A Bloodied Head

Yu Mao answered him with action.

—By ignoring him completely. She hadn’t heard a word.

Her whole heart and mind were fixed on the woman onstage. The song filled her ears, and the little noise off to the side never even registered before it was filtered out.

Zhao Xuan waited for a long while. Seeing that she still gave no reaction, irritation surged through him, and he raised his voice to shout again, “Hey, are you deaf!?”

Yu Mao frowned slightly as if the noise bothered her, then dismissed it and kept following the woman’s moving figure with her eyes.

Anger at being ignored only made Zhao Xuan more furious. In a fit of temper, he reached out and shoved her, intending to curse at her too. He hadn’t expected Yu Mao to be so frail that the push alone would knock her over.

It was like toppling a lifeless vase; there was no resistance at all. With a thud, she went straight down.

His whole body jolted. He was startled badly, terrified that he might have injured this money tree of theirs; not only would the fans explode, even the production team wouldn’t let him off.

Panic-stricken, his first instinct was to run, but a glance around showed other staff members had already noticed and were hurrying over. Knowing he couldn’t get away, he reached out instead, trying to help her and check whether she was hurt.

All this happened in the blink of an eye, but Yu Mao’s next move made his hand freeze halfway out, unable to decide whether to keep reaching or pull back.

He couldn’t help cursing, “What a freak.”

Yu Mao had all her attention locked on the stage, as if her soul had already drifted out of her body; her control over her own body had fallen to almost nothing.

So it was only when her vision lurched violently, like a camera crashing to the ground after a jolt, and that dazzling figure appeared at an angle in her eyes, that she belatedly realized she had fallen.

But she didn’t have time to think about how she’d fallen. She only wanted to right the camera. In one swift motion, she raised a hand to grab the top of her head and twist it back into place, the movement so deft it was as if she had forgotten she was a person and instead thought of herself as a device that needed manual adjustment.

And even then, she kept craning her neck toward the stage, completely unconcerned that her body was still lying on its side on the cold floor.

The staff member rushed over in a panic, shoved Zhao Xuan aside with his rear end, then grabbed Yu Mao under the arms and hauled her upright, all while checking her over and babbling so fast it sounded like his tongue was burned:

“Are you okay, are you okay? Where does it hurt? Did you hit your head, my goodness…”

Yu Mao seemed soulless; even being helped up after the fall didn’t bring her back. Her eyes were glued to the stage, and she didn’t make a sound.

Then the staff member suddenly let out a yelp that startled Zhao Xuan.

“There’s blood! Hurry, hurry, medical team, call the medical team!!”

The scene clearly descended into chaos. The others, who had stopped paying attention once they saw someone had gone over to handle it, all started to stir.

Even the person singing onstage noticed the commotion and glanced over, though the darkness beyond the stage made it hard to see what had happened.

The staff member tipped Yu Mao’s small face up and saw bright red blood streaming down from the corner of her forehead, sliding past one eye and almost reaching her chin; it was terrifying.

“My heavens, what bad luck… She didn’t even know to use her hand to block it when she fell; she just dropped straight down…”

The venue was already cluttered with all sorts of equipment, and the place where Yu Mao had been standing was practically the cleanest spot. Yet there happened to be a small stool tucked in the corner; with its metal frame and a few rough, unfinished edges, it had scraped her forehead when she went down.

The blood flow was exaggerated enough to make strands of hair stick to her cheeks. Her face was already lacking color, and now she looked, at first glance, as if she were dying.

The people who gathered around and saw Yu Mao’s injury winced in unison and turned their condemnation on Zhao Xuan.

“Zhao Xuan, are you sick in the head? What are you freaking out and hitting people for!?”

When Zhao Xuan heard that, he got anxious too. “Who hit her!? Don’t spit nonsense at me! I just gave her a light push; how was I supposed to know she’d be this weak? I thought she was trying to scam me!!”

“Damn, what kind of face do you have to say that? If you hadn’t laid a hand on her, would she have fallen? You hurt someone this badly and don’t even feel guilty; you won’t even help her up. You’re really human trash!”

The medical team hadn’t arrived yet, so they started shouting and cursing each other first.

They didn’t have many scruples anyway; this was only rehearsal, no outsiders were coming in, and the matter wouldn’t get out.

Someone pulled tissues over to wipe the blood from Yu Mao’s face, smearing it into a large red patch.

Their hands were shaking from fear. Looking back at Yu Mao, though, they saw no reaction at all; her eyes were still fixed on the stage, bright like lightbulbs, as if she didn’t know pain.

“You really are… I’m honestly done with you.”

The staff exchanged glances, unable to find the right words, each expression more indescribable than the last.

“I’ve never seen a fan act like this.”

“I’m telling you, before Nan Changgeng finishes singing, even if fire were burning on her body, she probably wouldn’t run.”

By the time the medical team and the director rushed over, Nan Changgeng’s performance had just ended as well.

Yu Mao twisted away from the staff member’s grasp and, facing Nan Changgeng as she came down from the stage, raised both hands high and clapped wildly, looking extremely excited.

“……”

“No, you…”

The words stuck in the throats of the staff members surrounding her; their expressions shifted several times, but in the end they still couldn’t force out another word.

As soon as Nan Changgeng stepped off the stage and came closer, she saw a large patch of blood on the girl’s cheek and was immediately shocked. She hurried forward. “What happened? Why is there so much blood?”

