54 Below the Windows
Lan Chang held both of Wang Yuan and Ming Cheng's hands as she walked them down the corridor, away from the Imperial Physician's Office.
As soon as she deemed that they were far enough away, after turning around two corners and ducking below one of the windows, she fell down onto her knees in front of Wang Yuan and held out her hand.
"I know that you've picked up a scroll. Give it," she demanded of him, her voice quiet and whispering, but no less forceful.
Without hesitation and much to Ming Cheng's surprise, the small quiet boy beside him really did reach into his robes and pull out one of the scrolls that they had all seen within one corner of the Imperial Physician's Office.
Ming Cheng felt his entire body freeze up as he realised that he had let himself, despite promising no longer to, relax around the boy, seeing him as somebody who wasn't particularly worth looking at while he had placed all his focus on the Imperial Physician and the ghost who had sat by the windowsill.
He glanced over towards the direction they had just arrived from, and like clockwork, the ghost just turned around the corner to watch them all huddle on the floor, craning over to read a stolen scroll.
The ghost still looked slightly lost and aimless, and as if she weren't in a hurry to get away from the Imperial Physician, confusing Ming Cheng even further.
Resolutely, he looked down instead, deciding to rather focus on the scroll and the dilemma of Wang Yuan first, before probing the ghost situation later at night, when he was sure that Lan Chang was asleep.
He had underestimated Wang Yuan, and would have to keep a closer eye on him to ascertain all that he was capable of and try and find ways to counteract any of his potentially harmful future actions.
The best course of action currently was to observe, and the boy certainly made it easy enough for Ming Cheng, considering that he was currently looking away down at the scroll.
Lines upon lines of words filled it, rendering it entirely useless for Ming Cheng to bother looking at or even try to decipher.
However...
This was the perfect time to broach the topic of his illiteracy and hopefully score himself some sort of education or, in the very least, put him in the company of Wang Yuan to try and have some more alone time with him to more properly assess his...
suspicions about his...
He would re assess Wang Yuan's place later.
They were never probably friends to begin with.
They hadn't actually ever interacted.
He was just somebody within the group of people that he called friends for a lack of convenience, not that the twins would willingly spend time with him of their own volition after how the day ended today.
Lan Chang's eyes were rapidly moving over the medical text that she had received, her head moving slightly side to side as she tried to absorb and internalise everything that she read off the stolen paper.
