Chapter 85: Recruitment

“Sister Gu!” Mu Jiatong’s expression brightened when she saw Gu Xiqiao and immediately wanted to stand up in complete disregard to the needle that was pierced in her arm, and the boy next to her immediately held her down. “It’s not your father, what are you so excited about?”

“Brother Dalin¹, this is Sister Gu! She’s the one I told you about, you know, the one that’s great at everything!” Mu Jiatong sat back down, but her eyes were still stuck on Gu Xiqiao with worship written all over her expression.

“How great could she be, is she greater than Xu Jiayin?” The boy patted Mu Jiatong’s head while he rolled his eyes, not believing what she was saying.

The girl frowned and puffed her cheeks as she looked at the boy with a serious expression. “No, Sister Gu is awesome! She’s as awesome as Dad!”

The boy knew of Mu Zong’s position in his daughter’s heart, and seeing that the girl placed Gu Xiqiao on such a pedestal, he only turned his head and looked back at the television.

“Hello, Dalin.” Gu Xiqiao wasn’t one to care about the opinion of a child, so she only placed the fruits she brought with her on the table and started peeling an apple with a knife.

Hearing her voice, the boy turned around and looked at her, only to turn his head away with a blush up to his ears as he saw her face.

“Official reports say that the Arts Academy has gotten a Chinese painting that has been accepted into the national art exhibition, but the artist of this work is still unknown…”

Gu Xiqiao saw the painting that she drew on the screen, before the camera panned over to Xu Jiayin’s face. Upon seeing this, she smiled. If she didn’t want anyone to find her, no one would be able to, even if they turned the entire country upside down.

Seeing that she looked at the television too, the boy smiled proudly and said, “Sister Xu is awesome! She’s the smartest person in our area other than my brother, and she was accepted by B University’s Faculty of Arts!”

Seeing that he was so proud of it as if it were his own achievements, Gu Xiqiao chuckled. “Alright, well you better learn from your Sister Xu, yes?”

“Of…Of course.” The boy seemed particularly prone to being shy, but he still tried to put on an unfazed front as he did.

Gu Xiqiao was focused on peeling the apple with a fruit knife, deftly peeling off the skin of the apple without pausing as she smiled warmly at the two children.

After she finished peeling the apple, she cut it up and pierced two pieces with two toothpicks before sticking both pieces of apples into the children’s mouths. “What are you guys looking at me for? Eat!”

Dalin nibbled on the apple with a perplexed expression. Was he really the type to value looks that much? How could he just follow what she told her without any question?

After a short while, a nurse came into the ward and started herding the two children out for chemotherapy, which Gu Xiqiao was here to accompany Mu Jiatong for in the first place. She was quite surprised that the boy’s parents weren’t here, while the warm-hearted nurse brought up calling Dalin’s older brother here.

“Please don’t call my brother! I can do it by myself!” Upon hearing the suggestion, Dalin immediately clasped his hands together and looked at the nurse pleadingly. “Sister Nurse, please? My brother is very busy!”

The nurse blinked in surprise, while Gu Xiqiao went over to communicate with the nurse about looking after Dalin too.

There wasn’t much difference between taking care of one child and two.

The chemotherapy room was in another building, and when she brought the two children there, they were met by the surprised gazes of some elderly people that were waiting in line too. “Chemotherapy at such a young age?”

Gu Xiqiao only rubbed their heads before sending them into the chemotherapy room, not knowing how to reply.

Yes, they were young. Too young to have to deal with this much pain, and too young to have to learn to stay positive despite what life threw at them.

“Hello…Huh, why are you here?” A familiar voice asked behind her.

Gu Xiqiao turned around, and saw a familiar boy standing there in the halls of the hospital.

It was Luo Wenlang.

“You’re… Dalin’s older brother?” Gu Xiqiao immediately guessed the relationship between him and the younger boy, and she pointed towards the chemotherapy room. “He just went in.”

Radiation was strong in the chemotherapy room, so family members weren’t allowed to enter, and while Gu Xiqiao wasn’t afraid of radiation, she still waited outside in respect to the rules of the hospital.

Luo Wenlang panted softly as he tried to catch his breath. “Yes, thank you.”

He was helping with deliveries for the fast-food restaurant that he was working at. Even though there were two workers hired for that purpose, but sometimes customers would request that he be the one that delivered them, so he was so busy that he almost forgot about Luo Wenlin’s appointment. Upon rushing to the hospital, he was notified that the boy had been brought to the chemotherapy room, so he rushed here immediately after he knew.

He was quite surprised to see Gu Xiqiao there.

Thinking of this, Luo Wenlang’s mood became better as he looked at the girl in front of him with a smile. “Mhm…Why are you here?”

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“I’m here to accompany a girl.” Gu Xiqiao leaned back onto the wall, before looking over at the door of the chemotherapy room for a long moment before continuing, “Dalin’s not bad.”

“Mhm.” Luo Wenlang seemed to have been reminded of something, and he started to space out for a while.

All of a sudden, the doors were opened from the inside along with Luo Wenlin scrambling out of it followed by a doctor that was shouting, “Hey, wait!”