When Yu Mao clearly saw the worried look on her face, she finally broke free from that dreamlike, strange delight. Her gaze went blank for an instant, as if struck by a heavy blow, and then dropped back into reality.

Only then did a sharp pain register belatedly on her forehead.

Nan Changgeng reached out to brush the hair at her temple aside, exposing the wound underneath, and her expression immediately darkened even more.

The injury was matted with blood; the cut was irregular, the flesh turned outward, nearly two centimeters long.

“Zhao Xuan pushed her. She didn’t stand steady and fell, then hit that little stool,” someone explained to her.

Nan Changgeng glanced at the stool, then looked around again, but she didn’t see the culprit, Zhao Xuan. Her brow tightened unconsciously.

That bastard had somehow slipped away.

The medical team, who had rushed over, set the first-aid kit down beside the stage, opened it, and took out cotton swabs and iodine to treat the wound.

The director leaned in to look at Yu Mao’s injury. Her face turned ashen, anger making her curse in a stream of unbroadcastable filth.

“Where the hell did that worthless piece of trash run off to? Go find him and tell him not to come back! We run a proper show here; we don’t hire thugs and muscle as mentors! And tell him to pay Yu Mao’s medical expenses.”

She was genuinely regretting now that she’d brought in someone like that just to manufacture conflict. He dared to pull every kind of stunt imaginable. If he already had the guts to lay hands on a contestant on their show, what else wouldn’t he do?

Good thing the livestream hadn’t been on, or the chat would’ve been torn to pieces by that pack of fans!

Yu Mao was still completely out of it. Like a dazed puppet, she was led by Nan Changgeng to sit on the little stool that had injured her. She lifted her head and blinked. Sensing how uncomfortable the blood felt smeared on her face, she raised a hand to wipe at it, but the woman caught her wrist at once.

“Careful. Don’t move around.”

Nan Changgeng took a handkerchief from her pocket; it was a pale blue silk square with a simple white border, and in the lower right corner a small black character for Changgeng was embroidered on it.

She found a bottle of mineral water, dampened the neatly folded handkerchief, crouched down, and gently wiped the blood from the girl’s face.

A dirty little flower face.

Yu Mao’s brow also furrowed; her gaze fixed on Nan Changgeng’s face, long lashes fluttering, a trace of melancholy surfacing in her eyes.

The medical worker came over to her side, bent down, and used a cotton swab dipped in iodine to disinfect the wound. Nan Changgeng helped hold back her hair with one hand while using the other to wipe her face clean.

“Does it hurt?” she asked softly.

Yu Mao seemed a little troubled. Her lips moved, and she weakly managed to breathe out a single word: “No.”

She sat upright on the little stool, her thin body unable to fill out the loose tracksuit; the trouser legs and sleeves hung empty. Then she suddenly reached out to the woman, revealing a small wrist.

Like a thirsty little tree, withered and feeble, stretching out its shriveled branches.

Her fingertips were cool. Her index finger lightly touched the center of the woman’s brow, and with extreme, extreme care, she pressed and smoothed the furrow there flat.

Nan Changgeng closed her eyes for a moment, startled. She relaxed her brow; when she looked up again, she saw Yu Mao withdraw her hand, looking much more at ease as she nodded and said, “It doesn’t hurt now.”

“Hey! Don’t shake your head.” The medic was startled and pressed a hand against the top of her head. “If you poke your wound by accident, you’ll know what pain feels like.”

Nan Changgeng pressed her lips together and watched as the other person skillfully cleaned and disinfected Yu Mao’s wound, then applied gauze. Her eyes darkened; for a moment, she couldn’t quite gather her thoughts.

The bloodstained handkerchief was crumpled into a ball in her palm, wrinkling several times over.

Yu Mao’s face was clean now, a large piece of gauze covering her forehead. The hair on the right side of her head was stuck together with blood into several clumps, a little messy; still, she happily swung her feet.

Her heels touched the ground, the balls of her feet lifting and falling, making crisp little tapping sounds against the floor.

“Changgeng, you sang especially well, especially beautifully!” Her expression was earnest, her voice thin as mist, but the way she praised people had a blunt, childlike quality.

Nan Changgeng’s expression was hard to describe. She drew in a breath, then let it out slowly, helpless. “Can you focus on yourself for once? You’ve got a bloody head and you’re still thinking about that?”

The director had been watching them for a while. Her anger had started to settle, and she interjected at the right moment, saying, “Ah, this kid’s silly, but we definitely won’t let her be wronged. Don’t worry; our production team will give her a result she’s satisfied with.”

Tomorrow was the first public performance, and Yu Mao’s injury definitely couldn’t be hidden. They didn’t intend to hide it anyway. It was all Zhao Xuan’s fault alone; he’d already been chased off. The fans might be angry, but they wouldn’t make that big a scene; if anyone wanted to curse, they could curse Zhao Xuan.

“That’s the best outcome.” Nan Changgeng smiled faintly, but her gaze was a little cold, making the pale gray-blue in her eyes seem to hold a faint chill, as dark as if a thin layer of ice had formed.

She wasn’t someone without a temper. Yu Mao had followed her for so long and then suffered this for no reason; what difference was there between that and someone randomly hitting the cat she kept?

“Zhao Xuan.”

Yu Mao studied the woman’s expression and suddenly spoke, clearly enunciating the name. The side-stage light cast her face into half-shadow beneath her hair, and her expression held something strange.

She sat upright like a doll, her eyelids lowering and lifting at a steady pace, and asked lightly, “Do you want him to disappear?”