Chapter 2
Pinduoduo, didn’t you say I was the luckiest person alive?
“I really want to…”
Forget it.
Xia Fengsheng lay sprawled on the hospital bed.
Better not actually send himself off for real.
A nurse pushed a cart into the ward and pulled open the divider curtain. Their eyes met.
Nurse: 0v0
Xia Fengsheng: orz
“You’re awake,” the nurse said cheerfully.
At a time like this, it was hard not to feel cheerful when seeing the way he was lying there.
“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked.
Xia Fengsheng had not had any water all night, and his throat felt like it was smoking. “Not bad.”
The nurse checked the stitched wound behind his ear. After a whole night, it was still perfectly intact.
She chattered on, “Yesterday after you came off the operating table, the doctor was afraid you’d press on the wound in your sleep, so he deliberately arranged you into that position.”
“See? The wound didn’t split open at all.”
“Is that so,” Xia Fengsheng said with a weak smile.
Lying on the bed in an orz pose—
Was there really not even one more dignified position?
“Wait a bit. The doctor is doing rounds. As soon as he finishes, he’ll come see you right away.” After changing his medicine, the nurse wheeled the cart out.
It was a six-bed ward, with curtains hanging between the beds.
The weather was nice today—blue sky, white clouds, bright sun. The temperature had gone up, and it was warm outside, so all the other patients in the room had been taken out by their families to get some sun.
Xia Fengsheng sat up and looked around. The other beds were full of traces of daily life: towels and handkerchiefs, lunch boxes and thermoses, fruit baskets giving off a sweet fragrance.
By comparison, his bedside table looked very bare.
He lowered his head and glanced at it.
A bottle of glucose the nurse had hung up for him.
Xia Fengsheng tipped his head back and poured a couple mouthfuls into himself.
The movement tugged at the wound behind his ear, making him bare his teeth in pain.
The world kisses me with pain; I respond by dialing 110 and reporting the world for sexual harassment.
He reached for his phone, only to discover that not only had he fallen—his phone was gone too.
Xia Fengsheng: …
How could a person be this unlucky?
Xia Fengsheng did not know whether his injuries were serious. He vaguely remembered waking up once, when the doctor was stitching him up.
“You’re awake.”
His consciousness had been fuzzy. “Mm.”
The doctor said, “Good thing you were brought in early. If you’d kept bleeding any longer, it wouldn’t have mattered who came.”
According to the doctor, at the scene of the accident his blood had been pouring out like it was free.
As if loudly announcing to the world: blood is free!
The doctor even used a story to make him understand how serious it had been. “Have you read Chronicle of a Blood Merchant?”
Xia Fengsheng gave a faint hum.
“At that time, Xu Sanguan could’ve put a basin beside you and collected enough blood to live the rest of his life in comfort,” the doctor said.
Xia Fengsheng: …
After that, he lost consciousness completely.
Xia Fengsheng got out of bed and tried walking a couple of steps.
“Nurse, is Xia Fengsheng in this room?”
That dead pig demon’s voice.
Xia Fengsheng’s soul shriveled up like a little flower deprived of water.
It was not just Yang Liwan who had come. Several junior students had followed him in as well.
Yesterday, when the ambulance drove into Jing University, it made it onto the forum. But everyone at Jing University had their own business to deal with, and it was finals week, so the discussion under the post was not very lively.
It was nothing more than: which unlucky bastard got hurt and carted off by ambulance?
At first, everyone thought it was just an ordinary accident.
Until a few hours before the dinner gathering, Yang Liwan could not find him. His always-on-call free labor beast of burden senior was not replying to messages.
After specifically asking around, he found out that the unlucky bastard had a name: Xia Fengsheng.
Yang Liwan stormed in. “Xia Fengsheng, who gave you permission to be hospitalized at a time like this?!”
Xia Fengsheng: …
Damn monkey, every word out of his mouth made people want to die.
“Do you know how many things you’re delaying all by yourself?!”
Tonight’s dinner gathering was imminent, and whether the project negotiation would succeed hinged on it. At a critical moment like this, Xia Fengsheng had dropped the chain—what was he supposed to do now?
