Thirsty Skin - Chapter 13

Chapter 13 – He Loves Me So Much

Lin Wan did not have no memory of what happened last night.

He remembered calling room service for ice, and then Zhu Chizhou rushed in to stop him.

Since the medication for his cravings stopped working, he had developed a habit of taking ice baths twice a day, which worked well to suppress his body’s desire for skin intimacy.

Although he didn’t soak in ice water last night, he woke up this morning feeling very comfortable. It was not the comfort he felt after soaking in ice water or taking medicine, but a healthy and relaxed feeling that he had never experienced since he became ill.

It was like going back to his childhood before he got sick.

It is the kind of feeling that no medicine or therapy can give him.

He did drink too much the previous night and failed to control his behavior. But Lin Wan did not expect that sleeping in Zhu Chizhou’s arms for a night would be such a good experience.

The experience was so good that Lin Wan was scared.

It is equivalent to taking a tablet of ibuprofen as usual, but directly injecting morphine, and it is a large dose of high concentration of morphine!

Zhu Chizhou looked up at the ceiling, waiting for Lin Wan’s response for a long time. He glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and heard him say in his heart: 【Disaster.】

【The consequence of indulgence is destruction.】

Zhu Chizhou: …

‘It’s not that serious…’

“Well, well,” Zhu Chizhou had no choice but to give Lin Wan a way out, “You drank too much last night, and I saw that you were feeling very uncomfortable, so I stayed to take care of you, and then, I accidentally fell asleep in your bed.”

Lin Wan hummed and withdrew his hand from Zhu Chizhou’s chest.

His palm left a thin layer of sweat on Zhu Chizhou’s chest muscles. When he took his palm away, Zhu Chizhou felt a coolness on his chest.

They didn’t go on to discuss why they “accidentally” ended up sleeping in that position.

Zhu Chizhou certainly remembered all the details, and Lin Wan could also vaguely recall what he had done.

Lin Wan lifted the quilt, sat up calmly from the bed, found his glasses on the bedside table and put them on, completely restoring Director Lin’s seriousness: “Get up. Get ready to go to the company at 8:30. Finish the work today, and then you can go back to Shenhai.”

“I’m going back alone?” Zhu Chizhou asked without thinking, “What about you?”

“I have something else to do,” Lin Wan walked towards the bathroom, explaining the work to Zhu Chizhou as he walked. “Go back to the company and sort out the report and send it to me tomorrow.”

【I’ll go home to see my grandparents tonight, and go back to the company tomorrow, no, the day after tomorrow. I won’t be able to face him tomorrow.】

【Oh my god, how am I going to face him in the future?】

【What if I can’t leave him? 】

【I’m done.】

Zhu Chizhou was certain that Lin Wan was not trying to take advantage of him, but really liked him.

Alas, people often said they liked him in the past, but Zhu Chizhou didn’t know what liking meant.

Now seeing Lin Wan like this, he understood – liking someone meant the uncontrollable touching and the anxiety after the touching.

After breakfast, the two took a taxi to Qiuge Industry. Lin Wan asked Zhu Chizhou to go and see the production line first, as he wanted to talk to Pan Min about something.

Zhu Chizhou said: “Okay.”

He understood that Lin Wan was embarrassed.

‘Director Lin is so cute. He is cold and indifferent to others, and only acts coquettishly and shyly in front of me.’

But Lin Wan was too shy. Zhu Chizhou didn’t meet Lin Wan again until he packed up and left Rong City.

He returned to work at the company after finishing his business trip, and Zhou Yuang just came back.

Previously, Lin Wan assigned the Ri’an Xinke project to Zhou Yu’ang, and Zhou Yu’ang brought people to see it these two days.

“How is it going over there?” Zhou Yuang asked Zhu Chizhou.

Zhu Chizhou turned a black signing pen in his right hand, turned his chair towards Zhou Yu’ang, leaned lazily, stretched out his long legs, and poked directly into Zhou Yu’ang’s territory opposite: “It’s going well, how about you guys?”

“We are also doing well. This project is simple, and the existing resources we have can solve Li Yanli’s technical bottleneck,” Zhou Yuang leaned against the desk. “But your project involves cooperation with the government, so the follow-up matters will be a bit troublesome.”

