Me After Meeting You

“Do you want to eat it?” Amber picked up a large piece and waved it temptingly under his nose. She even lightly teased, “I remember telling you that the nature of clean freaks is to like dirty things. Last time, you ate the sweet potatoes that I peeled, and how dirty they were! Buried in the ground, plucked from a damp and dark environment with earthworms and bugs crawling all around but didn’t you still enjoy it nonetheless?”

She pushed the food on the coffee table closer to him, commandingly saying, “Try some.”

It was already right next to his mouth; if Ian merely opened his mouth, he’d be able to eat it. However, he didn’t. Besides his frown deepening and his gaze turning even colder, Ian remained stoic.

But a lack of reaction was in and of itself a reaction, so Amber kept going. “Do you think that I’m being particularly annoying right now? Then eat. Only if you eat and regain your vitality can you throw me out, and remove my annoying presence from your eyes.”

Upon hearing this, Ian glared at her for another period of time before suddenly opening his mouth and biting down fiercely on the chopsticks. Then, he … he sucked in a breath, evidently having hurt himself from biting down too hard.

Amber tried to stop herself from laughing outright as he stared at her fiercely.

“Alright, I’m sorry. Laughing at someone else is wrong, but you can laugh at me too. Once, I was so hungry that I even started chewing on my own fingertips.” After saying this, she brought him another dish. After he finished it, she took out a bowl of fish porridge and placed it by his side. He didn’t take it, so Amber had to move next to him and feed him with a ladle.

Thankfully, he didn’t reject her again this time.This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.

Amber smiled at his compliance, and fed him the entire bowl of porridge quite naturally. A patient was similar to a child, so she didn’t mind doing this. After she finished feeding him, she gathered up all the dishes. Ian stared at her, unsatisfied, with his gaze landing on the lunch box by the coffee table.

Amber smiled. “You haven’t had food for a while, so you can’t eat too much at the beginning. Eat some more later after you’ve had some time to digest. Now, can you let me give you a checkup?”

He didn’t respond. Perhaps the food had helped his rationality recover somewhat, but he could recognize her now. “It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“You aren’t angry anymore?”

When she heard this, her heart seemed to ache out of pity. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have let you leave like that that day.”

He smiled, very faintly and very coolly, and with a taunting air.

Evidently, he understood that, in her heart, Calvin was far more important than he ever would be.

Amber didn’t give an explanation, this simply wasn’t something that she could explain. She treated his response as a silent acceptance of the situation and grabbed his hand. Indeed, it was quite warm to the touch. She lightly rolled up his sleeve, only a little, but it was enough for her to see lines upon lines of welts. Some were from scratching, and others.

She wanted to continue examining him, but Ian had already snatched his hand back. He lazily said, “Leave. I don’t want to have sex with you right now.”

“Alright, I’ll leave. But I can’t just leave you like this. You’re my friend. When you’re sick, I can’t just abandon you.”

“Friend.” He smiled. Right after Amber detected the danger in his eyes, he exploded forth. He suddenly grabbed her, and then she felt a twinge of pain in her shoulder. He was biting down deeply on her just like a vampire.

Amber felt like she was about to be bitten to death, and she was too afraid to struggle and too afraid to provoke him. As she endured the pain, she said, somewhat helplessly, “My body’s really dirty. I was at the hospital the entire day, and was even in close contact with two patients who just entered the hospital. One of them even spat at me in his agitation. Hmm, it’s about at the same place where you’re biting me.”

Although she had told him that the nature of clean freaks was to like dirty things, this description was evidently beyond Ian’s tolerance. He froze before slowly letting go of her.

Amber leaned backwards as she extended her hand into her clothes and touched the area that had been bitten. As expected, there was blood.

This was truly an unlucky year for her, being bitten by both of her patients. Who knew if this time the injury would be more serious than the last?

But when she saw the unbearable expression on his face, Amber couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m joking.” Afraid that he was about to pounce on her again, however, she shook her head and said, “Don’t bite me. I’m all skin and bones. What if I hurt your teeth?”

The pain was so intense that her face was contorting, but she was still joking with him. Even though he had just hurt her, she didn’t shy away from him.

Ian was reminded of that day when she had been hugging that little girl, not letting go even though she had been painfully biting down on her.

Amber might not ever know that, when he witnessed that scene, only his greatest efforts had been able to restrain the brutality in his heart.

In this moment, he had realized that his nature was just like that of the little girl’s: equally crazy, equally … ill.

He shut his eyes, trembling. “… Aren’t you afraid of me?”

Amber was curious, and asked, “Why would I be afraid?”

“I don’t have any emotions.”

“No, you do.” Amber looked at him seriously. “You care about your family, and you’re afraid that they’ll worry about your marriage affairs. So, you tried every trick you could think of to make me your girlfriend; this is kinship.

You accompanied me to Elly’s hometown and helped me interview local residents, discover what made everyone so suspicious, and investigate Mark Brown, this is sympathy. You also help your friends by helping them close business deals they wouldn’t have been able to on their own, this is friendship. You have all of these emotions, so why do you keep saying you don’t?”

Her voice was so pleasant to the ear, so gentle. It was just like a long forgotten dream that he had once had. In that dream, he was surrounded by darkness on all sides. But then, a beam of light appeared from afar, so bright it chased the darkness away.

He unconsciously confessed what he had never told anyone before. “That’s all fake, all of it. I only did it because they told me that it was time for me to date someone and get married.

At that time, coincidentally, Nancy wanted me to meet you, and so I did. Then I read some books that said that I had to help my girlfriend with anything she wanted, which was why I accompanied you to the Brown family house and helped you investigate them.

It has nothing to do with sympathy who’s Elly, and who’s the Brown family? How are they related to me? The only reason I made friends and helped them is because I don’t want to be a lonesome freak.

Honestly, I hate people. I hate social interaction, marriage, romance, family, friends. To me, none of them have any meaning! I live only because I haven’t died yet.”