10. A day of terror
Usually people used to say: another day, new happiness. But for Liu it was just a string of words without meaning.
That morning she walked the corridors of the residence hall with a worried look. She hadn't seen Xiang since the change, and she couldn't expect any information from Duona. The peahen rubbed her hands nervously. She kept wondering if everything was okay with him. But that wasn't the only thing that worried her. She was much more concerned with one fact: Today it was Xiang's turn to be bathed.
Xiang still had no idea how to take revenge on the impudent person. Instead, he kept every comment to himself and he even ate his breakfast. As soon as the she-bear had disappeared from the room with the tray, the peacock continued to ponder. Until Duona came back.
"Bathing," she grunted.
But this time, Xiang was not ready to compromise. Instead, he crossed his arms and turned his head to the side.
"I don't feel like taking a bath today. I'll skip it."
He winced when the broadly built nurse let out a loud snort. Xiang tensed up, but he refused to give in.
"Bathing!" the she-bear growled, this time in a more threatening tone.
Xiang raised his head. "I said I'm not in the mood... HEY!"
The she-bear grabbed the peacock by the neck, yanked him out of bed and dragged him out of the room. The peacock wriggled furiously in her grip. But the she-bear just pushed open the bathroom door and put the peacock on the stool so brutally that his buttocks ached.
"You can't expect me to undress!" Xiang protested.
He had never felt inhibited about Liu. But now he was somehow embarrassed to get rid of a complete stranger, even if his feathers covered his body.
The she-bear stomped towards him. Xiang backed away.
"Get off! Get out of here... LET ME GO!"
But the she-bear grabbed the peacock by the neck again, tore his shirt off and put him in the tub like a cheap, dirty dog on laundry day.
Xiang came back to the surface with a snort.
"HEY! Do you want to drown me or what... ?!"
Xiang had no chance screaming for help. At the next moment, the she-bear grabbed him and pushed his head under the water.
The peacock kicked and thrashed around so wildly that the water splashed in all directions. Finally, Duona loosened her grip a little so that Xiang could gasp for air again. But just for two seconds, then she dipped him back into the tub.
Xiang began to panic more and more and thought he would suffocate at any moment. In the meantime, someone was brutally scrubbing his back. Finally, he managed to get his head out of the water again, coughing terribly. His lungs ached and he realized that it wasn't just bath water in his eyes. He was about to cry loudly. All around him were feathers that had been torn out from all the scrubbing.
Suddenly Duona dragged him out of the water and threw him, soaking wet as he was, on the ground. The cloth flew immediately afterwards. Xiang had no hold because of the slippery water. He slid across the floor and slammed into a cupboard, dropping out a basket full of haircare items.
Xiang straightened up with a groan. He was shivering in a pool of water. Only now he noticed how his left leg was hurting. He checked his knee to see that it had gashed something when he fell.
Xiang turned his head away. He didn't feel sick seeing blood, but that was just too much. Panting, he propped himself up on his arms. He stared at the floor and the scattered hair material, which consisted mostly of combs and... a pair of scissors.
Quickly Xiang threw his long, wet peacock tail covering the scissors over it. Then he slid backwards across the floor. As soon as he felt the scissors in his wing, he reached for them. But before he could use it, the she-bear appeared next to him, grabbed the half-wet peacock by the back and dragged him across the ground.
"HEY, I'm not dry yet!" Xiang yelled at her.
Shortly afterwards, he was thrown back on the floor. Then the dryer towel was put over him like a sack. Then he was picked up again and carried out of the room. The peacock tried not to shout; from fear she would break his neck.
At the end of the trip, he was thrown on the bed. He scurried frantically out of the towel. But Duona paid him no further attention. She just tossed the new shirt down next to him and left the room.
Xiang's heart was pounding and he pressed himself against the wall in the bed.
"She wanted to kill me," it shot through his head. "That was clearly an attempted murder!"
Suddenly he felt the scissors in his wing again. Trembling, he hugged it.
Then his gaze fell on his bleeding knee again. What a shame that he landed on his good leg. If he had hurt his right leg, he wouldn't feel pain there.
Slowly he stroked the blood with the scissors blade. For a while he looked at the red smear on the metal. His pupils contracted with anger.
You will count the cost!
It wasn't long before lunch. Xiang sat bolt upright in his bed and stared at the door. He was just waiting for her that she came in. In the meantime, he had cut the scissors in half. Now they were as dangerous as two knives.
In Xiang, the tension built up with every passing minute. He checked again that the two separate halves of the scissors could not be seen under the blanket.
It was a risk with what he was up to. After this act, he couldn't escape from here. But he didn't care at all at the moment. Even if he received the execution for that, but he couldn't stand for the humiliations what she had given to him.
His feather comb raised. Heavy footsteps approached his room.
Xiang put on a brave face when the bad-tempered bear entered the room with a tray and, as always, she slammed it on the bedside table. As soon as she had turned her back on him to go, the peacock felt for the first half of the scissors and hurled it at her. The sharp metal whizzed through the air, but before it could touch the victim's fur, Duona turned around in a flash and caught it in flight.
Xiang's eyes widened in shock. But he immediately grabbed the second half of the scissors. But this was caught by the she-bear, too, like the fly by a frog.
