Chapter 30: Part 1

Deep in the night, Little Yao was already asleep. She’d played hard at kindergarten today; her little face was still rosy, and she’d drifted off to the story Lin Jinxu told her.

Lin Jinxu gently closed the storybook, made no sound at all as she slipped out of Little Yao’s room, pulled the door shut, and returned to her own dark bedroom.

Spread across the desk was a large sheet of white paper, several rulers, and a pencil. On the paper, unmistakably, was a floor plan of Capital Star First Hospital.

Lin Jinxu switched on the desk lamp, sat down, picked up the pencil, and drew a route—working out how to slip past the guards and break into Li Zhi’s room.

Behind her, the Orchid Mantis climbed in through the window with practiced ease.

“So you failed again today.”

Lin Jinxu’s pen never stopped. “I was only surveying the environment. There’s no such thing as failing or not failing.”

“Don’t dodge. You ran into your little Alpha again today, didn’t you? And I’d guess you still haven’t told her what you’re planning.”

The Orchid Mantis sounded genuinely puzzled. “What exactly is going through your head?”

Lin Jinxu finally stopped. She released the pencil, and it rolled half a turn across the paper.

The lamplight lit her features and deepened the shadows. The Omega, made lovelier by the light, thought for a moment and answered honestly:

“She has her own open road to walk. I have my own cliffs to walk. I’m not about to drag her onto my road.”

The Orchid Mantis was still puzzled. “Why?”

The Omega seemed to have thought this through many times already; she didn’t hesitate.

“If I succeed, she’ll still have the escape route I’ve paved for her.”

“If I fail, she doesn’t need to be destroyed along with me. She can still have her own bright, brilliant future.”

The Orchid Mantis fell thoughtful. After a long silence she said, out of nowhere, “Are you trying to be her mother?”

Lin Jinxu, already back at the desk planning her next move, looked up, stunned. “What?”

“Don’t you humans have that saying?” the Orchid Mantis drawled. “‘When a mother loves her child, she plans far into its future.'”

“The way you treat her, you’re practically a mother. Such a fierce protective instinct.” The Orchid Mantis considered. “You know, some insects, when they sense danger, will swallow their children back into their stomachs—because they believe that’s the safest place there is.”

“Would you like to swallow Sang Ling up?”

Lin Jinxu looked at the Orchid Mantis. As a Zerg in human form, the Orchid Mantis had not only a very narrow waist but a rather small head, like a little ball.

Lin Jinxu said, “If you’re not using your brain, you could donate it to a human in need.”

The Orchid Mantis grumbled a complaint.

“And if you don’t want to be her mother, then you must like her, hm?”

For a few seconds, Lin Jinxu was silent.

“Mantis,” she said, with the faintest thread of a smile, “humans are far more complicated than you imagine.”

“What I feel for her comes in many varieties. But it doesn’t include liking her—because love is a luxury.”

“I can’t afford it. And all luxuries are consumerism. Unnecessary.”

“Ding.”

At nine in the morning, Sang Ling emerged from the elevator as usual and went to the station to review the previous night’s treatment records.

“Hm? Has the patient in Room Three been discharged?”

The head nurse, preparing IV equipment at the station, nodded. “She recovered beautifully. Her discharge date was set long ago—her family picked her up first thing this morning.”

“That’s wonderful.” Sang Ling meant it.

She went to check on Li Zhi’s room, and when she came back out of Room Two, she found the corridor filling with people in black work uniforms, streaming into Room Three with their tools.

At the far end of the emptied corridor appeared Su Qingyue, strolling along at an unhurried pace.

“Well, well. Good morning.”

Su Qingyue met Sang Ling’s eyes with perfect composure.

Sang Ling said, “Good morning. For someone who got scolded into fleeing yesterday, you’re looking remarkably recovered today.”

“A stable mental state and a powerful capacity for recovery,” Su Qingyue said, tapping her own temple, “are essential equipment for an evil capitalist.”

Fair enough. How else would one survive the internet’s endless avalanche of abuse directed at capitalists?

Sang Ling eyed her empty hands. “No coffee for me today?”

Su Qingyue teased, “Am I under some obligation to bring you coffee? Getting spoiled, aren’t we, Doctor Sang?”

Sang Ling was about to retort when Su Qingyue snapped her fingers. “But as it happens, I did prepare coffee for you.”

“Where?” Sang Ling looked at her still-empty hands, puzzled.

Then the elevator chimed open and out stepped a person in black work fatigues, cradling an espresso machine.

Behind her came another, bearing an enormous tray loaded with grinders and the other tools of pour-over coffee.

Sang Ling had gone numb by the third person. This tray held no fewer than ten bags of coffee beans, milk from various regions, and one enormous bucket of ice.

