AL Chapter3

When Liang Ruixi groggily woke up, he had no idea how much time had passed. He found himself lying on a simple hospital bed, the pain in his stomach much relieved.

 

He… had pulled through?

 

Phew, where was Jiang Cheng?

 

Liang Ruixi turned his head and saw an unexpected person sitting by the bed!

 

“Zhou Yan?” Liang Ruixi widened his eyes and said in a hoarse voice, “How did you get here?”

 

Zhou Yan’s brows knit slightly as he remained silent, merely gazing at him, a tangle of emotions flickering in his eyes.

 

Liang Ruixi felt very nervous under his gaze. Just as he was racking his brains to find something to say, Zhou Yan suddenly stood up and said, “I’ll go call the doctor.”

 

Zhou Yan had only been gone for a few seconds when Jiang Cheng returned, holding a cup of oden in his hands, along with convenience store coffee and hot steamed buns. Seeing Liang Ruixi’s eyes open, he exclaimed happily, “You’re awake!”

 

Liang Ruixi snapped angrily, “I told you to give him a red envelope. How could you call him over here?”

 

Jiang Cheng was stunned, quickly defending himself, “Who called him! He came on his own!”

 

Liang Ruixi: “Huh?”

 

Jiang Cheng explained, “Your phone rang not long after you were rushed into the emergency room. I answered it for you. He asked who I was, and I said I was your friend and that you were in the emergency room being resuscitated. Then he said he wanted to come over.”

 

Liang Ruixi was a little annoyed. “Why did you tell him I was in the emergency room?”

 

Jiang Cheng retorted irritably, “What else was I supposed to say? That you were in the morgue?”

 

Liang Ruixi: “……” F*ck!

 

Jiang Cheng plopped down, seemingly realizing he had misspoke, and muttered, “I don’t know who the hell scared me just now.”

 

Before long, Zhou Yan returned with the emergency room doctor.

 

The doctor was also a young man, looking to be under thirty, wearing a white coat and a mask, with only a pair of bright eyes visible.

 

He checked Liang Ruixi’s heart rate, blood pressure, and other data, asking if he was still in pain.

 

“It doesn’t hurt much anymore, but my stomach still feels uncomfortable,” Liang Ruixi said, touching his stomach. “Doctor, what’s wrong with me?”

 

“What’s wrong?” The male doctor’s eyes sharpened as he reprimanded him. “Acute gastroenteritis, hypoglycemia.” As he spoke, he tapped the blood test report clipped to his clipboard with his pen. “A normal person’s fasting blood sugar is at least 3.15. When you passed out, it was only 2.7. You still have the nerve to say your stomach is uncomfortable? How long has it been since you last ate?”

 

Liang Ruixi was speechless. No wonder he had been feeling stomach discomfort lately; he had thought it was indigestion and had been eating less.

 

The entire day, he had only eaten a tea egg. He went to the bar in the evening and drank a glass of alcohol on an empty stomach. That was all he had consumed.

 

“Do you think your stomach is made of iron? You can’t treat yourself like this even if you’re young,” The doctor grumbled, glancing at the remaining saline and glucose drips, then at his various reports. He continued, “The rest isn’t a big problem. I’ll prescribe three boxes of anti-inflammatory drugs and two boxes of gastrointestinal motility drugs. After the drip is finished today, take them for five consecutive days. Take the stomach medicine before meals and the anti-inflammatory drugs after meals. If the pain returns, come back for a follow-up…”

 

A nurse intern rushed in calling, “Doctor Wu.” When she caught sight of Liang Ruixi on the bed, her face flushed, and she didn’t dare to look him straight in the eye. She spoke a few words to the doctor about the patient next door and then left.

 

Doctor Wu had other patients to see, so he quickly finished giving his instructions, mainly telling him to eat regularly and pay attention to his diet in the future.

 

Before leaving, something came to his mind. His eyes crinkled into a smile, and he gave Liang Ruixi a few more words of advice: “You’re quite handsome. Don’t you usually wear underwear? The young nurse who gave you the buttock injection was quite startled by you. You should wear them in the future; otherwise, that area is prone to bacteria growth and inflammation, which can also be very troublesome.”

 

…What injection?

 

Wait, what did he mean by usually not wearing underwear?

 

Liang Ruixi glanced at the two closest friends of his life standing on either side of his bed, both giving him odd looks that seemed to say: Didn’t expect you to have this kind of fetish.

 

“No, I don’t have that habit…” Liang Ruixi’s face flushed red. “I happened to be showering when my stomach started hurting. I was in a hurry to get to the hospital and couldn’t find my underwear, so I just threw on a pair of loose sweatpants.”

 

“Alright,” Zhou Yan said with a soft chuckle, “Say less, rest more.”

