He Su Ye went to work at the hospital. Just as he got off the bus, he saw Comrade Qiu Tian walking into the hospital gate, swaying his head with an MP3 player on. He was curious and walked over to pat Qiu Tian on the shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’re working here too.”
Qiu Tian looked innocent. “What kind of world is this? My arrival is so unwelcome. I’m deeply hurt!”
He Su Ye laughed. “Welcome. I just find it curious that no mentor can hold you down.”
Qiu Tian sighed. “What a world. Having a Ph.D. means nothing much. There are plenty in the hospital. I still have to follow the boss and do the dirty work. Besides, our cardiology department isn’t that strong. I’m just staying for now. Who knows, I might leave someday.”
He Su Ye remained silent, feeling somewhat the same. Qiu Tian continued, “Su Ye, I wanted to work under your dad, but it’s impossible. I’m not a military man.”
He hesitated, “Right, it seems impossible. That’s the military hospital, requires military status.”
Qiu Tian gave him a “you’re slow” expression, reaching out to pinch him. He sighed, “I don’t understand you. You didn’t even try for the military medical school. You even studied traditional Chinese medicine. With your dad being a hospital director and a major general, a nationally renowned cardiovascular expert, what a waste!”
He Su Ye sighed helplessly. “You can’t force these things. I prefer traditional Chinese medicine.”
Today was Professor Gu’s clinic day. The Chinese medicine building was packed with people. He Su Ye and another female doctoral student sat aside, observing patients, taking notes, and calling out numbers. Professor Gu was known for being strict. The female doctoral student hesitated several times while writing prescriptions and was glared at repeatedly.
After a long wait, a call came to summon the professor away. The doctoral student sighed, “Every time the boss has a clinic, it feels like I lose a month of my life.”
A nurse called out, “Dr. He, Professor Gu wants you in the internal medicine building, gastroenterology.”
The female doctoral student finally noticed his name tag — “Attending Physician.” She sighed inwardly, realizing why the boss valued him so much. She was just a physician. By this standard, she should call him senior master.
It was an unusually busy day. He started with a clinic in the Chinese medicine building, then dealt with a patient in gastroenterology, and was called to hematology afterward. Finally, the boss told him about a new drug and asked if he’d like to help.
He Su Ye smiled wryly, thinking how tough this year-end was.
The application form from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine sat under his desk, untouched for a long time. Professor Andy had expressed several times that he didn’t want to lose an excellent talent in integrated Chinese and Western medicine and was willing to wait as long as needed.
The momentum of studying traditional Chinese medicine in the country was far behind that of the United States across the ocean, which he found rather sad.
It seemed like everyone was busy at year-end. Li Jie was dizzy from exams and kept coming to He Su Ye for help. Fang Ke Xin seemed to have disappeared for a long time; heard the imaging department was also very busy. Grandma called, saying He Su Ye’s father went to Japan and might not come home for Chinese New Year.
He Su Ye had indeed been feeling restless lately and bought some bitter herb tea to drink.
Bitter herb tea possesses properties such as bitterness, mild coldness, thirst-quenching, vision improvement, wind and heat dispelling, head-clearing, detoxification, and bleeding cessation. It treats conditions like wind-heat headaches and red, swollen eyes, while also lowering blood pressure, blood lipids, aiding weight loss, and possessing anti-cancer and anti-aging properties.
He favored the bitterness of bitter herb tea, drinking it as plain water.
The second heavy snowfall of the year came, even larger and fiercer than the first. The meteorological department issued a series of warnings in succession. The city fell eerily silent, isolated as highways, railways, and airports suffered damage from the disaster.
He Su Ye felt similarly isolated. Apart from Qiu Tian and Li Jie, no one talked to him.
Even Shen Xi Fan seemed to have disappeared. This sometimes noisy, sometimes quiet girl vanished as if evaporated snowflakes, leaving no trace, making her untraceable.
He Su Ye wondered if it would be too abrupt to send her a message and if it was even necessary.
This winter was really cold; the warmth of a cup of tea was far from enough.
He had been studying pharmacology these days, busy with the boss’s new drug formulations, including studying the usage of a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry system worth 1.5 million and a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry system worth 650,000.
Books, manuals, papers, and reports cluttered his desk in a chaotic pile. He Su Ye’s things had never been so messy, but he didn’t bother to tidy up, letting it develop as it pleased.