Yang Liwan’s face flushed red, and when he opened his mouth, nothing but fragrant birdsong and flowers came out.
Xia Fengsheng automatically activated his self-protection mechanism. Both ears stopped hearing anything. Having lost too much blood, he stared blankly at Yang Liwan’s face as it twisted and turned through countless expressions.
The pig had started squealing.
Bang bang bang—
The ward door let out a miserable scream.
“What’s all this noise? Can’t you keep it down? How is the patient supposed to rest with you making this much racket?!”
The doctor came in aggressively with several interns behind him.
All in white coats, striding with wind at their backs, like some medical idol group.
He looked Yang Liwan up and down. “Do you think this is a vegetable market?”
Before Yang Liwan could shoot back, the doctor glanced at how many of them there were and said disdainfully, “Worse than a vegetable market. At least nobody there shows up without even bringing a fruit basket.”
Yang Liwan’s face turned liver-colored as he defended himself. “I’m this master’s advisor.”
The doctor’s expression was openly mocking, his eyes full of contempt. “You’re this satisfied just because you supervise a master’s student?”
He lifted his chin. Behind him stood a whole row of interns.
“I supervise PhD students.”
“…”
Good lord, academic one-upmanship.
Xia Fengsheng: What a razor-sharp tongue.
One of the students jumped out to speak up for Yang Liwan, sensing a good chance to perform in front of the advisor. “There are two patients fighting in the hallway—why aren’t you doing anything about that?”
The doctor’s prized disciple warned him, “Mind your own business. That’s a two-player mini-game for patients. If you’re jealous, go line up.”
“…”
Like master, like disciple.
After dispersing the crowd, the doctor came over to Xia Fengsheng with all the results of his brain scans in hand.
“Xia Sanguan.”
His disciple’s nose started itching, and he covered his mouth as he sneezed. “A-A-A-ACHOO—Xia Fengsheng!!!”
A sneeze so powerful it could shake heaven and move ghosts.
Without changing expression, the doctor corrected himself. “Xia Fengsheng.”
Xia Fengsheng: …
He could practically foresee the two of them gossiping about him in the office.
The doctor gave Xia Fengsheng a basic examination.
Sitting on the hospital bed, Xia Fengsheng lowered his head, exposing the stitched wound behind his ear.
His eyes were lowered, and his lashes fluttered like rain-drenched butterfly wings. Usually, he kept his hair slicked back neatly and impeccably, but now the overlong fringe hung down against his cheeks.
His skin was the bloodless white of sickness, but his lips carried a vivid crimson.
A pale, eerie, damp sort of beauty.
The doctor asked whether his head hurt and whether he felt dizzy.
Xia Fengsheng answered each question honestly.
Holding the CT scan up in midair, the doctor pointed and said, “The external injury looks scary, but fortunately there doesn’t seem to be anything seriously wrong inside the skull. Still, mild concussion aftereffects are quite common.”
Then he lowered the scan and asked Xia Fengsheng, “Do you remember who you are?”
Sitting on the bed, the black of his eyes and the red of his lips stood out in stark, heavy contrast.
“I’m Xia Fengsheng.”
Xia as in summer. Fengsheng as in riding high on the wind and water.
“Do you remember who they are?”
The advisor frowned, sensing that something was wrong, and strode forward a few steps.
“Doctor, what do you mean? Are you saying he fell once and knocked himself into amnesia?”
The doctor replied, “That possibility can’t be ruled out.”
The world was vast and full of wonders—what was so shocking about that?
The advisor found it utterly absurd. His face said, Why don’t you listen to the nonsense coming out of your own mouth? He let out a speechless laugh.
“Doctor, who loses their memory just because they took a fall? Isn’t this a joke?”
If Xia Fengsheng had really lost his memory, then what about tonight’s dinner gathering? Who was going to perform the girl-group dance?!
“Could the examination be wrong?”
The doctor shot him a weary look. “If you keep making trouble in the hospital, get out.”
“…”
The advisor’s face instantly turned as black as his heart.
The project negotiation was right around the corner, and at the final critical moment Xia Fengsheng had amnesia?
If he really had lost his memory, forget the future—even tonight’s dinner gathering was already a problem.