“Cooperation with the government? Has it been decided?” Zhu Chizhou stopped spinning the pen, and the pen fell to the ground with a “click”. “How did you know? Why do you know everything, but I don’t?”

Zhou Yuang: “Don’t you know? The boss went to the government for a meeting yesterday afternoon.”

Zhu Chizhou picked up the pen and thought about what Lin Wan said yesterday morning. He realized that the other party might have ignored him. Zhu Chizhou had to find a way out for himself: “Oh, when he went to the meeting, I was still interviewing middle-level managers in the company.”

He knew that Lin Wan was probably avoiding him again.

At six o’clock in the afternoon, the report was completed and sent to Lin Wan’s email.

At 7:30, Lin Wan hadn’t responded yet, so Zhu Chizhou sent another WeChat message: 【The report has been sent to your email.】

Lin Wan quickly replied: 【OK.】

Just one good one. That’s it.

Zhu Chizhou racked his brains and sent another message to Lin Wan for no reason: 【I didn’t write the cost analysis very clearly.】

Lin Wan still replied quickly: 【It’s okay, the firm will write it down when they do the financial due diligence.】

Zhu Chizhou really wanted to ask Lin Wan why he didn’t invite him to the government meeting the otherday afternoon, but this would make it seem like he was questioning Lin Wan.

Lin Wan is his superior, and all business matters are arranged by Lin Wan, why should he worry about it!

Zhu Chizhou deleted the words in the input box with a “da da da” sound and turned off the phone screen.

•=|=•

In the week since returning from Rong City, Lin Wan’s avoidance of Zhu Chizhou had become so obvious that even Nie Xiaolan and the others felt something was wrong.

Zhou Yuang also asked Zhu Chizhou if they had quarreled again in Rong City.

Zhu Chizhou was reluctant to tell Zhou Yuang that Lin Wan liked him, so he just stammered and said that something happened.

After the meeting that day, Nie Xiaolan went to the tea room to pour coffee and met Zhou Yuang there.

“Hey,” Nie Xiaolan put the cup on the coffee machine, pressed the button, and asked Zhou Yu’ang, “Do you think Xiao Zhu is going to leave too? The boss has changed ten assistants in a row, and none of them stayed for more than three months. Xiao Zhu has worked for more than half a year with great difficulty. I thought he could stay.”

Amid the noise of the coffee machine, Zhou Yuang said mysteriously, “You’re wrong. They are not having any conflict.”

Nie Xiaolan asked: “Why?”

“I saw Xiao Zhu’s computer,” Zhou Yu’ang lowered his voice, “The boss gave him feedback on the revisions. The screen was full of comments. There were more words in the comments than in the main text. Have you seen it?”

“That’s impossible. The boss will just mark everythinf in red and have it change.”

Zhou Yuang pointed to his eyes: “I saw it with my own eyes.”

Nie Xiaolan: “Because Xiaozhu is the child of someone’s family, right?”

“The previous assistant was also LP’s child. I’ve never seen the boss be so attentive!” Zhou Yuang paused, “Besides, Xiao Zhu used to be treated the same as us, but it has only changed recently!”

“That’s not right. They haven’t said a word to each other in the past few days.”

Zhou Yuang picked up the cup, “So it’s weird.”

The coffee machine stopped, and Nie Xiaolan picked up the cup: “Forget it, don’t worry about it, it’s good that he can stay, I like Xiao Zhu very much.”

At this time, Zhu Chizhou came in and just heard the last sentence. He said listlessly, “Thank you, Sister Lan.”

Nie Xiaolan was not embarrassed to talk about others behind their backs, and said directly: “We were just talking about whether you had a quarrel with the boss.”

Zhu Chizhou thought to himself that he wanted to argue with him, but he didn’t say a word to him. “The situation is very complicated.”

Seeing his serious expression, Nie Xiaolan thought they had a bigger conflict than a quarrel, so she comforted him: “In fact, the boss is very soft-hearted. You will know after being with him for a long time. Just tell him clearly if there is anything.”

How can this be easily explained?

Zhu Chizhou sighed: “I can’t explain it clearly.”

