◎ “Let my world, become a little thinner” ◎
When the snow melted, the entire city of Nanwu seemed to turn into a dripping cake. The snowman had become melted cheese on the cake, and the branches that had been treated as signal receivers were scattered messily on the ground.
Ji Qingyou saw the red and black plaid scarf as she passed by. It was covered in melting, slushy snow and dirty water stains.
When she picked it up from the ground, it was completely soaked through, bone-chillingly cold.
It was full of the smell of snow.
“You eat way too fast.” Ji Xiruan, standing under the eaves, looked at her and muttered, “I feel like I’m going to get indigestion trying to keep up with you.”
Ji Qingyou walked in holding the dripping scarf and glanced at her.
“Next time, you don’t have to walk with me.”
“No can do. I can’t stand eating alone.” Ji Xiruan said, then clearly didn’t understand why she would pick up such a dirty scarf and carry it all the way here. She asked, “What’s that?”
Ji Qingyou looked at her and said flatly, “A scarf.”
“…” Ji Xiruan choked. After a long moment, she asked again, “Since when did you start… picking up things?”
Just as she finished asking, the elevator stopped at a floor. A person in a white coat walked in, rubbing their neck. They had striking features—narrow, elongated phoenix eyes that slanted slightly upwards, intense and beautiful. Their chestnut-brown curly hair was tied up in a high ponytail, neat and sharp.
Many people in the elevator greeted the newcomer, calling her “Doctor Qin.” Ji Xiruan also chimed in, even moving aside a bit to let Qin Shuangchi stand next to Ji Qingyou.
Qin Shuangchi nodded, greeting everyone one by one. When she reached Ji Qingyou’s side, she smiled and patted Ji Xiruan’s shoulder, calling her “Doctor Ji.”
Half of Ji Xiruan’s shoulder went numb. She winced. “Doctor Qin, you still don’t know your own strength.”
“Do I?” Qin Shuangchi paused for a few seconds, then quickly rubbed Ji Xiruan’s shoulder, her voice softening. “Sorry, Doctor Ji, I didn’t notice. Does it still hurt?”
“…Hmm.” Ji Xiruan’s voice suddenly became much quieter, like a mosquito buzzing, and she muttered an “It’s okay.”
Ji Qingyou glanced at her, but accidentally met Qin Shuangchi’s gaze. She lowered her eyes and softly called out, “Doctor Qin.”
Qin Shuangchi humphed softly. “Where are you off to, Doctor Ji? It’s been days, and I can’t even get a meal with you. And we work in the same hospital.”
Someone in the elevator laughed. “You two sisters still calling each other Doctor Qin and Doctor Ji? Doesn’t sound very close, does it?”
Ji Qingyou subconsciously gripped the scarf in her hand tighter, but her shoulder felt heavy. Qin Shuangchi had lazily draped her arm over it. She glanced back at the speaker and said with a smile, “Our family just likes to call each other that. I even call my mom ‘Director Qin.'”
“Ding——”
As she finished speaking, the elevator arrived. A crowd of people streamed out, taking the noisy chatter with them, leaving only the three of them behind.
Ji Qingyou removed Qin Shuangchi’s hand from her shoulder and answered her earlier question succinctly. “Going back to the department.”
Qin Shuangchi withdrew her hand, slightly dissatisfied. She noticed the scarf Ji Qingyou was clutching tightly. Even though it looked like it had been tidied up, there were still some dirty marks, and it was wet and cold, because she saw Ji Qingyou’s fingers were red from the cold.
Ji Qingyou clearly wasn’t comfortable with this scarf being dirty. Qin Shuangchi’s gaze lingered on it for a moment. “I heard Little Jiu is back?”
“Hmm? Little Jiu?” Ji Xiruan looked confused.
Ji Qingyou hummed in confirmation. “She came back a few days ago.”
“You’ve seen her?” Qin Shuangchi’s voice sounded a bit displeased. “I haven’t seen her yet.”
“Who? Who?” Ji Xiruan scratched her head, bewildered.
