The Emperor’s Beloved Ugly Girl

15. Tears in His Eyes

Translator: Iris Guo

A lump came into A’Chou’s throat again. She had never known that she would cry so easily. But somehow, when she faced the paralyzed man in the filthy room, her eyes were wet all the time.

“It’s okay. You got me.” said A’Chou softly while she grabbed his shoulder and tried to turn him over to wipe his back. However, he was so heavy that she failed several times. She got so exhausted that she sat on the bed and gasped for a while. Afterwards, A’Chou put her arms around his waist to turn him over with great efforts. After a few unsuccessful attempts, she tried to put his thin arms around her neck and asked him while panting: “Could you move your arms? Could you hold me?”

It was still dead silent, so A’Chou stopped asking. She spared no efforts to turn over his body by holding his waist. However, accidently, his body was all over hers firmly, but she didn’t feel embarrassed at all. She had just wiped every inch of his body and already got over it. She didn’t regard him as a man but a weak person in need. After taking several deep breaths against his chest, she recovered from the shock. However, when she was about to move away, she found goose bumps all over his chest.

A’Chou gazed at the small piece of red skin of his, surprised and delighted: “You… You can still feel something, right? Here! Right?”

She tapped the skin lightly, and it became redder and got more goose bumps as expected. She therefore became overjoyed: “You can feel something for real! Great! Great! It will heal for sure!”

A’Chou climbed up gladly. She was in such a good mood that she didn’t find it unpleasant to look at the dense bedsores on his back anymore. While she wiped his back, she continued to nag: “I’m telling you the truth. When I was in the Imperial Wash—No, in my parents’ house, I knew a Mammy Xiang…an old lady, who accidentally broke her legs. At that time, everyone said that they would never heal, but I didn’t think so. Every day I massaged her legs as long as I was free. Guess what? She got better! Although she had to walk on crutches since then, she could get out of her bed after all. In my opinion, your legs and feet are fine, and you are in the prime of your life, so you must get better faster than she did!”

Zhong Mingwei’s face was buried in the pillow. His eyelids trembled violently and his face got a little wet. He used to be the Crown Prince, and he had been educated on how to be an Emperor since he was a child, so he valued his dignity more than his life. In the past six months, in spite of all kinds of humiliation and abuse, he never begged for mercy, let alone crying. However, he had tears in his eyes like a coward when listening to a strange girl’s meaningless nagging.

The warm handkerchief gently rubbed against every inch of his back, and he felt a little cozy. No matter how knowledgeable he was and no matter how broad his horizon was, he couldn’t find the exact word to describe such a feeling. He also found his heart softened, and his eyes somehow got tearier.