After Shao Yu left the private room, she didn’t come back for a long while.
Song Yingqiu set down her glass, picked it up again, and finally put it down and got up to look for her.
Outside the room there was no sign of her. Just as Song Yingqiu was about to ask a server, her phone buzzed twice in her palm. She looked down.
Shao Yu: “Something came up. Emergency surgery.”
Only then did Song Yingqiu understand: Shao Yu had been called straight back to the hospital.
Officially she wasn’t due back at work until tomorrow, but such was a doctor’s life: one call from the department director and she was back at the operating table.
And here she’d thought Shao Yu was too annoyed to come back.
Seeing that work was what had called her away, Song Yingqiu relaxed and went back to the party for a while longer. It was over an hour before the night wound down.
Song Yingqiu had drunk a fair amount, and her usually sober designated driver, Shao Yu, had bailed midway, so she hired a driver. Wen Xinxian couldn’t drive either and hitched a ride home with her.
Shao Yu had left in such a hurry she hadn’t taken her bag. Song Yingqiu hung her own from the crook of her arm, slung Shao Yu’s over her shoulder, and took both home.
Wen Xinxian sat in the passenger seat. Watching Song Yingqiu climb in with two bags slung over her, she picked the worst possible topic. “Sister Yingqiu, it’s just the two of us now. Be honest with me. Did you feel anything just now?”
Song Yingqiu had just shut the car door; her hand rested on it, motionless, as she answered without lifting her head, “Just now?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. You and Doctor Shao, you know, that!”
“The way you tell it, you’d think something happened.”
“It got that far and you call it nothing?!”
“Without an actual kiss, does it count as something?”
There was the breezy nonchalance of a woman who had kissed eight hundred girls in Song Yingqiu’s voice, and it instantly shut Wen Xinxian up.
With her post-drinking brain, not very bright but very bold, she thought it over for a good five minutes, then suddenly: “But I’ve never seen you kiss anyone else, Sis.”
“……”
Of course you haven’t.
She would like to, though. Would the body swap even allow it?
The thought soured Song Yingqiu’s mood too. She snapped, “Of course I wouldn’t show you. If you’re drunk, go to sleep like a good girl. I’ll wake you when we get to your place.”
Wen Xinxian gave an “oh” and then grinned slyly. “But with Doctor Shao’s face and that body, Sis, are you telling me your mind didn’t wander even a little?”
Hearing nothing from the back seat, Wen Xinxian looked to the future. “Fine, since you felt nothing. Next time there’s one of these sapphic gatherings, hand Doctor Shao over to me. Preferably in a white coat. And gold-rimmed glasses…”
Song Yingqiu’s voice was ice-cold. “Either shut up or get out of the car. Your choice.”
“……”
Her tone was so stern that Wen Xinxian sobered instantly and shut her eyes. “I’m asleep.”
Without Wen Xinxian’s yakking, the car fell silent, nearly dead silent.
Song Yingqiu drew a deep breath. Disliking the cluttered night scenery outside the window, she leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes.
Thanks to Wen Xinxian’s reminder, even with her eyes shut she found no peace, and the three minutes she had tried so hard to forget came flooding back.
And the faint illusion those three minutes of intimacy had planted in her. An illusion about Shao Yu.
Her phone screen lit up: tomorrow’s schedule from Wu Rui.
She read it, exchanged a few messages with Wu Rui, and by the time she set the phone down, her mood had settled.
That’s right. Just an illusion.
She and Shao Yu had always been extremely close. It was only natural that their odd little interactions stirred her emotions and gave her a momentary illusion.
When the car reached Wen Xinxian’s residential compound, she apologized as she got out. “Sister Yingqiu, I was drunk and talking nonsense. I know you see Doctor Shao as your own little sister, and here I was having improper thoughts about her, eyeing her up, the works. I’m truly the worst.”
“……”
Hearing nothing from Song Yingqiu, Wen Xinxian looked up uneasily and found, in the darkness, a face gone so foul it was nearly green.
Wen Xinxian: “S-Sister Yingqiu?”
