Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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After seeing Tan Yunchang off, Luo Zhan booked a room in a hotel near Jia Junxi’s private eye hospital. After taking a shower, he tiredly fell onto the hotel’s big bed and slept for nearly five hours, which was considered to have replenished his energy.
In the evening, Luo Zhan returned to the single room where Tang Ran was.
At that time, Lan Jingqian was standing beside the bed, and the full-time nurse was taking away the bowl of porridge on the low table beside Tang Ran’s bed.
Seeing that the person who came in was Luo Zhan, Lan Jingqian’s eyes moved slightly. After a few seconds, he stood up and walked towards the door and stopped opposite Luo Zhan: “I’ll leave this to you tonight. I’ll come to take over your shift after 12 o’clock.”
Luo Zhan was a little surprised, and asked in a low voice: “Boss Lan is so considerate?”
Lan Jingqian glanced at him helplessly: “It’s just to repay you for not disturbing me this afternoon.”
Luo Zhan nodded and moved aside to make way: “Please go well, Mr. Lan.”
“…”
After Lan Jingqian left, Luo Zhan closed the wooden door and walked towards the bed: “Have you had dinner, Ran Ran?”
Tang Ran, who was lying on the bed, had only heard the noise at the door. When she heard Luo Zhan’s voice, she turned her head excitedly: “Luo——”
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t move, little girl,” the nurse who came in to change Tang Ran’s infusion bottle quickly stopped her, “Be careful not to budge the needle!”
Tang Ran was frightened and had to close her mouth quietly and shrink back.
The caregiver who was clearing the dishes beside the bed was an experienced old woman who Luo Zhan had hired from the Luo family. She was familiar with Tang Ran. At this time, the caregiver straightened up and answered for Tang Ran: “Young Master, Miss Tang Ran’s dinner was a nutritious meal specially arranged after the operation. She just had it.”
When she finished speaking, Luo Zhan just stopped by the bed.
The nurse who was preparing to change the dressing obviously heard the caregiver’s address to Luo Zhan. After realizing what was happening, she looked at Luo Zhan in surprise and strangeness.
Then the nurse turned back and teased Tang Ran with a smile: “So there’s a young lady living in the ward where I’m changing the dressing today?”
“I, I’m not…”
What Tang Ran was least good at dealing with was jokes. After hearing this, she hesitated for a long time and couldn’t follow the conversation, her face turning red.
Luo Zhan never cared about what others said, and this level of teasing was like a gust of wind in his ears to him.
However, Tang Ran’s reaction was still his greatest source of interest, so Luo Zhan did not say anything, but just waited for the little girl with interest.
When he saw Tang Ran’s face was almost as red as a lantern, he lowered his eyes, coughed softly to suppress his smile, and said to the caregiver: “Don’t call me such an old-fashioned name outside in the future.”
The caregiver was about to respond.
But Luo Zhan turned to look at Tang Ran and added maliciously: “Young Madam is too shy to bear it.”
Caregiver: “……?”
Tang Ran: “——!”
The girl’s skin was the same color as that of freshly cooked shrimps.
After the nurse had finally changed the medicine and the caregiver had tactfully left with the cleaned-up dishes, Tang Ran’s red lantern state slowly faded away.
Luo Zhan took a chair, sat next to the bed, and asked, “How do you feel this afternoon?”
The little girl didn’t know how to hold a grudge, so she answered obediently, “Much better.”
“Don’t your eyes hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Really?”
“…” Tang Ran was silent for a few seconds, then looked bitter, “It’s fake. My eye socket seems to hurt a little, but the nurse said it was normal.”
Seeing the little girl’s miserable appearance, Luo Zhan felt amused and distressed: “If you feel uncomfortable, just rest more. You won’t feel uncomfortable when you fall asleep.”
Tang Ran’s expression became even more dejected, and her voice was low and a little aggrieved: “I seem to have slept too much last night. I don’t feel sleepy at all today, instead I feel energetic.”
“What should we do then?”
“…Luo Luo, can you talk to me?” the little girl asked carefully. “This can help divert my attention.”
Luo Zhan lowered his eyes: “Okay.”
The tip of the little girl’s nose, wrapped in white gauze, moved slightly, and the corners of her lips curled up.
Luo Zhan’s eyes were complicated.
After a few seconds of pausing, he asked, “How was your conversation with that person this afternoon when I was away?”
Tang Ran: “Better than yesterday. He doesn’t seem to blame himself as much, and I feel much more comfortable. In the future…it should be better.”
Luo Zhan asked: “If I have to leave for a while, and he is the only one to accompany you, is that okay?”
Tang Ran was stunned.
After more than ten seconds of silence, the little girl came back to her senses and asked softly, “Where is Luo Luo going?”
Luo Zhan: “At this time last year, a team from INT signed up for the Songke Cup Robot Competition, and I am the team leader. The first stage of the competition will begin the day after tomorrow in Country T at the latest. We have been preparing for a year, and I can’t miss it.”
Tang Ran nodded: “Then Luo Luo will of course go.”
“But what will you do if I go to compete?”
