Greedily gulping down the fresh air, that inexplicable headache from before finally eased.
Yet, Yudong still didn’t want to leave.
People need to change their mood from time to time—what if she kept being gloomy every day until she couldn’t take it anymore?
Thinking of this, Yudong forced herself to laugh twice, sounding almost like self-mockery.
No, actually… it would be better to say… she already couldn’t take it anymore, and so-called changing her mood
Was nothing more than an excuse to escape.
Staying there only carried the scent of death… No, not just the hospital room—at home, in the shop, even in her phone, everywhere…
Everything was disgusting, whether it was the smell of disinfectant, the sour odor of garbage fermenting in the shop, or even the dust gathering on the balcony at home after being neglected for too long.
Why did it all have to be so revolting…
Rather than saying she liked it here, it was more accurate to say Yudong had no idea where else she could go.
At the very least, here there was no disinfectant, no fermenting trash, no dust piling up on the balcony…
She knew.
She knew better than anyone.
It was broken, everything was broken, from her life to herself, all rotten, with nowhere left to go…
It wasn’t just nausea overwhelming her; a sharp pain twisted in Yudong’s chest, forcing her to gulp down greedy breaths of oxygen.
But, somehow, the sweet fragrance lingering in her nostrils from before suddenly twisted into the scent she hated most. The abrupt change left Yudong no time to react.
No, that’s not right, it shouldn’t be like this, there’s no way that revolting smell would be here! Where is it, that clean scent from before…
Where, where exactly is it
That scent of freedom.
That scent of happiness…
Her hands fumbled blindly through the darkness, desperate to grasp onto something.
A person, a tree, a pillar…
Anything… just let her have something to lean on…
She vaguely saw a petite figure by the Artificial Lake, clutching her chest and stumbling step by step toward the center of the lake.
How useless… In just a few months she’d already given up like this.
I’m sorry…
All these years, how did you manage to keep going… What kept you moving forward…
Mother
Can you… teach me? Right now, I can’t see anything at all…
Can’t… hold onto anything…
The lake water flooded over her shoes, the icy cold rushing in all at once—first like pinpricks, seeping into her socks, then soaking her whole shoe with dampness.
Almost numb to the pain of the cold, Yudong didn’t stop walking, pressing on toward the center of the lake.
Her heels pressed into the soft lakebed, each step sinking deeper.
It wasn’t far before the water swallowed her feet completely, and then her calves… The legs of her pants clung to her skin, cold as a layer of ice.
“Hey, you~”
A long, drawn-out call from the nearby street became the key that snapped Yudong back to reality.
What was I just doing
The voice yanked Yudong’s awareness back with brute force, and in the next moment, the icy chill surged up from her legs, crawling along her spine into her chest, freezing her so badly she shivered hard, her breath catching in her throat.
No.
I can’t, not yet…
Panicking, she turned and stumbled in the opposite direction.
Her already weak body had only grown weaker after all that, and Yudong had to wrench her feet from the mud with effort, crawling back toward the shore.
Her feet were soaked through, her pants marked by a clear dividing line—the upper part, dry and brown as usual; below, dark and gray-black with cold, water droplets pulled down by gravity dripping one by one to the ground.
How could I be so foolish…
Climbing onto the shore, Yudong struggled back to the Pavilion, staggering to grab the pillar’s edge and finding a clean spot on the Bench to sit.
Leaning her back against the cold surface, she shivered for a long while.
The chill lingered, the wet half of her pants like a thin sheet of ice plastered to her skin.
With every breeze, the cold seemed to seep straight into her bones.
She curled up, resting her chin on her knees, fingers gripping her pant leg.
There weren’t any streetlights by the lake like there were on the stone path, so Yudong had made her way back through memory and touch alone, inevitably picking up scrapes along the way—maybe from sharp pebbles, maybe from weeds mixed in the muddy ground.
Now, the girl’s fingers and palms were stained with damp earth.
Wounds that should have glistened red with fresh blood were smeared gray by dirt, the cracks in her flesh like slitted eyes staring right back at her.
Barely suppressing the pain from the scrapes on her knuckles, Yudong used what little strength she had left to wring out her pant legs and rolled them up.
