The clinic was bright and quiet. Xu Qi sat on a round stool, looking at the familiar furnishings around him.
When he wasn’t having an episode, he looked like a normal young man—of course, the near-death experience was just a fantasy in his mind; all his bodily functions were normal. Due to his height and build, he was even sturdier than his peers.
“So, the interval between episodes has gotten longer recently.”
Xu Qi’s gaze was pulled back from his thoughts, turning to the doctor in front of him: “Yes, apart from when I stopped taking the medicine, I basically haven’t had any episodes.”
“How long?”
“Generally around ten minutes,” Xu Qi paused for a moment, “in special cases, two to three minutes.”
The doctor stopped writing, looking up at him: “Special cases?”
Xu Qi was silent for a while, then said: “Safety valve.”
The doctor nodded, with a gentle and calm gaze, waiting for his explanation, just like countless times before.
“There’s someone,” he added, “when he’s around, it’s like having an extra safety valve. I know he will open a gap when the water is about to drown me.”
Then he could breathe.
The doctor said: “He makes you feel absolutely safe, absolutely trusting.”
“Yes.”
“Does he also relate to the decrease in the frequency of your episodes?”
“Maybe.”
“Emotional support from social relationships can indeed serve as a protective measure, reducing the negative impact of stress on you,” the doctor said, “but, just like medication, they are external support. When riding a bike, adding two extra wheels in the back can make you more stable. But if one day, those extra wheels are removed…”
If one day, this safety valve disappeared…
What would the result be?
He didn’t know. Perhaps from the very beginning, he got this illness because of Jiang Yu’s departure.
The bike was overloaded, without extra wheels, it wobbled as he rode, and ultimately it threw him heavily to the ground.
He held the newly opened medication and slowly walked into the lobby of the outpatient building. In front of the bustling triage desk stood a familiar figure.
As if there was a telepathic connection, Jiang Yu turned around and waved at him as he entered the lobby: “Did you finish? How did it go?”
“Pretty good,” he said, “as long as I take the medicine on time.”
Jiang Yu let out a sigh of relief. That day outside Xingcheng Secondary School, Jiang Yu was scared half to death by him and insisted on accompanying him to see the doctor. He said he really couldn’t find the time recently and mentioned that he had already been to the doctor many times and knew what was going on. Jiang Yu still wasn’t at ease, and Xu Qi couldn’t refuse him, so he had to agree to go to the hospital.
Although it was a doctor’s visit, it could barely be considered a date.
Jiang Yu had always been someone who believed what others said, so when Xu Qi said it was nothing, he didn’t think much of it: “That’s great.”
Xu Qi was just about to speak when his phone rang. He held the medicine in one hand and the phone in the other. After hanging up, he looked at Jiang Yu apologetically and said: “Something came up at the company, I need to go take care of it.”
Jiang Yu nodded and asked: “When do you take the medicine?”
Xu Qi didn’t react for a moment.
“This,” Jiang Yu pointed to the plastic bag in his hand, “how many times a day do you take it? When do you take it?”
Xu Qi looked at the prescription and told him.
Jiang Yu started to silently recite the numbers. “I’ll remind you,” Jiang Yu said, “so you won’t forget.”
Xu Qi didn’t know how someone with a bad memory could remind others, but he thought it would be great to hear his voice every day.
“I think I can finish up in the afternoon,” Xu Qi asked, “want to have dinner together tonight?”
“Okay!” Jiang Yu agreed quickly.
Xu Qi smiled: “I’m not sure what time it will be, I’ll go home after work and put the medicine away, and then I’ll call you.”
Jiang Yu left happily.
Because of this appointment, Xu Qi’s speed in signing documents was much faster than before.
Things were going too smoothly, even the clients were unusually kind, and at this rate, today would end perfectly.
In the evening, he tidied up his documents and returned to his familiar neighborhood. In the garage, he made a call to Jiang Yu, saying he had finished work. He walked into the elevator; the stainless steel wall still bore marks from new residents moving in. The hallway was spacious and bright, with anti-wear ceramic tiles on the floor, both beautiful and easy to clean. The building was equipped with a sensor lighting system, and as it heard his footsteps, the lights turned on automatically.
Then Xu Qi saw his mother at the door.
Xu Zhiya was holding an insulated food container with one hand and slapping her thigh with the other. When she saw her son, she straightened up and let out a sigh of relief: “Why did you change the password?”
Xu Qi’s gaze swept from her hand to her face, and he said emotionlessly: “Next time, let me know before you come over.”
“You might as well just tell me not to come over.”
“I’ve told you before…” Xu Qi stopped before his voice got louder. He clipped the car key back to his belt, blocking Xu Zhiya’s view of the keypad with his body, and unlocked the door.
Xu Zhiya put the insulated food container on the dining table and was about to open the cabinet when Xu Qi said: “No need to take it out, I have a dinner appointment tonight.”