Ji Qingyou said, “Twice.”
Qin Shuangchi clicked her tongue, but then remembered something funny. “Little Jiu was the cutest when she was little. She’d call me ‘Sis,’ even if it was only when she wanted to steal my makeup. Hey, do you remember…”
“That year she was learning to put on makeup and painted your face all over. Then she laughed so hard she got a stomach ache and had to go to the hospital. We panicked and rushed her there. Little Jiu was scared she was going to die on the way, bawling her eyes out.”
“You hadn’t even washed that mess off your face yet, but you stubbornly carried her the whole way. Even though you weren’t physically strong as a kid, you insisted on carrying her yourself. In the end, your face was covered in sweat mixed with the makeup, and you looked as ugly as a painted monkey. Then I took one look at Little Jiu—she was crying hard, sure, but she was clean and wet, the contrast with you was just too obvious.”
She sighed again. “Even then, I thought Little Jiu was really pretty. I wonder what she looks like now…”
“She’s probably still pretty.” Ji Xiruan finally found a gap to interject, nudging Ji Qingyou’s arm. “Don’t you think?”
“Ding,” the elevator reached their floor again.
The warm air from the air conditioner outside blew in, brushing against their faces, feeling a bit hot. Ji Qingyou was about to walk out.
But just before stepping out of the elevator, holding the scarf that had been blasted with warm air for a while, she only said two words.
She said, “Pretty.”
Ji Xiruan followed. Qin Shuangchi, still inside the elevator, reminded Ji Qingyou, “Remember to come have dinner with Director Qin and your brother-in-law in a few days.”
Ji Xiruan suddenly stopped in her tracks.
Ji Qingyou turned back. The elevator doors had already closed. She saw Ji Xiruan’s bangs being blown by the air conditioner above, and her gentle profile seemed to have become eerily quiet.
“What’s wrong?” Ji Qingyou asked.
Ji Xiruan snapped out of it, pulled her silent phone from her pocket, and faked it. “Oh, a phone call. I need to take this.”
Ji Qingyou stared at her, wanting to say something, but Ji Xiruan’s expression clearly showed she didn’t want to hear it.
After a few seconds, Ji Qingyou turned away. Behind her, Ji Xiruan had indeed answered the phone, walking past her quickly like a gust of wind.
Ji Qingyou quickly followed.
Ji Xiruan put on her face mask and explained the situation as she walked. “Bed 16, Professor Li’s patient. Admitted a few days ago, seven years old. Has a soft mass in the abdomen. Abdominal CT and needle biopsy confirmed hepatoblastoma. The tumor isn’t large. Professor Li decided on surgery next week.”
“The nurse just called. She was vomiting pretty badly, so I need to go check on her.”
She sighed lightly again. “The little girl is quite well-behaved. She calls me ‘Big Sis’ every time she sees me. Having such a serious illness, she doesn’t cry or make a fuss. She just holds onto that Ultraman doll every day, saying we have to believe in the light.”
Having said that, Ji Xiruan had already done her hand sanitization, rubbed her hands, and entered the ward.
Ji Qingyou followed for a bit. Eventually, the situation calmed down. She looked at the little girl’s pale, weak face.
But she still couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She just wiped away the thick vomit from the corner of the mouth of the seven-year-old who had drifted off to sleep.
The haggard family member held Ji Xiruan’s hand, asking about the situation. Ji Qingyou picked up the scarf that had been set aside, walked out of the ward, and went to her own assigned ward, checking on each patient’s condition one by one.
After her shift ended, she arrived punctually for the appointment. As expected, only Tao Xingzi was sitting at the table in the restaurant near the hospital, the place they had agreed upon.
Ji Qingyou pushed the door open. When Tao Xingzi saw her, she waved nervously. As Ji Qingyou got closer, she tidied her hair and collar, frantically poured her a glass of water, and explained, “Dr. Zhao suddenly had a family emergency. And the other colleagues, I don’t know what happened. They all promised yesterday, but suddenly they all said they had things to do.”