Dalin’s expression was ghastly as he looked at Luo Wenlang, before he immediately ran away with pursed lips, not saying a single word.

“Luo Wenlin!” Luo Wenlang finally reacted to what was happening and he immediately chased after the boy, shouting as he did, “Luo Wenlin, stay right where you are!”

Gu Xiqiao looked on at this, not quite sure what had happened, before she heard the doctor from earlier explain to a particularly gossipy patient that saw what had happened, “This boy probably didn’t know about his condition at the start, and he heard me and Dr. Zhang talk about how he couldn’t get completely cured no matter how much money they spent, and…”

The doctor sighed as he made his way back to the chemotherapy room and closed the doors.

***

A young boy and a handsome young man stood there under the sun, the two of them staring each other down and not willing to step back on their respective standpoints.

Luo Wenlang’s hands were clasped on Luo Wenlin’s shoulders in a tight metal grip as he glared at the boy sternly, but the younger boy wasn’t even fazed in the slightest as he looked back up at him with the exact same intensity. It was clear that Luo Wenlin was a stubborn boy that even Luo Wenlang couldn’t do anything about.

“Luo Wenlang, your phone has been ringing for a while now. If you have matters to attend to, you can go, okay? I’ll take care of Wenlin for you,” Gu Xiqiao made her way over slowly and said.

Seeing that this matter couldn’t be resolved in a short matter of time, Luo Wenlang let go of Dalin and looked at him for a few moments before breathing deeply and turning over to face Gu Xiqiao. “Thank you, I’ll be back when I’m done.”

There was a camphor tree in the courtyard by a bench, and Gu Xiqiao sat down with Dalin under the shade. “Now that your brother’s gone, do you want to tell me what that was about?”

Upon hearing her question, Dalin only raised his legs onto the bench and wrapped his arms around them, before curling into himself, not replying to the question at all.

When Gu Xiqiao thought that this silence would go on, he spoke.

“Brother Wenlang isn’t my brother by blood.”

Luo Wenlin had been abandoned at the orphanage’s doorstep a mere few days after he was born, and Luo Wenlang was the one that picked him up and named him, and brought him into his home like he was his own brother.

Ever since he could remember, he had been following behind Luo Wenlang, and from the words of the people around them, he knew that his brother was a genius. Many families had tried to adopt Luo Wenlang, but he had always refused because of Luo Wenlin.

That was until one day, he was diagnosed with leukemia, and the older boy sold all of his favorite trinkets and worked as hard as he could to earn money for his medical bill. Every day, he would go out and work until midnight before going to school at six in the morning, without even the slightest bit of free time.

Luo Wenlang had always told him that he wasn’t all that sick.

“Sister Gu, my brother is an awesome person, and I can’t become a burden to him. The doctors said that I only had a ten percent chance of being cured, and that is only under the circumstance of having a suitable donor for me…But my brother can’t wait, he just finished his national finals with such good grades! Both A University and B University have called him time and time again, and he’s going to stay in N City for me…He needs more money than I do to go to university, and I hope he can have a great life…” Dalin spoke as his head was still buried in his knees. “If I knew things would turn out like this, I would have never agreed to be admitted into hospital.”

He hadn’t done chemotherapy yet, and he was already starting to feel his chest tighten and his line of sight becoming blurry…But if he died like this, it wouldn’t be bad, right? His life was picked up anyway, and he would at least not be a burden to his brother if he died here.

Luo Wenlang’s mind was in a daze, when suddenly he felt a stream of warmth make its way up his arm, and his eyesight started to become clear again, along with the tightness of his chest.

“Sister Gu, you…”

Gu Xiqiao was holding his palm, her skin tone becoming even paler as her eyelashes fluttered slightly, before she stood up again. “Alright, let’s go get Tong Tong and get something to eat, shall we?”

She stood there for a while to regain her bearings before she brought the two children to a nearby restaurant to have some food.

Luo Wenlin’s height was already up to Gu Xiqiao’s ear, and he had eyes as clear and bright as hers were. When the two of them stood together, they seemed like brother and sister.

Of course, the one that had to convince this stubborn boy to accept treatment had to be Luo Wenlang.

When they were eating, Gu Xiqiao sent Luo Wenlang’s phone number to Mu Zong, and got the system to create a contract and send it to Mu Zong too, and the man was quite surprised when he heard Luo Wenlang’s name.

Mu Zong already knew who Luo Wenlang was. After all, there was a reason why such a genius was in such a state without any external help, he wasn’t just a regular poor kid.

According to the rumors, after his mother gave birth to him, his father went to make a name for himself in the Imperial Capital, only to fall in love with a rich girl and get married into their family, while Luo Wenlang’s mother died in a car accident soon after.

And so, Luo Wenlang became an orphan, and that rich girl from the Imperial Capital seemed to dislike him a lot, and had sent word time and time again for everyone in N City to not help in any way!

There weren’t any people that dared to get in trouble with a strong family from the Imperial Capital, and even the ones that didn’t know about the situation and had wanted to sponsor him were all advised not to by those in the know, and they cut off their plans immediately. For them, it wasn’t worth it to risk their entire families and businesses on a boy with unknown value, so even now that he had gotten the second ranking in the entire country, he still had no financial aid.