"Whatever caused you such distress, Xinyuan?" Hu Lijing approached him, hands folded behind his back and body leaning forward ever so slightly. Though he tried hard to sound cursory, the flowing waves of concern in his voice was anything but.
It appeared suddenly, the withdrawn air swirling around Li Xinyuan. The nine-tailed fox spirit found himself failing to understand the crux of such a change, thus fuelling his curiosity akin to a smoldering log burning slowly.
As his words fell, thinning under the weight of the silence pressing heavy in the room, Hu Lijing received no answer from the surgeon, creasing his elegant brows with a frown. "... Xinyuan?"
Li Xinyuan, still for a moment, jolted, as though rising to wakefulness from a trance. "Huh?" He turned to face the amber-haired man, expression dazed. His eyelids trembled, eyelashes fluttering with a shallow inhale. "Did you say something?"
