Li Tangli couldn’t hold it back anymore, and burst into tears.
Afraid of losing face, just as Gu Zhi had said, not wanting him to witness her wretched state again, she raised her arm to cover her face, trying to preserve what little cheap pride she had left.
She sobbed, “I… I don’t want to be like this either…”
Drifting along with the current, unable even to refuse people, choosing to hurt herself rather than stand her ground — Gu Zhi had never had any pity for the pathetic display of people like that.
But seeing her cry like this, Gu Zhi found he couldn’t continue. It was as if a few tears had slid down his chest, scalding him, making it impossible to stay unmoved by the sound of her crying.
He paused, then said, “Stop crying. Come up first. Ji Jiayu wouldn’t dare touch you. I guarantee it.”
Gu Zhi’s tone was steady, carrying a kind of reliability that made heavy things seem light. He was telling Li Tangli, without a shadow of doubt, that with him here, she had nothing to fear.
The steps were on the other side of the pool. Li Tangli wiped messily at her tears, the corners of her eyes still wet: “It’s too cold. I can’t move.”
“Come up straight from here.” Gu Zhi crouched down halfway and held his hand out to her. “Give me your hand.”
Li Tangli reached out and took hold of it. Compared to his, her fingers were slender, ice-cold.
Gu Zhi gripped her wrist and, water streaming down, pulled her upper body out of the pool. Seeing that her legs couldn’t manage to lift her the rest of the way, he had no choice but to wrap an arm around her lower back and haul her up into the crook of his arm.
She felt thin and light — it took hardly any effort to lift her entirely out of the water.
Gu Zhi meant well, but the position was, in this moment, far too intimate.
Having just lost her balance, Li Tangli grabbed frantically at the front of his shirt. With his arm locked tight around her waist, she had no choice but to rest her cheek obediently against his warm, firm chest. Finally in contact with a source of warmth, she instinctively pressed closer to him, soaking a large patch of his clothes.
“Sorry. That was urgent, just now.”
Gu Zhi let go of her.
Li Tangli nearly lost her footing, her knees buckling, and Gu Zhi caught her again, keeping her from pitching headfirst back into the pool.
She sniffled and said thickly, “I know. Thank you.”
She was soaked through, her clothes clinging to every inch of her body. Arms wrapped around herself, she trembled slightly. Her top had ridden up beneath her chest, exposing a soft, pale stretch of waist and stomach, a few red marks visible along her side.
Gu Zhi immediately looked away, but the afterimage was difficult to dislodge from his mind.
…So — had he really just held her waist directly, with nothing in between?
Just like when he’d held her calf at the hospital — slender, soft, never moving around carelessly, just like Li Tangli herself, docile to a fault. | BLACK LOTUS Novel Archive — Black Lotus
Belatedly, he realized his fingertips felt faintly warm.
A trace of doubt surfaced in him again — he’d only pressed lightly, hadn’t used any real force. So why had it still left such a visible mark on her?
Was everyone like that, or was it just that her skin was especially delicate?
Once out of the water, Li Tangli felt colder than before. The moment she stepped indoors, she sneezed, and her face gradually flushed red.
Gu Zhi turned back: “How long were you in the water?”
Li Tangli couldn’t say for certain, her teeth chattering: “Maybe half… or a whole hour?”
He immediately sensed something was wrong and pushed open the guest room door. “You can sleep here tonight. To keep from catching cold, I’d suggest a hot shower first.”
“Okay,” Li Tangli said, her head swimming, forcing down her discomfort to thank Gu Zhi. “Thank you so much for today, President Gu.”
Looking at the tip of her nose, red from the cold, Gu Zhi said nothing more: “Go on, quickly.”
After their parents passed away, Gu Zhi had watched both Gu Yuqin and Ji Jiayu grow up. He’d contributed at least half the effort in raising the two of them, put in far more thought than an ordinary older brother or uncle would — practically half a father to them.
Having raised children before, especially through the early signs of minor illnesses like colds and fevers, Gu Zhi could spot the warning signs at a glance.
He brought cold medicine and hot water back to the guest room, and was about to knock when he saw the door left ajar, not shut properly at all.
He knocked. No answer. He spoke up: “Li Tangli?”
Still no sound at all.
Something was wrong. He pushed the door open — no one in sight. The sound of running water came from the bathroom, its door wide open.
Something had definitely happened.
He no longer bothered with propriety between men and women, and strode in. The moment he stepped inside, he saw Li Tangli already collapsed on the bathroom floor — it seemed she’d only managed to turn on the hot water before passing out, the water pouring down and drenching her motionless body completely.
Gu Zhi’s eyelid twitched.
He rushed over immediately and shut off the water, one hand carefully cradling the back of her head, the other slipping beneath her knees, lifting her sideways off the cold floor.
Curled in his arms, Li Tangli looked small, tiny even, her eyes shut tight, unconscious.
Gu Zhi felt her forehead. It was burning.
A high fever, sure enough.
Gu Zhi had plenty of experience taking care of children; but taking care of Li Tangli up close like this felt entirely inappropriate. His own nephew and Li Tangli were only two years apart, after all.
He wrapped her hastily in a bath towel and laid her on the bed, then called Auntie Liu, asking her to come watch over things for the night.
Li Tangli’s body was still wet — he couldn’t just leave her like that.
Avoiding anywhere sensitive, Gu Zhi wiped the water from her hair, face, and limbs as best he could. As for her clothes, that would have to wait until Auntie Liu arrived.