Ji Qingyou paused for a moment, just nodded, said nothing, and didn’t drink the water.
“Then… how about we order first?” Tao Xingzi bit her lip softly.
Ji Qingyou looked over. There was nothing in her pitch-black pupils behind the glasses. “Doctor Tao, is there something you need to tell me?”
The question was too direct.
Tao Xingzi froze, almost forgetting to blink. After a few stumbling moments, she denied it. “…No, no there isn’t.”
Ji Qingyou lowered her head. “I have another appointment soon. I can’t waste time.”
Tao Xingzi stiffened, her shoulders tense. When Ji Qingyou looked over again, she deflated. She bit the corner of her lip and said, a little sadly, “I just… wanted to be friends with Doctor Ji. Get to know each other, develop the relationship…”
Her voice got smaller and smaller as she spoke, until she finally confessed, as if showing her cards. “Fine. I think I might kind of like Doctor Ji.”
Of course, she was well aware that Ji Qingyou didn’t like her, probably didn’t even remember her. But she felt that even if she played dumb, Ji Qingyou would still reject her flawlessly.
So, she might as well just say it.
After she finished, she snuck a peek at Ji Qingyou, but didn’t dare to look directly, afraid she might see disgust on her face. Instead, she noticed the watch Ji Qingyou always wore, constantly strapped to her wrist. The style was different, but still a dark green color.
This surprised her, but before she could ask, Ji Qingyou lowered her hand. When she looked up again, there was a hint of confusion in her eyes. “Doctor Tao, why do you like me?”
No one shows this kind of confusion when someone confesses to them. It wasn’t confusion about why you liked her, but confusion about why you liked “her.”
Ji Qingyou, who asked this, seemed to think she was very hard to like.
This didn’t match Tao Xingzi’s impression of Ji Qingyou at all, especially not that one particular scene, which was forever burned into her memory.
When she first started her internship at Nanda Third Hospital, everything was foreign to her. She felt like a newly hatched chick being forced to lay an egg. She couldn’t lay anything. She knew nothing. She fumbled through her first surgery as a second assistant, and when the professor told her to try suturing a few stitches, she was trembling too much to even do it.
That was her first clinical internship, her first time on a real operating table, and she naturally failed. The person who cleaned up her mess was a first assistant with very steady hands. She got scolded harshly by the professor, tears swaying in her eyes. She could only stare at that person’s suturing hand. The hand, wearing medical rubber gloves, was slender and long, but every knot it tied, the force and speed were perfectly controlled, precise as a robot.
She held back her tears the whole time, not knowing where to stand, just watching.
When it was over, the first assistant looked up at her. The eyes visible between the head cover and the mask were slightly cold. Under the bright surgical light above, they seemed restrained and ascetic.
“Good work, Doctor Tao.”
Just that one sentence made her unable to hold back her tears. She was completely devastated when she walked out of the operating room. Not because the professor had yelled at her, but because at that moment, she felt she would never be a good enough doctor to perform surgery.
But that first assistant called her “Doctor Tao” at that moment.
Later, she found out the first assistant’s name: Doctor Ji from the department. Not Ji as in Ji Xiruan, but Ji as in Ji Qingyou. She had been on hundreds of surgeries, apparently, and had never made a mistake. She had also seen a few patients pass away, but she had never shed a tear. Some said surgeons don’t need tears. Some said Ji Qingyou was a true robot—professional enough, but lacking empathy for patients.
But Tao Xingzi had seen Ji Qingyou spending entire days and nights in the on-call room reviewing data and organizing medical records. She had seen Ji Qingyou, even after hundreds of surgeries, still using her spare time to endlessly practice laparoscopic suturing and knotting on models.
She had also seen Ji Qingyou, after a patient in the department died despite resuscitation efforts, go alone to the outdoor atrium and sit there, blankly, letting the wind blow.
Tao Xingzi quietly followed her. She walked around a long way and found Ji Qingyou sitting in a corner, slightly hunched over. She was still wearing that loose set of scrubs, bathed in the sunset light the color of grapefruit skin, her hair flying, reflecting an unreal light.
