“If Xie Huai were Shanqi’s boyfriend, forget eighty thousand, I would give eight hundred thousand. Even if he were just Shanqi’s classmate who encountered a family emergency, I wouldn’t hesitate to help. But in what capacity are you asking me for money?”

“Xie Huai rejected Shanqi, and you rejected me. From any perspective, you have no standing to make this request.”

Xia Xia remained silent, her breathing so soft it was barely audible.

Zhao Jinsong spoke coldly: “I’ll give you time to think it over, but my patience is limited, and I assume the hospital’s patience is equally limited.”

“I admire young people’s courage to rush headlong like moths to a flame. However, Xia Xia, think carefully – do you have the ability to take responsibility for your life and future right now? If you do, or if Xie Huai can truly give you a future as you claim, why are you coming to me to borrow money?”

Xia Xia hung up the phone.

She lowered her eyelids, concealing all trace of her presence, sitting quietly in a corner at the end of the hallway.

The energy-saving light above flickered dimly. She made no sound, and passersby could hardly notice her presence.

The nurse’s soft-soled shoes thumped up the stairs. After making rounds in the ward and coming out to look around, she finally found Xia Xia and came over to remind her: “It’s already dark, and we’re about to end our shift. Come downstairs with me now to make the payment.”

Xia Xia stood up, supporting herself against the tiled wall. She hadn’t eaten all day, and due to low blood sugar, her vision darkened. Her knees buckled, her legs wobbled, and her body pitched forward.

The nurse caught her: “Hey, what’s wrong—”

Xia Xia covered her forehead, waiting for the dizzy spell to pass before daring to move slowly.

The nurse: “Go back to the room first, eat something, and rest. I know this situation is very hard on you too.”

Her expression was sympathetic, but after thinking for a moment, she still spoke up: “You must complete the paperwork before eight o’clock, otherwise after eight they’ll transfer the patient to a regular ward. Every minute in intensive care costs money, and the hospital isn’t a charity…”

Xia Xia softly repeated what must have been her umpteenth time today: “I understand, I will pay.”

She returned to the ward where all the patients were already asleep. The family members accompanying patients were lying on folding beds, watching shows on their phones, their screens creating tiny points of light in the darkness.

Xie Huai remained in the same reclined position as when she had left, showing no signs of waking.

Xia Xia sat by the bed, gently resting her head on Xie Huai’s arm.

She dared not put her full weight on him, only brushing her temple’s hair against his arm that had finally gained some warmth.

Unconscious, Xie Huai’s face held a child-like purity, without his usual boldness or the handsome yet childish expression he wore when playing with her. Xia Xia had never seen him so quiet and acquiescent, completely different from the Xie Huai in her memories.

For the first time, Xia Xia realized how fragile human life was, like a weightless piece of thin paper.

Even if held between fingertips or kept close to one’s heart, it could still become damp or creased from countless unexpected accidents in this world.

But accidents weren’t the scariest thing.

Xia Xia’s eyes were wide in the darkness as she thought helplessly that scarier than accidents was the scrambling poverty that accompanied them.

The clicking of high heels sounded outside, and the ward door creaked open.

Chen Manxi stood in the doorway with her handbag. Xia Xia straightened up from the bed and tucked in Xie Huai’s blanket.

She didn’t ask how Chen Manxi knew about this place or why she had come; she just looked at her.

Chen Manxi spoke first: “I heard Xie Huai was hospitalized.”

“Don’t look at me like that. My father has friends in the police station; I know about everything that’s happened recently.”

“Of course, you know.” Xia Xia’s voice was faint. “You not only know about this, but you also know that Xie Huai’s girlfriend went home with him for New Year’s and stayed at his house.”

Chen Manxi’s expression changed upon hearing this. Xia Xia said, “I know you revealed my identity to protect yourself, but right now I’m very emotional and won’t think rationally.”

“You’d better leave before I lose my temper. If you stay one more second, I can’t guarantee what I might do.”

Chen Manxi: “…I just came to see Xie Huai.”

“Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” Xia Xia raised an eyebrow and asked, “Why do you need to come see him?”

Her sharp edges and corners pricked Chen Manxi with displeasure.

Chen Manxi pulled out a sealed red envelope from her handbag and placed it on the bedside table: “This is a small token from me.”

Xia Xia glanced at it – so thin it couldn’t be more than a thousand yuan.

