46 The Office
"Everything's going to be alright, Ming Cheng. I'm just taking you back to the doctor to check that nothing's wrong with you, and that your healing properly," Lan Chang explained to her son, tugging him along with one of her hands with Wang Yuan holding the other.
The two children walked side by side silently, without speaking.
Keeping his eyes firmly glued to the floor, Ming Cheng outwardly refused to look at the other boy, said other boy not particularly minding as he stared out of all the windows that they walked past.
The weather was much more cloudy than it had been yesterday, the clear skies that had once been abound completely absent in the face of the endless swathes of dull greys.
It looked as if it was going to rain soon as well.
Lan Chang's face was heavy, and she marched down the corridor as if she were a soldier on his way to battle, her hands wrapped tightly around both of the children's tiny, soft, pudgy fingers.
A smiling face greeted the trio at the Physician's office: a kind young man with an easy going demeanour, and face that definitely did not scream 'I torture frogs for a living'.
Lan Chang paused in front of him, her body firmly in front of the children and strictly behind the seams of the building that separated the Physician's Office from the corridor outside.
She did not bow down to the man in front of her, glaring down as him as still as a statue, even as one of her charges reached out to be held by their older sibling.
"Physician's Assistant!" she addressed the young man with a stoic face.
"Chef's Assistant," the young man addressed the older woman with a smile on his face.
The two of them faced off, staring down each other in the entryway of the physician's office, not moving an inch forwards of backwards, only adjusting themselves in response to their particular and specific loved ones.
A door slammed shut somewhere behind the young man, with a cough and grumble.
"Assistant! Where's the scroll of results that I was promised when it came to the opium quantities to use on the frogs?" a familiar voice rang out, accompanied by the sound of some miscellaneous cluttering noises and the sound of bone hitting wood.
An appropriately loud, shrill scream followed.
The young man, who was still stood in the entryway, did not give any sort of indication or recognition that he was aware of the chaos around him, still maintaining an affable expression of an almost otherworldly calmness and serenity.
Lan Chang to both of the children, looming over them," Don't ever turn out like this scary man, especially you little Cheng."
"Aww, that's cute. I never knew that you had the maternal instincts... Lan Chang!" the young man yelled out the final words of his taunt.
A deafening silence rang out... and held... and held.
"Lan Chang, so nice to see you. Come in, come in," the physician's voice called out, tone sickly sweet.
"Did you bring Ming Cheng with you?" he asked, a light, tentative note of hope in his voice.
"Fu- fffff..." Lan Chang let herself mumble out.
"Yes. Yes, I did. For you to do your job!" she gritted out, the words straining to get through her clenched teeth.