Nie Xiaolan was worried: “Is it a serious matter?”

Lin Wan said it was a disaster, and also said that the consequence of indulgence is destruction. It sounded like he and Lin Wan had done something crazy. Zhu Chizhou said, “It should be very serious.”

Nie Xiaolan and Zhou Yu’ang looked at each other, and Zhou Yu’ang said, “No way, last time you yelled at him like that and nothing happened, what did you do this time? Is it worse than last time?”

Zhu Chizhou did not answer, feeling aggrieved.

‘Last time I yelled at him, but this time he slept with me!’

Lin Wan was obviously the one who took the initiative, so why is he the one ignoring him now?

‘I don’t know what I did wrong. He was touching me happily the night before, but when I woke up the next day, he turned hostile to me!’

Because he was absent-minded, Zhu Chizhou took a full cup of boiling water and went out.

As soon as he walked out of the tea room, he ran into Lin Wan in the corridor. He paused and the boiling water in the cup spilled out due to inertia.

Zhu Chizhou felt a sharp pain in his fingers instantly, and he reflexively lowered his head to see that the index and middle fingers of his right hand were both burned red.

A well-proportioned hand reached out and steadily took the cup of water from his hand, “Go and rinse it with cold water.”

Zhu Chizhou looked up and met Lin Wan’s calm eyes.

【Go! Doesn’t it hurt? You fool!】

Zhu Chizhou’s heart skipped a beat and he turned and walked towards the bathroom.

After holding his hand under the cold water, he discovered that his water cup was already placed neatly on his workstation.

His fingers still felt a little burned, but it was not serious. He was used to having thick skin and flesh, so he didn’t care about this minor injury. He thought for a moment, wondering if Lin Wan had been burned when he took his cup just now.

There was no one in the director’s office.

He shook his right hand and continued to work.

At this time, Zhou Yuang brought a stack of English materials and said to Zhu Chizhou, “International student, please help me read this. I have English dyslexia.”

Actually, Zhou Yuang’s English is pretty good, but many professional terms are hard to come by in daily life, so he needed to look up the dictionary while reading, which is rather troublesome.

Zhu Chizhou had a good memory and cold basically remember words after reading them two or three times, so Zhou Yuang sometimes gets lazy and uses Zhu Chizhou as a dictionary.

Zhu Chizhou was speechless: “Can’t you scan it into the computer and use AI to translate it?”

“No,” Zhou Yuang said, “This is confidential information.”

Zhu Chizhou looked at him suspiciously: “Can you show me the confidential information?”

Zhou Yuang moved his chair over and smiled slyly, “It’s okay, you’re one of us.”

So the two of them squeezed into Zhu Chizhou’s workstation. Zhu Chizhou helped him translate, and he took a pencil and took notes on paper.

After watching for more than twenty minutes, neither of them noticed someone coming over. Suddenly, there was a “pop” and a tube of ointment fell on the table.

The two men looked up and saw Lin Wan standing behind the workstation partition, looking at them expressionlessly.

【You should know how to use it, wipe it yourself. 】

Zhu Chizhou: “…”

Lin Wan didn’t say a word and turned and walked into his office.

Zhou Yuang picked up the ointment and looked at it: “Burn ointment, who got burned?”

Zhu Chizhou raised his right middle and index fingers: “Me.”

He originally had wheat-colored skin, and the red spots from the burns were almost invisible. Zhou Yuang had to hold his hand and look carefully against the light to find that there was indeed a darker spot.

Zhou Yuang said exaggeratedly: “You are seriously burned. I will help you apply medicine quickly, otherwise you will not be able to recover!”

Zhu Chizhou snatched the ointment and put it in his pocket, blushing: “Get lost!”

Zhou Yuang bent over and buried his head under the partition of his workstation, raised his chin towards the director’s office, and asked in a low voice: “Sure enough, there was no quarrel, right? This is the first time I see the boss buying burn ointment for someone.”

Zhu Chizhou also lowered his head and whispered, “Do you still want my help? If not, take it away.”

Zhou Yuang pursed his lips, straightened up, and said uninterestedly: “Look!”

When Zhu Chizhou sat up, he glanced towards the director’s office and once again inadvertently met Lin Wan’s eyes.