Of the two people who got down from the car to fetch Apple, one of them, a chubby-looking girl who seemed to be Apple’s assistant, helped to her to carry her bag. Seeing Xu Tingsheng who was not far away, she smiled shyly and nodding towards him.
The other was a fashionably dressed middle-aged man who was wearing leopard frame spectacles, a windbreaker and men’s boots. He saw Xu Tingsheng as well.
“A guy, an ordinary person, his car being ordinary as well,” The middle-aged man frowned, looking dissatisfied as he told Apple ‘Hurry up’ in a dour tone and first got into the car himself.
Apple turned and waved rather silently towards Xu Tingsheng before getting on the car, her gaze cast downwards.
“She’s not happy.”
Xu Tingsheng had a bad premonition of things to come, and regretted it a little as well. Back when Apple had been negotiating with the management company, he had participated too little in it. As a young girl with little societal experience, even if she was somewhat courageous, how would she have been able to contend with those old wily foxes who had been in the industry for decades?
……
Two days after Apple left, Fang Yunyao woke up. There were no endless emotional entreaties and heartfelt, moving words like in the television dramas. She had struggled alone amidst the darkness. She had won.
Fang Yunyao opened her eyes at around 4am in the morning. Only she herself could know whether she might have felt afraid, panicked, helpless had she been alone at the time. However, Fu Cheng was there for her.
She opened her mouth, but could not speak. Fu Cheng could not speak as well.
These past few days, Fu Cheng, old Mrs Fang and Song Ni had all collapsed from exhaustion, having had to go on the IV drip for a time. Xu Tingsheng and Huang Yaming were comparatively more sturdy, still being able to occasionally take over their shifts.
As the two sat smoking by the grassy lawn outside, Fu Cheng dashed out and exclaimed, “She’s awoken! She’s awoken!”
Huang Yaming and Xu Tingsheng exchanged glances, “Freaking fool, what’re you doing coming looking for us? Look for a doctor!”
Fu Cheng raced off to find a doctor. Xu Tingsheng and Huang Yaming didn’t actually break out in wild, unbridled joy. Instead, the two of them lit up another cigarette and patted each other’s shoulders. Then, they turned away from each other, each silently dabbing at their moist eyes.
Throughout this entire incident, Song Ni still being a young girl, old Mrs Fu and Fu Cheng both having seemingly been without their souls, there were only Xu Tingsheng and Huang Yaming who had been the toughest, most optimistic of them all. They had dealt with everything calmly, from those matters back at Libei to everything at the hospital here.
They had not succumbed to their emotions all throughout, never even having shed a single tear up till now, when Fang Yunyao had finally awoken.
“Heck, I’ve never been this tired before,” Huang Yaming said.
It was actually the most tiring and difficult when one was bearing immense pressure yet had to force themselves to stay calm.
Xu Tingsheng stretched lazily and exhaled dramatically before collapsing into a lying position on the grassy lawn behind him.
Huang Yaming pulled him up, saying, “Come, let’s go and see Ms Fang.”
Actually, on the first day of Fang Yunyao having regained consciousness, aside from those doctors and specialists, there was no one else who was allowed into her hospital ward. They could only look at her through the large glass window of the room, being seen by her as well.
While Fang Yunyao’s face was pale with even her lips lacking the slightest colour, she tried hard and smiled towards everyone.
Fu Cheng spent the entire day outside the hospital ward. Meanwhile, Xu Tingsheng and Huang Yaming were finally spent with all their physical and mental exertions over this period of time. Having held on the longest, they also collapsed the most straightforwardly…directly entering the IV drip room after having seen Fang Yunyao.
“Sis Nurse, can I smoke a cigarette? It’s just the two of us here now anyway,” Huang Yaming said.
“You can’t. This is a hospital,” The pretty young nurse replied, her eyes wide open.
“Sis nurse, I want to go to the toilet. Can you hold my fluid bag for me?” Huang Yaming asked.
“…” The young nurse looked bemusedly at this little hoodlum, “Hold it yourself with your other hand.”
“I’ve got to draw something out with my other hand. How about I hold the fluid bag and you draw it out for me?” Huang Yaming’s earnest face as he discussed the topic was no different from when he was asking ‘Can you help me pour a cup of water?’
Xu Tingsheng watched on rather interestedly from the side.
