1- Rainy days, thighs and breasts

1.

The ink-dipped pen scratched the paper, leaving behind a thick line. The hand gripping the pen was tightly squeezed, controlling the nearly imperceptible quivering of the nib. When he reached the final box labelled 'Experimental Data,' his handwriting dramatically deteriorated, the ink smearing across the white paper.

  Brent frowned and tore the paper out, crumbling it into a ball and throwing it in the trash. He turned his head and saw his phone screen light up with a message alert, accompanied by a “ding”.

  It was the surveillance software alerting him, "Biological activity detected, click to view surveillance footage."

  Outside, there was a knock at the door.

  It must be Mrs. Sala from across the street again, delivering her papaya salad, having been turned down three times in a row, as if she didn't understand how much Brent hated human contact, especially face-to-face contact.

  This bores Brent Keith.

  People react to seeing him in one of two ways: shock and amazement, followed by some pretend sadness and painless pity, telling him that one day he will be able to return to the operating table, or pretending not to notice his physical handicap and talking to him as if he were an able-bodied, normal person.

  Talk to him as if he were an able-bodied, normal person.

  Unfortunately, the majority of people are lousy actors. The more they disregard his hand and lower body limitations, the more Brent is able to make himself feel out of place using their body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, the pace of speech, and pauses in speaking. They don't usually notice it themselves, but observing people's small movements was a professional habit for Brent, even though he had long since moved away from his own home.

He had long since moved away from the hospital of which he had been so proud.

  Brent tried to wait for the knocking to wear off, but the girl seemed to be very persistent. Finally, he became impatient and slid his wheelchair towards the lift.

  "LA has been affected by the rainy season and has been hit by a rare and extremely heavy rainfall, the weather station has now issued a red warning signal for heavy rainfall, please stay indoors as much as possible ......"

  As the lift went up Brent heard the sweet female voice on the radio at his work table. He came to the door and looked out through the cat's eye, which was much shorter than the average person's home, and saw in the distorted and exaggerated fisheye view a gust of wind and rain.

  In the rain, a pair of pale, slender legs wrapped in tight denim hot trousers, the edges of their thighs squeezed out a bit of soft white flesh by the tights.

  A fleeting obscurity crossed Brent's eyes. The next moment he ghosted open the door, tasting the cold, fishy smell of rain and seeing a pair of wide, frightened eyes. A pair of smudged eyes that have lost their eyeliner due to the rain and long black hair dripping down at her back. The woman was holding a sleeping little girl in her arms, the wet material of her dress torn out of shape by her tiny hands, revealing a large, bulging, soft breast, a woman's heaving breast.

  She took a half-step back in shame upon noticing where Brent's gaze rested, but she did not turn away, most likely because Brent was the first person who hadn't driven her away as soon as the door opened.

  "Sir ...... Would you mind if I come inside for a while to get out of the rain?" The woman mustered up the courage to beg him, looking behind her in panic as she spoke, "Please if my man finds me, he'll kill me ......"

Man?

  Brent repeated the word in his mind without moving and looked at the woman in front of him without speaking.

  "Please, or may you let the child in? She'll get sick if she stays wet." The woman looked on the verge of tears. Her eyelashes were long, wet locks from the rain. She looked like a poor animal on the verge of drowning. A few unusual bruises on her pale, soft thighs had an oil-painted beauty against her snow-white skin.

   Brent's breath sank imperceptibly.

   As if sensing what Brent was about to do, the woman fell silent. Her shapely throat rolled and very slowly,  she walked up to Brent with the baby in her arms, turning sideways so that the more bruised leg was exposed to Brent's eyes.

   "Does your man beat you a lot?"

   Brent reached out to touch the bruises, spinning his fingertips but not quite touching them.     There were two bruises so close to the base of the woman's thighs, covered by hot trousers that

they couldn't be seen clearly. The back of Brent's hand lifted the hem of the trousers and touched the soft, tender flesh at the base of the woman's legs.

   "...... mmm." In reaction, the woman bit her lower lip, goose bumps gently responding to the touch. She was attempting to contain herself, almost to the point of trembling. But she never ducked or spoke up to stop Brent's almost offensive behaviour.

   "Cold compresses for 24 hours after an external impact, hot compresses afterwards, and also eat some vitamins to promote recovery."

   Brent withdrew his hand as if it was just a normal visit: "Don't make a mess on the floor when you come in."

   "Thank you so much!"

   The woman froze for a moment before responding, carefully placing her dripping sandals on the floor mat by the door and tiptoeing in. Brent went to the bathroom and grabbed towels to her as he went along.

  The woman folded it up and tucked the child into her shirt because she could not bear to use it. She did this before going to wash her face, and when he bent over his jeans hot trousers shrank up a notch to reveal the quivered roots of her white, greasy legs.

   "You're only staying for one night,” Brent said as the woman washed her face. The woman didn't object, turning to him with a grateful smile as she finished washing her face.