Tang Ran: “Even if Luo Luo is not here, I can continue to treat and recover, but if Luo Luo does not participate in the competition, then they probably won’t be able to complete it successfully, right?”
“Um.”
“So,” Tang Ran said with a smile, “Of course we have to make decisions based on the situation.”
Luo Zhan hesitated to speak.
Tang Ran waited for a while and her smile faded.
Then she spoke in a very soft voice: “I just want to ask, how long will Luo Luo be gone?”
Luo Zhan sighed silently: “According to previous years, the total schedule usually lasts for one to two months.”
Tang Ran was stunned for a moment: “Will it take two months?”
“Well,” Luo Zhan raised his eyes, “so I may be away until the stitches on your eyes are removed before I can come back – do you mind?”
Tang Ran came back to her senses: “Of course not. You already have your own studies, work and life, and Luo Luo is not mine alone… I am already very satisfied that you have been with me from before the operation until now!”
He didn’t know who the girl was trying to convince, but she raised her voice rarely.
Luo Zhan stared at the little girl for two seconds and sighed softly. He then stood up and gently touched the girl’s head.
“After your stitches are removed, I will appear in front of you as soon as possible.”
“Yeah.” Tang Ran nodded and chuckled again, “It’s a deal, you can’t forget it.”
“…”
Luo Zhan was suddenly stunned.
These words were hidden in his fragmented memories.
[What is your name?]
[Me? I don’t have a name.]
[No name? Then how did they find you?]
[The teacher calls me number 390 because I was the 390th child taken in since the orphanage was founded.]
….
[In the future, if there is a future, when we get out, I will give you a name.]
[Okay. Then I will only use the name you gave me and never change it.]
[It’s a promise, you can’t forget it.]
[Well, I won’t forget!]
It was just that he said it at that time, and he himself forgot it.
Luo Zhan sank into his memories, his voice becoming hoarse: “Did he give you a name later?”
Tang Ran, who was sitting on the hospital bed, was slightly startled and tilted her head: “Name? Who?”
“The boy you met at the orphanage.”
“Ah, he…” Tang Ran’s smile paused. She turned back in confusion, “Luo Luo, how do you know he promised to give me a name?”
Luo Zhan’s eyes flickered slightly.
After a few seconds of silence, he replied calmly: “You told me that, have you forgotten?”
Tang Ran was stunned for a few seconds: “Did I tell you?”
“Um.”
“Maybe I forgot,” Tang Ran knocked her head in distress, “I heard that taking anesthetics will make you stupid, is it true…”
Luo Zhan said nothing, just looked at the little girl quietly.
Her eyes were covered with white gauze. Those beautiful eyes had spent ten years in that dark world without sunlight and had to go through the terrible pain of stitches and sutures in the hope of regaining some light.
And all this was because of him, because he was a coward who was so afraid of the torture that he forgot everything.
Luo Zhan lowered his eyes and raised the corners of his mouth in self-mockery: “He should have forgotten that he promised you this, right? For him, forgetting can make it easy. It’s so easy to live only for himself.”
The girl on the bed was stunned for a few seconds.
Then her expression tightened little by little, and she said seriously and solemnly: “Luo Luo, you don’t understand him, you can’t say that about him.”
Luo Zhan slowly clenched his fists.
The pale blue veins on his forehead bulged slightly, and his voice was low and hoarse: “Hasn’t he forgotten, am I wrong?”
“He didn’t!” Tang Ran retorted, her breathing quickened, “My name – he gave me my name!”
Luo Zhan was suddenly stunned.
The next second, he looked up in disbelief.
“Your…name?”
“Yeah.” Tang Ran came back to her senses from her anxiety and lowered her head in embarrassment, “I’m sorry, Luo Luo, I shouldn’t have spoken so loudly to you – but don’t misunderstand him, he really didn’t forget about it.”
Luo Zhan spoke with difficulty: “Then, the name he gave you, could it be…”
“Ran, Ran.”
Tang Ran seemed to remember something and chuckled, bright and beautiful: “He used to call me that too.”
Luo Zhan’s consciousness almost went blank.
Tang Ran was still smiling as she said, “Since I mentioned the name to you, I must have told you that my number in the orphanage was 390, right?”
“…”
“He named me according to this. Because it was 390, so seeing that 3 is the radical of three drops of water, 9 is the capital nine, 0 is the capital ten, and add a left stroke and a right stroke below…”
In front of Luo Zhan, the girl with her eyes covered with gauze opened and closed her lips.
This soft voice slowly intertwined and overlapped with the low, hoarse and gentle voice of a boy in her memory.
The broken fragments were reassembled, and the long-forgotten picture appeared before his eyes, brushing away the dust in his memory.
In the dim and cold room, the boy and the girl were leaning back to back against each other while lying against the concrete wall.
The hand stretched out from the fence was covered with bruises and mottled scars, and the boy was gently drawing on the ground, stroke by stroke.
[No. 390, 3 is the radical of three drops of water, 9 is the capital nine, 0 is the capital ten, and then we add a left stroke and a right stroke below…]
[No. 390.]
[From today on…I will call you Ran Ran.]
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