Chapter 41: I’m Simply the Happiest Person in the World Part 2

She didn’t know where Miss Alps had recently learned the word ‘Yay’, but she still followed up with: 【Okay】

Putting down her phone, a colleague across from her said, “Dr. Ji, I think I have a bit of a fever, but there’s an urgent surgery this afternoon. Can you cover for me?”

She gave a slight nod, and with the coldest tone, miraculously uttered one word, “Oka…”

Realizing she almost blurted out ‘Yay’, she stopped abruptly.

Her colleague, eating lunch with her, looked over with confusion. “Dr. Ji, is it inconvenient?”

Ji Qingyou pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, it’s fine.”

“Oh, oh…” The colleague muttered. “That’s good, that’s good.”

Ji Qingyou tried to move past the topic. She noticed Ji Xiruan, sitting across from her, one of the most active members in the department, wasn’t joining in the usual “shocked” reactions or participating in their conversation.

Instead, she was listlessly counting the rice grains in her bowl. Her favorite chicken drumstick sat untouched on her plate. She was deeply distracted.

“Dr. Ji has been like this for a while now. The person who usually loves to eat the most hasn’t touched her food. She’s gotten so thin, her cheeks are all sunken,” a colleague joked.

Ji Xiruan only gave a dry laugh. When her eyes met Qingyou’s, she quickly looked away, flustered, as if Qingyou had become some kind of monster.

Ji Qingyou noticed that Xiruan’s condition seemed to have started the day she told her about Shuangchi and Yu Muzhou separating, and had continued until now.

She didn’t ask Xiruan what stage she was at, but it was clear she was suffering, even losing weight, because of Qin Shuangchi.

Ji Qingyou thought this would be good news for Ji Xiruan.

But her reaction didn’t show it.

Even so, Qingyou didn’t ask. She just stayed by Ji Xiruan’s side after finishing her meal, waiting patiently.

When Ji Xiruan snapped out of it and looked around blankly, Qingyou reminded her, “Lunch break is almost over.”

Ji Xiruan curled her fingers, avoiding her gaze. “Have the others left?”

Ji Qingyou handed her a tissue. “Mm, they have things to do.”

“Oh, oh.” Ji Xiruan nodded, took the tissue, and wiped her mouth. After wiping it over and over again, she hesitated, looking at Qingyou. Finally, she mustered the courage to ask, “Is Dr. Qin doing okay lately?”

“She’s doing well.” Ji Qingyou thought for a few seconds, then gave a more precise answer. “Eating well, sleeping well, and often goes to look at good-looking guys and girls after work. I heard she recently met a girl who’s pursuing her…”

Ji Xiruan’s eyes widened.

Ji Qingyou glanced at her. “But she’s not interested.”

Ji Xiruan’s wide eyes relaxed, then widened again after a few seconds. She asked nervously, “Why isn’t she interested? Is it because that bastard hurt her too deeply? Or is it because she… doesn’t like girls?”

“According to what she told me…” Ji Qingyou noticed Xiruan’s increasingly eager expression, and a slight smile touched her lips. “It’s because she likes people who eat a lot. But that girl eats like a bird every time. She felt awkward eating too much in front of her.”

“???” Ji Xiruan’s face was full of question marks. She looked at Qingyou suspiciously. “It would be hard for you, of all people, to make up such a lie. It can’t be true, can it?”

“What do you think?” Ji Qingyou countered. With her personality, it was indeed hard to make up such nonsense. But after spending time with someone with such a leap of logic, she found she could say anything off the top of her head.

Ji Xiruan struggled to think. “It should be a lie.”

Ji Qingyou hummed in agreement and raised an eyebrow. “So your brain isn’t completely broken.”

Ji Xiruan put down the chicken leg she had just picked up again, her face visibly darkening. “I knew it.”

Ji Qingyou added, “But…”

“No ‘buts’.” Ji Xiruan interrupted her, very firmly. “I don’t want to take advantage of a vulnerable moment like this. Besides, I haven’t figured out my own plans yet. You know…”

She hesitated, looking at Qingyou.

“I’m afraid of scaring her. I don’t know if I’m ready to overcome that long relationship she had before. And she’s straight… Not that I’m saying anything bad about your sister, just… just… I’m not ready. Yeah, not ready.”

Ji Qingyou watched Ji Xiruan’s reaction. The same person who had told her to “seize the moment,” the one who regretted her biggest omission, was now so hesitant and uncertain when facing her own feelings.

She understood. “I understand.”

Ji Xiruan hesitated and asked back, “What do you understand?”

Ji Qingyou looked at her strangely. “I understand your thoughts.”

“What thoughts?” Ji Xiruan looked at her with an eager thirst for knowledge, her face clearly begging for Ji Qingyou to give her the answer.

Ji Qingyou sighed. “Never mind.”

“Hey, don’t just say ‘never mind’!” Ji Xiruan panicked. “Tell me what my thoughts are! And you had a ‘but’ earlier! You didn’t finish!”

“But…” Ji Qingyou squinted slightly, remembering her point. “But she’s not against same-sex relationships. I remember when I was ten, she received a love letter from a girl. She even said that girl was cute, and actually replied, saying she would wait for her to grow up. But I don’t think she ever got a reply. This was before she started dating Yu Muzhou.”

“But that’s just a guess. She probably just found the little girl cute and was humoring her.” She added, but noticed Xiruan’s reaction was off. Her expression froze. She rubbed her knees repeatedly, took a few deep breaths, then said dryly, “That wasn’t a love letter.”

“Huh?” Ji Qingyou didn’t understand.

Ji Xiruan lowered her eyes and repeated, “That wasn’t a love letter.”