She had taken off her glasses and was looking slightly down. She looked like a shelled, sugar-roasted chestnut.
Her naturally soft and delicate features made her seem tender in that moment.
“Doctor Ji.” Tao Xingzi walked over and sat beside her.
Ji Qingyou didn’t look up. She was still staring at her wristwatch, a dark green watch that looked a bit old.
After a while, she nodded slowly and called her, “Doctor Tao.”
It was then that Tao Xingzi noticed how thin Ji Qingyou really was. Her throat bones were slightly prominent, but because her skin was so fair, it looked particularly sexy, especially when she slightly tilted her head back to look at someone. With the scattered light swaying in her pitch-black pupils, there was a cold kind of sexiness.
That was the first time Tao Xingzi realized Ji Qingyou could be so vivid. She knew rumors were mostly exaggerated. Ji Qingyou didn’t cry; her face was still expressionless. But in that second the wind blew her hair, she seemed incredibly sad.
“Doctor Ji, are you okay?” Tao Xingzi asked her.
Ji Qingyou shook her head, her enunciation very clear. “I’m fine.”
“…That’s good.” Tao Xingzi breathed a sigh of relief, remembering the story she had heard from others before coming up here, the story of Ji Qingyou’s first encounter with death in this hospital.
It was said to be a patient who died suddenly from a heart attack while running in winter. Ji Qingyou encountered him on her way to work, performed CPR all the way to the hospital, and then took turns with the ER doctors, pressing on his chest for two hours. But they still couldn’t save him.
Someone who witnessed the whole thing saw Ji Qingyou raise her still trembling hand, stare at her watch with restraint, and calmly declare the patient’s death. Then she turned around and threw herself into other work, even refusing the family’s request to meet her.
She was a robot with no tears and no mistakes.
Many people said that.
But that day in the courtyard, Tao Xingzi saw a Ji Qingyou who was off the clock, tightly gripping her left hand, which wore the watch, with her right hand. She stared at the time on the watch, watching the seconds and minutes tick by.
Tao Xingzi thought about it but couldn’t see anything special about the watch. So she asked Ji Qingyou, “This watch seems very important to Doctor Ji.”
Surgeons’ watches usually serve many purposes—timing during examinations, reminding themselves when they’re pressed for time, and occasionally for things like this… because time is very important to a doctor.
Ji Qingyou didn’t look at her. She just stared at her wristwatch, lightly stroking the strap with her finger. That was the first time Tao Xingzi had seen this small gesture from Ji Qingyou.
But later, she noticed Ji Qingyou had this habit when she was nervous, or when she was relaxing and resting.
“The person who gave me this watch spent a long time picking it out. They saved up their allowance for a long time. I don’t know where they heard that this brand of watch was best for doctors to wear. At first, I didn’t want to be a doctor at all. One day I casually mentioned that I was starting to think about becoming a doctor, and she bought me this watch for me.”
“Later, when I was choosing my university major, I thought, this watch was so expensive, I already bought it, so I can’t back out now. I don’t want to be someone who goes back on my word.”
It was the first time Ji Qingyou had spoken so much at once.
Tao Xingzi felt flattered, but also surprised. She couldn’t imagine that Ji Qingyou could be someone with such a simple thought process. But she couldn’t help asking, “And then?”
Ji Qingyou closed her eyes. The hot wind blew through her gentle features, inexplicably adding a few mobile emotions. “Later, I often remembered her telling me that every second of being a doctor was difficult, but also precious. I didn’t understand why she would say that after watching all eight seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. Then, later, when I actually became a doctor, I found out she was right. Every minute, every second of being a doctor is difficult, but also precious, because every minute, every second…”
When she answered this question, Ji Qingyou’s eyes were slightly lowered, looking at the second hand ticking on her watch. Her long eyelashes reflected the dancing light. Her soft hair flew by her cheeks, and her voice was very, very soft.
“…it seems to make my world a little thinner.”
On that day, Ji Qingyou was like a beautiful butterfly wrapped in a cocoon.
