Seemingly Leila heard that Vincent paused a bit. He kept silent for a few seconds, and only his breath was heard from the other end of the line. Then Leila heard a child’s scream and the voices of women’s delighted chatting.
Leila’s body was suddenly stiffened. It turned out that they were really together. A beautiful image was sketched in her mind -- a family of three. If the family of three were together for real, it must be a quite aesthetic picture.
“Ah! Mr. White, if you are quite busy, you can go. The international call is so expensive.” She suddenly lost the impulse to continue speaking. If she continued, she was afraid that she would become more depressed and might burst into tears. “You... Do you have anything else?”
Vincent kept silent again for a moment as if he had realized something. Then there was no kid’s or women’s voice on the phone. “Nothing else. That’s it.”
“Okay! Then, good night,” Leila said softly.
However, neither of them hung up the phone. Leila was waiting for him to hang it up first, and Vincent didn’t hang it up either.
One minute passed.
Leila stared at the screen, all the time. Another minute passed, and she saw the phone was hung up.
She inhaled deeply and put the phone on the desk. She looked around the study, which was empty, familiar, and strange. The huge study was so cold and quiet.
She picked up a cooperation management book and read it for a moment, and then put it back. She went to the bathroom to take a shower. Then she returned to the bedroom and lay down. She was sleepless the whole night--
Time passed so slowly. She didn’t know when the week would pass finally. She was counting the days but only three days had passed.
Every evening, she was learning taekwondo skills from Arthur. Leila seemed to have learned anything. Three days had passed already. Besides stretching her ligaments, she also hopped up and down and warmed up, which seemed to be all of her lessons. It made her quiet down.
Finally, on the fourth day, Arthur started to teach her new things -- the gist of confrontation.
Unavoidably, they two got the physical contact, which made it difficult for Leila to adapt. However, when seeing Arthur behaves quite naturally, she felt that she had been too unreasonable.
Holding Leila’s hand, Arthur said, “Yes, like that. Put your hand here, and your foot should kick out sideways quickly!”
“Like this?” Leila had a try.
“Yeah! Smart!” Arthur nodded. “I’ll teach you the airstrike. You can get too familiar with the technical movements first. This kind of exercise can continuously consolidate the correct power stereotypes of technical movements and continuously strengthens conditioned reflexes. It also contains various forms of airstrikes, which can be practiced alone or in multiple players. Please practice it first. Then we will practice it together.”
When Leila walked out of the taekwondo gymnasium, she felt the soreness all over her body.
“Can you hold on?” asked Arthur.
“Sort of. I just felt worn out.” Leila heaved a sigh weakly.
“Come on. Let’s go for dinner together!” She had dinner with Arthur every night after the course these days. And it was always his treat, so they went to the high-end restaurant all the time. This time, Leila shook her head.
“It’s on me today. I want to eat some snacks.”
“The snacks? Arthur frowned. “Aren’t you going to take me to the night market street of F City?”
“If you don’t want to go, I’ll go there myself. I’m so starved today and I want to have mutton shashlik.”
“Ah? Do you want to each barbecue food? We can go to South Asia Scenic Garden, where the roasted whole lamb is served.”
“No way! I just want to eat mutton shashlik.” It was quite rare for Leila to insist.
“All right. Let me take a look at what’s so delicious there!”
Hence, Leila took Arthur to the night market. The two were sitting at the small dining table. Arthur looked at people coming and going while creasing his nose. The plate looked quite a grease. “Can this stuff be eaten? Will we have loose bowels?”
Leila shook her head. “Everyone eats it in this way.”
“How to eat it?” Arthur frowned.
Leila enjoyed the dinner indeed. She was indeed starved. Unexpectedly, she would feel so hungry after working out. Taekwondo was truly a strong confrontational exercise. She had just kicked for an hour but now she was almost starved to death.
Arthur took a screw of mutton shashlik, which looked good and tasted good, too. Just the sanitary condition wasn’t so good. From his childhood, he had never eaten anything in such a kind of place. He carefully took a bite. “Ehn! It tastes good, way too spicy though.”
“What have I told you? It’s indeed tasty.” Leila enjoyed it so much.
As a result, Arthur had trouble with diarrhea that night.
On the second day, Leila didn’t see Arthur in the gym. After the class, Coach Koby told her that Arthur was in the hospital.
“Why is he in the hospital?”
“He suffers from diarrhea,” said Coach Koby, “He asked me to tell you that he would rather die than eating things on the snack stand.”
“Ah--” Leila gaped. “I’m totally fine. I don’t have diarrhea at all. How could he scour?”
“Different people have different degrees of resistant bacteria.”
“Uh! He’s so namby-pamby, isn’t he? Which hospital is he in now?”
“First Hospital.”
After the class, Leila went to First Hospital. She looked for the Gastroenterology department, and then she bought a bouquet. She asked for Arthur’s ward number but was informed that she couldn’t go to see him now.
“Why not? I’m his friend.” Leila was surprised.
“I’m sorry, Miss. Just now a gentleman went into the ward, and we’re informed to block other visitors. How about the wait for a while? After the gentleman comes out, we’ll ask Mr. Lane if he wants to see you,” the nurse explained to her politely, but still refused her.
Leila looked at the Medical Guidance Desk and found that Arthur was in a VIP ward.
So those VIP wards were for the rich, but the nurses were too snob, weren’t they?
Leila nodded. Then she went into a corner.
After ten minutes or so, she looked over at the ward from time to time. Suddenly, she saw a familiar figure and she gaped -- it was Vincent.
Leila’s heart hammered. It was indeed him.
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: A Moment in Destiny
the writing is quite childish, but maybe it's just the translations...