A very absurd idea popped into Ji Qingyou’s head. But seeing Ji Xiruan’s utterly dejected expression, she felt maybe it wasn’t so absurd.

Fate is always like this.

With a small joke, it can easily change everyone’s life path.

And every person caught within fate, with just a moment’s carelessness, can make a choice completely opposite to their intention.

An insignificant event, like the tiny flutter of a butterfly’s wing, carries little force, yet can bring a magnificent tornado to some corner of the Earth.

Like now.

With a bitter expression, Ji Xiruan said to her, “You know my mom is the director of the orphanage, right? When I was little, to spite her, I said I didn’t want to study, I wanted to get married. She asked who I would marry. I said anyone would do. How old was I back then? I was dead serious. I found the recorded addresses of adopted children and sent letters to a bunch of older girls…”

Ji Qingyou asked, “A bunch of older girls?”

Ji Xiruan looked up, thinking. “Maybe seven or eight? Or over ten?”

Ji Qingyou nodded understandingly. “You told every older sister you wanted to marry her?”

Ji Xiruan’s expression went blank for a moment, then she nodded with great effort.

“I never knew you were such a player.” Ji Qingyou concluded objectively, then paused. “I always thought you were a very devoted person.”

Ji Xiruan made a fierce face. “I was so young back then! How can you call me a player? And I only sent letters to sisters, not brothers or younger kids. That proves I’m very devoted!”

Ji Qingyou was actually convinced by her logic. “That’s true.”

Ji Xiruan’s expression returned to blankness, like a mood-switching machine. “But winning this argument with you is pointless. I can’t go back in time and only send a letter to her. I can’t go back and take a punch at that bastard sooner.”

She looked very desolate.

Ji Qingyou wasn’t good at comforting people. She watched her for a long time, then spoke. “When I was little, I was in a fire. My airways were burned. I couldn’t speak for a long time. Later, when I could talk, people always made fun of me, calling me a robot.”

“What?” Ji Xiruan’s eyes widened.

Ji Qingyou slowly lowered her head, fiddling with the watch on her wrist. “There’s someone who wishes she could go back to my childhood. She said if she had been there, she would have found a way to save me, so I wouldn’t have those lasting effects…”

“What happened then?” Ji Xiruan couldn’t help asking.

“Then…” The wind lifted Qingyou’s hair, and she slightly lifted the corners of her mouth. “Then she built me houses out of mahjong tiles. She found me many architectural models. She showed me pictures of many beautiful houses…”

As she spoke, she noticed Xiruan was listening intently. Her voice became very light.

“Later, she became a very good architect. And she truly saved me from that fire.”

Ji Xiruan finished listening, then asked with some curiosity, “Is this person Miss Alps?”

Ji Qingyou didn’t answer, just raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

Ji Xiruan was stunned for a few seconds, took a sip of water, and said seriously, “I just think you’ve been in a good mood lately.”

Ji Qingyou didn’t deny it.

Ji Xiruan asked, puzzled, “Miss Alps isn’t leaving?”

Ji Qingyou shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You’re this happy and you don’t know?” Ji Xiruan’s face grew even more puzzled.

Ji Qingyou took a sip of water and lowered her eyes. “I only know that being with her right now makes me happier than most other times.”

Thinking about the camping trip on Saturday, I feel as happy as an elementary school kid getting ready for a field trip.

I can’t think about anything else.

Just like right now, in Ji Xiruan’s slow gaze, Ji Qingyou suddenly saw a vast forest of green. She remembered a line engraved in her heart, from some unknown time:

/ Three days with you by my side

/ Happier than living alone for fifty years /

Before heading back to the office, Ji Qingyou looked at Ji Xiruan, who was blankly staring into space, not knowing what she was thinking. She hesitated, but wanted to offer her a chance to choose again.

“We’re going camping on Saturday. My sister will be there too…”

Ji Xiruan slowly looked up, seeming to hear her, yet also not.

Ji Qingyou looked at her and extended an invitation. “You seem a bit down lately. Do you want to come to the park with us and see the tangli pear blossoms?”

Ji Xiruan looked at her with confused eyes. After a few seconds, she nodded hesitantly, her voice very small and helpless. “Yeah, I should come.”

It was as if she was asking Ji Qingyou for an answer. But Ji Qingyou couldn’t give her one. She could only watch her silently.

So Ji Xiruan finally let out a breath. “Right, right, right. I’ll just go and relax.”

–

After work, amidst the bustling, hurried crowds at the hospital entrance, Ji Qingyou remembered she needed to tell the others that Ji Xiruan would be joining their camping trip.

She typed a message and sent it to the 【Camping Family】 group:

【Can I bring a friend along?】

No sooner had she sent it than a flurry of WeChat messages followed. Everyone who saw the message at that moment asked the same question:

【What friend?】

Except for Miss Alps. She wasn’t among the string of replies.

Ji Qingyou breathed a sigh of relief, typed a few words in the dialogue box, but before she could send them, a gust of wind, carrying the colors and scents of spring, tousled her hair and clothes.

A very cute car came to a very cool stop in front of her.

The setting sun melted like gold. The surrounding sirens rose and fell. The window, stained with the yellow light, rolled down. Her Miss Alps appeared out of nowhere, with the coolest expression in the world, very coolly lifting her chin. Very coolly, she held out a drink.

“What friend? In the middle of the rush hour, you don’t just skip work. I finished my work early, drove over from ten kilometers away, bought you your favorite mocha without cream…”

As she spoke, she probably realized her tone sounded a bit childish. Her eyes curved in a smile, her soft voice filled with the spring evening breeze.

“Alright, I’m here to pick you up from work.”

In a way, she made Ji Qingyou clearly feel an illusion:

For a brief second, it seemed that the Alps, belonging to no country, were theirs.