Ming Li didn’t intend to drive any of the Gu family’s cars. She had left all the keys on the dressing table in her room. Since it was hard to catch a taxi in this area, she sent a message to Gu Fei: [Do you have time to help me with something?]
It wasn’t long before Gu Fei pulled up in her car.
Ming Li got in, wearing headphones. She asked Gu Fei to drop her in the city center, pretending to be too upset to talk during the drive to avoid letting Gu Fei notice anything was wrong.
When she got out, Ming Li managed a small smile. “I’ll treat you to dinner next time.”
She watched Gu Fei drive away before calling a ride to the hospital.
Gu Qingshuang had been hit with a bombshell since the moment she woke up. She stood on the balcony, watching Ming Li in the courtyard.
The woman looked much as she did when they first met: a slender frame with narrow shoulders. It seemed impossible that she could bear the heavy burdens of life. Yet here she was, resolutely abandoning everything the Gu family offered, determined to divorce.
Gu Qingshuang couldn’t understand it. Within thirty minutes, she began tracing back to when this idea might have started.
Shen Chang.*
Her mind raced back to that incident. That was the first time she had seen Ming Li show her sharp edges, and it was from that point on that Ming Li’s attitude toward her had shifted. Even though Gu Qingshuang had tried to compensate for it later, it clearly wasn’t enough for Ming Li.
Since then, her life had become unstable.
To Gu Qingshuang, her life over the past two years had been like an ornate, warm robe. Shen Chang was the rat that had bitten a massive hole in it. By the time she had found the perfect fabric to patch it, she realized more little rats were chewing away. She couldn’t patch it as fast as they could bite.
Now, the robe was tattered and no longer provided warmth. Yet she hadn’t truly realized it; she hadn’t taken it to heart.
Gu Qingshuang hated trouble. If life were a math formula with a standard answer, she would likely score quite well. Unfortunately, life had no such answer key. She was a fast learner—anything she wanted to study or review, she mastered.
Except for emotions.
Gu Qingshuang had stumbled in every intimate relationship she’d ever had: family, romance, friendship. None were an exception. Thus, she was convinced she was unfit for intimacy.
Ming Li’s request for a divorce meant that the ornate robe, after all its mending, had finally caught a draft in the dead of winter and was tearing wide open.
But there had to be a catalyst, right?
Thinking back on the last few days, both she and Ming Li had been well-behaved. Life had been peaceful, just as usual.
If she had to name something, it was the medical disturbance Gu Qingshuang had faced yesterday. Her mood had been foul. A surgery had failed and the patient had died. When she stepped out of the operating room to deliver the somber news, she was met with a slap to the face.
It was entirely irrational, a blow that felt like a howling mountain wind. Gu Qingshuang had dodged instinctively, but the woman’s hand still caught her ear and neck. Sharp fingernails had raked across the skin behind her ear, snagging and pulling out several strands of hair.
In her years of practice, Gu Qingshuang had seen all kinds of families, but she had never encountered one this unreasonable. Naturally, she didn’t strike back; she simply stared at the woman with cold, stern eyes.
The woman was in her thirties. She looked well-maintained, yet her face was contorted with malice. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, “What was wrong with my son?! You killed him! You’re a wicked doctor! This hospital is a murder house!”
Every word was an indictment against the hospital and the staff.
The reality was that when the fourteen-year-old boy had arrived, his condition was already dire. He had jumped from his home balcony—a fourth-floor unit without a safety railing. He had smashed through the glass and leaped. He suffered from glass cuts, high-altitude impact wounds, broken legs, a fractured spine, and a brain hemorrhage.
Any one of those issues was life-threatening. After six hours of surgery, he was pronounced dead.
The reason the boy had jumped was the very mother now screaming outside the operating room. From the moment he went in, she had been cursing his lack of gratitude, his stupidity, his lack of ambition, and how he didn’t deserve her “painstaking cultivation.”
Gu Qingshuang had heard this through hospital gossip during dinner.
At the time, the mother had tried to tear at Gu Qingshuang’s white lab coat while two nurses held her back. Gu Qingshuang hadn’t planned to react; she was willing to let the slap go. But as she turned to leave, the mother found a burst of strength, shoved the nurses aside, and lunged at her.
Gu Qingshuang couldn’t dodge in time. Her wrist was grabbed, and the red Fortune Beads—the hand-string she had put back on after washing up—were snapped.
The round little beads pattered onto the floor like falling rain, scattering everywhere.
Gu Qingshuang’s expression turned to ice. She wanted to demand an explanation, but seeing the woman’s tear-stained face and disheveled hair, a flicker of pity stayed her tongue. In front of a grieving family, she felt she was in a lower position because she hadn’t been able to save the life.
Eventually, security restrained the woman and the hospital called the police.
Gu Qingshuang finally had a few minutes of peace. She knelt on the ground, picking up the beads one by one. She hadn’t been used to wearing it at first; it made things inconvenient. But after a while, she had grown accustomed to rubbing the beads between her fingers when she was stuck on a problem. Counting them calmed her mind.
Moreover, it was a gift from Ming Li.
Gu Qingshuang had always cherished gifts. The things Chun Liuyi and the others had given her over a decade ago were still kept perfectly in the highest cabinet of her study.
She knelt there for a while, and just as she thought she’d found them all, she stood up. She saw someone standing nearby, smiling.
It was Shen Lideng.
Gu Qingshuang counted the beads in her palm first. There were five missing. She frowned.
Shen Lideng walked over and placed the five missing beads into her palm. Her state was completely different from a few days ago. It was as if her jump into the water had shocked her will to live back into existence. She was no longer listless or self-pitying.
That was good. It meant Gu Qingshuang no longer owed her. Gu Qingshuang wanted her to be well; if she was, Gu Qingshuang’s heart would feel much lighter.
“Since when did you start liking hand-strings?” Shen Lideng asked familiarly. “This color doesn’t really suit you.”
Gu Qingshuang closed her hand, tucking the beads into the pocket of her white lab coat. “A gift from someone. Fortune Beads.”
