Love from the Male Protagonist’s Harem

 Chapter 51-Doudou And Shuangshuang [Buried Memories] Part 1

Translated by Snowfall77

“Miss, this child……”

Bixi, the one who took care of Gu Peijiu’s daily needs, stared perplexed at the black-clad boy that her mistress had carried back home.  But, quickly snapping herself out of it, she hurried over to Gu Peijiu: “Miss, let me hold him, you……”

The second she got closer, the smell of blood filled Bixi’s nostrils.  And even though Gu Peijiu had her arms tightly wrapped around the boy, Bixi spotted at a glance the fearfully bright red bloodstain flowering across the front of the young lady’s white robe.

Gu Peijiu took a step back from Bixi, countenance and tone ice-cold: “Go, bring hot water.”

Although panicky, Bixi said: “Yes.”

Her mind was raced.  Was that blood on her mistress from the boy?  What the hell had happened?  How had someone gotten hurt that badly?

In the kitchen boiling water, Bixi also considered what a clean freak the young lady usually was, but now she had actually……

Steam rose and Bixi focused on the task at hand.  Carrying a basin of hot water and a towel, she briskly walked back to Gu Peijiu’s room.

Bixi opened the screen and slowed her pace out of habit, calling softly: “Miss?”

She was greeted with the sight of Gu Peijiu sitting by the edge of the soft bed where the delicately pretty boy lay.  The boy’s face was pallid, his brow furrowed and covered in cold sweat.  He kept pressing his chapped lips, his chest heaving up and down, looking altogether very pained and agitated.

“It hurts……”

Gu Peijiu gently stroked the boy’s head with a slender hand, nodding along to his words.  Bixi put the water basin down, nervously asking: “Miss, should I……I’ll take care of this?”

Ignored by a silent Gu Peijiu, Bixi glanced down and saw that the edge of her young lady’s left sleeve was being gripped so tight by the boy that his fingers were turning blue.

Like someone clutching onto their last hope.

Bixi found herself rendered mute.

“I will attend to him,” Gu Peijiu paused for a second, “You, wring the towel, then bring me my papers.”

“……yes.”

Handing over a wrung wet towel to the young lady, Bixi went to retrieve the indicated papers.  Gu Peijiu used her right hand to fold and tenderly place the wet towel on Xia Wuyin’s forehead.

“It hurts, it hurts……”

Xia Wuyin’s voice was hoarse as he kept tugging tighter and tighter on Gu Peijiu’s sleeve.

All the boy seemed able to do was cry out his misery.

Stymied by her inability to know what was going on in the boy’s fevered mind, Gu Peijiu eventually settled for slowly moistening his dry, peeling lips with the warm water.

She’d already given him hemostatic medicine, therefore his bleeding would’ve stopped.  However, that wouldn’t ease the suffering of his torn wound.

Then, thinking about how Xia Wuyin hadn’t been able to reverse his Dan Jue until he’d slammed his wound into a table corner, Gu Peijiu’s mood grew even more complicated.

“……Miss, here are your papers,” Bixi spoke carefully, “Shall I put them on the desk?”

“Mmm.”  Gu Peijiu gave a nod and tried to disentangle her sleeve from Xia Wuyin’s hold so she could get up.  Dimly aware that he was about to be left behind, the boy grew even more agitated in his stupor: “Don’t, don’t go——”

Gu Peijiu stopped, saying to Bixi: “Go get the doctor from the village, he should take a look at the wound.”

“Yes.”

The next moment Bixi was gone.

“……don’t go.”  The boy’s tone was sobbing and weak, “……it hurts.”

First eyeing the hand that was desperately clenching her sleeve, Gu Peijiu’s gaze finally settled on the unconscious boy’s blanched face as he pleaded and cried in pain.

Time stretched on……

“Mmm, I won’t leave you.”

Seated by the bed, Gu Peijiu softly held the hand that wouldn’t let go of her.  Such a bony, thin hand—enough to make one’s heart ache.

The boy’s grip slightly relaxed at Gu Peijiu’s reassurance.  Although he still frowned in pain, his expression became less distressed.

Gu Peijiu’s heart skipped a beat, and she leaned closer to decipher the boy’s soft whispering.

“……Doudou, you……don’t let me go.”

= =

Xia Ge felt like she about to die from the pain.

Whatever anesthetic Su Chan had given her had worn off, and now the poison from the Wangsheng dagger burned intensely through Xia Ge’s body.  She’d courted disaster too carelessly, now she had to endure the salt being rubbed in, in all its violent, burning agony.

She wanted to rouse herself, to somehow escape, but because of the previous backlash of lingqi, her skull was held prisoner by incessant droning.  Like being hung over an abyss by a fraying rope, her brutal discomfort was trying to awaken her, yet some other exhausted part of her was being inexorably pulled into the darkness of everlasting sleep.

Everything was gaudy, whimsically grotesque……and excruciating.

Memories in her mind surged chaotically, and ones that she’d purposely buried deep down began to furtively surface.

“Hey, what you doing?  Silly Shuangshuang, it’s time for us to go find food.”

“Ah, Shuangshuang, what should we eat today?”

Those indistinct shadows, don’t let them gain sharp edges.

""

But she was already remembering.

—The things she’d thought she’d safely forgot.

When she’d first crossed over into this world, Shuangshuang was what this small body had been called.

Living as a tiny beggar, she’d possessed only one good friend by the name of Doudou.  Doudou was older than her.  By how much?  Not even Doudou knew.

Both of them begged together in a village called Nanming, never knowing where their next meal would come from.

Nanming was a desolate place.  When Xia Ge had arrived there, the area was going through a famine.  Shuangshuang had been born with a strong body.  But living as an abandoned child, strength meant nothing.

No coin, no food, no one to dote on her.  As a beggar, hadn’t Xia Ge had been bereft of everything a child needed?  There was only one thing she had……her friend Doudou.

豆Dòu

bean / pea / CL: 棵, 粒 / sacrificial vessel

双shuāng

two / double / pair / both / even (number)