She tiredly looked away: “Take it back.”

Chen Manxi: “I heard from the nurse that you haven’t paid Auntie’s hospital fees yet. Don’t be so proud.”

Xia Xia wasn’t being proud. She smiled and asked, “The hospital fee is eighty thousand. Can you afford that?”

The total cost of Chen Manxi’s designer clothes probably exceeded eighty thousand. She thought for a moment, then hesitated: “…If Xie Huai needed the money, I could try to figure something out.”

The implication was clear – since it was Qiao Ru who needed the money, she wouldn’t try.

Xia Xia resealed the red envelope, stuffed it back into Chen Manxi’s handbag, and then pushed her out of the ward.

She went to find the nurse on duty, asking her not to let Chen Manxi enter Xie Huai’s room to disturb him, then put on her coat and went down to the lobby alone.

The nurse who had called her earlier to make payment was organizing things at the payment window. With only half an hour left until the end of her shift, Xia Xia walked over and knocked on the window: “Sister.”

The girl’s eyes were swollen red from crying, her lips pale and thin, a pitiful sight to anyone who saw her.

Sniffling, she asked softly: “Could I pay the surgery fee and today’s hospital fees first? Please don’t transfer Auntie to a regular ward. I’ll figure out tomorrow’s money somehow, and if I can’t pay on time, then you can change the ward…”

The nurse looked troubled: “Hospital fees must be paid in full at once. How can we do it your way?”

“Please.” Xia Xia said, “I don’t have enough money.”

The lobby was almost empty as closing time approached. The nurse looked at her for a long while, feeling sympathetic.

She asked: “How much money do you have?”

Xia Xia’s savings plus what Zhu Ziyu had lent her totaled twenty thousand yuan.

The nurse said: “ICU costs ten thousand a day, plus the surgery fee. Even if I only charged you for one day’s stay, your money wouldn’t be enough.”

Xia Xia’s head was buzzing.

The nurse looked at her and asked: “What’s your blood type?”

“Type B.”

“How’s your health? Have you had your period recently?”

Xia Xia looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. The nurse explained: “I might be able to help you with the remaining money. The hospital currently has a volunteer blood donation program that urgently needs Type B blood. If you pass the physical examination, you can get four thousand yuan in compensation for 400cc.”

Xia Xia asked: “Is this selling blood?”

“No, the state doesn’t allow blood selling.” The nurse explained the program to her and asked, “Have you decided? The physical examination department doctors have already left, but I can find a doctor I know to help examine you.”

Xia Xia nodded: “I can do it.”

The nurse routinely asked: “Have you eaten today?”

“No.”

“You can’t donate blood during menstruation due to blood loss. When was your last period?”

Xia Xia paused, then said: “Half a month ago.”

“Come with me.”

Xia Xia followed her upstairs, finally seeing a glimmer of hope through the heavy despair.

She even forgot about her cramping, aching abdomen from menstrual pain, taking urgent steps, and wanting to get upstairs quickly and complete the examination.

She had just finished the ECG when the examining doctor frowned at her: “No need to do the rest.”

Xia Xia froze. The doctor asked: “You have heart problems; you definitely won’t pass the examination. Have you been diagnosed before?”

The last time she heard this was during military training in her freshman year. Back then, Xia Xia hadn’t been very passionate about life and hadn’t gone to a proper hospital for a follow-up examination.

She would have forgotten about it if the doctor hadn’t mentioned it. All these years she hadn’t felt different from others, except for occasional severe breathlessness after intense exercise and intermittent rapid heartbeat and chest tightness, but once she got through those few minutes, her body didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable.

She asked: “Could you have made a mistake? There’s nothing wrong with my body.”

The doctor pointed at the ECG to show her: “Such obvious multi-lead ST-T changes, and you say there’s nothing wrong? I’m not a cardiologist; come back tomorrow for another examination to determine the specific condition, but this physical examination has high health requirements – you definitely won’t pass.”

Xia Xia: “I’ll take responsibility if anything goes wrong, don’t worry about it, just draw the blood.”

“Don’t be foolish,” the doctor scolded her. “What do you mean you’ll take responsibility? If something happens to you, our hospital will be held responsible too.”

The nurse took Xia Xia’s arm: “Think of other options. You must have some relatives or friends, what about your parents?”

