You can't breathe underwater! Elena! What are you doing?!
Marcus screamed silently in his heart, his instinct screaming at him to push her away, to separate their lips, to break this contact before she inhaled lake water and hastened her own drowning.
However, at that exact instant—a crisp electronic chime reverberated through his consciousness:
[DING! DETECTED TARGET'S STRONG SURVIVAL RELIANCE AND INTIMATE CONTACT! POSITIVE EMOTION VALUE (SPECIAL EVENT BONUS) +500!]
Marcus's internal response: ...???
What... what is happening?!
But there was no time to process the System's cryptic reward notification.
In the very next moment, he felt Elena's lips shift against his. They were no longer simply pressed together in desperate contact. Instead, they became active, forceful, almost aggressive in their insistence. Her lips pushed against his as though trying to crush him, to force something from him through sheer will.
Simultaneously, her eyes—hazy with moisture and confusion, yet burning with desperate clarity—stared at him with unblinking intensity. Her gaze pleaded silently, conveying a message that was absolutely unmistakable:
"Give me... a breath..."
Understanding crystallized instantly.
She's suffocating. She needs air.
Elena's lips were unbelievably soft—the kind of softness that transcended the physical and seemed to touch something deep within his chest. Yet they were simultaneously chillingly cold from the lake water, the temperature contrast creating a sensation of almost unbearable tenderness and heartbreak.
Marcus's resistance crumbled entirely. His understanding of the situation transformed in a heartbeat. This wasn't a kiss in any romantic sense. This was Elena, desperate, drowning, seeking the only source of oxygen available to her: the air in his lungs.
All distracting thoughts evaporated.
Following her lead, Marcus tilted his head slightly, adjusting the angle of their contact. His hand rose to her small chin, cradling it with surprising gentleness, supporting her face as they repositioned this utterly bizarre and desperately urgent interaction that was taking place in the depths of the water.
He no longer resisted. Instead, he kissed those lips—those delicate, petal-like lips battered by the violence of drowning and the assault of cold water—with renewed intensity and purpose. He gently used his own lips to pry open her cold, tightly sealed teeth, creating a passage through which breath could flow.
The lake water, held back by the seal formed by their pressed lips, remained cleverly blocked from the space between them. It was a fragile barrier, but it held.
Marcus's chest contracted with deliberate control. Gathering the precious, body-temperature breath stored in his lungs, he carefully—with all the precision he could manage—transferred this life-sustaining air to Elena through the narrow passage created by their connected lips.
Elena responded with the desperation of a desert traveler encountering rain after years of drought. She inhaled rapidly, greedily, her body absorbing the life-saving oxygen as though it were the most precious substance in existence. Each breath she drew from him was a conscious choice to live, a visceral affirmation of survival instinct.
As the oxygen flowed into her, Elena's consciousness gradually clarified. The fog that had been obscuring her perception began to lift. She could finally see the person before her with real clarity—could finally understand who it was that was risking his own survival to save hers.
Long, delicate eyelashes—silver-needle fine, beautiful in their precision. A high, aristocratic nose bridge. And those eyes—those eyes watching her with such intensity, such compassion, such absolute focus that it seemed as though nothing else in the entire world existed except her and her survival.
His lips were searingly hot. His breath was hot. The hand cradling her face was burning hot—as though intent on completely incinerating and melting away the terrible coldness and despair that had surrounded her moments before, when she believed death was inevitable.
Gradually, Elena closed her eyes. She seemed to be channeling all her remaining strength into drawing oxygen from him, into this act of survival that required absolute surrender to another person's will and generosity.
Finally, their lips parted. Elena immediately choked on a small mouthful of cold lake water, her body convulsing with a weak but reflexive cough—the kind of cough that meant life, that meant her body was still fighting, still surviving.
