Chapter 5

Chapter 5

After Xie Cheng left, we agreed on the next time he would come by, and I paid through the app on the spot.

Over the past few days, my boss had kept talking to me, both openly and in roundabout ways. At most, they could hold my position until the end of the year. What I needed to do was get to Shanghai as soon as possible, and the deadline they gave me was painfully tight.

Maybe before long, I would be leaving for good.

Living alone in this unfamiliar city, I kept my meals as simple as possible. It had been a long time since I’d eaten anything that could be called a proper meal, and lately my stomach had been aching on and off.

It even hurt so badly one morning that it woke me up.

Remembering I had a housekeeper scheduled to come by today, I hunched over and shuffled out of bed. Afraid I might fall asleep again and miss the doorbell, I left the door unlocked for him.

I had meant to go back and take a couple of painkillers, but just as I braced myself against the doorframe and turned around, my vision suddenly went black.

In an instant, I lost consciousness.

In my haze, someone was holding a warm towel and wiping my wrists and cheeks again and again.

I wanted to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt as heavy as a thousand pounds.

“Ri… rice soup…”

In my blurred vision, someone bent down and leaned close to my ear to listen. All at once, I felt so terribly wronged that the moment I opened my mouth, tears slid down from beneath my tightly shut eyelids.

“I want rice soup…”

As I cried, my hand kept grabbing around blindly.

Somehow, I caught hold of a piece of fabric. It was smooth and cool, with raised, embossed patterns on it.

The other person simply let me hold on without saying a word.

By the time my mind finally cleared, it was already the afternoon of the next day. In the hazy, golden glow of the setting sun, someone was standing by my bed, stuffing a huge bouquet of roses into a vase on the bedside table.

Maybe I should have been more concerned about the roses, but my attention was drawn to the IV bag hanging above my head.

“Is that rice soup in there?”

At that, he lowered his head to look at me, his face blank.

“What rice soup?”

I rubbed my face with my other hand, the one that didn’t have a needle in it. “No, I mean, what’s in the IV?”

“…Glucose.”

“Oh.”

I looked around again. A plastic-cased television hung on the snow-white wall opposite me. In the bed next to mine, an older woman was scrolling through short videos and chuckling to herself. Not far away, the door stood wide open, and every now and then a young nurse would zip past at impressive speed…

Yes, I was definitely in the hospital.

I silently processed that for a while before noticing what was odd about the cabinet.

“Are those flowers…?”

He quickly waved his hands. “Please don’t misunderstand, Ms. Yu.”

“These are leftover roses from my mom’s shop. Some flowers don’t sell on the day they arrive, and we can’t sell them to customers after that, so I brought some over to brighten up the ward. I thought maybe seeing them would put you in a better mood.”

At that moment, looking at that bright, overflowing bouquet, I couldn’t quite describe what I felt.

“…Thank you.”

Seeing me thank him so solemnly, Xie Cheng only gave a modest little smile.

As we were talking, a middle-aged doctor pushed the door open and came in, walking straight to my bedside. Several young nurses in pink caps followed behind him.

“Yu Yijun, you were brought into the ER yesterday, right?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m your attending physician. Given that you have a history of acute gastroenteritis at this hospital, I recommend you get a gastroscopy and colonoscopy first so we can check whether there’s any internal bleeding.”

“It’s fine, doctor. It’s just chronic stomach trouble…”

“It’s not just stomach trouble. You also had severe hypoglycemia!”

At that, the doctor shot me a glare, looking furious at my lack of self-care. Then he turned and scolded Xie Cheng, who was standing not far away. “Isn’t she your girlfriend? How can you just let her ruin her health like this?”

Xie Cheng, suddenly dragged into it, looked completely bewildered. “…No. She just booked me by the hour.”

For a moment, everyone in the ward wore strange expressions.

I hurriedly explained, “It’s true. He’s the in-home service I called.”

The doctor said, “Oh?”

It would have been better if I hadn’t explained. After that, everyone’s expressions became even stranger.