Chapter 11: The One Who Blows Bubbles When Sick

The heavy coat struck Yue Chengqi with such force it left her dazed for a moment. It wasn’t until she was pressed firmly into a seat that her senses returned, and she realized what had just happened.

The person who had been arguing with her—or at least, the person with whom she’d had a decidedly un-peaceful exchange—had come running out with a heavy coat to fetch her. She had also nearly knocked her unconscious with said coat.

Su Ye’s attitude hadn’t softened in the slightest, and she refused to speak a word to her on the way back. Yet, she had come to get her. They walked in silence, side-by-side; if it weren’t for the scent of detergent clinging to the coat—the exact same scent that lingered on Su Ye—Yue Chengqi would have thought this was a hallucination.

The entire way back, Yue Chengqi stole glances at the woman beside her. Su Ye’s pretty profile was tight, her cheeks slightly puffed out like a little pufferfish holding back a burst of indignation. But the little pufferfish refused to acknowledge her, and Yue Chengqi didn’t know how to break the silence.

She opened her mouth, but ultimately gave up.

It was too quiet—so quiet that it felt surreal.

“Um…” She clutched the coat, the collar bunched up against her face so that only half her features were visible. “You…”

The person walking ahead paused, huffing out, “What?”

Yue Chengqi’s lips twitched. In the end, all she could manage was: “…Are you still angry?”

Su Ye let out a frustrated laugh. “Oh, give me a break. You tell me—who’s the one who was angry?”

“You called me stupid.”

“Aren’t you? You…” Su Ye turned her head, only to see the woman’s damp hair, half-dried and messy. The wind passing through those wet strands had turned Yue Chengqi’s face a pale, frozen white. She looked utterly pitiful.

Su Ye swallowed the rest of her retort. She looked away, sighing in resignation. “I’ll go borrow a hairdryer from Sister Wanjia first. She managed to find one when she visited the provincial capital. If you don’t dry your hair, you’re going to catch a cold.”

“Don’t go, it’s too late,” Yue Chengqi said, pulling the coat on properly and standing up to grab a dry towel. “I can get it dry. She’s probably already asleep.”

She rolled the towel into a makeshift rope, then hesitated. “Maybe you should step out first? I’m afraid I’ll spray water all over you.”

“…” Su Ye stared at her blankly for a moment before nodding. “Fine. Just get it done. We’ll talk in a bit.”

She pushed the door open and stepped out, but she didn’t go far. She sat down on a small stone bench in the courtyard and looked up at the sky.

She looked at this sky, which had felt particularly strange and eerie lately.

There were no strange constellations; the moon was still just the moon, a plain crescent hanging quietly in the heavens.

So where did this strange person come from?

How did she know about “towel-drying” techniques? Even Lin Wanjia had to be taught, yet this mysterious, sudden arrival handled the towel with such familiarity. She had even ushered Su Ye out, clearly not wanting her to see the decidedly ungraceful method of hair-whipping that was to follow.

Why?

A single oddity meant nothing, but when so many anomalies converged on one person, even the smallest detail became glaringly obvious.

Before long, Yue Chengqi emerged with her hair neatly combed. Before she could speak, a small plastic bag was tossed into her arms.

Su Ye grunted. “Your clothes. You’re a grown woman; you have money but don’t know how to buy yourself a change of clothes? How long were you planning to wear that white T-shirt?”

“Buying books, newspapers, and reading cards… Tsk. I really don’t understand how you intellectuals’ brains are wired.” The young woman shook her head with a look of profound grief, as if mourning the money Yue Chengqi had “wasted.”

Yue Chengqi peeked into the bag. It contained a simple white shirt and a pair of jeans—the quintessential snapshot of popular fashion for this era.

She suddenly wondered if she should get into the garment business. No, no. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. One step at a time.

“Thank you.”

Su Ye rolled her eyes. “Change into them tomorrow. You look pathetic. If I hadn’t remembered you lacked clothes, how many more days were you going to struggle?”

Yue Chengqi smiled, smoothed her mostly-dry hair, and sat down beside her with the bag. “Let’s talk, then. We should clear things up.”

“Ha! Who was the one crying while walking just now? I wouldn’t dare speak my mind; if I make you run away in a fit of rage again, my good deeds will turn into a disaster.”

“…”

Su Ye was referring to her momentary lapse into self-pity. But those tears were because she felt overwhelmed by the absurdity of her situation, not because of the argument.

Still, crying while walking was undeniably embarrassing.

Yue Chengqi huffed and sat on the other side, hugging the clothes. “I thought you wouldn’t come looking for me.”

Su Ye looked at the woman sitting with her back turned. Her freshly washed long hair was dark and supple, falling loosely across her back and bathed in the silver glow of the moonlight. It made her look remarkably fragile.

Su Ye let out another cold snort. “You were gone too long. I was afraid you’d gotten lost, and then I’d have to go through the trouble of calling the police to find you.”

Yue Chengqi: “…”

Su Ye continued, “Aren’t you supposed to be so capable? Don’t you know everything? Then how did you not know there’s a bathhouse right over in Xinnan First Lane that’s still open? You ran so far I almost thought you’d fallen into the river.”

“There’s no water in the river this time of year. In the Great Northwest, it’s dry enough to bury a person in sand.”

“As long as you know. So, you don’t actually know that much, do you?”

Yue Chengqi looked at the girl’s bright, piercing eyes and suddenly understood the meaning behind those words.

The person in front of her didn’t actually care how she knew things. She just wanted Yue Chengqi to admit that she didn’t know everything—that it was all just guesswork.

Su Ye needed her to yield.

Hope hung on that baby face as she stared intently, seemingly desperate for affirmation.

How can a woman be this stubborn?

Yue Chengqi didn’t want to fight anymore. She sighed softly. “With your brains, you can figure it all out yourself, can’t you?”