Stretching his arm, he retrieved the Chinese Pharmacopoeia from the depths of the cluttered desk. Unexpectedly, he overturned all the books. Among them, he found a blue piece of paper, tucked among Li Jie’s documents.
It was from Shen Xi Fan, her handwriting elegant and somewhat graceful.
Large clouds swiftly traverse the city sky. Suddenly, a pigeon glides by, its silhouette fragmented by adjacent balcony wires, evoking poignant notes of loss.
I feel like I’ve seen this scene before. We walked hand in hand on the road after the rain. I asked you what happiness was, and you said happiness is spending a lifetime with the person you love, quarreling and bickering.”
“I’ve grown accustomed to it—holding an umbrella alone, walking alone, smiling alone, and being drenched in the rain alone.” So on this rainy afternoon, I wandered from the east end to the west end of the flower market alone, and then from the west end back to the east end. Eventually, I got hungry, so I walked into that Hong Kong-style tea restaurant alone and ordered the seafood noodles you used to love. Little by little, it felt like I was eating away memories, devouring the food in front of me.
As the geese disperse, the fading sun disappears into the gloom, casting a somber atmosphere over the landscape. On days without me, are you doing well?”
A sour taste surged in his heart. He Su Ye sighed softly, remembering Shen Xi Fan’s red eyes last time and her strange question about “lost and regained love”. He should have realized something was wrong.
Shen Xi Fan must have deeply loved someone, the person mentioned in this letter, giving everything, like a moth to a flame, burning fiercely, turning into ashes. And now, has that person returned to find her?
Cherish and protect this good girl, innocent and lovely, sometimes mischievous but always diligent, instead of hurting, abandoning, and then begging for forgiveness.
Her recent disappearance out of nowhere, was it because she encountered difficulties, or because there were things she couldn’t understand? He felt worried, although — it felt somewhat odd.
In the end, he messaged her, but it was like dropping a stone into the ocean. He waited all night, but there was no reply. Calling her yielded only a cold response, “Sorry, the number you dialed is powered off.”
He picked up the teacup, feeling the faint bitterness on his tongue for the first time. Mischievously, he wondered if he should add a little sugar.
It wasn’t Shen Xi Fan’s fault. At her cousin’s wedding banquet that night, her cousin’s four-year-old son cried and demanded to go home. She held the child and let him fuss at the stairwell, taking out her phone, and playing music to amuse him. Then when she turned around, the child got restless, holding the phone unsteadily. The phone slipped from the second floor and fell onto the marble floor below, shattering into pieces.
She felt this year-end was truly sad, lonely, and boring, and it even cost her money.
But she didn’t know someone was thinking about her, worrying about her all night.
The next day at work, Shen Xi Fan felt handicapped without her phone and decided to buy one after work to solve the communication problem.
Coincidentally, a package arrived from the courier company. Curious, she signed for it and opened it, only to be genuinely startled. It was from Chow Sang Sang, and inside was a diamond necklace. She vaguely remembered it was the “Platinum Heart Shadow” model.
Her eyes widened in shock. The scattered diamonds sparkled under the orange light, shimmering like a dream. No wonder women loved diamonds and such things; it wasn’t just vanity but also a great satisfaction of their aesthetic senses.
She was no exception, but this gift was too precious. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it, but she couldn’t afford it.
She picked it up and read it carefully, then carefully packed the necklace and placed the box at the bottom of her bag. Deciding to find him at the coffee shop, she planned to return the gift and say, “Let me think about it.”
This was the best way, right? For example, hurt couldn’t be simply erased, and feelings couldn’t just disappear without a trace. She understood these truths, but she didn’t want any regrets in her life.
Think it through, then decide how to proceed. Time would prove everything.
He Su Ye stayed in the lab very late. The graduate student he went with was impatient and accidentally miscalculated the dosage of the drug, so they had to start over again. The experiment that could have ended at five was dragged on until past seven.
He planned to grab something from a roadside stall to eat but then saw Shen Xi Fan at the ramen shop, holding chopsticks and tissues, slurping spicy hotpot, looking quite entertained.
Suddenly, he felt a sense of amusement at his unrequited concern and at the carefree way this little girl acted. Shen Xi Fan was happily picking at lettuce, the soup bowl filled with bright red chili oil, panting as she ate, and then she saw He Su Ye holding a bowl, gesturing if he could sit across from her. She was curious if that guy could eat this kind of food too.
