OS - 50

Liu Fen ultimately could not be resuscitated.

Yan Ci hated her. Back then, she would come to their door daily, acting insane, and his father had faced a large truck head-on just to avoid her.

Now, she wouldn’t curse or argue; she just lay quietly on the bed, covered head to toe by a white sheet.

The doctor said she was dead.

Zhou Yu was her only daughter. She had to accept the reality of her death and handle her funeral arrangements.

Other families were holding celebration banquets for their children’s admission to university, filled with joy, but only the Zhou family was holding a funeral.

Yan Ci watched Zhou Yu stand at the door, bowing and returning greetings, as if seeing his former self.

Zhou Yu hadn’t closed her eyes for three days. After the funeral, she slept for a very long time. Several times, Yan Ci thought she had fallen into a coma. When she was woken up, she looked at him blankly, said nothing, rolled over, and quickly fell back asleep.

The university admission letter was delivered to her home, but she hadn’t opened it.

The sky cleared. Zhou Yu tidied Liu Fen’s room. Under the pillow were the family’s bank card and passbook. On the note with the password, there were a few lines: “Good girl, Mom has dragged you down.”

“If there’s a next life, please don’t be my daughter. Being my daughter is too hard.”

Liu Fen hadn’t had much schooling, and the two lines of pencil writing were crooked. Zhou Yu looked at the handwriting on the paper, and her tears wouldn’t stop flowing.

She cried so sadly that Grandma, flustered and at a loss, also cried.

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper with her, knowing she was sick... She was just so afraid of me leaving her, yet I still yelled at her.”

“If I hadn’t yelled at her that day, she definitely wouldn’t have drunk the pesticide.”

Yan Ci wanted to say it wasn’t her fault, but the simple words caught in his throat and he couldn’t utter them until the day she left Baicheng.

Before Zhou Yu left, she sent Grandma to the nursing home, bringing all her familiar belongings. There were over a dozen elderly residents in the nursing home. Every time Zhou Yu visited Grandma, Grandma would smile and ask if she would come back tomorrow.

Even with a school in the city, it wasn’t possible to go home every week.

Yan Ci got into Jiaotong University, but he couldn’t report normally at the beginning of the semester and was many days late.

Zhou Yu’s major had more male students. There were only six girls in her class. She fainted on the fourth day of military training, and her name spread throughout the entire department.

“Oh, it’s that girl who fainted during military posture training.”

Fainting from not eating properly seemed like a clever trick to avoid military training. When Zhou Yu was mentioned, everyone would just smile and move on. Instead, discussions about Yan Ci grew more and more frequent each day. He became a celebrity among the new students because he ran from a distant formation to carry the fainted Zhou Yu to the infirmary.

The school doctor said Zhou Yu was anemic and told her to eat on time, emphasizing that she shouldn’t harm her body like this, no matter how sad she felt.

Although Zhou Yu listened, her mind was still on the dream she had after fainting.

She dreamed that all of them were still in that small county, with endless homework and exams, day after day, boring and monotonous. Cheng Yuzhou gently poked her back with a pen, quietly asking if she wanted to skip class. She said no, but he dragged her hand and ran out, dodging the gatekeeper uncle, passing through alley after alley, and running into a large orange orchard. He picked an orange that looked particularly sweet, peeled it, and fed it to her. Her teeth went soft from the sourness, and he laughed at the drool on her lips, laughing exaggeratedly, unable to straighten his back. She initially found him annoying, but seeing him laugh like that, she couldn’t help but laugh too. He suddenly leaned in very close, extended his tongue, and licked away the drool from the corner of her mouth.

Was he also doing military training?

Was Nanjing hot at this time?

She didn’t know, because she had intentionally cut off contact with everyone and changed her number. Except for Yan Ci, who she occasionally saw at the same school, everyone else seemed to have disappeared from her life.

Unless there was an important school matter, Zhou Yu visited Grandma once every half month. She rarely attended gatherings with her roommates, so their relationship was generally distant.

“Zhou Yu, is Yan Ci from the business school pursuing you?”

Zhou Yu shook her head, “No.”

“If he’s not pursuing you, then I’m going to pursue him,” her roommate said with a smile, “I asked you in advance, so don’t say I’m stealing your man later.”

“No, he and I are just classmates.”

“Oh, so you’re high school classmates!” Her roommate was surprised and immediately enthusiastically linked arms with Zhou Yu, “No wonder everyone says he wants to pursue you but isn’t obvious about it. So you’re just classmates. Can you tell me about him then? He’s so aloof and mysterious. Can you push his WeChat to me?”

Zhou Yu said apologetically, “I don’t use WeChat.”

“Why are you so old-fashioned? Everyone uses WeChat now, hardly anyone uses QQ anymore. Even the advisor’s notifications are sent in WeChat groups first. Download WeChat on your phone, and I’ll teach you how to register tonight.”

She was just blunt in her speech, not malicious.

Zhou Yu’s inferiority complex was deeply ingrained, well-hidden from outsiders, only revealing itself when she was alone.

The only thing she kept was an account for a music app. It contained a playlist Cheng Yuzhou had made for her. Like a stalker, she only dared to log in at night to look, but that playlist had never been updated again.

________________________________________

Cheng Wanyue finally woke up after eighteen days in a coma. She was transferred to a hospital in Nanjing, and Qian Shu followed her there.