 The woman's face was free of all the messy makeup. Her slightly slim face was marked by a straight nose and honey-coloured lips, a small mole on each cheek, the right one on the left near the eye, against large, round eyes, slightly drooping ends and a wet mist in them that revealed a certain innocence for no apparent reason.

   Brent hates innocence.

   He suddenly remembered the rabbits he had dissected, looking at them with such innocence even as they were being pumped with air into their veins.

Their bodies shook and twitched in his palms as they were dying and losing their body heat. It made him feel doubly guilty - guilty that he had killed an innocent creature with his own hands. But he could not restrain himself; how could he live without those fresh veins and warm blood?

   Visions don't go away easily once they strike. The woman's restrained smile and the rabbit's scarlet, bloodshot eyes alternated before Brent's eyes.

   When he came back to his senses he was in the basement, with a dying rabbit under him. The poor rabbit's carotid artery had been severed when he had made an unsteady cut, and a plume of blood had spilled everywhere. Instead of smelling blood, Brent's nose was filled with the smell of rainwater and the citrusy scent of the face wash the woman had just used.

   The basement suddenly became unbearable.  Brent slammed the knife down and returned to the living room, where he saw the woman still standing with the baby in her arms, probably not having moved since earlier. Her hair was still damp against her cheek and her thin body was shivering slightly in the cold air conditioning.

The child in her arms was still sleeping soundly, her two little hands being rubbed gently in the woman's palm.

   "Why are you still standing here?" Brent was going to tell the woman that he had changed his mind and that he had a friend who was a police officer and could call someone to take her to the police station, which was certainly a better location for a victim of domestic violence to seek refuge.

   But for some reason, the words that came out were this.

   The woman was startled. She looked up timidly. She said, "You didn't tell me to go anywhere else ......," cautiously, like a stray cat that had just been picked up to curl up under the sofa.

   Brent was a little annoyed for no reason and turned up the air conditioning a little: "So, how about Now ?"

   "What?" The woman was stunned for a moment before she realized what Brent meant then she felt the air conditioner's temperature, "It's not cold now, thank you."

  With that, she let out a small sneeze and glanced at Brent with a red face. It was then that Brent noticed that her clothes were still wet, outlining her round shoulders and soft breasts.

  Brent told her to wait and went to the bedroom to bring her his own clothes that she wasn't wearing anymore, and also thought about bringing down a blanket.

  "Don't you need one?" The woman asked as she took the blanket and looked at it.

“What?"

  "Your knees." The woman looked at Brent's senseless legs and said seriously, "The air conditioning is too cold and it's easy to get uncomfortable if you don't keep them warm."

  Brent's eyes suddenly turned cold and obscure.

  "What's wrong?......"

  Not realizing that her actions were offensive, the woman knelt down on one knee in front of Brent and put the blanket over his legs, smiling up at him. Not the fake "treat him like a normal person" smile, but a genuine, timid one, with real gratitude and concern.

  It was a smile Brent had never seen before.

  And the one he hated the most.

  "I'm sorry!"

  The moment she saw the obscure emotion in Brent's eyes, Hermosa dropped her eyes as if she had been stung. She took two steps backwards to stand up, pursing her lips in a breathless manner.

  "Why do you feel sorry?" Brent asked. He suddenly changed his mind, even as he grew more and more annoyed by the presence of the woman in front of him.

  "I say you're allowed to stay the night, which means you can pick a room of your choice." Brent said turning to open the lift doors, "Just one thing, don't go down to the basement."

  "Thank you, sir.” The woman said from behind him.

  After dinner, Brent went back to the basement. He still hadn't calmed down, but to be honest, he had only calmed down for a handful of days in months. The rabbit he had just killed had begun to grow cold and stiff with dilated pupils. It wouldn't be long before a carcass scar appeared and smelled rotten. Brent stared at it for an instant, anticipating the change, and after an unknown amount of time, his eyes suddenly caught a glimpse of a slender figure on the wall of the monitor TV in front of him.

  The woman, freshly showered, was smiling and saying something to the child as she walked into the bedroom, towel-drying the water from her hair.

  In Brent's absence, her body is clad only in a bathrobe, the belt loosely tied in a half-dropped state. Her skin was flushed by the heat of the bathroom and looked thin and flimsy, like a ceramic doll that would break at the touch.

He heard the woman's soft voice coaxing the child, "Elisa, my honey it's time for bed."

  Hermosa adds, "It's bedtime for the little bear, too. Shall we go to bed together after dinner?"

  Elisa thought for a moment, nodded her head and let go of the bear doll.

  The woman then sat down on the edge of the bed and took Elisa into her arms. Then she pulled down one side of her bathrobe to reveal her breasts bulging with breast flesh, a ring of tender red areolas like cherries dotting the top of a buttercream.

  The child sucked the soft breasts evenly in her arms at ease, and occasionally a few drops of milky milk spilled from the child's mouth and slide down the rise and fall of the woman's breasts to her slender waist.