Dr. Jiang
“Ugh—cough, cough…”
Water sizzled and hissed from the tap, interspersed with a woman’s uncomfortable, dry retching. The sour taste irritated her throat with a burning sensation no less intense than getting fire-cupping done right inside her windpipe.
Jiang Feiwan hunched over the edge of the toilet. The bathroom lights weren’t on, and the dimness obscured her wretched appearance at that moment. The dinner from tonight had long since been vomited up completely, yet she still couldn’t stop the urge to retch, wishing she could flip her stomach inside out and wash it clean.
She fumbled as she crawled back up. Her stomach felt empty and twisted with pain, and her hands trembled uncontrollably as she pressed them against the edge of the sink. Jiang Feiwan glanced down at them out of sheer habit, then unconcernedly cupped a handful of water to wash away the disheveled mess on her face.
The spot where she was hit by the child riding the bicycle earlier that evening throbbed with a dull ache. It wasn’t just her arm; the handlebar, twisted in a rush when she couldn’t dodge in time, had slammed fiercely into her lower abdomen and hip bone. She was already thin, and that impact had quickly raised a stark, bruised patch on her hip.
Jiang Feiwan furrowed her brows, raising a hand to press firmly against the dull-throbbing spot. The pain made her whole body shudder, and as she added more force with her hand, a muffled groan inevitably leaked through her tightly clenched teeth, as if this silent act of self-harm was only then nearing its end.
Then came the abruptly popping phone ringtone.
The expression on Jiang Feiwan’s face softened a bit, mustering up a trace of her usual gentleness. She walked out of the bathroom, grabbed her phone from the bedside table, and seeing the name of the caller, her gaze relaxed as she answered the call: “Yunjun? Why are you calling me at this hour?”
“What’s wrong, can’t I call you at night?” There was quite a bit of static on the other end of the line. After a moment, it gradually quieted down, and Chi Yunjun continued: “I’ve been transferred back from Nangang to the Qingzhou headquarters. How about that! Isn’t it a surprise!”
“Transferred back?!” Jiang Feiwan was stunned in surprise, happy for her: “Congratulations! You’re finally back in Qingzhou again!”
She and Chi Yunjun had met near the end of their university days. Because of their different majors, she initially thought this friendship wouldn’t last very long, but who would have expected that after leaving university, the two of them would cross paths again in the workplace after twists and turns.
Chi Yunjun was an easygoing person. When it came to a long-awaited reunion of friendship, how could she miss it? Moreover, Chi Yunjun had always loved Jiang Feiwan’s personality—she was very gentle, never throwing any temper tantrums, and responding to whatever others said with just the right curvature of her lips. This trait had become increasingly pronounced under the accumulation of time.
“Hehe, whispering a secret to you, I’ve already landed! I’m coming to see you in a bit~” Chi Yunjun said happily.
“Then I—” Jiang Feiwan wanted to say she would go pick her up.
“Hey! Don’t put yourself through the trouble! I’ll take a cab over, I’ll buy some food on the way back, what do you want to eat?” Chi Yunjun hadn’t managed to eat dinner and was starving right about now.
Jiang Feiwan didn’t press the matter further, hung up the phone, and went to take a quick shower to make herself look a bit more energetic.
It was already an hour later when Chi Yunjun arrived, pushing a half-person-high suitcase with one hand. As for her other hand……..
Barbecue….. crayfish….. roasted sweet potato skin….. stir-fried rice noodles…….
And a box of fried chicken strips……. plus a few takeout boxes of unidentifiable food items.
Heavy on oil and salt, a mixture of carbs and sugar—Jiang Feiwan felt like her stomach was going to have to make another trip down to the edge of that toilet.
Chi Yunjun giggled as she hauled the suitcase inside, unable to wait: “Oh my—my good Wanwan, I’ve missed you to death!”
It was obvious she really had missed her to death, tossing aside both the suitcase and the food to launch straight into a flying bear-hug.
Jiang Feiwan staggered from her impact, but still steadily caught her, saying helplessly: “You want me dead, is that it?”
