After eating the egg, Lu Yufei made a fuss about not wanting to stay in the hospital any longer. Fu Qing picked up the medicine from the pharmacy, and the two walked out of the hospital.
As soon as they pushed open the front doors, the outside heat wave rushed right at them.
Just two steps out, Lu Yufei’s wisps of hair at her temples were already soaked with sweat, plastering limply against her skin.
Fu Qing glanced at her, pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped across the screen with his fingertips, and said in a very flat tone, “I’ll hail a cab for you.”
Lu Yufei peeked at his phone screen. Goodness gracious! Taking a cab from the hospital to where they lived actually cost forty-two yuan! Forty-two yuan! How many steamed buns could that buy?!
“No, no, no! Don’t book it!” She grabbed Fu Qing’s phone, her face full of heartbreak. “What cab? There’s no need, really no need!”
Fu Qing raised his eyes to look at her, frowned, and said in a cold voice, “Not taking a cab? How do you plan to get back? I can’t exactly go summon a Bentley to pick you up right now.”
Lu Yufei’s mouth twitched. The one who used to ride in Bentleys wasn’t me. She didn’t dare say those words out loud, though, and instead asked obediently, “Then how do you plan on getting back?”
Fu Qing didn’t speak. He lifted his chin and flicked his gaze toward the side. Following his line of sight, Lu Yufei caught sight of it right away: parked in the electric vehicle shed beside the hospital, a black e-bike with a delivery box strapped to the back stood out quite clearly.
She turned to look at him, her eyes lighting up, her tone sounding utterly reasonable: “Can’t you give me a ride?”
Fu Qing was clearly taken aback, a hint of scrutiny in his gaze. In his impression, Lu Yufei wouldn’t even walk half a step outside without taking a taxi, and whenever she went shopping, she couldn’t wait to have the driver wait right at the mall entrance. When was she ever not utterly spoiled?
He narrowed his eyes slightly, his mouth twitching as the words at the tip of his tongue were swallowed back down. “Are you sure?”
Lu Yufei had no idea what was going through his head; she just thought this grown man was being so dawdling. She raised a hand to shade her forehead from the sun, squinted at him, and urged anxiously, “Sure, sure. Let’s go, it’s roasting out here.”
With that, she headed toward the parking shed herself. After taking two steps, she looked back and saw him still standing in the same spot, then beckoned to him. “Hurry up!”
Watching her eyes squinting against the blazing sun and her pale little face, Fu Qing tucked his phone back into his pocket and strode over to follow.
When they reached the e-bike, Fu Qing swung his long leg over to sit first and grabbed the handlebars. Following closely behind, Lu Yufei sat right down on the back without a second thought. Just as Fu Qing was about to twist the throttle, the bike body gave a sharp bounce upward—the back seat suddenly growing light.
His grip on the handlebars slowly tightened, his knuckles turning white. As expected. He really was a fool— Lu Yufei had put on a cute act for a moment and said a few sweet words, and he had almost believed her.
Without turning his head, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he pressed out a low, deep voice: “If you don’t want to ride, just say so…”
There was a moment of silence from behind. Then Lu Yufei’s voice exploded from the back of the bike: “This seat has been baking in the sun all morning! It’s hot enough to fry an egg! Don’t you feel how hot it is? Is your butt made of iron?!”
Fu Qing froze, looking down at the spot where he was sitting. The sunshade over the parking shelter only covered the front section of the bike, and the front half where he sat happened to be blocked by the shade, keeping it out of the sun. “…My side isn’t hot.” “You’re not hot, but I am!” Lu Yufei clutched her backside and yelled.
Without another word, Fu Qing swung his long leg off the bike and turned to walk into the convenience store right next to the hospital entrance.
Not long after, he came out holding a bottle of iced water. Walking back to the e-bike, he unscrewed the cap, slowly poured the ice water in a stream over the back half of the seat, and then used the bottle to roll back and forth across the cushion several times. Once finished, he pulled a grayish-blue cloth out of his pocket, wiped the water stains off the seat in a few quick motions, and casually slotted the remaining half-bottle of ice water into the front console basket.
After doing all this, he finally raised his eyes to look at Lu Yufei and said expressionlessly, “There. It’s not hot anymore.”
Lu Yufei pressed her lips together and swung her leg back over to sit behind him. The delivery box at the back of the bike happened to press right against her back. She leaned back against it and patted his shoulder. “Alright, let’s go.”
The e-bike slowly moved forward, and a wave of hot wind blew toward them. Fu Qing’s back was straight as a board, and his T-shirt billowed slightly in the wind, carrying a faint scent of soap.
After about a half-hour ride, the e-bike turned into an old neighborhood and finally stopped at the foot of a six-story self-built residential building. The paint on the walls was peeling and mottled, plastered all over with lock-picking advertisements. There was no elevator, and shoe cabinets and old cardboard boxes belonging to goodness-knows-who were piled up in the stairwell.
Fu Qing locked the bike, carrying her bag and the bag of medicine as he walked in front. Following behind her, Lu Yufei felt like she could still manage when she reached the third floor, but by the fourth floor, she couldn’t take it anymore. Her legs began to turn to jelly, her breathing grew rapid and heavy, and she had to grip the stair railing and pant heavily several times.
She clenched her teeth, lifted her foot to try and take another step up, and suddenly felt a dull, sinking ache in her lower abdomen. Lu Yufei didn’t dare move at all, even unconsciously easing her breathing. With one hand tightly pressing against her lower abdomen, she spoke in a trembling voice, “Fu Qing…”
Fu Qing turned around, taking three steps in two, and reached her side with barely contained tension in his eyes. “What’s wrong? Is your stomach hurting?”