The investors had specifically asked for him by name.
Where was he supposed to temporarily find a Xia Fengsheng 2.0 that could satisfy them?
The junior students said nothing after hearing this, only exchanging glances behind him.
In the past, whenever they had any trouble, they could ask Xia Fengsheng for help, and he would agree every single time. Now, if he really had amnesia, who would help with their assignment guidance and article organization?
And it was finals week now—there were mountains of things to sort out.
Each of them quietly broke into a cold sweat for their own sake.
Someone tried to jog Xia Fengsheng’s memory. “Senior, do you still remember who I am?”
Yang Liwan shoved the student aside and stepped forward. “Xia Fengsheng, I’m your advisor. You still remember that, right?”
Xia Fengsheng looked at the concerned faces of his advisor and junior schoolmates one by one.
A whole crowd had come to see him, and not one of them had brought a fruit basket.
So naturally—
“Don’t remember, hehe.”
.
“Have you seen our Sheng’er?”
He Qiang grabbed a classmate coming out of the neighboring dorm and started circulating his missing-person notice.
His method was unique: the classmate was wearing a hoodie, and He Qiang seized the hood, instantly tightening the collar around the other boy’s neck.
The classmate, caught at the throat and barely hanging on, gasped, “Haven’t seen him. He didn’t come back last night?”
“No. He was gone all night yesterday, and he’s not picking up his phone either.”
The classmate was shocked, like some warmhearted auntie at the village entrance. “Then what are you still looking around for? Hurry up and check the rooftop!”
Who knew which building he might be sitting on top of!
A whole night had passed—maybe by now he had already…
The two looked at each other and swallowed hard. Every year there were students who jumped because of academic pressure.
Because so many people, after failing to think things through, ended up sitting on rooftops, the school had specially posted comforting slogans on all the rooftops.
They were trying to reduce the number of tragedies.
“Have you eaten? What did you eat? It must’ve been a feast, right?”
“Does the person you like like you back?”
“Did you pass CET-4 and CET-6?”
“It’s finals again—you must’ve learned a lot this semester, right?”
In the end, people who had originally only gone up there to get some air—
After reading that, they jumped straight off.
If you’re not going to let people live, just say so.
If the school had not specially assigned security guards to watch the rooftops, the consequences would have been unthinkable.
The pressure in the finance department had always been intense.
He Qiang watched Xia Fengsheng leave early and return late every day, so busy his feet practically kicked the back of his head, even cutting down on sleep.
The thought of Xia Fengsheng going to the rooftop was not surprising at all.
Without saying it outright, both He Qiang and the classmate understood each other perfectly:
He had finally decided he did not want to live anymore.
He Qiang could not just stand there and watch such a fresh… such a half-dead life vanish before his eyes.
Better to live badly than die well.
Besides, whether as a roommate or a friend, Xia Fengsheng was beyond reproach.
Whenever he ran into any trouble, big or small, Xia Fengsheng would help without hesitation if he could.
Back then, when He Qiang had no money to buy his girlfriend a birthday present, Xia Fengsheng had lent him a thousand yuan without even blinking.
And that had been at the end of the month—there was no need to explain the value of a thousand yuan at that time.
Two words summed it up:
Righteous father.
He Qiang spun around and ran straight for the dorm building rooftop. The classmate, being a warmhearted sort, followed right behind him.
The two of them rushed like a whirlwind to the elevator.
Ding!
The elevator doors opened.
Xia Fengsheng stepped out, fresh and dewy.
He Qiang: Huh?
The person who had vanished for an entire night had just appeared like this.
“Sheng’er!”
Excited, He Qiang threw his arms around Xia Fengsheng and rambled incoherently, “I knew you weren’t so far gone that you’d jump off a building. There’s nothing worth jumping off a roof for, absolutely nothing.”
As he spoke, he also reached out and slapped the classmate beside him on the shoulder. “Right?”
The classmate immediately agreed, “Right.”
He Qiang let Xia Fengsheng go, but the moment he clearly saw the bandages wrapped around Xia Fengsheng’s head, his smile froze.
Through gritted teeth, he forced out, “Bro… you really did jump.”
