Chapter 32: 32 Chapter 32 Part 2

She said “try” five times in one sentence.

“But I’m planning to apply for permanent residency when I go over this time…” Yu Qinjiu started, but couldn’t finish. She chewed on the words in her mouth, ultimately just saying, “It’s hard for me to come back anymore, Ji Qingyou.”

Her voice carried no discernible tone, but it was like a fish drowning in water, silently overflowing with sadness.

Ji Qingyou’s sleeve was gradually soaked by her tears, as if a hole had been burned through it. Her throat was full of hot smoke. She said softly, “I know.”

I know you have everything over there that won’t make you afraid or in pain. Family, work, new friends… If you won’t be in pain like this over there, I want you to go back to London even more.

Ten years ago, I was the one who gave up on our relationship, made the decision.

I thought you would never see me again.

I already thought it would be hard for you to come back.

But you came back. You brought me Alps and Lollipop. You brought me the strength to face the future. I can’t handle going back to a relationship where we never see each other again. I also can’t just give up on you again.

Unless you give up on me.

Ji Qingyou was a strange person. Even when facing something with such emotional upheaval, she could still calmly maintain her expression, even rationally analyze the next step, analyze all possibilities, and then get the most direct result.

Ten years ago, it was like this.

Now, it was also the same.

She thought all the outcomes had been decided.

Good or bad, the end was only one.

She was prepared for everything. But then she heard Yu Qinjiu, her reddened eyes raised to look at her, saying softly,

“Ji Qingyou, don’t come see me off tomorrow.”

“Otherwise, I’ll cry.”

Before Yu Qinjiu said this, Ji Qingyou had already been prepared, which was why she hadn’t answered Ji Xiruan’s question.

Because she knew Yu Qinjiu would say that.

But at that moment, staring at Yu Qinjiu, Ji Qingyou suddenly remembered the little goldfish and the kitten that had left her. It was a very lagging, hard-to-dissolve sadness.

Making her feel:

Like she could never hold onto everything she loved.

She couldn’t control her expression or actions. It felt like she could hear the sound of butterfly wings flapping, once, twice, slow and forceful.

In the end, perishing in the flames, turning to ash.

A sense of detachment arose. Her thoughts and body split in two. Her thoughts watched the two goldfish swimming in the tank, but she heard her body use an almost parched voice to say,

“Okay.”

—

The wedding was in the evening. Yu Qinjiu’s flight was in the morning.

The times weren’t in conflict.

But Ji Qingyou still didn’t see Yu Qinjiu off.

In 2012, the day Yu Qinjiu left, she also couldn’t go see her off. She couldn’t say why. It was just some kind of delayed reaction from her body.

As if, as long as she didn’t say goodbye, Yu Qinjiu wouldn’t leave.

As if, as long as she didn’t face it, nothing had happened.

Back in 2012, at this time, she was at home, repeatedly disassembling and reassembling those models, finally assembling herself amidst the scattered pieces.

And now, she was at the hospital, meticulously immersing herself in one three-hour surgery after another. Her train of thought was as smooth as usual, as if she really were an emotionless robot.

Or rather, Yu Qinjiu had taken her vitality and emotions away again.

Just that.

When she came out of the operating room, she washed her hands for a very, very long time. So long it felt like the water from the faucet would run dry.

Her phone still had the WeChat message Yu Qinjiu had sent her before leaving. A few little red dots. She didn’t dare open them, and her expression remained blank.

After a series of surgeries.

She returned to the office. Half her forearm was red from washing. She changed clothes and came out. Ji Xiruan wasn’t there. The other doctors in the office looked at her with some concern.

“Are you okay, Dr. Ji?”

Ji Qingyou lowered her eyes. “I’m fine.”

“That’s good.” A male doctor sighed. “Yesterday was so happy seeing her off, and today she’s gone just like that. It’s sad to think about. I remember Little Jiu was such a good kid…”

Before he could finish.

Ji Qingyou sprinted out of the office. Her chaotic thoughts quickly pieced together what he had just said. The atmosphere in the department was normal. A few doctors who were usually close to Yu Zhijiu looked worried.

Ji Qingyou couldn’t find Ji Xiruan.

She wasn’t in the ward. She went outside to look. The wind outside was cold, cutting across her face like a knife. But she couldn’t feel it anymore. She was completely numb, like a walking corpse.

In the end, she found Ji Xiruan in the courtyard.

Ji Xiruan was sitting on the edge of a flower bed. Her hair was unbound. A few cans of cola were beside her. She was holding one in her hand, gulping it down one mouthful after another. If it weren’t for the fact that she was on duty and couldn’t drink, Ji Qingyou suspected she would have downed several bottles of hard liquor and burned through her own throat.

When Ji Qingyou walked over.

She found Ji Xiruan was trembling, trembling violently. Even the bubbles in the cola can overflowed fiercely.

She sat down beside her.

Ji Xiruan looked at her. Her expression was very calm as she took another gulp of cola. “One good thing about carbonated drinks is that when you shake up the bubbles and drink them at just the right speed, they create a sensation of suffocation in your chest. A real, tangible suffocation that lets you at least catch hold of the pain you can feel floating in your body but can’t quite grasp.”

Ji Qingyou looked at her. The bracelet she hadn’t given out was clutched tightly in her hand. She asked, “Are you okay?”

“Mhm, no.” Ji Xiruan said. “But it’s not that bad either. Older doctors often tell me that after a while, you get numb to this kind of thing…”

She paused for a few seconds, let out a sob, and choked up. “But I feel awful.”

“I just sent her home yesterday, and today she’s back in the hospital. An accident took her away. Resuscitation failed. I saw her mother crouching on the ground, crying her heart out, and there was nothing I could do…”

“Do you understand how that feels, Ji Qingyou?”