Cheng Yuzhou spent all his time at the hospital except for classes. Cheng Yanqing, at his school in Beijing, flew to Nanjing every weekend.

Cheng Wanyue was very sensitive to pain. Even a small scrape on her hand would make her shed a few tears. The bone marrow puncture was so painful; most people could have it done easily, but it was difficult for her. A 40-50 cm tube had to remain in her body for a long time. In the beginning, she would cry inside the ward, and the Cheng family would cry outside. Later, she stopped crying, but the Cheng family would still cry, more sadly than before. Cheng Yanqing didn’t believe in Buddhism, but he went to a temple to burn incense, kneeling and kowtowing, saying he was willing to trade twenty years of his life for Wanyue’s health.

She needed blood draws and IV drips almost every day. Her hands were full of needle marks, and her skin was bruised in patches.

Once, when Cheng Yuzhou was sleeping in her ward at night, her heart suddenly stopped. After the resuscitation, Cheng Yuzhou was drenched in cold sweat, as if he had just been pulled out of water.

When she started chemotherapy, she lost a lot of her hair.

“I still want to dye my hair, that purplish-blue color. A celebrity I like dyed it, it was so pretty.”

“It’s okay, it’ll grow back,” Cheng Yuzhou picked up strands of hair from the pillow one by one, then touched Cheng Wanyue’s face, “Your new hair will be black and beautiful. When you’re better, I’ll take you to the most expensive hair salon. You can dye it whatever color you want.”

“The nurse sister said I have to get a lumbar puncture tomorrow. Is it like a bone marrow puncture? Last time it was so hard to get a sample,” she said, looking towards the door, “Why isn’t Cheng Yanqing back yet?”

Half an hour ago, Cheng Yanqing had gone out to buy barbecue.

Cheng Wanyue couldn’t eat it, but she wanted to smell it.

“You sleep for a bit, I’ll go check,” Cheng Yuzhou covered her with the blanket and walked out of the ward.

The entire hospital ward building was smoke-free. Cheng Yanqing was in the garden downstairs. He wiped away a tear and handed his lighter to Cheng Yuzhou.

Cheng Yuzhou had only started smoking after Cheng Wanyue got sick.

It had rained, and plane tree leaves were scattered everywhere. Cheng Yuzhou silently finished a cigarette, then pulled out his phone and dialed that familiar number.

“Sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service.”

Still the same.

Cheng Yanqing had a call come in. He didn’t answer the first time, but he answered the second. He didn’t speak, listening to Qin Hua on the other end complain that he always ran off to other places when she needed him.

He endured until he couldn’t anymore, then roared, “Have you fucking said enough?”

“...Cheng Yanqing, did you just curse at me? What’s wrong with me saying a few things about Cheng Wanyue? She’s just...”

“Cheng Wanyue is my sister! She’s my only precious sister! Nobody’s allowed to badmouth her!”

No one outside the Cheng family knew about Cheng Wanyue’s illness.

She didn’t want to tell others, and the Cheng family didn’t either. When this illness was mentioned, most people thought it was terminal.

Qing Hang transferred money to Cheng Guoan’s account at a fixed time each month. Sometimes it was a text message, sometimes a brief phone call. He didn’t ask about Cheng Wanyue, and Cheng Guoan wouldn’t bring it up either.

Cheng Wanyue was constantly in the ward, with very little time to use her phone. Even Zhou Yu didn’t know, let alone Yan Ci.

“Qin Hua, don’t let me hear any of those words you just said from your mouth again.”

Qin Hua was stunned for a few seconds. Cheng Yanqing had always been responsive to her requests. He came to Beijing for her. If he had a thousand yuan in his pocket, he would spend nine hundred and ninety on her, keeping only ten yuan for bus fare and instant noodles. He was good enough to her that she could convince herself to wait a bit longer. The entertainment industry was a young person’s game; she didn’t have many years to waste. She went to an audition today, and the person in charge hinted at a sex for role offer. She splashed red wine on their face. Now, wandering the streets in distress, she really needed him, even if just to hold her and comfort her, but he had gone to Nanjing again. His sister just went to school; how could she have so many problems?

“Cheng Yanqing, let’s break up. I don’t have the energy to wait for you to grow up.”

“Break up then! Qin Hua, this time I’m tired of you!”

“Fine, you said it,” Qin Hua hung up the phone and deleted all contact information.

Cheng Yuzhou watched Cheng Yanqing vent, then went over and patted his shoulder after he calmed down.

Cheng Yanqing sat crouching by the flowerbed, holding his head, his throat hoarse, “It’s only a 0.003% chance, why did it have to be Wanyue?”

Cheng Yuzhou couldn’t answer.

The next day, he shaved his head bald.

Cheng Yanqing cared so much about his hair. In high school, even if he was almost late for morning self-study, he would fix his hairstyle. If anyone touched his head, he would chase them across half the sports field.

He also shaved his head. Before entering the ward, he forced a smile and cheerfully called out to Wanyue.

Cheng Wanyue looked at the two shiny, reflective bald heads and laughed until tears streamed down her face.

The nurse sister nearby teased, “Is shaving your head bald a trend among handsome guys now?”

Cheng Wanyue said proudly, “These two brothers of mine have been handsome since they were little. They’re handsome even with bald heads. Lots of people pursue them.”