Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 74

Chapter 74: You Win!!

It was still a silent answer.

Qin Luo sat calmly by the bed, the small space of the hospital squeezing her. The last time she had sat miserably by a hospital bed was when her father was still alive.

It was strange.

As long as they met, everything chaotic around her would stop in front of her.

Especially the way Xu Tao had made a mountain out of a molehill on the phone before she had come, describing an acute appendicitis as terminal cancer. Suddenly… Qin Luo remembered the living room of the Shen family in the past. Uncle Xu had also described Shen’s father’s tailbone injury as a matter of life and death.

Perhaps it was a common problem with other people’s monologues, to exaggerate small things, to help you quickly weigh how much of a difference there was between the other person and you.

They all said that a person who has reached the peak of their career is lonely and sober.

But she found it difficult to refuse the temptation of Shen Yiyi. At thirty-four, she was in love like an eighteen-year-old girl. Qin Luo felt a sense of fear because of this.

But desire is like a mudslide. Fear will freefall in front of it. Even the most sober person will be obsessed with it.

“Shen Yiyi, you have to be reasonable.”

The old man coughing behind her made Qin Luo feel disgusted. She turned and pulled the partition curtain, isolating a space.

“You at least have to give me a decent reason.”

Qin Luo stared at Shen Yiyi’s nose. A beam of light changed its tone on her face. Qin Luo knew it was the tide of her heart. It had surged and fallen on her, and now she was wet and standing alone in the center.

Everyone was watching.

She also felt that her situation was very funny.

The Moments and Weibo posts she had sent out in the middle of the night were described by Liu Jia as an old nun breaking her vows. The rumor circulating in the production that the forensic pathologist had been brought in by an investor but hadn’t even finished a meal, and the fact that the reading group team was gossiping behind her back that the boss was so in love that she didn’t even care about public welfare… Now she was sitting by the hospital bed, preening like a peacock, but she couldn’t even get a decent reason for their separation.

“I have my pride too.”

“If you don’t know how to politely refuse someone, I can provide you with a template.” Qin Luo moved the stool closer to the hospital bed, forcing Shen Yiyi to hear her every word.

Who hasn’t rejected someone?

Since Qin Luo had entered the entertainment industry, she had rejected an average of five men and three women a year. All kinds of investors, directors, and editors-in-chief. She had experienced all kinds of weird types, including the persistent ones. Qin Luo had seen sycophants, and she had also seen those who dug for wild vegetables. Qin Luo had even written about the supporting characters who had fallen from the sky. Qin Luo reflected on their two-month relationship. Was she being persistent with Shen Yiyi?

Probably not.

She had given the other person enough distance, had never bombarded her with messages, had not consumed the other’s emotions, and had only occasionally been eager to get a confirmation, and was also afraid that her eagerness would put pressure on the other. This kind of tangled, push-and-pull feeling was like a dog leash around her own neck.

She was a sycophant.

“A sycophant is just getting off on themselves. When it gets uncomfortable, they’ll definitely say goodbye.”

Qin Luo thought that Liu Jia was right.

A person who is a sycophant has a magnifying glass and is extremely easy to be moved by themselves. As long as they find even a little bit of affection, they will force it on themselves. The most perverted thing is that the switch for the pleasure threshold is in the other person’s hands. She can open the floodgates at any time.

So Qin Luo felt that there was nothing wrong with being a sycophant. It was just that she hadn’t reached the stage of eating flies yet.

But now it was indeed at a stage that was difficult to swallow.

“When you don’t like someone and want to refuse them, you have to state the reason directly, such as the other person is ugly, has poor abilities, has a bad personality, or has no money. Tell the other person clearly that you will not have any intersection in your future lives, and let the other person’s self-esteem die completely.”

“Instead of acting like a young lady, playing a game of feinting to the east and attacking the west, sending a good morning message ambiguously, and eagerly coming to the airport to pick me up. In the end, after kissing, you say you want to be friends. And now, when I ask you, you’re silent and pretending to be dead.”

Qin Luo reached out and slowed down the flow of the IV drip.

“Or do you have some difficulties?”

Qin Luo cleverly chose a third path for Shen Yiyi. “For example, our financial resources don’t match, or your career is a priority, and so on. If you tell me an objective obstacle, I can also help you think of a solution… can’t I?”

…

Shen Yiyi took a deep breath on the bed. The IV tube swayed with her body. “Yes, the difficulty is that I’m not good enough for you. I’ve thought about it, and I won’t have much of an achievement in the future. I’m sorry to have wronged you.”

“Really?”

Qin Luo bent over tiredly, her arms on her knees, and rubbed her brow. “I can even make you feel inferior?”

“It’s not inferiority. It’s that I see things more clearly than you do.” Shen Yiyi slowly turned around and said flatly, “You just want to win right now.”

Just want to win.

“Can a reunion of old friends really mend a childhood? Does being in a relationship with me mean that the goal has been achieved? Even if I’m busy with work in the future and my mind is not on you, can you accept it with a clear conscience? Then, will you say that a relationship with someone like me is meaningless? Or is a breakup another game for you? If so, then you win now.”

“Do I have to be very clear? The me you’ve created and the me in reality don’t match at all.”

“I, a top student from a county town who wants to draw a clear line with you, went to a very ordinary medical school, chose a very ordinary forensic medicine major, and now I have a job that doesn’t make much money. The Shanghai you casually settled in is where I tried my best to be transferred to. The house you live in by the Huangpu River is something I can’t even afford to rent with a month’s salary. The connections that Liu Jia casually greets at the bureau are the leaders who forced me to teach at the production.”

“Yiyi, these—”

“Why won’t you admit that the person you want to win is just the me you’ve created out of thin air? Your desire to win, your unwillingness to give up, are misplaced.”