Marcus didn't allow himself even a moment of hesitation. He maintained his grip on her, gathering every ounce of remaining strength and forcing his exhausted legs to continue their kicking motion. He pushed them both upward through the water, breaking through the surface with an explosive splash.
On the Shore
The sunlight was blinding—so bright after the underwater darkness that it seemed to assault the eyes with pure radiance.
Marcus carried Elena horizontally in his arms, moving through the shallow water until his feet found purchase on solid ground. He laid her carefully on the soft, damp green lawn that bordered the lake, his movements precise despite his own exhaustion and the water streaming from his clothes.
Ignoring his own soaking wet state—his clothes clinging to him like a second skin, water dripping from his hair and into his eyes—Marcus immediately positioned himself beside Elena and began performing standard CPR techniques. His movements were practiced, efficient, born from training that felt like a lifetime ago.
His hands compressed her chest in a rhythm learned long before he'd transmigrated into this world.
One, two, three, four...
The counting was automatic, mechanical, a meditation on survival.
After several cycles of compressions, Elena's body convulsed. Her head turned involuntarily, and her mouth opened.
"Wah—!"
She expelled several mouthfuls of murky, cold lake water in violent jets. The water poured from her lips, carrying with it the taste of drowning and the memory of death.
"It's alright, you're alright..." Marcus whispered the words over and over, a mantra, a prayer, a desperate affirmation that death had not claimed her after all.
His anxious heart finally settled into something resembling normal rhythm. The adrenaline that had been sustaining him began to ebb, and Marcus felt his own strength crumble. He slumped onto the ground beside her, his body surrendering to the exhaustion that had been waiting just beyond the edge of his consciousness.
His hand rose tremulously, and he began to gently pat her cold face—those pale cheeks that were slowly regaining the faint blush of life. His fingertips trembled as they moved across her skin, an unconscious mixture of distress and something deeper, something that felt like heartbreak made tangible. He rubbed her pale cheeks softly, desperately trying to convey warmth through touch alone.
Gradually, Elena's consciousness returned. Her long eyelashes fluttered several times, each flutter bringing her further back from the edge of death, closer to the living world.
Finally, she opened her eyes.
Her gaze was now clear, focused, aware. Her eyes scanned Marcus's face—the one bent so close to her own, the one that had been the last thing she'd seen before drowning took her consciousness.
Her expression revealed two distinct emotional states: the daze of having survived a catastrophe so profound that survival itself seemed impossible, and a deep astonishment—a bewilderment that suggested her understanding of reality had been fundamentally altered by what had just occurred.
"You... why are you here?"
Her breath was faint, her voice so weak that it seemed the wind might scatter it entirely, as though she'd exhausted every ounce of her strength simply in the act of breathing.
Marcus released a long, shuddering breath. Looking at her face—which had regained its delicate beauty, its vitality, its proof of continued existence—a tremendous wave of exhaustion and relief washed over him. His body seemed to collapse further, as though all the structural supports holding him upright had suddenly vanished.
Almost subconsciously, he lowered his head, his nose gently resting against her cold, delicate neck, uttering a trembling sigh:
"Thank goodness... thank goodness you made it." His voice trembled with the raw edge of genuine emotion. "If you had died, I reckon... I wouldn't have survived either."
His words were mixed with genuine fear of the aftermath, and the terror of mission failure that only he understood.
Elena's pupils contracted slightly at his words. She felt a strange, almost addictive warmth beginning to spread from the precise point where his nose touched her neck, radiating outward from the contact point in concentric circles of sensation. His warm breath caressed her skin with an intimacy that was both comforting and overwhelming. The sensation was deeply pleasant, and it began to dispel some of the terrible chill that had penetrated into her very core during her time in the water.
But survival came before sentiment. There were practical concerns that demanded immediate attention.
Marcus raised his head, his gaze falling upon Elena's soaking wet, thin white dress—the pure white fabric that clung tightly to her skin, defining every curve of her young, developing body with uncomfortable clarity.
clearly outlining the graceful curves of the young girl, curves that were still developing but already taking shape. The outline of her black underwear was faintly visible beneath.
