Li Jun was sitting with his back against the wall, his knees up to his chest and his face in his hands. He was still groaning.
Li Na quickly cleaned the toilet and kneeled beside him. She didn't like the idea of leaving him in vomit-soaked clothes, but the idea of undressing him looks rather tedious.
"Li Jun, you've thrown up all over yourself. Do you understand? Do you want to stay like this or…" She let her voice trail off.
He shook his head with some semblance of understanding and tried to remove his shirt. Of course, with his eyes closed, he had little success.
He began undoing the buttons of his shirt. However, it was much more difficult than he anticipated, and so he cursed and tugged at the buttons, almost tearing them off in the process.
Li Na sighed. "Here, let me." She moved towards him, brushed his long fingers aside, and quickly unfastened the buttons from the shirt, and slowly pulled it over his head.
He shrugged out of his dress shirt and immediately pulled his shirt over his head. Because he was disoriented, he could not free his head from the shirt, so he just sat there with it wrapped over his hair like a turban.
It really was quite funny. Li Na stifled a laugh, wishing she had her cell phone close at hand so she could take a picture of him. She would have loved to have used that shot as her screensaver. Or for memes. She gently freed his face from his shirt and sat back on her heels, gasping.
Li Jun's naked chest was stunning. Indeed, his entire upper body was a study of perfection. He had large, muscular arms, broad shoulders, and excellently toned abs. He'd always seemed to have a slender build, Li Na thought, especially when his physique was masked by long sleeve shirts or jackets. But there was nothing slender about Li jun now. Absolutely nothing.
Wow! Li Jun had a tattoo. This surprised her greatly.
The tattoo was over his left pectoral, above the nipple, and spreading over to his sternum. The image was of a Chrysanthemum that was dripping its juice over an oversized cracked heart. The heart was lifelike, not stylized, and the chrysanthemum juice seems to be ever ending that it seems that blood seeped from the cracks on the heart.
Li Na gaped open-mouthed at the dark and disturbing image. Especially when chrysanthemum traditionally meant the death flower. What really captured her attention was the maroon-colored stylized lettering across the surface of the stem of the flower. She was able to make out the letters CHU HUA.
Li Na had no idea who Chu Hua was or what Chu Hua was. The name tattoed on his body seems to be blinking at her mysteriously.
Li Na wondered what other surprises lurked across the surface of his skin, He has a tattoo like that underneath his clothes? With a sweater? Her eyes wandered a little lower. Even in a seated position, she couldn't help but notice his well-defined abdominal muscles and the deep V that extended from his hips to down beneath the waistband of his wool trousers.
Crap. Li Jun must work out—a lot. Should I touch it, No don't do it Li Na, Don't be a pervert. Maybe I could take a photo of his abs for my screen saver? She inhaled deeply.
Li Na flushed and averted her gaze. She was being bad, ogling her student. She wouldn't have wanted anyone to do that to her, especially when she was in such a low mood. So feeling more than slightly guilty, she gathered up his filthy clothes and the towel that she used to clean up the puke that had dripped onto the rug in his bedroom and took them to the laundry room. She hurriedly stuffed everything into the washing machine, added detergent, and started the cycle. She then walked across the kitchen to the refrigerator to get a glass and a bottle of distilled water.
Li Jun had managed to wobble to the enormous bed in the room's center during her absence. He was now seated on the edge, barefoot and wearing only a pair of black boxer shorts, his hair sticking out in all directions.
Freaking cow.
Although there was probably nothing hotter in the universe than the sight of a half-naked Li Jun sitting on his bed (except perhaps for the surface of the sun or a heated desert), Li Na averted her eyes and placed the water on his nightstand. She wanted to ask him how he was, but she thought maybe she should give him a moment. So she stood back and let her eyes roam around the room. And what she saw astounded her.
Li Jun's penchant for various hand-drawn arts was more noticeable here, for every wall but one was adorned with pairs, each extremely large and hung in imposing black frames.
She then remembered the drawing he drew of her during their first encounter.
However, the content of the drawing made Li Na amazed and taken aback.
The arts were glooming. Drawings of black, primarily female forms, although sometimes a female and male together, with their hands grasping at a shadow or being swallowed up by an unending tunnel. Tastefully posed, they were quite disturbing, and Li Na would not have said that they were depressing. But they were highly horrific, much more sophisticated than the average cover for horror movies, and far more dispirited than a cover album of a certain musician.
One showed a man with his head and face covered in a thick cloud. Li Na shivered as she wondered if the drawing was drawn before, during, or after an event, for she couldn't tell.
Another was of a woman's back and a pair of man's hands which were dripping with blood, one of which embraced her middle back and the other cupping her arse. A tattoo ran across her back, but the writing was in Japanese, Li Na surmised, so she couldn't read it.
But it was the two larger frames that hung over the bed that caught her attention.
One of them depicted a woman lying on her stomach with her form slowly chipping and fading away. A man's form floated over hers, almost like a dark angel, pressing a kiss to a shoulder blade and splaying his left hand which was aiming a dagger across her lower back. It reminded Li Na of Edvard Munch's artwork, Vampire, so she wondered if the artist had been inspired by that work.
The other photo took Li Na's breath away, for it was the most overtly emotional, and she was instantly drawn by its rawness and aggression. It was the side view of a man sinking into a spiral mouth that looks like a pit. The pit was surrounded by various flowers and two old people and two young-looking people, and four shadows hovering over the pit, all of them trying to pull the man out of the mouth. Li Na was perturbed by the photo and immediately looked away in sadness.
Why would someone display art depicting anger and whatnot hanging on his wall? She shook her head. From gazing at the framed art, one point was abundantly clear: Li Jun suffered from depression at one point and it was one of the reasons for his panic attack.
Li Jun's bedroom appeared to have only one purpose, and that was to serve as a container of anger and frustration, based on his décor and artwork choices. Despite its clear and palpable coldness, which was in line with the general frigid vibe of his entire apartment, she realized he must have planned it to be that way based on what she'd seen. The artworks, the ice-blue silk of his bed coverings and curtains, and the sparseness of the all-black furniture of the room, dominated by an oversized bed with an ornately carved and high-posted headboard and a low and equally intricate footboard, all gave off a chill tone in this shimmery space.
Li Na shuddered because it became too cold. What a great choice for house decor.
But the artworks were soon supplanted in her attention by something else, something even more surprising. She stared in shock at the painting on the far wall, her jaw-dropping open.
On the wall opposite Li Jun's large bed, and strangely out of place amongst the black-and-white drawing, was an artwork painted in brilliant and glorious color. It was a full-scale reproduction of the drawing she collected during their first interaction after the lecture she held that day. The same painting was drawn with the addition of a drawing of a blue iris flower.
Li Na's eyes darted from the painting to Li Jun, and back to the painting again. He could see the painting from his bed. She imagined him falling asleep at night, every night, looking at her face. It was the last thing he would see at night and the first thing he would see in the morning. Li Na hadn't known that he made a full-scale reproduction of the painting. He really attached it to the wall?
At the same time, it was both charming and disconcerting.
She began to tremble at the thought. No matter who came into his bedroom, no matter who Li Jun brought home to his room, Her picture was always there. Her portrait was ever-present.