 

Jiang Cheng also sat down again, picking up the almost cold oden and saying, “Damn it, it’s almost three in the morning, I’m starving.” He then asked Zhou Yan, “Brother, do you want some? I also bought coffee and meat buns.”

 

Zhou Yan said, “Just the coffee for me, thanks.”

 

Liang Ruixi was already full of resentment, and listening to Jiang Cheng’s “hiss-ha, hiss-ha” sounds as he ate, the cravings in his stomach were stirred up. He glared at Jiang Sheng and said fiercely, “I’ve been hungry all day. Are you even human, eating in front of me like this?”

 

“Want a little bit?” Jiang Cheng held up the disposable paper bowl, showing him the little soup left at the bottom, and said vaguely, “Spicy.” The doctor had just told him to eat bland food recently, so the implication of ‘spicy’ was that he couldn’t eat it.

 

Zhou Yan saw Liang Ruixi stubbornly glaring with his neck craned, so he picked up the bun beside him, tore off a small piece of the skin, and stuffed it into Liang Ruixi’s mouth.

 

Liang Ruixi subconsciously opened his mouth and ate it, chewed twice, and frowned, “This isn’t tasty.”

 

Zhou Yan said expressionlessly, “Behave yourself. Do you still want to get better?”

 

Liang Ruixi stopped talking, obediently accepting the feeding.

 

Jiang Cheng watched this scene, his expression somewhat bewildered.

 

“What message did you send me? Why did you withdraw it?” Zhou Yan asked Liang Ruixi.

 

“Sent it by mistake,” Liang Ruixi said sheepishly. “It’s just that my stomach is hurting and I was going to ask for help. I meant to send it to Jiang Cheng, but I accidentally sent it to you.”

 

“What’s wrong with sending it to me?” Zhou Yan countered.

 

“You’re quite busy.” Liang Ruixi lowered his eyes, looking around as if for something else to focus on. “I ran into Wei Ran last month. He said you and your senior from high school opened a law firm together. I just didn’t want to trouble you.”

 

Wei Ran was their classmate in university and Zhou Yan’s roommate. Liang Ruixi used to often ask to switch beds with him to find Zhou Yan. After graduation, he also stayed in Haicheng and worked at a consulting firm.

 

Zhou Yan was silent for two seconds before asking, “When did you become so distant with me?”

 

“No…” Liang Ruixi quickly looked at him, a hint of fear of his anger on his face.

 

Their gazes met, and the undercurrent of emotion rippled in the air, creating a faint electric charge that made them both look away at the same time.

 

The reason Liang Ruixi withdrew the message was indeed because he was afraid of troubling Zhou Yan. They used to have a very good relationship in university, but this kind of closeness was different in nature from the closeness between Liang Ruixi and Jiang Cheng.

 

He and Jiang Sheng had known each other since junior high school. They had fought together, skipped classes together, and called each other idiots. Although their paths later diverged greatly, and their current educational levels were worlds apart, the decade-plus of knowing each other had made them as close as brothers, a sibling-like bond without blood ties but stronger than some. So, whenever Liang Ruixi encountered any difficulties, he could unreservedly boss the other party around.

 

But Zhou Yan was different.

 

Getting into F University was a significant turning point in Liang Ruixi’s life. After that, the people and things he encountered were completely different from his past. Initially, he relied on his youthful arrogance to become close with Zhou Yan, but as his experience grew and his understanding broadened, he gradually realized that he and Zhou Yan were very different.

 

If Liang Ruixi getting into F University was like his ancestral graves emitting green smoke[mfn]A sign of great luck[/mfn], then Zhou Yan going to F University was like choosing it casually by throwing dice when he wasn’t in a good mood.

 

They just happened to meet at F University and happened to become friends.

 

And Zhou Yan’s kindness was something all their classmates acknowledged. Throughout their four years of university, Zhou Yan was the one who helped and took care of him the most. Now that they had graduated for three years and Zhou Yan was usually so busy, how could he rely on someone’s kindness to trouble them again for such a trivial matter?

 

The air still lingered with a strange sense of ambiguity, but fortunately, Zhou Yan, who was skilled at controlling the atmosphere, didn’t let it last too long. He changed the subject, saying, “I heard that before you fainted, you didn’t forget to tell your friend to give me a wedding red envelope of eight hundred and eighty?”

 

“Dog kidney, what did you tell my classmate?” Liang Ruixi looked at Jiang Cheng, feeling uneasy. This guy had just met him, how could he say everything?

 

From the moment Zhou Yan fed Liang Ruixi the first piece of bun skin, Jiang Cheng had been somewhat bewildered. At this moment, he sluggishly ‘ah’ and explained, “You were still unconscious when he arrived. We chatted for a bit and found out he was the buddy you mentioned, so I just told him about it.”

 

Zhou Yan looked at Liang Ruixi and joked, “Didn’t you used to say you’d give me at least an eight thousand eight hundred eighty red envelope? How come it’s only eight hundred and eighty now?”

