Jie Jingchen froze, his hand halting mid-air as he applied the ointment. Seeing Qin Mei awake, he looked as flustered as someone caught red-handed. "Applying your ointment."
"Go ahead," Qin Mei said. She wasn't making a fuss, nor was she feigning any demure shyness.
A thick layer of ointment was slathered on her knee. Qin Mei was speechless. 'I know the ointment is from my mother-in-law,' she thought, 'but even free medicine doesn't need to be wasted like this.'
'If I remember correctly, medicine is very scarce these days.' Then another thought occurred to her. 'Then again, in this era of scarcity, what isn't in short supply?'
Jie Jingchen carefully lowered her pant leg, then looked at Qin Mei and asked, "Are you hurt anywhere else?"
"Nowhere else," Qin Mei said, shaking her head. 'When I fell off the bike, my knees hit the ground first. It's a good thing I was wearing long johns, or they'd be in much worse shape.'