“What kind of talk is that, what kind of talk!” Chi Yunjun pinched her cheek hard, deeply dissatisfied: “Every time I come back to see you, you’re always thinner than the last time. You’ve definitely dropped below 90 [jin] this time!”
Jiang Feiwan couldn’t support her weight, and her jump nudged the bruise on her hip bone once more, causing a tight throb of pain. Yet Jiang Feiwan acted as if nothing was wrong, smilingly setting her down from her body without even twitching an eyebrow: “Looks like the food in Nangang must be pretty good.”
“What are you insinuating!” Chi Yunjun covered her ears: “Not listening, come eat your midnight snack quickly, I’m starving to death.”
“Reporting, can I apply not to eat?”
“Denied.”
Very well, Jiang Feiwan walked with her to the living room and sat down. After forcing herself to eat a few bites with her, she truly couldn’t stand the greasy smell anymore and stopped using her chopsticks. Her stomach began churning all over again; she bent her knees, pressed her fingertips against her upper abdomen, and began massaging and kneading inconspicuously.
“Oh right,” Chi Yunjun bit down on a skewer of enoki mushrooms: “What was it you wanted to tell me when you called me yesterday?”
Jiang Feiwan’s fingertips paused, her expression dazed for a split second.
“Wanwan?”
Failing to hear a reply from the person beside her for a long time, Chi Yunjun called out to her.
After a long while, she heard Jiang Feiwan’s lowered voice reply: “I saw her again.”
Chi Yunjun was startled, not quite understanding who “she” in her words referred to: “Her?”
“That junior sister I mentioned to you, Chen Zui.”
Chen Zui had been staring at her phone for 3 days.
God knows what she was looking at. Every morning when she arrived at the shop, she would just clutch her phone and stand there like a guardian deity at the door—and let me tell you, that guardian deity act was freakishly useful, almost working An Qi’s brain into a state of smoke.
The usual daily order volume of around 320, with Chen Zui acting as this guardian deity, skyrocketed straight past 650.
Four people in the morning, four people in the afternoon—forget about shift rotations; when things got busy, they didn’t even have time to eat lunch, and the kicker was that she had also spent the entire day shaking drinks!
She was done for. The morning after, An Qi felt like she was evolving into a long-armed ape, specifically a muscle-weakness version of a long-armed ape.
Who could have known the sheer exhaustion of frantically spinning 10,000 steps in the preparation area all day long? An Qi wanted to make her boss go sit somewhere else.
Especially since today was Saturday.
“Boss, can you come over and help out.” An Qi looked at the bill printer that kept spitting out orders, feeling utterly exhausted and heartbroken.
“Don’t call me boss.” Chen Zui glanced back, put away her phone, and walked into the staff aisle.
“Can’t break the habit, just bear with it!” Busy up to this point, An Qi was no longer afraid of anything in heaven or earth, “Hurry up and work to earn yourself some money.”
Leisurely putting on her apron, Chen Zui calmly glanced at the stack of orders rivaling a stack of imperial memorials, “I won’t be in the shop this afternoon, what are you going to do without anyone to help?”
An Qi couldn’t care less about all that, waving her hand: “This afternoon isn’t my shift anyway; all I know is that the moment your honorable self plants yourself inside the shop, the rest of us turn into gyroscopes.”
“Really?” Chen Zui didn’t feel it, “Isn’t this the usual foot traffic?”
“Unusually high.”
Chen Zui: “500 [yuan] wage raise for you guys this month, and I’ll take you out for team-building on the 9th of next month.”
“…….”
The fire instantly extinguished.
500 bucks plus a team-building session successfully coaxed her into a good mood. An Qi cursed herself for having no backbone, fated to be a draft horse for the rest of her life.
Chen Zui was exceptionally fast at making coffee, and her latte art was steady and gorgeous. She methodically finished the majority of those memorial-like orders.
An Qi was impressed to the point of total submission. Other people’s bosses were completely clueless about everything, but their boss was different—heh, she knew even more than the employees.