“Forget it, there’s no rush to settle this right now… Achoo!“

The sneeze came a bit too quickly.

Su Ye moved to get up, likely to head next door to borrow fire for a stove, but Yue Chengqi grabbed her. “There’s no need. It’s just a sneeze. It’s normal. Let’s keep talking.”

Seeing the worry on Su Ye’s face, Yue Chengqi actually felt a flicker of… gratification. If only this woman weren’t so deathly stubborn.

But it was understandable. If Su Ye didn’t have her own convictions and persistence, how could she have built such a massive supermarket empire in the future? How could she have turned it into a landmark of An City through excellent management and policy during the digital era?

It wasn’t that Su Ye was stubborn; it was that Yue Chengqi was an outsider. In a video game, she would be the type of ‘Deus Ex Machina’ character that players hated. Her advice could only ever be advice; it could never be the final decision.

Once she realized this, she felt much more at peace.

Since Su Ye was destined to succeed, then as long as she followed quietly, she would surely live a good life. She already knew the outcome; there was no need to force the process, was there?

On the other side, Su Ye closed her eyes and finally gave half a step. “I’ll think about it more. This is too big of a decision.”

Yue Chengqi’s anomalies reminded her that what the woman said might actually be true—that it was useful. But the gap between that information and her own perception was simply too vast. She couldn’t wrap her head around it.

She needed time. Time to sort everything out.

And fate, indeed, granted her plenty of time before the next major choice arrived.

Yue Chengqi collapsed.

The previous night’s conversation had ended with Yue Chengqi trying to persuade Su Ye to install a gas water heater and a gas stove. Su Ye had replied that she had no concept of that kind of money.

“I’m only twenty. As long as I can rent a place and feed myself, it’s enough. Your standard of living is a bit too high; I can’t do it.”

Yue Chengqi hadn’t argued back. She had simply drifted into deep thought, punctuated by several more sneezes.

They should have noticed then. A string of sneezes was the herald of illness. Su Ye just hadn’t expected the sickness to strike with such ferocity. By the time she realized the sun was high the next day and Yue Chengqi still hadn’t gotten out of bed, the woman on the mattress was too weak to even crawl up. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, and her forehead was hot enough to fry an egg.

Worse, she could no longer speak. Her eyes wouldn’t even open, as if her brain had been cooked into a stupor.

Su Ye brought over several towels soaked in ice water and draped them over Yue Chengqi’s head, but it was a drop in the bucket. The woman’s body heat was so high it warmed the ice towels almost instantly.

How did it get this bad?

Su Ye looked at her and unhesitatingly slapped the woman’s cheek lightly. “Can you brace yourself and sit up? I’ll carry you to the clinic.”

Cloudy eyes rolled with great effort, eventually meeting Su Ye’s gaze. In that moment of contact, Su Ye clearly felt the woman’s gaze soften, carrying a faint sense of dependency.

It wasn’t the look one gave a friend; it was more like the look given to an elder.

Is this a reaction to that ‘Auntie’ nickname again?

Does this girl like making people her auntie the moment her brain gets foggy!

Su Ye had no time to ponder. She grabbed Yue Chengqi’s arm, trying to pull her up and onto her back.

But the weakened woman chose that moment to become stubborn. A boneless hand pressed against Su Ye’s shoulder as she murmured, “I’m not going to the hospital. I can’t go to the hospital.”

She was someone who had come from 2023. She didn’t know if there were latent viruses she had brought back with her. She couldn’t go to a hospital; she couldn’t risk harming more people.

Su Ye grit her teeth and pulled. “You can’t be afraid of doctors. A shot is just a ‘blink and it’s over’ thing. Be good.”

“Don’t you always call me your Auntie? Now you have to listen to your Auntie, okay?”

Yue Chengqi whispered, “I wasn’t trying to use Sister Wanjia…”

Su Ye was speechless. Why didn’t you say that last night? Why bring it up now?

“Fine, fine, fine. You weren’t. Just be good, okay?”

“…So, you should leave here, too.”

“What kind of nonsense are you talking!”

Su Ye decided to simply grip both of the woman’s struggling arms and hoist her toward her shoulder.

She could move dozens of kilograms of cargo; surely she could move one tall, thin woman? A woman should be strong!

Suddenly, her hands felt empty.

It wasn’t that she had let go, nor was it that Yue Huan had struggled free. It was simply that, for a split second, her hands were grasping nothing but air.

She stared at her own hands, which were still positioned as if gripping something, opening and closing them in disbelief.

The person she had been pulling didn’t seem to notice the glitch. She continued to struggle backward, and as she intended, she fell—thud—back onto the bed.

The impact actually jarred her into a brief moment of clarity.

Two pairs of eyes, filled with confusion and shock, met in the air. Yue Chengqi scrambled to hide under the quilt, shrinking into a corner. “Can you just get me some fever medicine? I really don’t need the hospital.”

Su Ye panicked for a moment, quickly looking up. “Okay, I’ll go get it for you. Um… the water is here. Drink plenty of it so you don’t get dehydrated from the fever.”

Yue Chengqi nodded. She burrowed deeper into the quilt until only her eyes remained, watching Su Ye leave.

She just let go of my hands; why is Su Ye panicking?

Yue Chengqi didn’t mind the fall; she only felt that Su Ye had let go a bit too slowly.

What if she gets infected? I’d be the greatest sinner of 1998!

Yue Chengqi thought to herself, curled up in the blanket like a fish in water, slowly blowing bubbles cooked by her own body heat. Gurgle, gurgle.

But the person who had left hurriedly shut the door. In an instant, she lost half her strength. Su Ye slid down against the wall, sitting on the floor, staring blankly at the palms of her hands.

Why… did that happen?