The three holes were leaking. A cold wind was blowing through her body. No one could mend and paint her damaged body. She could never be rich, because her mother had cut off her “appendix.”

Shen Yiyi said frankly, “You are much more outstanding than me now. I’ve heard about it all these years, and I’ve also checked the information after we reunited. I’ve seen it all… the public welfare you’ve done.”

“The adolescent psychological intervention clinic, the reading group, the empowerment institution, the agricultural aid public welfare.” As she spoke, she raised her right hand, which was not on an IV. “I can’t even count them on both hands.”

And her.

Shen Yiyi’s raised hand fell again. “I rarely have the energy to care about other people’s affairs anymore.”

Every time she walked into the morgue, she would stare at those bloated and rotten faces, which looked like humans but no longer had any delicate features. She would easily take out a set of non-functioning organs, imagine how she had been tortured and killed, and review her actions before she had breathed her last, wanting to remember the fear of death for her. But she would suddenly realize that the survivor was the most unfortunate.

So she numbly acted as a human machine, wandering between hatred and self-sufficiency. Online, offline; online, offline, repeating the cycle until even the pain could not be compensated.

“I’m only willing to write a report now, to investigate the wounds of those dead people. I don’t want to explore why he became a corpse, nor do I want to explore the killer’s desires. I have no awareness of other people’s affairs.”

Shen Yiyi was the same as before, with no interest in humans. “So don’t ask me for any difficulties or reasons. Compared to these, you need to be more sober.”

The glucose drip was finished. This was not a single room. There was no twenty-four-hour nurse to pay attention to the patients, nor was there a warm and enthusiastic ward round.

There was only a call bell here, but sometimes it was a long wait even if you pressed it.

Qin Luo stood up quietly. “I’ll go and find a nurse to change your medicine.”

The nurse at the hospital had seen many dejected and exquisite women, especially the ones with glasses who looked very cultured. They were the easiest to lose control and complain.

But they only saw the woman leaning on the front desk and pointing to the ward behind her. “There’s a patient with the surname Shen who needs her medicine changed.”

Two minutes later, she heard the woman ask again, “Is that patient being discharged tomorrow?”

The nurse on duty was also very vigilant. “May I ask… are you a family member?”

Qin Luo shook her head.

“Then… you’d better ask the patient yourself.”

Qin Luo nodded. “Then can the patient eat now? Is there anything to pay attention to in her meals?”

Seeing that the concern in Qin Luo’s eyes was not fake, the nurse looked for the patient with the surname Shen in the ward on the computer. After checking, she said, “The nurse’s station has already ordered a post-operative meal for Shen Yiyi. You can just go to the service room to get it.”

With that, the nurse pointed to the room at the end.

Qin Luo walked over, dazed. Although her steps were steady, her chest was empty. In her ears was the “if so, then you win now.” How could she be so uneasy when she had been personally awarded the prize? Shen Yiyi had given her a reason. Why was she still not filled? So disappointed in herself?

“Let me see the meal ticket.”

Qin Luo came back to her senses and realized that she didn’t have a meal receipt at all. So she turned back and buried her head, searching for the so-called meal ticket on the bedside table.

At this time, the bottle of glucose had been changed, and Shen Yiyi had also turned her back. Qin Luo looked back and scanned the six-person room. The other couples were loving, and the families were harmonious. Only they were secretly competing.

“Is there anything else you want to eat?” Qin Luo asked.

Shen Yiyi shook her head.

Qin Luo took the meal ticket and returned to the service room. She sat back by the bed with the post-operative meal box. That summer, Shen Yiyi had also been like this, curled up in a small ball with a stomachache, her back to her. She had stroked her back soothingly, back and forth, until her spasms had disappeared and she had slowly fallen asleep.

At that time, they were so young, so young that they didn’t have to fight for anything.

Qin Luo placed the lunch box on the bedside table, moved closer to the bed, and, as before, reached out to stroke her back, comforting her gently, “If you’re hungry, you should get up and eat.”

The other end was silent for a while before she said, “A little.”

Qin Luo helped Shen Yiyi up, the whole process careful and cautious, afraid that she would pull at her incision with force, so much so that Shen Yiyi would cry for half a day. But clearly, the person lying on the bed was not her dying father, but Qin Luo couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t stop the images that were popping up in her mind.

“It’s just a laparoscopy,” Shen Yiyi reminded her. “Not an open surgery.”

Qin Luo familiarly picked up the lunch box, opened the vegetable porridge. The disposable plastic spoon was too soft and couldn’t scoop up much. She blew on it by her lips before handing it over. “It shouldn’t be hot.”

Shen Yiyi opened her mouth.

Qin Luo’s gaze was only on the tip of the spoon. Seeing the vegetable porridge being eaten, she couldn’t help but scoop up a second spoonful. She didn’t know what she was doing, as if she were searching for the past along a certain outline. “After the surgery, you have to take better care of your body. Your body is the first priority.”

Shen Yiyi also stared at the vegetable porridge in the spoon, a sticky food that could be swallowed without refusal, like the mashed fruit her mother had made when she was a child.

She was right. Qin Luo had indeed won.

She had won in that no matter if the shadow disappeared or not, she could always catch an explosion, wipe the blood from the floor, as if the war was not there, death did not exist. To be so detached for sixteen years, yet still be able to see the shadow of longing, to be angry at the thought of it, angry that she couldn’t throw it away, but also didn’t want to wear it. If she were still alive, and had seen Qin Luo feeding her porridge, she would definitely have liked Qin Luo too.

Shen Yiyi swallowed and said slowly,

“Let’s not see each other anymore in the future.”