So young, yet her figure was... He immediately cut off that inappropriate thought.
He supported Elena's back—which felt so frail that he feared it might snap beneath his touch like a bird's wing made of glass—while simultaneously becoming aware of the continuously rising positive value points flowing through his consciousness. The System's running total climbed steadily, fueled by Elena's survival and her current dependence upon him. A sense of mission accomplishment began to surface in his heart, finally diluting the previous sense of mortal danger and desperate fear.
"Ahem." He cleared his throat, attempting to mask the strange intensity of emotion that had suddenly seized him.
He then moved with swift efficiency, untying his own shirt—equally soaked and clinging to his skin—and draped it over Elena without explanation. The gesture served the practical purpose of concealing her suggestive curves beneath a layer of coverage that was socially appropriate, even if it was also cold and wet.
Next, he bent down and carefully lifted her light body in a standard princess carry—one arm supporting her back, the other beneath her knees. Her weight was almost negligible, and he found himself acutely aware of just how fragile she truly was, how easily life could be extinguished from such a delicate frame.
Elena, already weakened and powerless from her ordeal, felt her body settle into a broad, warm, exceptionally secure embrace. The fear of having survived such trauma by such a narrow margin made her subconsciously reach out, her hands grasping desperately at whatever material they could find. Her fingers closed around the edge of his soaking wet vest, pulling slightly.
She leaned her weight against Marcus's chest, her cold fingers unconsciously grasping at the hem of his vest, pulling it down slightly and exposing a small patch of firm, warm skin. Her body—chilled to its core—instinctively sought out heat sources. She buried her cheek deeper into his chest, taking small breaths through her nose, drawing in his warmth, his scent, the reassurance of his continued existence beside her.
"Marcus..."
Her voice was weak and hazy with the moisture of recent tears. This was the first time she had called his name so clearly, without any of the cold probing or emotional distance that typically characterized their interactions. The name emerged as an acknowledgment, an acceptance, perhaps even a confession of something she hadn't allowed herself to consciously recognize before.
"Don't let Grandfather know..."
She was referring to the truth of her falling into the water—not wanting her elderly grandfather to experience the trauma of learning how close he'd come to losing another family member. Her protective instinct extended even to him, despite her current helplessness.
Marcus felt the slight tremor of the body held in his arms and registered the careful, cautious nature of her request. His heart softened—not the calculated softening of someone earning points, but a genuine emotional response to her vulnerability. He tightened his grip around her, responding with a low, firm voice that conveyed absolute certainty:
"Alright. I promise."
Inside the Villa
Devon Zhang, who had been "tricked" into the second-floor room by Marcus's deception, was currently stationed dutifully beside the closed door like a guardian deity. He muttered internally about what sort of "life-or-death" major event Marcus could possibly be handling that had required such forceful reassignment of duties.
His gaze wandered, inevitably drawn to a massive decorative screen positioned within the room.
It was a masterpiece of Suzhou embroidery—the semi-transparent silk gauze had been embellished with glittering gold thread, creating intricate depictions of butterflies in various graceful poses. Under the soft indoor light, the embroidery shimmered brilliantly, creating an effect of exceptional beauty and artistry.
Almost without conscious intention, Devon stepped forward. His fingers reached out to gently touch the delicate needlework, and he found himself marveling at its exquisite craftsmanship. The precision of each stitch, the way the gold thread caught and reflected light, the composition of the butterfly forms—it was the work of an artist of considerable skill and patience.
He stood there, absorbed in admiration, unaware of the drama that had just unfolded by Mirror Lake, unaware that his friend Marcus had just saved Elena from certain death through sheer determination and willingness to break the System's restrictions.
The embroidery glistened in the afternoon light, beautiful and indifferent to the life-and-death struggles occurring beyond its frame.