Now the peacock was sitting in bed completely unarmed. He hadn't planned on that. And even less an angry giantess.
With a snort, the she-bear raised the two halves of the scissors in each hand and bent them with her thumbs. With a poor clang, the battered metal halves fell to the floor. To Xiang's horror, the she-bear pressed both hands together and cracked her fingers threateningly.
The peacock jumped up in the bed and pressed himself against the wall in fear.
Liu stopped. She had just been walking down the corridor to the yoga room when she thought she had heard a muffled scream. But after several seconds of strained listening, nothing more happened, then she continued on her way. However, with a bad feeling in the stomach.
When the peahen went back through the corridors later, she was very surprised when she met Duona in the hallway.
"Hello!" Liu greeted. "How are you...?"
The peahen was startled when the nurse pushed her aside so roughly. The she-bear had a nasty, angry expression on her face. Without a word, she just kept walking.
"Hey, what was that supposed to mean?" Liu mumbled angrily and looked after her. The she-bear was in an even worse mood than usual. Had Xiang annoyed her?
Liu got a bad suspicion. She hurried to Xiang's room. With a pounding heart, she stopped at the door. She listened briefly, but she couldn't hear anything. Everything seemed as it always was. Reluctantly, she opened the door to the room. She had barely taken a step forward when she stood in the door frame with shock. She held her wings over her mouth, avoiding not screaming.
Xiang was lying on the floor against the wall. The bedspread had been torn into strips and were wrapped around him so that he couldn't move. Neither wings nor legs. He was tied up like a bundle of wood.
But that alone didn't frighten her. A few smeared blood stains could be seen on the wooden floor. Two bent pieces of metal lay next to it. There were also a few feathers scattered on the floor.
The peacock moved very slightly. Liu heard a dull gasp. Finally, life was coming back to her. Quickly, she ran over to him and leaned over him. When her gaze fell on his head, she only noticed now that someone had put a cloth in his mouth and had closed it with a torn cloth.
The peacock had closed his eyes and looked extremely exhausted. Liu's eyes widen. She hadn't noticed that under the feathers immediately, but from the black eye she recognized that the peacock had been hit. She couldn't say where exactly, but it must have been more than just the face.
Her gaze fell back to the bent metal pieces on the floor. Reluctantly, she picked one of it up and looked at the sharp blade. When she saw the ring at the end, she knew it was a part of a pair of scissors. Searching, she looked at the peacock's body. Where did he get the blood from?
She got the answer from the cuts on his legs. The wounds weren't deep, but Liu couldn't believe that someone could do something like that.
Gently, she touched Xiang's back. The peacock winced and let out a pained groan. The peahen caressed him gently. These unfamiliar touches on his body caused him to open his eyes.
When their eyes met, Liu shook his head in disbelief. "What did she do to you?"
Xiang narrowed his eyes and avoided her gaze.
Liu sighed heavily. Then she put the bent metal on the strips of fabric that were used as shackles and began to cut them up. As soon as the peacock felt the sawing movements, he cried out. Liu backed away, startled.
At least she had cut through it so that the peacock could free himself from the shackles, despite his injuries. He even managed to pull the gag out of his mouth.
Liu leaned forward with deep worries.
"Is everything…?"
When Xiang's eyes met her again, he panicked away from her. He was so hysterical that he hunkered down in the corner and stared at her with wide eyes.
Liu tried to calm him down. "It's okay, it's okay, it... I'm not going to hurt you."
"GET OFF!" the peacock yelled. "No! Put it away! Put it away!"
Liu paused in surprise. Only now she noticed that she was still holding the bent half of the scissors in the wing. The blue peacock stared at it with horror as if it was a meat cleaver.
"It's okay, it's okay," she said calmly and threw the scissors away quickly.
But that could no longer calm the peacock. When she came up to him, he just pushed himself deeper into the corner of the room.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" He continued to shout.
Liu didn't know what to do anymore and tried to calm him down. "It's okay, nobody's going to hurt you. Can I do anything...?"
"GO AWAY!"
Liu was startled. There were tears in his eyes. She hadn't seen such tearful eyes on him since he...
"GET OFF! GET LOST! GO AWAY! GO AWAY!"
In a panic, Liu escaped from the room and ran down the hall.
"Mr. Furu, you have to assign a new nurse to Xiang!"
The old pika was doing some relaxation exercises in his office. When Liu charged him with the matter, he pricked up his ears in surprise.
"First you complain that he acted up with you and now you demand to handle him with kid gloves?"
Liu let out a desperate sigh. "Of course not. But not in such a way that she almost kills him! After I found him, he was totally shell-shocked."
The pika wrinkled his nose, but he continued his slow movements. "Then he has to conform to the rules. Either he does what we're bidding or he can go to a maximum-security prison immediately. That was how we agreed with the king. He wouldn't be an easy guest, and if he continues to behave rebelliously, then he will have to bear the consequences. Duona has already told me that he wanted to stab her. Had she not been so skilled in dealing with dangerous criminals, I would have expelled him from this residence now."
"But isn't it possible without having to hurt him? In the end she'll break him something!"
The conversation was getting too annoying for the pika.
"Do you want to go back to the laundry?"
Liu rolled her eyes, but she complied by shaking her head. "No."
"Then don't worry about it any further and go back to your work. He isn't your patient anymore."