Ch66 - All men will encounter death

I was awakened by the incessant chirping of birds outside the window as I pried my eyes open to see the first traces of light spill through the sky. It appeared to be around seven or eight AM in the morning and there was no one else around me, as I found myself lying in the hospital bed alone.

I heard a regular thrum from the machine beside me as I raised my hand and took in the sight of all the clips and needles inserted into it before lowering it again. My lips were immensely dry, and my body felt exceedingly hot. I wanted to lift the blanket off me, but as soon as I moved, a sharp pain flared from my left abdomen, as it almost knocked the lights out of me again. 

I knitted my brows together as I remained stationary afterwards, fearing the pain. It was at this moment that the bathroom door in the ward opened, and Sheng Min Ou walked out from within as he was wiping his hands. He initially had his head down as he walked towards me, however when he was halfway to my bed, he perhaps had felt my fervent gaze on him, as he quickly stopped in his footsteps and looked up instead.

Our eyes met each other’s, our gazes intertwined, and no one spoke a word as we continued to look at each other quietly.

 

 

I wasn’t sure how many days I had been out for. Sheng Min Ou appeared neatly dressed but his complexion looked as if he hadn’t slept for three days and three nights. Overall, he looked horrible.

“Ge…” My voice was hoarse, and just muttering one word felt like an extremely arduous task. I wanted to sit up, but found that I had no energy in my body to do so. 

Sheng Min Ou heard me call out for him, and unfreezed from his stupor. It was as if the stalled gears within him began turning again, as he resumed his footsteps and walked towards the hospital bed.

 

He sat down beside the bed, the handkerchief he had been wiping his hands on tossed carelessly onto the bedside table.

“You’ve been asleep for three days, and you were just moved from the ICU to the general ward last night.” He glanced at the quilt which I had tossed away from myself as he grabbed a corner of it and placed it over me again. “It’s not a big deal. They’ve just cut off a portion of your intestines, and you’re currently experiencing a bit of a fever.”

Hearing him say that I just had “a portion of my intestines cut off” in such a nonchalant tone almost made me think that I hadn’t suffered from a gunshot wound, but rather just came out of an appendectomy.

 

His hand moved in front of me and I could catch the faint trace of disinfectant. My gaze followed his hands as I noticed that the edges of his fingernails looked very rough, with the skin surrounding it coming off.

I was certain that the last time I had seen him, his hands still looked beautiful. Apart from the few calluses from his pen holding habits, there were no flaws present with any of his fingers. So how come, when I woke up, his hands had been ruined to this state? For some inexplicable reason I felt a sharp pain in my heart, but I couldn’t begin to explain why I had suddenly paid attention to such a small thing.

Sheng Min Ou had probably caught my line of sight, as he retracted his hands after covering me with the quilt, to a position where I could no longer see them anymore.

 

After a person came to again, their senses in their body would recover slowly too. With each accompanying breath, a sense of excruciating pain would come with it, as it resulted in me taking each breath gingerly. 

“Ge, I’m thirsty.”

I asked Sheng Min Ou for water and he picked up a plastic cup from beside him as he dipped a cotton swab in it and smeared water on my lips. I didn’t think it was enough, so I reached out to grab the cup in Sheng Min Ou’s hands so I could drink to my heart’s desire, but he dodged me as he didn’t let me anywhere close to the cup.

“You just underwent a small bowel resection surgery, so you’ll need to fast for the next few days.” He said, putting the cup back in place, ignoring the gaze of my eager eyes desiring water.

I grimaced in response, “Then what do I do if I’m thirsty? I feel so hot that I’m going to dry out.” 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Sheng Min Ou adjusted the increments of the IV drip as he said the next two words without any change of expression in his face, “Endure it.”

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I sighed silently as I tasted the remaining moisture on my lips when I suddenly remembered that Yi Da Zhuang was also involved, and I had no idea whether he was dead or alive. I hurriedly implored Sheng Min Ou to tell me whether Yi Da Zhuang was still alive.

“He’s doing better than you.” Sheng Min Ou replied coldly. 

