He took the bowl out of Grandma Sha’s hand, and drank the sweet potato soup all down.

“I am glad you are staying,” Grandma Sha smiled.

After he drank the soup, Grandma Sha kindly said, “LiNa, I will leave the bandaging to you since you had better hands than our clumsy old fingers.”

What!?

I said with awkwardness, “Grandma Sha, he seems all better now, big appetite and lots of strength, I think he fine. No need for me to help.”

I did not want to help that jerk bandage anymore. He was ignoring me all along, and did not even apologize for what he had done. Although my head was not injured severely, I was hurt deeply inside. I didn’t want to sound like a baby and make a big deal out of this assault, but no longer wanted to face this cold and heartless person anymore.

Grandma Sha smiled warmly, “His wounds are deep, it’s important to keep them clean so he can recover sooner.”

I didn’t give a damn at all! I did not care if those wounds were full of pus and worms crawling in and out his flesh!

“Ok…..Grandma Sha.”

Yes, I was such a coward! I dared not say no to Grandma Sha, not because I was afraid to say no, but more like knowing that I owed the old couple my life.

Great, Grandma Sha and Grandpa Jin left the room, leaving me with this icy cold face who did not even speak a single word. I took some clean bandages and sat right in his face. I bet the top of my head was steaming with fire, just because that dude fooled me like I was an idiot.

Hmm………

I got a brilliant idea, and an evil one too.

His eyes were on the window, sitting on an old carpet motionless and expressionlessly. I smirked while taking off a bandage from his arm, and took a good portion of the crushed herb and smashed it onto the wound, then suddenly------------

He froze, like an icy statue .

That was because my brilliant idea worked like a charm, hehe…….

I had no mercy for his wounds, like he had no mercy for my poor head!

I didn’t owe that dude a single penny. That was what he would get from being such an ungrateful person, and never speaking a single word of thank you to anyone. If Grandpa Jin thought he was not a mute or deaf person, then he must not be.

He was just a ruthless and cold-blooded being. The only reason I was doing the bandaging was due to Grandma Sha’s request, for I had no pity over this guy.

I purposefully put the herb on the wounds with some force, and laughed with plain evilness inside. His eyebrows squeezed with pain, and sweat beads were forming on his forehead where the bronze mask wasn’t covering. His fists were tight, as if in any second ready to give me a relentless punch in the face.

I didn’t care at all, punch all he wanted if he preferred to die in the freezing cold outside. I was well prepared for what would happen this time. Before I was easily attacked because I wasn’t prepared at all.

I thought he was just a badly injured man, what else could he do? Plus I was the one who saved him, he wouldn’t return my kindness with ingratitude, right?

Even a dog knew to never bite the feeding hand.

I grabbed a clean bandage and wrapped it around his arm, gently and steadily, and suddenly tied it as harshly as possible. Then I made an ugly butterfly knot.

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“A very nice butterfly, can’t wait to do another one!” I talked as if there was no one in this room, without any eye contact with that dude.

He was injured badly, and there were so many bandages to change. As I changed the easier ones and squeezed the tenth butterfly knot, I felt an intense blue laser beam “shot” through my skull.

Yeah, those were his eyes!

That dude finally couldn’t bear the amount of pain and gave me this death sentence stare, as if I made one more harsh move, he would either suffocate me to death or smack my head once more with a stick. I felt a sense of victory inside, and got the revenge I was looking for. Strangely enough, no matter how much pain there was, he never groaned once. If it wasn’t for the sweat beads on his forehead, I would totally believe he had no sense of pain at all.

It was time to change the bandage on his back, I took off the old bandage and threw it in a wooden basin.

I hesitated abruptly.

JEEZ!

The wounds were so bad that I was scared to look at it. If it was in the old days, I would have fainted right away or have a panic attack (not exaggerating). There were mainly two deep wounds on his back, one on the left and the other on the right, sort of spreaded out evenly. I knew they were bad after changing the bandages for a few days, but oh boy, those wounds were severely infected! Each one was at least two inches deep and three inches wide, as if something got pulled out of it. It was like when you pulled out a weed while gardening, it left this hollow hole in the soil, except the hole was no longer filled with dried blood but yellow pus and maggots.

The maggots were happily swimming in their own little “well.” One of them got out of the hole, and wriggled its way out toward the edge of the wound, right next to my finger!

I screamed like a hawk!

The piece of wet cloth went flying elsewhere!

Damn! He was sure not deaf because through the bronze mask, his eyes clearly did react to my sharp scream, but his face was still expressionless.

Although I didn’t like this person the slightest, his indifference should be admired. If those maggots were wriggling in my body, I would have lost my mind. My stomach felt as if turning upside down, and wanted to throw up, but I didn’t want to waste the sweet potatoes. Food was so scarce that even throwing up was wasteful enough. I kept telling myself everything was all right, at least a hundred times to finally calm down.

Maybe it was because he couldn't see the maggots, therefore he was not scared? Oh LiNa, I knew where you were heading now.

Even though I was almost shitting my pants off, I managed to get another clean wet cloth and came close to his wounds. I blinked so hard to avoid observing all the details of the wriggling worms, and finally managed to get one of them onto the cloth, of course after a few tries.

Then…..I shoved it right to his face, and hoped for a huge reaction like mine!

And guess what?

Nothing, absolutely no reaction at all, not a hint of surprise in his eyes!

That was a bit hard to imagine, maybe he could feel the maggots wriggling in his flesh? Thinking about that made me have goosebumps all over the body, and all of a sudden felt sorry for him. He must be in more pain than I could have imagined.

No, LiNa, you must have gone nuts! It was just two days, and you had already forgotten about the stick on your head!?

Seeing that he wasn’t scared of the maggots at all, I hid my disappointment and came close to the wounds. I closed my eyes for a couple seconds and took a deep breath, finally got enough strength to work on the maggots. I wouldn’t let go of even one of them, even though my hands were shaking like a grandma. This was definitely a torture, and all I could do was swallowing my “tears” down.

The wounds on the back looked so terrifying that I was certain if my hands were just a bit more heavy, he would have jumped in agonizing pain.

I was about to, but then……….

As I stared at those two hollow wounds, I gave up. Fine, I would let him go this time!

Demons were demons. Their tolerance was definitely much higher than humans. I just couldn’t imagine any of these wounds on a human and still survived. It took me quite some time to really clean out the wounds, and put some herbs on them, then bandaged them up.

Finally done!

I didn’t want to stare at that icy face anymore, and threw all the old bandages into the basin and got out of the room. I put more wood onto the bonfire, and boiled the bandage in a pot. This was the only way to sterilize them for reusage. White steam came up and rose to the orange sky. I stared at the sunset far away, and started to wonder how Mom and Dad were doing. Hopefully they would not grieve for a long time. I only wanted them to be happy, not sure why I got all sentimental abruptly.

Afterwards, the bandages were hung on a line next to the bonfire to dry, and they danced in the soft wind.

Aargh!

Why did I have to babysit this ungrateful jerk!?