take care of me? You're so insensitive."
Wesley felt guilty when he heard her remarks. Eventually, he helped her get up grudgingly.
Blair sat on the edge of the bed for a while. "Where's my friend?" she asked.
'She went back to her class." Since Blair seems fine, Wesley stood up from the chair to leave.
Blair wasy going to miss such a good opportunity to be alone with him.
When he turned to leave, she lay back on the bed and whined, "Oh, my head. I feel so dizzy."
Wesley turned around to look at her. 'I'll go get the doctor."
Before he could leave, Blair grabbed his hand. The calluses on his palm made her heat ache. She could imagine how much effort he has put into being a good soldier. "I don't need a doctor. I want to go home and rest."
Her gentle touch sent his heart racing. As if an electric shock had passed through him, he quickly withdrew his hand. He couldn't even look her in the eyes. Instead, he avarted his gaze to the empty drip bottle and said in a cold tone, "Then, go home."
"But I'm too feeble to walk."
"I'll have someone drive you home."
"But, we are neighbors. Nobody lives closer to me than you." Obviously, she was saying that if someone had to take her home, it should be him.
Perhaps, he didn't get her point. He replied, "I'll not buy an apartment so close to yours ever again."
Blair thought, 'Do you have to be so insulting?'
After a long sigh, she asked, "Can you give me a lift?"
"I have to go someplace else later."
"You can go there after taking me home."