Me After Meeting You

While her father was helping Ian change, Amber hid in her room, but that only caused her mother to show up, grab her by the ear, and scold her once more. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Her mother glared at her. “You don’t know why he came looking for you in the middle of the night?”

“Maybe he’s ill.”

Amber was telling the truth, but her mother didn’t believe her and even continued to scold her. “You’d even get together with someone who’s mentally unsound? Is the stress of being a doctor getting to you?!”Text © 2024 NôvelDrama.Org.

Amber couldn’t refute her mother, because she felt that her mother did have a point. In some sense, from a doctor’s perspective, she was unduly attracted to Ian.

She also felt somewhat guilty. Her parents normally got up very early and barely had any time to rest during the day, which made their sleep all the more important. Tonight, however, their rest had been disrupted over and over again.

She pulled on her mother’s hand anxiously and pleaded, “Mom, please go back to sleep with dad for now. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to handle this properly.”

Her mother looked at her suspiciously.

“It’s true.” Amber smiled and decided to try to clear up Ian’s name a little. “He’s not going to blame me. Don’t worry. Oh, if you don’t trust me, you can even ask Ruby. He knows too.”

Amber’s mother raised her eyebrows. “He knows too?”

“Em ….” Amber evaluated her position and decided that since they were siblings who had stayed in the same womb for ten months, it would be fine for him to take the fall every once in a while, right? So she nodded without any further deliberation. “Yes, he knew it all.”

Amber didn’t know what was going through her mother’s mind, but she was so angry that her teeth couldn’t stop grinding. Amber felt that, if Ruby were in front of their mother right now, he would immediately receive a big beating.

Her father knocked on the door. “His clothes have been changed.”

Amber and her mother walked out. Out of habit, Amber inspected Ian’s condition. She first checked his skin temperature, then peeled his eyelids back to examine his pupils, and finally checked his heart rate through his wrist. Once she was finished, she nodded. “Thank goodness ….”

Raising her head, she saw her parents looking at her strangely. Only then did Amber explain. With a soft cough, she said, “Thank goodness he’s not displaying any symptoms of a cold.” Looking at her father, she continued, “Dad, when he wakes up tomorrow, let him thank you.”

The only thing on her father’s mind was that his own daughter was too simple minded and somewhat silly. He couldn’t bear to look at her anymore, so he merely waved his hand before retreating to his room.

Her mother pointed a trembling finger at her again. “You, you, you, you … all my lectures have been for naught! Make him scram once he wakes up tomorrow. At any rate, I’ll never accept someone like him.” After taking two steps back, she yelled at her again. “Go sleep! Stop worrying about him!”

Unfortunately, the misunderstanding between her and her parents seemed to have grown even deeper. They wouldn’t believe that Ian was ill. Naturally, her actions after they called her out would be misinterpreted as her caring for him.

Amber couldn’t stop herself from rubbing her temples. Once her parents had both left the room, she stood to the side and looked at Ian for a long while. She thought about what his cold face had looked like the first time she had ever seen him. It was hard for her to believe that one day, he would end up where he was now, wearing clothes one size too small for him and sleeping half curled up on a sofa in her parent’s house, looking pitiful and harmless.

Amber didn’t know if something had happened to him since she had last seen him, but his condition really wasn’t that good. He had large eyebags, and when Amber pulled back his eyelids, she could clearly see red striations on his eyeballs, which was a common symptom of long term sleep deprivation.

Patients suffering from emotional detachment shared several symptoms with depression, and insomnia wasn’t unusual. However, the fact that he could sleep even in this situation was somewhat strange.

Amber was certain that her punch hadn’t knocked him out, and he didn’t look like he was in a coma either. The fact that he hadn’t woken up yet meant that he was really asleep.

Anyways, regardless of why, if he could sleep, then she hoped that he would have a good night’s sleep tonight.

Amber turned off the overhead lights, only leaving a small wall lamp as a source of light. As she prepared to return to her room, her father brought out a large quilt. “Get that blanket off of him and replace it with this one.”

Amber looked at the quilt in her father’s hands briefly before silently removing the blanket currently on Ian’s body. Then, she watched her father push the heavy quilt onto his body. Instantly, the tall and long-limbed Mr. Axton had been submerged in endless piles of cotton.

Once her father was finished, he even caringly dug out Ian’s head as he said to Amber, “The living room’s cold, and this blanket is warm.” Since he was worried that the quilt would fall down, he even pushed all of the chairs in the room in front of the sofa so that he could drape the edges of the quilt on the chairs.

Amber started sweating internally. The quilt that was currently covering Ian was, in Ruby’s words, a family treasure. Amber’s mother had bought cotton and specially commissioned someone to stitch it. It weighed fifteen pounds, and Amber had once had the dubious fortune of being covered by it. Ever since then, she had been unwilling to use it again.

Nothing was wrong with it, it was simply too heavy. If Ian woke up in the middle of the night with the blanket draped over him, he would feel paralyzed.