“He’s indeed a hidden type,” she thought, “opting for clear broth, so bland. The essence of hotpot lies in its spiciness! She disdainfully glanced at him, pursing her lips.
He Su Ye’s expression turned cold. “I’ve got a fever and can’t handle spicy food. Don’t look at me like that; I’m irritated lately!”
Indeed, even a mild-mannered traditional Chinese doctor could have emotions. But Shen Xi Fan was even more irritated. “You’re irritated? I’m even more irritated! Not only did I break my phone…”
He Su Ye was taken aback. Muttering, “Broke your phone? Oh, I see…”
Choking on her food, Shen Xi Fan paused, then sighed. “Breaking my phone was bad enough, but then my ex-boyfriend showed up out of the blue, giving me gifts for no reason. Do you think I’m lucky? Far from it! I returned everything. I’m so frustrated!”
He Su Ye found her words hard to swallow. His thoughts swirled. So, the person mentioned in the letter was indeed her ex-boyfriend. Her pitiful appearance that day was also because of him. And now, every word out of her mouth was about him. Was he trying to win her back? Fortunately, she remained firm and stood her ground.
For the first time in over twenty years, He Su Ye found himself despising someone, specifically Shen Xi Fan’s ex-boyfriend.
Wait, what was wrong with him? Why was he thinking about irrelevant things?
The meal tasted bland to He Su Ye, but Shen Xi Fan finished hers with a cheerful smile. She even reached over with her chopsticks to pick at the gluten in his bowl, showing no signs of concern about her ex-boyfriend.
Watching Shen Xi Fan finish her meal, He Su Ye sighed. “I’m feeling so frustrated lately, with my heart burning. Despite my current appearance, seeming so happy, I’m quite troubled. Shen Xi Fan, what should I do?”
He felt like she should go to the emergency room, get a sedative injection, and then transfer to the neurology department. She was stumbling over her words, asking him what to do but unable to provide any reasons.
“Bitterdew tea, to cool down,” he replied. To provide more evidence, he added, “I’ve been drinking it lately too.”
Shen Xi Fan exclaimed, “He Su Ye, Bitterdew tea? Are you trying to lose weight?”
Exasperated, He Su Ye shook his head. Lotus leaves not only aid in weight loss but also possess properties to dispel heat, invigorate yang, and cool and stop bleeding.
As soon as he finished speaking, Shen Xi Fan burst into laughter. “Su Ye, Lotus leaves… You have all the effects covered!”
On the way home, both of them were lost in thought, they remained silent. Finally, Shen Xi Fan couldn’t hold back any longer. “He Su Ye, I feel like forgetting isn’t so easy. For example, my ex-boyfriend. Even though reason tells me it’s impossible, I can’t help but think about it involuntarily. It’s an indescribable feeling. Perhaps I loved too deeply before and was hurt too badly, so I can’t forget even if I want to.”
“How long were you together with him? I mean, your ex-boyfriend?”
“Two years, to be precise, 764 days…”
“Oh… Is your phone fixed?”
“I just bought a new one. So frustrating. By the way, did you send me a message?”
“YeAh nothing important. Just wondering what you were up to.”
“Sorry…”
He Su Ye returned home and brewed a cup of Bitterdew tea. Taking up the letter again, under the soft glow of the lamp, the blue paper exuded a faint sadness. Her words, her heartache, he could feel it.
Upon reading it again, it was more than just a sour feeling. He felt a twinge of pain for her. It turned out that Shen Xi Fan still carried scars from her youth, seemingly healed but deep into her marrow. A single misstep could bring about earth-shattering pain. She had never had another boyfriend after that, afraid to mention love again, afraid to fall in love again, and then suffer once more. Such a sensitive girl, fragile enough to trigger protective instincts.
As he sipped the tea, He Su Ye couldn’t help but furrow his brows. Bitter, truly bitter. There was a place in his heart that ached faintly, soft and long, tightening around his heart.
Was he falling for her? He found himself worrying about her, missing her every few days, getting anxious for her, minding her ex-boyfriend, inexplicably jealous. Everything was proof of his affection for her.
Joy and helplessness seized him simultaneously. Shen Xi Fan seemed to have a bottomless void in her heart, and he didn’t know what to fill it with. He couldn’t force her out of it, but how could he make this girl, who made him ache and feel responsible, radiate sunshine and happiness?
Just making her feel happy was enough for him. He was willing to stand by her side, quietly waiting.