She looked at her through teary eyes, her own eyes almost swollen shut.

Ji Qingyou nodded slowly, unable to speak.

Of course she understood. Ji Xiruan was Yu Zhijiu’s attending physician. She was the one who spent the most time with her, the one who personally discharged her, the one who couldn’t stop talking about “my Little Jiu,” “my Little Jiu”…

This feeling, she understood best.

Ji Qingyou gently closed her eyes. She slowly relaxed her numb fingers. Finally, she let go of the bracelet, pinched herself, and pulled a tissue from her pocket. She silently handed it to Ji Xiruan.

“You can come to me with anything today.”

The main contradiction in the medical profession was always the sudden onset of illness and the emergency patients that came with it. The grief caused by a patient’s death, the sorrow caused by an old friend’s permanent departure, these were always secondary contradictions.

But when the main contradiction was resolved.

The secondary contradiction would rise to become the main one.

After work, it was already evening. Ji Qingyou really didn’t want to go to the wedding. She was also worried about Ji Xiruan’s state. So she drove the Beetle Yu Qinjiu had left her to drop Ji Xiruan off.

Ji Xiruan’s mood had improved a lot. She asked her, “Why did you buy a car like this?”

Ji Qingyou looked at the noisy city nightscape, her expression blank. “I really like it.”

Usually, Ji Xiruan would have pressed for more at a time like this. But now, perhaps she was exhausted herself, or perhaps she saw through Ji Qingyou’s expression.

She didn’t ask anything else. Just before she got out of the car, she gently patted Ji Qingyou’s shoulder and moved her dry lips.

“Get some good rest.”

Ji Qingyou hummed in agreement. She watched Ji Xiruan walk into the residential area. Her gaze lingered on the car for a long time, unable to look away.

Until her phone rang. She answered with some difficulty. It was Qin Shuangchi’s voice, very hollow, almost without emotion, very tired.

“Little You, can you come keep me company for a while?”

She clutched the red string in her hand. She didn’t agree right away.

Qin Shuangchi was silent for a long time, then said with difficulty, “I think… if you’re the second person to know, it might still be in time.”

Ji Qingyou’s voice was very soft when she spoke. “Okay.”

—

Too many things happened that day.

Ji Qingyou felt like all her emotions had been used up. Like a squeezed-out emotional compartment, her dry body couldn’t squeeze out any new feelings.

Even when she saw Yu Muzhou in his wedding attire, intimately chatting with a familiar-looking woman in the same coffee shop, as the woman tied his tie and whispered intimately in his ear.

Even when she recognized the woman as the one in the black hat who had bumped into both her and Yu Qinjiu at the banquet venue yesterday.

She still managed to keep her expression blank.

Qin Shuangchi sat in the same car with her, watching the scene. She stared blankly for a long time, then said slowly, “Working in obstetrics and gynecology for so long, I’ve seen a lot of men. Some are playing games on their phones while their wives are giving birth. Some insist on not letting their wives have a C-section. Some are too cowardly to handle the mother-in-law relationship…”

“And some act a little better, making me think there might be an exception.”

“I always thought Yu Muzhou was one of those exceptions. I’ve known him for thirty years. I thought I understood everything about him. I thought since he hated his own father so much, he would never do something like this.”

“But I finally realized, I don’t really know him anymore.” She forced a self-deprecating smile, her lips a straight line. “He managed to be all sweet and caring with me every day, picking me up and dropping me off on time, planning the wedding all by himself and following my every word, and I only find out on the day of the wedding…”

She paused, let out a long breath, and uttered two words in a trembling voice.

“Having an affair.”

After she finished speaking, Qin Shuangchi stared intently at the two people in the restaurant. She opened the car door and walked straight towards them.

Ji Qingyou followed, her steps heavy. The gears in her mind had also stopped turning. She felt like a wooden carving whose soul had been taken away.

Maybe it was because Yu Qinjiu had left. Or because Yu Zhijiu had also left.

Who knows?

What followed was chaos.

Slaps, spilled drinks, flustered explanations, forced sobs, noisy onlookers enjoying the show, and the shards of glass that hit Ji Qingyou from who knows where.

Most of them were blocked by Qin Shuangchi’s hand.

Qin Shuangchi’s hand was dripping with blood. But she hurried over, cupped Ji Qingyou’s face in her hands, crying in panic, hugging her tightly, saying “I’m sorry” over and over.

When the glass shards landed on Ji Qingyou’s face, they only made a shallow cut on her cheek. The blood oozed out slowly, as if some emotion was finally being released.

But she felt relieved, very relieved.

As if all the pent-up frustration of the day had been released through this bleeding wound.

The whole situation shattered in that moment. It was a scene she had been longing for. She couldn’t deny that she had once, very maliciously, wished that Yu Muzhou would do something bad. Then she would have a reason to make Qin Shuangchi break up with him.

But seeing Yu Muzhou’s panicked expression, and Qin Shuangchi’s face crying so hard she couldn’t catch her breath.

Yet, when it actually happened.

She just threw up.

Crouching on the ground, dry heaving continuously, as if she had to throw up all her organs to slow down the rejection reaction between her body and soul.

The chaos ended after this incident.

They didn’t care about the guests still lingering at the wedding venue. They abandoned all the mess.

Qin Shuangchi went to a nearby hospital to have her hand treated. Not the hospital where they worked. After registering for the emergency room, she urgently asked the nurse to treat the cut on Ji Qingyou’s face, ignoring her own bloodied hand.

The nurse couldn’t refuse her. She just put a piece of gauze on Ji Qingyou’s face.

Ji Qingyou felt her stomach churning. She went to the bathroom and threw up again. When she came back, Qin Shuangchi’s hand had been treated.

She sat quietly in the hallway, staring at the wound on her own hand.