Xia Xia instantly fell from hope back into the dusty, lightless despair, almost crying, but she didn’t cry in the department. She took her ECG and left.

The winter air was cold, the hospital doors tightly closed, and the lobby air greasy and stuffy. Xia Xia could barely breathe.

She walked out to the garden below. The night air was still good, and some patients were carefully walking in front of the building, supported by their family members.

A “No Noise” sign stood in the flower bed. Xia Xia walked out of the hospital gates.

The street outside was busy with traffic, bright streetlights lined the wide, straight road on both sides, and the dazzling light entered her eyes, mixing with the tears accumulated in her sockets. The world instantly became blurry, as if stained by light halos, and she could only see shimmering, wet orange.

Xia Xia crouched by the roadside, her fingers crumpling the ECG paper.

The emotions she had suppressed all day could no longer be controlled. Holding onto a bare tree trunk that had lost all its leaves, she sobbed uncontrollably.

—”Think of other options. You must have some relatives or friends, what about your parents?”

The nurse’s words echoed thunderously in her ears. Xia Xia cried until her head hurt, pressing her temples to stop the pain.

She did have family, but to Wei Jinhai, even if it were Xia Xia lying in the ICU needing money to sustain life, he wouldn’t give a single cent.

Such family members made one feel more helpless than having none at all.

Xia Xia cried devastatingly, thought devastatingly.

—What if it were someone else? If Xie Huai’s girlfriend wasn’t her, but some other girl? Like Zhao Shanqi, like Chen Manxi, would they be as useless and helpless as she was?

This thought was denied as soon as it emerged. How could that be possible? Even a girl from the most ordinary family could find ways to gather money. No one else would cry their hearts out on a busy street over a few tens of thousands like her.

Only herself.

Xia Xia thought uncontrollably: Xie Huai was unconscious, and Qiao Ru needed money to save her life. Only she could do nothing, could do nothing right.

Xia Xia couldn’t remember how long she cried; her throat hurt as if it had been scraped by a knife.

Passing pedestrians stopped curiously, some even taking out their phones to take photos – a beautiful girl crying so heartbrokenly for unknown reasons aroused people’s desire to know more.

Xia Xia took out her phone and found Zhao Jinsong’s number in her recent calls.

Her fingers trembled, her tear-stained face was as white as snow, her lips bearing bleeding tooth marks from her biting.

She cried chokingly but still couldn’t decide to press that number.

At one moment, a terrifying thought arose in her heart.

The person lying in the ICU now was Qiao Ru, but what if it were Xie Huai?

If it were Xie Huai, she probably wouldn’t even have a choice.

At that moment, an indescribable anger and disgust suddenly arose from the bottom of Xia Xia’s heart.

—Disgust at her incompetence, poverty, and worthlessness.

Long afterward, when Xia Xia recalled this day and the choices she made due to various states of mind on this day, she never felt that her decision then was wrong.

People in passionate love are full of courage and perseverance. They take it for granted that all difficulties in this world can be resolved with love, and they think that as long as they are with their loved ones, they need not fear anything. When love gradually wears away, the conflicts that were previously concealed begin to show their edges—if they explode at that time, they will be unstoppable.

Things that need to be resolved will be resolved sooner or later.

…

“…Xia Xia?”

Xia Xia heard a voice and looked up to see Ping Jiapeng.

He was wearing a proper coat, with a pretty girl following behind him.

Ping Jiapeng pulled her up, his tone incredulous: “I thought I saw you from across the street but wasn’t sure, but it is you. What’s wrong? Who bullied you?”

Xia Xia had no time to ask why he was in Zhangshi. She grabbed his sleeve like clutching at a lifeline.

As she moved, her phone suddenly fell to the ground, the screen still lit on Zhao Jinsong’s number page.

Through her heavy crying, Xia Xia’s words were almost indistinguishable. Ping Jiapeng listened carefully twice before understanding what she meant.

She asked: “Those shoes you showed me on the playground that year, do you still want them?”

The girl behind Ping Jiapeng stepped forward. She didn’t speak, just thoughtfully looked at Xia Xia’s hand holding Ping Jiapeng’s clothes.

“Those shoes are already discontinued.” Ping Jiapeng took a while to remember which shoes she was talking about.

“I have them,” Xia Xia wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “I can sell them to you, no, pawn them to you, can you lend me some money?”

Ping Jiapeng was quiet for a moment, then asked her: “How much do you need?”