 

“I said eight eight eight eight, he misheard!” Liang Ruixi retorted.

 

Jiang Cheng was completely confused. “How could it be my mistake? It was clearly…”

 

But before he could finish, Liang Ruixi had already asked Zhou Yan, “When are you getting married?”

 

Zhou Yan asked, “Didn’t you see my WeChat Moments?”

 

“Haven’t had time to look yet…” Liang Ruixi couldn’t help but sigh. “Wow, in the blink of an eye, you’re getting married. That’s great.”

 

Jiang Cheng had just finished drinking the last bit of soup from his oden. Whether it was intentional retaliation or not, he said sourly, “Aren’t you doing great too? Marrying into a wealthy family soon, your success is just around the corner!”

 

Zhou Yan frowned slightly. “What wealthy family?”

 

Jiang Cheng’s eyebrows danced as he said, “He has a rich girlfriend, her family is super wealthy, and they want him to marry into their family and have kids who take the woman’s surname.”

 

“Damn it, dog kidney, shut your mouth right now!” Liang Ruixi was so angry that even lying in the hospital bed, he wanted to kick him. The saline drip bottle hanging by the bed swung back and forth.

 

“Damn it, didn’t you say all this yourself tonight!” Jiang Cheng dragged his chair backward.

 

“Stop it.” Zhou Yan pressed down on the agitated Liang Ruixi, his brow furrowed tightly.

 

Liang Ruixi immediately calmed down. Seeing Zhou Yan’s sharp gaze fixed on him, he hurriedly explained, “Don’t listen to his nonsense. I just broke up.”

 

“Broke up?” Jiang Cheng said in surprise. “So quickly?”

 

Zhou Yan’s expression also held a hint of surprise.

 

“She told me she wanted to break up right at my doorstep when I got back,” Liang Ruixi said, feigning nonchalance. “Forget it. We weren’t a good match anyway, our relationship was never going to last long. This is probably for the best.”

 

“But you guys were together for over a year, right? Just broke up like that?” Jiang Cheng said, sounding genuinely regretful.

 

“How many is this now?” Zhou Yan asked intently.

 

Liang Ruixi said awkwardly, “Uh, the fifth.”

 

Zhou Yan smiled slightly. “I thought it was an ‘annual event’ for you. That would make it seven or eight over the years.”

 

Jiang Cheng’s eyes widened with gossip. “What ‘annual event’?”

 

Liang Ruixi wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he felt that Zhou Yan’s tone at this moment held a hint of schadenfreude.

 

He then heard Zhou Yan continue, counting them off for him, “You would rather let people misunderstand that you were having an affair with other girls than explain with the first one. The second one started making excuses not to go on dates not long after you got together. The third one didn’t want to answer her calls after three months of dating. The fourth one, if I remember correctly, was that junior from Normal University? I even thought that was your true love, but now here comes a rich and beautiful woman who wants you to be a live-in son-in-law…”

 

Jiang Cheng was dumbfounded. “Wow! Rui Ge, how could you be such a scumbag!”

 

Liang Ruixi couldn’t even tell if Zhou Yan was comforting him or mocking him. Listening to Zhou Yan’s words, he was also forced to review his own disastrous dating history, and a sense of sorrow welled up within him. “I don’t want it to be like this either…”

 

“You don’t want it to? Then why haven’t you settled down by now?” Zhou Yan’s gaze sharpened again.

 

Liang Ruixi was rendered speechless by Zhou Yan’s sharp retort. He had thought only his tactless friend Jiang Cheng would openly rub salt in his wounds, but compared to Zhou Yan, Jiang Cheng was just a minor annoyance.

 

Zhou Yan had originally wanted to tease him a bit more, but seeing his dejected state, he softened his tone and said, “Learn from your mistakes and put some effort in in the future.”

 

It was “put some effort” not “be smarter”, indicating that Zhou Yan also didn’t approve of his romantic history over the years…

 

Liang Ruixi drooped his eyelids and mumbled an “en.” After a moment, he said dejectedly, “You’re getting married.”

 

Zhou Yan found it both funny and exasperating. “What, are you trying to compete with me on who gets married earlier?”

 

Liang Ruixi was very discouraged. “Seeing you like this makes me feel like I’m a failure in life.”

 

Zhou Yan looked at him with an ambiguous expression, took a deep breath, and finally explained, “Xiao Zhi’s fiancé isn’t me.”

 

The author has something to say:

[Little Interlude]

(1)

Doctor Wu: Seeing his stomach cramping so badly, let’s give him an injection of 6542, intramuscularly.

The nurse prepared the injection and pulled down Liang Ruixi’s pants: “……”(//w//)

Doctor Wu: Oh my.

(2)

Jiang Sheng: Have you guys just started torturing a single dog like this? Am I invisible?