Song Yingqiu’s face was blank. “Mm. Truly the worst.”
Wen Xinxian: ?! QAQ
A few days earlier, a fire had broken out in an old residential building, and the injured residents were rushed to the nearest Provincial Hospital. Among them, a patient with extensive burns had just been transferred out of the ICU. The surgery would be difficult, and it fell to Shao Yu.
That night’s emergency surgery was like a signal, flipping Shao Yu straight into work mode ahead of schedule.
Shao Yu worked in the plastic and burn surgery department. Beyond reconstructive procedures, she also handled wound repair from traumatic injuries, and her schedule was nowhere near as leisurely as outsiders imagined.
She had just come off the operating table. The surgery just finished had been a free flap transplant, Lu Lin leading as chief surgeon with Shao Yu as first assistant. She stood in on all the department director’s surgeries, part help, part education.
She had reported to the hospital at seven thirty the previous morning for the overnight shift. After morning handover, she’d been called straight into the OR without a moment’s rest, and to now she’d barely closed her eyes.
With faint shadows of exhaustion under her eyes, Shao Yu returned to the department and found Yi Ya dropping goji berries and such into a thermos. Shao Yu held out her own cup. “Share some.”
Yi Ya teased, “Even an iron woman can’t keep up, huh? No more surgeries today?”
Shao Yu gave a short “mm.” “Off after rounds.”
But Yi Ya didn’t hand over the goji berries. She walked to the table by the window and picked up a bag. “You’ve got no use for herbal tea. Here, afternoon tea from your dear sister, sent with love.”
An intern nearby sighed. “I have an older sister too, but she never even remembers to send me a red packet.”
Yi Ya piled on, teasing. “Now that’s what a real sister looks like. Right, Shao Yu?”
Shao Yu pressed her lips together.
For the past two weeks, Song Yingqiu had been sending her things.
Hospitals naturally didn’t let delivery riders into the departments, but it was always Song Yingqiu’s assistant who came, never wasting a moment, dropping things off and leaving.
The first day it was Wu Rui. The interns tried to stop him at the door, but he said, “I’m delivering something to Doctor Shao from her sister,” and in he went. And so the title of “Doctor Shao’s sister” spread through the department.
Perhaps mindful of appearances, Song Yingqiu had instructed her assistants to keep the deliveries low-key and unostentatious.
Shao Yu opened the bag. Inside were pastries and drinks from the bakery of a venerable old hotel in Lingguan, more than enough to share with the whole department.
Shao Yu noticed a slip of paper tucked on top. She picked it up and unfolded it. Song Yingqiu’s handwriting sprawled across it, bold and unrestrained:
Bought the things you like.
I’m not coming home tonight. Rest well, don’t run yourself into the ground.
Two lines lay on the page, calm black on white, yet the care beneath them could not be hidden.
Yi Ya leaned over. Shao Yu didn’t cover it, letting her see the contents, and Yi Ya let out a soft “wow.” “That’s an older sister for you. So thoughtful and thorough, even writing you a note.”
Shao Yu neither confirmed nor denied.
A male intern said, “My girlfriend’s thoughtful like that too.”
Yi Ya went “oh.” “Us women? We spoil our little sisters like treasure and train our boyfriends like errant grandsons.”
Male intern: “?”
Yi Ya: “Shao Yu’s sister must be so gentle and attentive, to be this careful with her…”
Gentle. Attentive.
What surfaced in Shao Yu’s mind was a certain roving social butterfly. After a moment of silence, the corner of her mouth pulled up, a thread of bitterness woven through the light laugh.
Perhaps so.
In front of others, Song Yingqiu was nothing but bewitching and full of charm, or even heartless.
All that tenderness and care, she gave to Shao Yu alone. And yet Shao Yu often couldn’t tell which one she wanted more.
In the end, her gaze settled on five words: not coming home tonight.
Wen Xinxian: “I had improper thoughts about Doctor Shao, was eyeing her up, couldn’t keep my head straight. I’m truly the worst.”
Social Butterfly: “Thanks. I feel called out.”