“Today I’ll make your coffee myself. More sincere than a café’s, wouldn’t you say?”

All this spectacle—for one cup of coffee?

Sang Ling stared, momentarily at a loss.

After several seconds she managed, “If we drink all ten bags of beans today, my life may well be over.”

“Drinking that much coffee kills people!“

“No rush. We’ll drink it slowly.”

“Slowly? You’re not planning to keep all this on the station, are you? Where would the space even come from?”

Su Qingyue said, as if it were obvious, “No, no. I’m putting all of this in my office.”

“What office—” Sang Ling’s words cut off, because she was watching that crew of black-uniformed workers carry Room Three’s medical equipment into the elevator.

Su Qingyue nodded and pointed grandly at Room Three. “Welcome to my new office.”

“Is this purely so you can sit next to me?” Sang Ling was speechless.

“What else? Did you think I did it for the Intensive Care Unit’s lovely scenery?”

Su Qingyue looked triumphant. “And even if it were—what could you possibly do about it? I’m renovating an office in my own property. You’re helpless.”

Sang Ling was silent a moment. “I’m going to call Lin Jinxu and have her sit in your office every single day. You won’t out-talk her.”

Su Qingyue looked genuinely shaken. “You’d use an Omega as your shield? Where’s your Alpha pride!”

Sang Ling smiled faintly. “Don’t have any.”

The black-uniformed workers were fast. Within half an hour everything was installed, the space cleaned, the windows opened to air it out, air freshener spritzed, and Su Qingyue respectfully ushered inside.

Faced with the invitation to coffee, Sang Ling considered, then followed her in.

Su Qingyue scooped a handful of beans from the first bag onto an electronic scale; once the weight satisfied her, she opened the third bag and began scooping and weighing again.

“This is my favorite blend ratio.”

“At this ratio the aroma is intense but the mouthfeel stays soft, with a faint floral note in the finish.”

“Taken with milk, it has a hint of chocolate.”

Sang Ling had no such refinement about coffee. She had no palate; she drank coffee purely as a beverage, leaning on the caffeine to get through medical textbooks as dense as ancient scripture.

Just as Su Qingyue was showing off her flashy coffee-brewing technique, the head nurse outside suddenly called out, “Doctor Sang, could you come here a moment?”

Sang Ling stepped out of Su Qingyue’s new office and found the station covered with twenty-odd cups of coffee and two fruit baskets.

“It’s from the patient in Room Three—her thanks for our care these past weeks.” The head nurse handed Sang Ling a cup. “She even wrote us cards. She mentioned you especially, Doctor Sang—said you gave her a great deal of emotional support.”

Naturally. A rookie who’d only just begun studying medicine wouldn’t dare actually treat anyone. Emotional support was about all she could offer.

“I know,” Sang Ling joked. “My beauty is medicine.” She took her coffee and turned back into Su Qingyue’s office.

“You can stop making mine. Someone’s already bought me coffee.”

The new office’s layout was minimalist: beyond Su Qingyue’s desk and chair stood a round table, two sofas beside it, and a slim console against the wall where all the coffee equipment was arranged.

Sang Ling sat on one of the sofas at the round table, flipped open the drinking spout of her coffee cup, and had just raised it when Su Qingyue barked:

“Don’t you dare drink that!”

Su Qingyue spun around from the console where she’d been brewing. “I’m standing here making you coffee, and you’re going to drink chain-café swill?”

She said mournfully, “How is that any different from cheating on me and making me a cuckold?”

Sang Ling genuinely didn’t know where to begin. “It’s completely different!”

Under Su Qingyue’s shameless tantrum, Sang Ling ultimately decided to wait for whatever “specialty coffee” she was brewing.

The espresso machine was preheating; Su Qingyue made her final adjustments to the coffee grounds. And just then, Sang Ling’s light brain rang.

She glanced over—it was a call from Jiang Yunzhao.

She carried the light brain out of Su Qingyue’s office and found an empty stairwell to take the call.

“Hello?”

Since going undercover at the hospital, Jiang Yunzhao had called a few times. Her phone manner was exactly like the woman herself—blazing, full of energy, every call conjuring the image of that vivid red hair.

But this time Jiang Yunzhao was, unexpectedly, quiet.

After more than ten seconds of silence, she finally spoke, uncharacteristically grave. “These past weeks we’ve been combing through old campaigns. We’ve found that the secret releases of Zerg into civilian districts began long ago.”

“So far we’ve identified nearly ten battles where it happened. Over a hundred soldiers involved—and two or three senior officers among them.”

“The scandal keeps growing, and the resistance to our investigation grows with it. Recently we even found someone tailing the investigation team’s members.”