I could tell that the tone in his voice seemed off, as if he really disliked Yi Da Zhuang, so I quickly changed the subject as I said, “I seem to have met Mom and Dad…”

As soon as these words came out, the mood shifted to become even worse. Though Sheng Min Ou wore no expression on his face, I could feel that he was greatly unhappy and that his mood was plummeting downwards in a straight line.

 

“Maybe it was just a dream.” I added later, rather embarrassedly.

Sheng Min Ou frowned slightly but didn’t say another word. 

Truth is, I had a fever and my wound was still aching. I had opened my eyes and said a few words, but I was beginning to feel tired again. I closed my eyes and was about to sleep for a while when I heard Sheng Min Ou’s voice slowly ring out as he spoke, “Since I was young, I have always been able to easily learn skills that others could only pick up after much longer. As long as I wanted to do something, whether it was entering a prestigious school or becoming an elite of society, it was never difficult for me. You may call me arrogant, and you may call me conceited, as I had never paid attention to anyone else…”

I opened my eyes and listened to him quietly without interrupting him.

“I had planned my life meticulously as I calculated my future. I thought I had planned and accounted for everything, but I continue to lose to you. I had miscalculated regarding you ten years ago, and now ten years later, I still cannot accurately account for you..” He looked at me as he continued, “You make me feel pathetic at doing what I do.”

Was he blaming me with this confession or was he saying it was his fault? I wasn’t sure, so I half-jokingly responded, “I had a fake Daoist priest take a look at me in prison before, and his words seem to be very accurate. He said that before I turned thirty, I’d have to get over a serious incident, but if I made it past then I would be able to live to old age without befalling any disease or disaster. I don’t think that there will be a greater disaster than this time, so from now onwards everything should be smooth-sailing, so you won’t be getting a taste of failure again.” 

The corners of his lips twitched as if he was smiling.

The next second, he raised his hand to cover my eyes, his palms cool and smelling like soap and disinfectant, the texture of his skin slightly rough.

“Get some sleep.”

My face was hot, I could even say it was boiling, so the temperature of his touch was just right, and it made me feel deeply comfortable. I rubbed my head against his hand nostalgically, as I closed my eyes obediently and quickly succumbed to sleep. 

My stay in the hospital ended up being for more than half a month. Given my wounds, my recovery was characterised by ample rest, and even actions like sitting up, wearing clothes and eating required assistance from others. During this period of time, it wasn’t just Sheng Min Ou who was taking care of me, given that he had to work and have down time too.

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Shen Xiao Shi and Wei Shi took turns racing back and forth from Yi Da Zhuang’s ward to mine. Their schedule was so hectic that they found it hard to manage the pawn shop at the same time, as they remarked that they had come to understand ahead of time what it felt like to see both their elderly parents hospitalised.

After the bowel resection surgery, I was placed on a liquid diet for a while. Shen Xiao Shi’s mother made me a lot of porridge after learning about my situation and came to visit me every few days.

It had been a while since I had seen her, and she seemed like a completely different person. She seemed more spirited, her complexion rosy, and since living with Shen Xiao Shi, the mother and son duo had gotten along very well. 

I was bored in the hospital and she was bored at home. The two of us bored people got together and it worked out perfectly.

I was involved in an accident, injured, then hospitalised and all this had taken place in less than twenty four hours. During which, each occasion had its highs and lows, and the plot saw unpredictable twists and turns. Moreover, as this case was a hot topic in society, there were people coming to visit me every day, and I had to entertain them with the details tirelessly for a long time.

When Liu Yue came to visit, I told her the whole story. When Wu Yi and his group came, I had to say it again. Even Mo Qiu had come to see me, and who knew how he had heard the news, but I nonetheless repeated the story to him again.

Later, Yi Da Zhuang came to me on his crutches with his laptop in his arms and sat beside my bed. He turned on the computer and, with a bout of determination, tapped on the keyboard with one hand as he asked me to repeat the story to him. 

“…Weren’t you there too?” I asked, perplexed, “Do you have a twin brother or something?”