Lu Yufei bit her lower lip and nodded, the wisps of hair across her forehead completely soaked with sweat, her eyes rimmed with red. “I don’t know… I feel a bit of pain in my stomach.”
Without asking any further questions, Fu Qing shifted the bag of medicine and her bag into the same hand, bent down, hooked one arm under the bends of her knees and supported her lower back with the other, and with a slight lift, hoisted her straight up horizontally. “Put your arms around my neck and hold on tight.”
Almost instinctively, Lu Yufei raised her arms to hook them around his neck, burying her entire body into his arms. She could feel that he intentionally slowed his pace as he climbed the stairs, making sure every step was planted firmly before taking the next.
Fu Qing carried her all the way up to the sixth floor, unable to spare a hand to fish out the keys. He looked down at the person in his arms. “I’ll put your bag on the floor. Hold onto me tight while I get the keys.” “Put me down,” Lu Yufei blushed slightly. “Thank you, I feel a lot better.” “Does it still hurt?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Fu Qing slowly bent down and set her down. Once she was standing steadily, he freed up his other hand to feel for the keys in his pocket. The key slid into the keyhole, and with a click, the door opened.
To the right upon entering was a five-foot double bed against the wall, its foot bumping right up against a somewhat chipped wood-grain wardrobe. In the left corner were stacked three columns of acrylic storage boxes, next to a folding dining table and a mini-fridge, with two blue plastic stools tucked underneath the table.
Looking around this unfamiliar room, Lu Yufei hesitated for a moment before pulling out one of the plastic stools from under the dining table and sitting down.
Fu Qing glanced at her, placed her bag and the medicine on the table, and turned to pull open the fridge door. The inside of the fridge was completely empty save for half a bowl of leftover stir-fry covered with plastic wrap. He bent down to look at it, turned his head to ask her, “There’s nothing much to eat. It’s the stir-fried eggs from yesterday. Do you want them?”
Even though she had eaten three steamed buns, an egg, and a cup of soy milk in the hospital that morning, Lu Yufei was still a little hungry. She pressed her lips together and asked, “…What kind of eggs?”
Fu Qing took the bowl out, peeled back the plastic wrap, and showed it to her. Green bell pepper and scrambled eggs—the eggs were a bit broken up, and the peppers were chopped into uneven sizes. The presentation was average, but at least it was a proper dish.
“Fine,” Lu Yufei nodded.
Without another word, Fu Qing took the bowl out to the balcony. Lu Yufei heard the induction cooker beep twice, followed by the sound of a spatula scraping against the bottom of the pan coming from the balcony.
Fu Qing brought the reheated food over to the folding table, placed a pair of chopsticks beside it, and said, “I still have to go to work this afternoon. Eat properly at home by yourself, and stop messing around with the baby.”
Before Lu Yufei could even say a word, he had already pulled the door shut behind him as he left. The door clicked shut. Footsteps hurried down the staircase, growing fainter and fainter, leaving the room with only the humming drone of the refrigerator.
Looking up at this unfamiliar room while the food on the table was still steaming, tears spilled over without any warning. Fu Qing only cared about the baby; once the baby was born, where would she go?
Just as she was crying with grievance, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Sniffling, she pulled it out, wondering who on earth would still send her a message to care about her. It was a credit card repayment text from the bank:
[The minimum repayment for your credit card ending in xxxx this period is 3,286.44 yuan. The final payment date is July 10th. Please repay on time to avoid affecting your credit score.]
Immediately following that were two identical repayment texts. The minimum payments for all three cards added up to nearly ten thousand yuan, but her entire net worth consisted of just over two hundred yuan on WeChat and a little over six hundred yuan in her savings account—not even enough to cover the minimum payment on a single card.
Looking at the screen, Lu Yufei’s hands were shaking, and her tears fell even harder.
Before she could even catch her breath, WeChat popped up with several messages—sent by Lin Weiwei:
[Feifei, what happened to you yesterday? You ran off without a single word and I was looking everywhere for you.] [I specially set up that gathering just for you, specifically calling a few rich kid friends to try and help you make some connections, and you—good grief—you just slipped away.] [Oh right, the bar tab and table minimum came to three thousand eight last night. Go ahead and settle the bill when you get a chance, haha.]
Staring at Lin Weiwei’s heavily plastic-surgery-enhanced selfie avatar, Lu Yufei suddenly felt like the ball of congestion in her chest had found an exit. It was Lin Weiwei who had instigated drugging and scheming against Fu Qing! It was Lin Weiwei who had led the original owner to hang out in bars, spend money recklessly, and run up debts! And it was still Lin Weiwei who had taken the original owner to an illegal underground clinic for an abortion!
The original owner was stupid, but Lin Weiwei was vicious!
With fierce taps of her fingertip on the screen, Lu Yufei first deleted Lin Weiwei’s chat window, then went to her contact profile and unhesitatingly blocked and deleted her—a smooth and seamless sequence of actions.
To hell with your three thousand eight!
Setting her phone aside, she casually pulled a couple of tissues from the table to wipe her tears. The moment the tissue touched her cheek, the rough texture scratched painfully against her skin.
Looking down, she saw that the packaging of the tissue box on the table was a garish, multicolored mess—obviously the cheapest off-brand kind from a neighborhood sundry store shelf, completely devoid of any brand logo.
Lu Yufei was stunned, and her tears threatened to fall again.
Fu Qing, you’re supposed to be the male lead. Even I don’t use off-brand tissues like this—how come you’re the one using them?!