The young nurse walked over, looking at the needle in Huang Yaming’s hand and saying just as earnestly, “It’s not well injected; there’s a bit of blood. Let me inject it in for you again.”
After a while, within the IV drip room resounded Huang Yaming’s ceaseless tragic yells and cries for mercy…as well as Xu Tingsheng’s laughter and the young nurse’s constant repeated apologies as she mis-injected the needle in time and time again.
Only when several needle marks riddled the back of Huang Yaming’s hand did a senior nurse who had heard the noise over from the restroom dash in, asking anxiously, “What happened?”
The young nurse who had succumbed to a moment’s recklessness appeared rather panicked.
“It’s nothing. It’s just that I wanted to see if injecting this was easy, and so I tried it on myself a few times…I hadn’t thought that it would really be this hard,” Huang Yaming said.
“You…are you sick in the head? If something happened, would you take responsibility for it?”
Huang Yaming smiled cheekily as he apologised for his misdeeds. The senior nurse angrily stormed out.
Looking first at the doorway and then at Huang Yaming who still appeared nonchalant, the young nurse, feeling wronged yet also moved, asked, “Why didn’t you tell on me?”
“Because I like you,” Huang Yaming suddenly said solemnly.
“You…stop playing around. You want to get injected again?” The young nurse asked in a rather shy and embarrassed manner with a tiny little threat that could basically just be overlooked.
“I’m not playing around. When accompanying my friend here for IV infusion three days ago, the first time I saw you, I already liked you,” Huang Yaming continued confessing in a deep, emotional tone, “I didn’t how to to tell it to you, how to start a conversation with you…and so I spouted rubbish.”
“I don’t believe you. That doesn’t happen.”
“Right, that doesn’t happen…you see how I’m exceptionally stupid? I just thought that after spouting rubbish, perhaps you would then remember me. Perhaps you would angrily scold me, and that could be considered as us having a conversation. Also, those extra needles that you poked in me just now; I told myself…it was holding hands.”
“You?”
“I like you. My name is Huang Yaming, can I get to know you?”
“……”
Two bags of fluid later, leaving the IV drip room, Xu Tingsheng asked Huang Yaming, “You really saw her three days ago? And she caught your eye then?”
Huang Yaming shook his head, “How would I have been in the mood to look at chicks then?”
“Heck, you beast.”
……
Two days after Fang Yunyao awoke, her family and friends were finally allowed into the ward to see her. She still looked to be in rather bad condition, not being able to move or sit with even speaking being rather hard for her.
Old Mrs Fang first talked with her daughter, the two shedding tears as they faced each other. She told her all that happened these past days, including what had happened with Zhang Junming as well as the assistance of Fu Cheng and the others.
Xu Tingsheng, Huang Yaming and Song Ni entered together.
The two guys did not speak much, just asking Fang Yunyao if she was fine as they intended to help Fu Cheng, currently pacing outside the door, get to quickly speak with her. Song Ni, though, cared not about this, leaning over and whispering secretively into Fang Yunyao’s ear all the way till a look of shy embarrassment appeared on her face even amidst her poor condition.
As Xu Tingsheng and Huang Yaming grabbed Song Ni and exited, Fang Yunyao told them, “Thank you.”
“No need for thanks. You’re not merely our teacher…” Xu Tingsheng and Huang Yaming had originally intended to say, ‘You’re also our friend’, but Song Ni interjected, “That’s right, no need to stand on ceremony, Sister-in-law.”
Fu Cheng stood by the sickbed, looking like he knew not where to place his hands and feet.
“Come over here, you,” Fang Yunyao said, “You must have been really scared, right?”
Arriving beside her, Fu Cheng nodded before the tears just began flowing uninhibited down his face.
Fang Yunyao wiped the tears off his face with some difficulty, saying, “In the past, I was afraid that you only liked me because you were insensible, not yet having grown up…that when you grew up, you would have changed.”
Fu Cheng shook his head, vehemently denying ‘No, No’.
“Don’t be panicked. I know, I really do. My Mum told me about it, and Song Ni did as well,” Fang Yunyao smiled.
She had just been through a near-death experience. Death could bring fear, yet could also make one courageous. If someone had once struggled at the brink of death, he or she would have come to know to better treasure things, possessing greater courage as well.
The 6th Dalai Lama once said: In life, what aside from life and death is not inconsequential?
Having experienced even death before, what fear could there be left of loving someone?
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