“No no no, I was there, but I’m not as good at recapping the story as you are.” Yi Da Zhuang explained, giving a rather wicked smile, “San ge and the others all praised your story, saying that it was extremely moving. The climaxes to the story kept coming and the portrayal of it was heart-rending. There was blood and tears, and the plot was tightly packed and fast paced. I thought about it and I can just use what you already have, it also spares me the energy of needing to think back on it myself.”

 

Once Xiao Meng’s plots were exposed, he had received an invitation from the police for an investigation. Yi Da Zhuang had published the evidence that he had collated, as he stated that Mei Teng’s antiallergic drugs had defects, and that they had tampered and falsified clinical data. Mei Teng Pharmceutical’s stocks had plummeted in one day as they urgently applied for a trading halt. Whether the company would survive this ordeal in the future was unknown.

These days, I heard about how quite a few people were keen to interview him to draft up the story. Even the reporter who had previously covered the case on Shen Xiao Shi’s mother – Ke Xue Zi, had reached out and wanted to acquaint herself with him, but they had all been rejected. 

“I can write this story myself, why would I have others benefit from this?” In a display of astonishing perseverance and determination, Yi Da Zhuang typed out every word of his draft report with only one hand and his five fingers, as he posted it onto his account as part one of a series. In a short timespan of two days, his account had already amassed over millions of followers.

Shen Xiao Shi also followed his account, and bluntly remarked that he really was a devilish business genius for being able to serialise a news event into a multi-part story.

After remaining in the hospital until my wound had roughly healed on the surface, and I could get up and walk again, the doctor allowed me to fill out the patient discharge forms.

Sheng Min Ou drove his car and came to pick me up, as he took me back to his apartment. 

As soon as I walked through the door, I was stunned. There were cardboard boxes of various sizes piled up in his living room, crowding the originally empty and tidy space.

“This is…” I pressed a hand over my wound as I cautiously approached the boxes. Each box was labelled with different words, ‘Clothes’, ‘Miscellaneous’, ‘Daily necessities’ and such. It appeared like these cardboard boxes were used for moving houses.

“They all belong to you.” Sheng Min Ou replied in a simple tone, as he took off his jacket and walked towards the bedroom, as if this whole collection of cardboard boxes wasn’t anything to be surprised about.

I was stunned for a minute before I followed him to the bedroom. 

“You had all my things packed away and moved them here?”

He threw his suit aside and loosened his tie as he glanced at me, “Is there a problem?”

No problem no problem, how could there be any problem.

I was on cloud nine, but I tried hard to school my expression on the outside so there wasn’t a ripple of my feelings showing as I hurriedly shook my head. 

“Not at all, it was a good move to take my things here, it was a great move!”

Sheng Min Ou then tossed his tie on the ground in the same manner as how he discarded his suit, and then began undoing the top two buttons of his shirt and the cufflinks of his sleeves as he sat down on the mattress.

“Come here.” He said, as he sat on the edge of the bed, with his feet planted on the ground. He reached out a hand to me as he signalled with it for me to come closer.

Without even thinking about it, I walked towards him and held his hand. 

He tugged me lightly and had me sitting in his lap with my back facing him, as he then held me in an embrace as he laid back until we were both lying down on the mattress.

During the time when I was in hospital, he had always seemed very calm. Even when it was just then when I entered this place, he had appeared as he always did, if not a little tired.

 

I thought he would always be like this, that there would never be any more feelings coming out of him.

But, it would appear that I was wrong. 

He was not calm, he only ‘appeared’ calm.

He held me tightly, as if he was a giant silkworm spinning me into his cocoon. He buried his head in my neck, and his next words came out in a low, and slow tone.

“You asked me previously if I would be upset if you died. I wouldn’t, because all men will encounter death, so there is nothing to be upset over.” His breath gently tickled the side of my neck as he continued, “but, I would become very enraged.”

“If I’m still alive, how dare you die first?” 

He tightened the hug even more, as his voice dropped further, his breathing even.

“I have always been enduring this boring world, so you must stay and endure it with me, too.”

Jiraiya (translator’s note): AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SOMEONE HOLD ME AAAAAAAA

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