“Boss, did you teach yourself this craft?” she trotted over with bouncy steps to ask.
“Nope,” Chen Zui dried the water droplets off her hands. The ice-sleeve worn on her right arm was more than half wet, “Just like you, I learned it back when I was working for someone else.”
“Oi! The boss used to be a draft horse too!” An Qi was excited; she had similarities with the capitalists, so she would definitely have a bright future ahead!
Chen Zui was speechless: “What exactly is getting you so excited?”
“You used to be a draft horse.”
Chen Zui started taking off her work apron.
This help wasn’t being given anymore; she was going to let this little brat experience what true, evil capitalism felt like!
Seeing that she was about to leave, An Qi immediately slid back into position, “I was wrong, please don’t go—”
“You only get 400 for your overtime pay now.” Chen Zui put on airs.
“I really was wrong, Sister.”
Chen Zui let out a “hmph” and tied her apron back on again.
In the afternoon, Li Li came over to pick her up. Last time, Chen Zui had said she would accompany her to see a psychological therapist. Originally, they planned it for Saturday morning, but unfortunately, the company urgently convened a top-level transfer meeting in the morning. A planning department director was being transferred over to report for duty next Monday, and they had arranged for her to handle the handover.
Li Li had a headache. After surviving 5 days to welcome the weekend, half of it was still yanked away. As if having half a day stolen wasn’t enough, even her Monday work plan had been arranged for her.
She hated this feeling of plans being disrupted, which made Li Li feel like her life was spinning out of control.
“Did you eat firecrackers at noon?” Chen Zui got into the car, and seeing her sullen face, couldn’t help asking.
Li Li was blazing with irritation: “Even someone eating firecrackers wouldn’t be as fired up as me!” She slammed her hand hard onto the steering wheel, held back for a moment, and ultimately couldn’t help it: “Why schedule it at a time like this, why schedule it at a time like this! Of had-to-be a rest day! Since she’s coming, fine, but she still has to hold an online meeting!”
“Just because of this?” Chen Zui had never worked a standard office job and couldn’t fully comprehend the pain of a true corporate slave. Her breezy “just this” made Li Li wish she could kick her right out of the car.
If she could, she really wanted to drag Chen Zui into the company to experience the “joy” of going to work.
Probably knowing that she was asking for it, Chen Zui gripped her seatbelt tighter and honestly shut her mouth.
The location wasn’t close to the coffee shop—a twenty-odd-minute drive in non-peak traffic. From the looks of it, it seemed to be a private psychological healing center of considerable scale.
Chen Zui grabbed the stray hairs on her forehead. She hadn’t styled her hair in over two months, so it had grown a bit long and inevitably blocked her vision, so she casually used the hair tie on her wrist to tie up a half-ponytail.
She followed Li Li inside. Whether due to it being a private hospital or not, the interior layout was rather different from what she imagined a psychological hospital would be—it was much more luxurious. The moment they stepped in, a front desk receptionist came out to welcome them and inquire about the doctor they had booked.
Chen Zui was merely accompanying her, so she proactively handed the right to speak over to Li Li.
Li Li: “The doctor we booked is Dr. Jiang.”
Chen Zui was startled.
Jiang?
The receptionist politely led the way: “Dr. Jiang, is it? This way, please. Dr. Jiang just finished up a session, so you two might need to wait a few minutes.”
Li Li nodded: “Understood.”
Not long after walking out, Chen Zui harbored a faint sense of anticipation in her heart and asked: “Just by giving a surname, you knew which doctor it was?”
The receptionist explained with a smiling face: “Because we currently only have one physician with the surname Jiang here.”
Why weren’t things following the script.
Chen Zui dismissed the thought, figuring that such a coincidence probably wouldn’t happen in this world.
“Dr. Jiang is out,” after a while, the guiding receptionist reminded them, “Dr. Jiang, the client who booked your 2.5 PM healing session has arrived.”
Hey—
Such a coincidence actually did happen.