It can’t end yet…
After all the hardship she suffered for me, how could I just leave so easily!
I have to keep going, don’t stop…
Just like she did.
One blow after another hadn’t crushed that pitiful woman. After the night she cried, she was forever changed.
Despair became her strength, her daughter’s laughter her final hope.
For her—for that sweet, adorable daughter—she’d give up even her own life, if only it meant her child could grow up carefree.
And reality, just as she’d wished, wasn’t rich, but it was happy enough.
Happy enough that Yudong still couldn’t accept the present situation…
Curled in the Pavilion’s shadow, Yudong hugged her shoulders tightly, imagining her Mother would stand up and hold her.
But when she opened her eyes, only the wet, cold wind carrying the smell of earth stabbed into her lungs.
Go back…
There’s nothing here, nothing at all…
After a while on the Bench, Yudong managed to recover a bit of strength. The chill crept from her pant legs up into every corner of her body.
In the middle of summer, her frail frame seemed as brittle as a dead leaf in the night.
Her legs hadn’t regained their strength, so she could only stiffly shuffle forward, like a zombie from a movie.
Luckily, the courtyard was nearly empty at night—she didn’t want anyone to see her in such a sorry state…
She shuffled toward the building. The soles of her sneakers, soaked with water, screeched across the steps. Head down, she watched the dirty, muddy footprints she left behind, each one an ugly, jagged stain on the once-pristine floor.
Yudong looked up at the Hall. Fortunately, aside from the Nurse on duty, there were hardly any people.
Her gaze swept over the few people in the Hall and finally landed on a boy standing at the center, studying the Hospital Structure Directory Map.
Her scattered vision snapped into focus, her features twisting in disbelief.
Like a thief loaded with loot running into a police officer, Yudong hurried to hide herself, instinctively holding her breath, staring fixedly at the boy.
“Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the Neurology Department’s inpatient ward?”
Where?
???
Why?
Why is he here?
How does he know these things?
Why does it have to be him!!!
Shivering inside, Yudong’s body—already trembling from the cold—shook even harder.
Seeing Yezhe hurrying inside, Yudong, unable to care about her own sorry state, followed quickly.
He went up…
Her finger hovered over the elevator’s upward arrow, staring wordlessly at the elevator’s red LED display, glaringly bright in the gloom.
“9”
“10”
“11”
“Ding”
The eleventh floor, huh.
A number all too familiar…
“You came… you actually came”
Why are you different from everyone else?
“Yezhe.”
Her teeth ground against each other, making a unique sound. Yudong’s dry throat trembled slightly as she forced the name out through clenched teeth.
She didn’t know if it was uncontainable excitement or a deep-seated rage that had the upper hand.
Yudong pressed the elevator button over and over, even after it had been pressed, the plastic frame not fully attached to the wall banging against the marble, making a noisy racket.
Just like her wildly thumping heart.
…
Some things can’t be locked away. The more you try, the wilder they grow; the harder you fight, the worse the backlash.
…
The elevator doors slid fully open, casting a tall shadow onto the floor, and then, from inside, a second shadow fell as well.
A few seconds later, the doors closed slowly with a soft “click”, plunging the half-illuminated faces into darkness again, the two shadows slipping into the gloom.
“Uh, hello…”
The surroundings grew dimmer. Besides the bright red indicator light, there was another light reflecting in Yezhe’s eyes.
It was a light that made Yezhe’s skin crawl—he didn’t dare to look at its source.
Her gaze locked onto him like a vise. Yezhe’s mind went blank, his body frozen in place.
When he’d come up, he’d imagined several possible scenarios for running into Yudong, even planned out what to say.
But…
He hadn’t expected to run into her so soon, so suddenly…
“What a coincidence… haha.”
The air froze for a moment. Yezhe’s awkward laughter did nothing to ease the situation.
“What are you doing here.”
“Nothing, just, I just happened to have a friend here, but I got lost, didn’t expect to run into you.”
The more Yezhe spoke, the weaker his voice became—even he knew his excuse was as flimsy as tissue paper.
“Heh.”
The cold laugh spread to the walls, echoed in the room, and drilled into both their ears.
Those lifeless eyes stared Yezhe down, making his back go cold.