Burning with fever, her cheeks flushed red, Li Tangli curled up, unable to stop shaking. Something kept moving around on her face, and she frowned, uncomfortable.
Hazily, she raised her hand and caught hold of the culprit responsible for the disturbance.
Once she’d caught it, she wouldn’t let go, clinging to its warmth, holding on and on.
Gu Zhi, whose hand she’d caught, froze.
He should have pulled his hand back — and instinctively, that was what he tried to do.
The one lying in the bed was his nephew’s girlfriend. What was Gu Zhi to her? He was the uncle of Li Tangli’s boyfriend — whatever conflicts the couple had between them, it was none of his business.
With no proper standing or justification, alone in a room, on a bed, in the middle of the night — he’d already, subtly, crossed a line.
And now Li Tangli was holding his hand and refusing to let go. What was he supposed to make of that?
He wasn’t her boyfriend.
But when Gu Zhi tried only the slightest bit to pull free, Li Tangli clutched tighter, as if by reflex.
She pressed her forehead against him too, her tear-damp lashes brushing against the back of his hand, letting out those small, pitiful hiccupping sobs that made something in him soften.
Like the puppy he’d raised as a child, nuzzling up to him, begging to be petted.
Following the warmth of his hand, she murmured softly, “Mama.”
He gazed silently at her face, and in the end, didn’t pull his hand away.
Fine, then.
A quarter of an hour later, Auntie Liu hurried over, to find an unfamiliar young woman lying in bed, soaked through, apparently ill. President Gu sat in a chair nearby, facing the bed, chin propped on his hand as he watched her, his expression unreadable.
The room was silent. Hearing footsteps behind him, Gu Zhi came back to himself and said to Auntie Liu, “She still has a fever. She’s already taken medicine. I’ll step out — could you help her change into dry clothes?”
“Of course.” Though curious, Auntie Liu didn’t pry, only mentioning: “President Gu, there’s a phone on the coffee table — not sure whose it is. It rang a couple times just now.”
A phone? The guest room was some distance away, and Gu Zhi had been somewhat distracted — he hadn’t heard it.
He walked to the living room and picked up the white phone Auntie Liu had mentioned.
Cracks spread web-like across the top of the screen, badly damaged, an old model from several years back. — Black Lotus novel Novel Chapter | Black Lotus Novel
Aside from Li Tangli, there was no one else the phone could belong to.
He turned on the screen — one missed call from a minute ago, saved under the name “A Ji Jiayu.”
At that exact moment, Ji Jiayu called again.
Cold light fell across Gu Zhi’s face, revealing a trace of grim chill.
The ringtone hadn’t even lasted two seconds before he hung up on it directly.
Back at the club, whatever guilt Ji Jiayu had been carrying was catalyzed into anger by those two unanswered calls.
He tossed his phone down. Who did Li Tangli think she was, hanging up on him?
What right did she have to be upset with him? If she weren’t obedient and sensible, if she didn’t like him enough, would he have put up with her this long?
Besides — it was her, this afternoon, begging him not to break up. So what was she trying to pull now?
It never once occurred to Ji Jiayu that Li Tangli had genuinely stayed in the water that long over one angry remark of his.
His irritation was plain to see, and one of the young men in the group sidled up to smooth things over: “Bro Ji, you could find any woman you wanted — not worth getting mad over her.”
He seized the moment to curry favor: “I’ve got a cousin, Shu Ran. She’s visiting City A next week — let’s have her come out and hang with us in a few days.”
Ji Jiayu took a drag of his cigarette and gave a low, muffled grunt of acknowledgment.
If Li Tangli had been there, she would have realized at once. The second stand-in for the white moonlight, the story’s main antagonist in its early chapters — the second female lead, Shu Ran — was about to make her entrance.
In the early morning, Gu Zhi called in the family doctor.
After the examination, the doctor said, “It’s a low-grade fever right now, her body caught a chill, but nothing serious. She’ll be fine after some rest.”
Auntie Liu reported the situation to Gu Zhi. She’d looked after Li Tangli through the night, but honestly, it hadn’t been too tiring.
The patient had been remarkably easy to care for — no sleep-talking, no restlessness. She’d only woken once, thirsty, midway through the night; a little water and she was back asleep. She slept soundly, without tossing and turning.
When the fever got uncomfortable, she only whimpered a little and shed a few tears; otherwise she just murmured “Mama” softly, quietly enough that it tugged at Auntie Liu’s heart a little. Once breakfast was made, she headed home.
Gu Zhi walked in just as Li Tangli was waking up.
Her memory stopped right before she’d lost consciousness. She only remembered entering the bathroom, the hot water pouring over her, warm — and then everything went dark. All that remained were a few fragments of dreams, like a warm hand she’d clung to as if it were a lifeline.
Still hazy with sleep, Li Tangli felt someone’s fingertips brush the loose strands of hair from her face, and the instant that hand settled lightly on her forehead, she was suddenly, fully awake.
The broad knuckles, the long fingers, the faint weight of pressure — this clearly wasn’t a woman’s hand.
It wasn’t hard to guess whose it was.
For some reason, precisely because she knew who it was, Li Tangli didn’t dare open her eyes.
She had no idea that Gu Zhi had already seen straight through her clumsy pretense.
He didn’t pull away immediately, lingering two seconds longer before withdrawing his hand.
Watching her faintly trembling lashes, after a few quiet breaths, Gu Zhi finally broke her false hope, unhurried: “Awake?”
