地震时怎样保护自己

She felt exhausted, truly exhausted.

The last time she felt this drained was when her mother fell ill and she kept a round-the-clock vigil at her hospital bed.

The exhaustion then was a result of the despair from knowing that cancer was incurable, and her bewildered contemplation about the future. Now, that despair for cancer has been replaced with helplessness towards their marriage.

Before she could finish the word “marriage”, Qin Zhiyou turned his gaze slowly towards her, his eyes quietly meeting hers.

He clearly didn’t catch the final word “divorce”.

“What did you just say?”

“Nothing much.” Lu Weixi knew that her utterance moments ago was a real rush of blood to the head. Her mother hadn’t moved abroad yet and although Qin Zhiyou had already paid a hefty sum to secure her mother a place in the experimental group, the matriarch was too frail for a voyage just yet and needed more time to recuperate.

Now was not the right time to talk of divorce.

But her fatigue was genuine. Even though she hadn’t bustled around like she did during her workdays, and the physical altercation was only limit to a few slaps, she felt as exhausted as if she had been running around to meet seven or eight clients and worked on countless designs. Her exhaustion had permeated from her body to her soul.

In the instant she finished her sentence, Lu Weixi went silent, not knowing how to voice out her thoughts. Thankfully, she had spoken so softly that he’d only heard his name and missed the second part of her sentence, particularly that last bit. She lowered her gaze, turned her back to Qin Zhiyou and opened the wardrobe to change into her home clothes.

At the same time, Qin Zhiyou was also changing. The two of them were separated by their bed. She was on one side, he was on the other, her back turned to him.

With the curtains drawn and no lights on, their bedroom was dim. The lack of ventilation all day made the air heavy and stagnant. The room was so quiet it felt as if time was stretched out, and their movements were exceptionally slow in this silence.

However, Qin Zhiyou’s actions were slow because he was watching her while her own pace was retarded by her preoccupations.

It seemed like a long time had passed by the time they both finished changing.

Despite her back facing him, Lu Weixi had this feeling that Qin Zhiyou had been watching her all this while. After changing, neither of them made any more movements. Her hand rested on the wardrobe, still in the motion of closing it. Both of them stayed silent, still, frozen in the same position.

For a long while.

Finally, it was Lu Weixi whose phone broke the silence. She bowed her head instinctively to check the message, expecting something work or design- related. Instead, it was a promotional message from an online store she often visited.

Normally, Lu Weixi would have glanced at the sender’s name and deleted such messages without a second thought. Yet now, she read the message over several times carefully, muttering the promotional prices to herself repeatedly.

But that’s not the end of it.

She sensed Qin Zhiyou move slightly, caused no doubt by the noise of the incoming message, and take a few steps towards her.

She didn’t turn back but she could hear the soft, slow footsteps of Qin Zhiyou getting closer and closer.