Xu Zhiya’s hand stopped in front of the cabinet door for two seconds. “Oh,” she said, “then I’ll put it in the fridge for you to eat tomorrow.”
“Actually…”
“Shrimp is not good to keep, it’s best to eat it as soon as possible,” Xu Zhiya said, “just throw away the vegetables, the meatballs can be steamed in the rice cooker…”
Xu Qi sighed, took two steps in the living room, and turned around to face his mother. “Don’t do this,” he said, “I’m begging you, don’t do this.”
Xu Zhiya slowly stood up, supporting herself on the stove. After standing for a long time as a salesperson, her thigh veins were varicose, and any careless movement could lead to cramps. “Do this?” she asked.
“Be a good mom,” Xu Qi said, “it’s really not necessary.”
Xu Zhiya’s expression changed. After so many setbacks, she had finally been hurt.
“You still hate me,” she said.
“I don’t hate you,” Xu Qi said, “I just think we don’t need to be overly filial. When I was in middle school, I still longed for motherly love, but you didn’t give it to me, and now it’s too late.”
Xu Zhiya pursed her lips tightly for a moment and said: “So it’s still because of that thing? The thing about you going to Xingcheng Secondary School?”
“There’s no point in bringing it up now.”
“Is it still because of your dad?”
Xu Qi fell silent.
“Right,” Xu Zhiya stared at him, “you’re standing up for your dad.”
Xu Qi gritted his teeth and spoke: “Do you have to bring this up?”
His father’s death was a wound that had been hastily stitched up without being disinfected. After the stitches were removed, they each rushed back to their lives. Many years passed, and on the surface, it seemed like only an ugly scar remained, but in reality, the wound had become infected and festering, penetrating deep into the bone marrow.
Now, they had to tear it open, ripping it apart until the skin was torn and the flesh was exposed, pulling out the muscle fibers one by one, displaying and analyzing them, marveling at how the wound had deteriorated to such an extent.
Why?
“Haven’t you endured long enough?” Xu Zhiya looked at him, “Just say what you want to say.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Is that so?” Xu Zhiya smiled. “Your father was still in the detention center, and I was out running around, flirting with other men. He was behind bars, eating gruel and eagerly wanting to see me, but I never visited him once…”
“I don’t want to talk about this…”
“How can I be so heartless? A man who killed for me, how can I abandon him?”
“Yes!” Xu Qi exclaimed, unable to bear it any longer. “Yes! He was in prison for more than ten years. How could you not visit him once? Do you know what expression he had every time he asked about you? Until the day he died, he never heard a word of explanation from you!”
“How could I go see him!” Xu Zhiya yelled, “How could I tell him that I’m not grateful at all! I’m afraid that if I saw him, I’d want to strangle him and ask him why he did it!”
Xu Qi’s voice stopped abruptly.
“Who told him to kill for me?” Xu Zhiya slammed the insulated food container down, “What right does he have to make me owe him a life? Did he ever think about what my life would be like after that knife went in? What would yours be like? How would his family, your grandparents, uncles, and aunts look at me? How would you be mocked and bullied at school? What about the shop on Nanchang Street? How would we live in the future? He never thought! He thought of nothing!”
After gasping for breath a few times, Xu Zhiya suddenly burst out laughing. “He’s such a great man, he loves me so much, and with that one stab, I can never repay him,” she laughed as she sat down in a chair. “He went to prison for me, do I still have the face to be happy? Can I still smile for the rest of my life? If I don’t wait for him to come out, if I don’t keep my promise to him for a lifetime, wouldn’t I be struck by lightning?”
She looked at her son, her emotions overflowing: “I didn’t ask him to kill anyone! I didn’t ask him to take revenge for me! What right does he have to put this debt on my head!”
Xu Zhiya almost screamed out the last sentence, and then the living room fell into a deathly silence.
Xu Qi looked at her, his face gradually regaining its usual calmness. After a long time, he spoke up.
“I didn’t ask you to send me to an elite school.”
Xu Zhiya lifted her head, her eyes trembling the moment they met Xu Qi’s.
“I never asked you to find me a rich stepdad, never asked you to let me live in a villa,” he said, “What right do you have to make decisions on your own? I told you before, your income isn’t enough for the family, I went to work, I tutored, I supported you. So what if I went to a migrant workers’ children’s school? So what if I lived in a basement? It’s better than getting beaten there!”
“And those men you found!” he said, “Do you not remember how we escaped to Shenzhen? That man surnamed Zhou hit me and even hit you. When we boarded the train, your arm was still in a sling!”
The scenes of those years were too vivid, and he felt the uncontrollable anger surging out for the first time in a long time.
“I was beaten, I was bullied, I had a mental breakdown, I had psychological problems, and now you suddenly want to be a good mother?”
