Chapter 475 To Run Into Her Once More
Inside the hospital.
The doctor examined Natalie’s foot and determined that there were no fractures. However, she had sustained severe soft tissue damage that may require proper rest over the next couple of days.
After the nurse had dressed Natalie’s foot and was preparing to leave, she found herself stopped by Bastien.
“Wait, you should take a look at her hand as well.”
While he spoke, Bastien held Natalie’s slender hand and opened it up to reveal her badly cut and bloodied palm.
Natalie regarded Bastien with astonishment.
This man’s very perceptive, able to notice things that even the doctor and nurse managed to overlook.
Once she got that patched up as well, the nurse exited, leaving only Natalie and Bastien inside the vastness of the ward.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Bastien asked.
“But of course, it hurts! How could it possibly not? I suppose that you must be curious as to why I didn’t act as though it did,” Natalie replied with a broad smile. “I’ve been used to getting knocked around a bit in the past so that made me better at enduring it compared to other girls.”
It impressed upon Bastien that this young lady before him was simply different in every conceivable way, for he had yet to hear her elicit as much as a whimper in spite of her sustaining as many injuries as she did.
She’s a real toughie!
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Mr. Nine?” Natalie regarded Bastien in earnest.
“Ask away.”
“Obviously, you were right there beside me, so why didn’t you act to help sooner?”
“I thought that you could handle it.”
“Huh?”
Looking at Natalie, Bastien replied candidly, “You didn’t look like the type who needed any help, sticking that broken bottle to that man’s throat the way you did. Though your foot was already hurt, not only have you managed to fool them, you had me fooled as well.”
“Oh, I see! But regardless, I’m really grateful for today.” Natalie extended a hand. “Name’s Natalie Nichols. Natalie with an “i” and “e”, and Nichols with an “o”, “l” and “s.”
Bastien returned her handshake and introduced himself quite simply. “Scholl. Bastien Scholl.”
Their eyes met before Bastien shifted his attention to a wound on Natalie’s right cheek.
“Your face looks like it’s been dinged as well,” Bastien helpfully reminded.
Bringing her fingers to her face, Natalie realized that it was not a wound but a fissure in her hyper-realistic mask, sliced open by glass fragments.
“I’ll get the nurse back in to look at it.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“You must have it attended to.” Bastien’s brow tightened into a taut furrow, and there was a domineering quality to his otherwise genial tone. “Does it not bother you that you might become disfigured?”
“I’m not disfigured. This face is a fake.”
A fake?
Amidst Bastien’s skeptical gaze, Natalie gently peeled off the hyper-realistic mask just to show him what he assumed to be a wound. “This isn’t my face, so it’s not going to cause my appearance to be marred even if it’s damaged. It could become quite troubling for me if you were to get the nurse in here, though.”
After examining the mask more closely, Bastien concluded that it was as Natalie described.
However, when he lifted his eyes and took a better look at Natalie’s face, his heart skipped a beat.
It’s her?
It was no wonder he found her familiar, as she was the one who had been constantly on his mind.
After the quake in Loang, there was a woman who scurried around the disaster zone in her white coat and subdued smile, curing the wounded villagers with her assortment of medicinal brews.
In spite of only having taken one glance at her, he was determined to seek her out after the situation stabilized, only to discover that she had vanished from Loang since.
So this is where she came afterward!
When Natalie noticed how the wordless Bastien’s eyes fixated upon her, she raised her hand and waved it in front of him. “Don’t tell me that you’re that shocked?”
“No.”
With his gaze tinged with increased warmness, Bastien was merely quietly pleased that he had managed to run into her once more.
