Chapter 5

"Ow!" In a split second, Dylan's body was covered entirely in the piping hot soup. His flawless skin immediately turned a bright red color as blisters began to appear. The burning sensation felt like needles all over his body. It hurt so much that he could barely breathe. "Dylan!" Violet hurriedly let go of Archer and looked panicked for the first time. "Does it hurt? I'll bring you to the hospital at once!" Dylan looked up at her, pain paralyzing him all over, still unable to say anything despite his best efforts to make a sound. "Oh, my God! Archer! You're terribly hurt!" As soon as Violet heard that, her attention was drawn back to Archer at once. She looked even more panicked and flustered as she rushed back to Archer. A few drops of the soup had splashed onto Archer's arm, giving him a few red spots on his otherwise flawless skin. Archer withdrew his arm and shook his head with reddening eyes. "I'm fine," he said. "Mr. Cloud looks more seriously injured than me. Send him to the hospital first." "What do you mean you're fine? You've been so careful of your skin since you were young because you'd hurt for days even if you had a scratch on your body! Vi! What are you still waiting for? An invitation? Send Archer to the hospital at once!" Valerie stomped her feet anxiously. She even waved her finger at the people at the next table and yelled, "You're all idiots! Why didn't you just go out and fight instead? You hurt Archer, so Violet will never forgive you!" At this point, Archer couldn't stand the pain anymore and started moaning in pain. However, he still put on a brave front and insisted, "It's fine, Vi, just take a look at Mr. Cloud first. He's much more seriously injured than me." Saying this only served to make Violet's heart ache even more. She couldn't care less about Dylan and the mess on him anymore. Instead, she bent down, grabbed hold of Archer, and hurriedly led him out of the restaurant. Just before she left, she seemed to have thought of something and turned back to look at Dylan with a guilty look. "Archer has had sensitive skin since young and can't withstand pain. It's not far from the hospital anyway, so just take a cab there yourself." It wasn't until Violet, Archer, and Valerie all disappeared that Dylan finally was able to come back to his senses. He bore with the excruciating pain as he gasped loudly. The waiters felt sorry seeing him getting abandoned despite being the most badly hurt one out of the four. They then helped to clean Dylan up and quickly did their best to clean up the wounds on his skin. After taking some painkillers, Dylan finally felt the pain becoming slightly more bearable. At the very least, he could finally talk now. He borrowed a set of clean clothes from the waiter and carefully stumbled out of the pizzeria, heading toward the hospital. … The emergency doctor used two cotton swabs to pop the blisters on Dylan's skin. He also told Dylan to apply some ointment to the blisters daily so that they wouldn't scar. Dylan was in so much pain that he just kept his eyes screwed shut the entire time. At that time, two nurses walked past him. "Gosh, do you know how good Ms. Padden is to Mr. Niall? He just got burned by a few drops of soup, and she went ahead and booked out the entire floor of the hospital. She even got all the dermatologists here to look at him!" "Exactly! It was just a few spots, though. If they arrived any later, he would already have completely healed by himself. Ah, if only I had someone who cared about me as much!" "Haha! Keep dreaming. You won't meet another woman like her in a million years." A million years? Dylan couldn't help chuckling. Violet was someone who would abandon her gravely injured husband to take care of someone else's minute injury. Indeed, she was someone he wouldn't have met in another million years. After Dylan was all bandaged up, he thanked the doctor and got up to leave. Just as he walked toward the hospital exit, he received a text message on his phone. Tapping on it, Dylan saw that it was a message from the overseas college he'd applied to. The message told him that he had been accepted and reminded him to have his art portfolio ready during admission. … The last time Dylan held a paintbrush in his hand had been five years ago. After buying the materials he needed, Dylan didn't go home. Instead, he headed over to Moonlight Hill. The scenery at Moonlight Hill was beautiful. It had a pond in the middle of a valley surrounded by lush green hills. The pond was very still and quiet, reflecting the surreal scenery like a mirror, looking like a beautiful picture in itself. It put anyone who looked at it in a very good mood. Dylan sighed lengthily. The five years of suppression he'd experienced seemed to vanish into thin air when he was here. He just felt a sense of freedom, something he hadn't felt in a long time. He suddenly got inspired and immediately started to draw. In the blink of an eye, the beautiful scenery before him was captured impeccably on his canvas. There were no bustling sounds, no dust or smoke around him—only the sound of birds in the trees and a light breeze enveloping him in its embrace. Dylan spent the next three days completely lost in this beautiful scenery. It wasn't until he finally got down from the hills to send his work to the college that he finally turned his phone back on. As soon as the phone came to life, countless numbers of missed calls and messages jumped out at him. They had all come from Violet. Such a thing had never happened before. In the past, he would be the only one calling Violet or sending her text messages. Violet would never call him. She wouldn't even call him back after seeing missed calls from him. However, just as Dylan was staring blankly at the missed call logs, Valerie suddenly called him. As soon as he answered the call, Valerie's shrill voice could be heard immediately. "Dylan fucking Cloud! Where the hell have you been? Don't you know that Vi nearly went crazy trying to find you? Don't think that using such a dirty tactic will make her pay more attention to you! Keep dreaming, you pathetic loser! The only person Vi should ever marry is Archer and Archer only!" After she was done screaming at Dylan, Valerie hung up at once. Dylan frowned. Had he heard her incorrectly? Had Violet really been looking for him? What for? He wanted to ask Valerie what she meant and if she had been mistaken. However, the 108 missed calls from Violet seemed to prove that she had indeed been frantically trying to reach him.