Xu Zhiya stood up and tried to hold his shoulders, but he dodged.
“No need,” he said, “You’re really just making things worse.”
Her efforts were completely misplaced. Regulating his three meals, bombarding him with texts asking him to take his medicine, freely entering his room, changing his pillbox—this high-pressure concern only worsened his anxiety.
“Don’t use my future as an excuse, saying that you found them so that I can live a better life. You just wanted to open a shop. In your heart, that shop is more important than anything,” Xu Qi said. “I understand, so you don’t need to make up for it out of guilt. I don’t need it.”
Xu Zhiya’s hands started trembling. She opened her mouth as if to say something but ultimately said nothing. She simply walked out of the living room and closed the door.
Hearing the sound of the door locking, Xu Qi closed his eyes and braced his hands on the edge of the table.
Hearing the sound of the door lock closing, Xu Qi closed his eyes and supported himself on the edge of the table with both hands.
It became like this again.
It seemed like a curse—whenever they were alone together, it would inevitably end in mutual accusations. Every argument felt like testing each other’s bottom line: Xu Zhiya wanted to know how far she could step into his life, while he wanted to see how excessive he had to be to push her away.
As his emotions gradually settled, the doorbell rang.
He thought it was his mother who had come back, but a crisp voice came from outside the door: “Are you home?”
Xu Qi stood up and opened the door. Jiang Yu had been smiling, but the moment he saw Xu Qi’s expression, his face turned to concern. “Why is your forehead covered in sweat?”
Xu Qi avoided answering, reaching out from beside him to close the door. “Why are you here?”
“You must be very tired after working all day, it would be troublesome for you to pick me up,” Jiang Yu said. “Anyway, I have nothing to do today, so I came to see you.”
Suddenly, Xu Qi stretched out his arms and tightly hugged the person in front of him. Jiang Yu was momentarily surprised but quickly calmed down. He didn’t move or speak, simply letting Xu Qi hold him.
He quietly placed his hand on Xu Qi’s shoulder blade. Through the closeness of their pressed chests, he seemed to feel the other person’s heartbeat.
After a while, when Xu Qi let him go, his expression had already returned to normal.
“If you’re not feeling well, we don’t have to go out to eat,” Jiang Yu said, then noticed the thermos on the dining table. “Did Auntie make those dishes?”
“En.”
“Auntie brought dinner, why isn’t she here?”
Xu Qi was silent for a moment. He walked to the dining table, opened the container, and took out the dishes one by one, placing them onto plates.
“We had a fight,” he finally said. “I said a lot of harsh things.”
“Oh,” Jiang Yu replied. “So Auntie left?”
“I actually…” Xu Qi said, “can understand her.”
Back in the days when his mother clung to anyone she could, he had once asked her, if she truly wanted to remarry, why not find a good man? It wouldn’t matter if he was poor.
His mother’s answer was: if she found a wealthy man, she would indeed be bullied, but just by that one man; if she found an ordinary man, she would be bullied by the whole world.
After leaving Nanchang Street, she stopped seeking justice in the world. She had tried, but nothing came of it. So, she accepted the rules and chose to take shortcuts.
“I understand her, but I resent her,” Xu Qi paused, as if tracing back through the past few years of his life. “I deliberately provoked her. Maybe I just want to hurt her.”
This kind of emotional entanglement was too complicated for Jiang Yu, who had only his own experience of getting along with his mother. “How could you not like your own mom?”
Xu Qi looked at him. “Not all mother-son relationships are like the one in your family.”
He hadn’t received maternal love in his youth, and now? Now it didn’t feel like maternal love either—it felt more like guilt-driven remorse and compensation.
He said he didn’t need it, but perhaps it was simply because what he wanted wasn’t what he was given.
Suddenly, a ringtone echoed in the room. Instinctively, he looked at his own phone, but there was no notification.
“Oh, it’s mine.” Jiang Yu rubbed his pocket, took out his phone, and silenced it.
“Is there something wrong?”
Jiang Yu nodded and picked up the bag of medicine on the table. “Take your medicine.”
Xu Qi looked at his serious expression, took the medicine, unwrapped it, and swallowed it.
“Let’s go take some photos,” he said to Jiang Yu.
Jiang Yu was a little confused by the sudden change of topic.
“You said before that you didn’t have any photos of me,” Xu Qi looked at him. “I don’t have any of you either.”
Jiang Yu blinked, then quickly agreed, “Okay!”
What would happen if one day the safety valve disappeared?
Then don’t let the safety valve disappear. Xu Qi thought to himself—he had to hold on to something.
T/N: ah I’m having a mental breakdown. My laptop freaking died while I’m updating this and then refused to work lmao. The screen stuck at 7% update and nothing I did worked, couldn’t even reboot in safe mode. And now I’m updating on phone because I left my ipad at my parents’ :))))
