Earlier when Xiao Zhi Ren had really said those words to Ru, her reaction was nothing like his dream at all. In fact, her reaction was completely out of the box kind.
She had simply shrugged her shoulders and said, "Oh, well... As long as you don't treat me like a girl before others, it's fine with me."
Xiao Zhi Ren was truly dumbstruck by her words. He wondered whether he was too good at hiding his emotions or she was too clueless about such emotions. But his heart inclined towards the latter option since she didn't seem like the kind of person who would have experienced love.
He thought his words were suggestive enough but she acted like they were talking about the weather and there was nothing wrong at all.
That night he could only toss and turn after that dream. His lips were tingling in anticipation. What would she taste like? What would her lips feel like on his? What would she feel like her under his touch? He was curious, way beyond his control. But he had no way to cure his curiosity unless he had a death wish.
He knew for a fact that Ru would beat him to death if he dared to kiss her. And from his earlier experience, he knew she was way more fierce than she seemed. Now that he remembered it, he felt uneasy in his heart knowing that there was some drug which played with her senses. She was someone who had a strong mental control but if some drug actually was working on her, it meant it wasn't a simple matter at all.
However, the way she acted after gaining her senses back was even weirder. She didn't question him at all. She didn't seem disturbed at all. She only cared about her secret and nothing else. Was her own life that worthless in her eyes?
Meanwhile on Ru's side...
"Raven, change of plans," Ru started as she was typing something on the computer. "We have to start the research all over again. Drug addiction is not gone. We need a permanent solution. If it wasn't for Zhi I might have killed myself tonight just for the sake of sanity."
At the thought of Xiao Zhi Ren, she quietened up. Since his earlier words were still crystal clear in her memory. 'My heart won't allow me to.'
If someone thought she couldn't understand the underlying meaning they were mistaken about it. She might be clueless about the feeling of love or physical intimacy but she wasn't clueless when it came to reading people.
She wasn't mistaken at all. The look in Xiao Zhi Ren's eyes had already made it clear to her that he was looking at her as a woman. She couldn't blame him for that but the tenderness which she saw in his eyes was something that kept bugging her.
She was once told that she was the kind of person who was scared to experience love but it wasn't true. At least not until Xiao Zhi Ren barged into her life out of nowhere. As she had told him, he was like the saint she couldn't afford to love. And that was a scary feeling.
He was that light she didn't dare to taint with her darkness. Because she knew before he could light up her dark world, she might pull him into her own dark world. In the end, she didn't want that painful life for him or for anyone.
She knew life had broken his heart. She could see it in his desolate eyes.
But she also knew that life had broken her as a whole.
He might only have the burden of a broken dream.
But she was living with a burden of a broken past and possibly a broken future.
Was it worth it to pull him into her life where she couldn't even find her own shadow? She had seen the worry in his eyes at the hospital and that reminded her how involved he was in her life. She knew her weaknesses all along but this was the first time, someone else saw her weakness.
Shaking her head to shoo away these thoughts, she mumbled to herself, "I need the recipe for that drug before it kills me."