From afternoon until evening, Yang Jianzhen trailed Ming Zhifei like a shadow. One moment he was talking about the internet—when he found out Ming Zhifei’s data plan cost 119 yuan a month, he insisted they could get free broadband installed with that kind of plan so they wouldn’t have to waste data at home.
The next moment, he was suggesting that since they’d have internet, they could set up the TV and move his own television over, so they could watch movies or shows when they were bored during the day.
“Fei-ge, did you change your phone number recently?”
“Mhm. I changed it a while ago.” After switching numbers, Ming Zhifei had only told his parents, his lawyer, and his ex-wife. No one else could reach him, and the harassment calls had finally stopped.
“Haha, we both have brand-new numbers then,” Yang Jianzhen said. “Wait, that means we haven’t even saved each other’s numbers or added each other as friends yet. How are we going to video call tomorrow?”
“Let’s add each other then.” Ming Zhifei gave Jianzhen his number. Yang Jianzhen called him immediately, then leaned over to watch as Ming Zhifei saved the contact. Ming Zhifei meticulously typed out “Yang Jianzhen”—not a single character more.
Yang Jianzhen shoved his own screen in front of Ming Zhifei’s face to show his own contact note: “Beautiful Zhifei.”
Ming Zhifei looked up in bewilderment. Yang Jianzhen just grinned. “Fei-ge, you’re so cold. You didn’t even give me a prefix or a suffix.”
“Is… is that necessary?” Ming Zhifei looked confused. He thought for a second. “Then what should I write? ‘Handsome Yang Jianzhen’?”
“There are a hundred million ‘Handsome Guys’ in this province, Fei-ge. That’s so lazy.”
“Actually, it’s only fifty million. The other fifty million are ‘Beautiful Girls’,” Ming Zhifei corrected him, pointing out the logical flaw.
Yang Jianzhen nearly doubled over laughing. He snatched Ming Zhifei’s phone, edited the contact name himself, and handed it back.
Ming Zhifei saw the name had been changed to “Darling Jianzhen.” Goosebumps erupted on his arms. He went to change it back to “Yang Jianzhen” immediately, but Jianzhen pinned his hand down on the phone.
“Fei-ge, just leave it. I like being saved like that by you.”
“No. I can’t stand it.” Ming Zhifei brushed his fingers away, his tone uncharacteristically firm. He quickly edited the name. Yang Jianzhen leaned in and saw it now read: “Neighbor Yang Jianzhen.”
“That’s even colder than just the name!” Yang Jianzhen cried. “And we aren’t even neighbors right now! Ge, if you have to be like that, at least make it ‘Under the Same Roof Yang Jianzhen’?”
“Too long.”
“Then drop the ‘Yang’ and just make it ‘Jianzhen’.”
“What if I forget your surname later?” Ming Zhifei seemed genuinely worried about this possibility.
“I’ll make sure you never forget it as long as you live,” Yang Jianzhen muttered, nearly gritting his teeth. “Besides, if the day comes where you’ve forgotten my surname, what does it matter if I’m in your contacts or not?”
Ming Zhifei could sense that Yang Jianzhen was actually angry—or at least, annoyed. In all the days they’d spent together, Jianzhen was always smiling; this was the first time he’d shown real irritation. So this is how he sounds when he’s upset. Ming Zhifei wondered what he’d said wrong. Everything he said was a fact. In a few days, Jianzhen’s leg would heal, he would regain his mobility, and he would leave. Living across the hall was clearly unsafe, so logically, he would move away. After that, their paths would diverge and they’d have no reason to meet again.
He had already forgotten the names of his high school deskmate and his roommates from freshman year. Years from now, would he really remember this brief encounter? Forget the surname—he’d likely forget the name and the face entirely.
A sudden, dull tightness expanded in his chest. He had felt this frequently for a long time after “the incident.” Eventually, he had labeled it as cardiac neurosis. It had been better lately, but it was flaring up again now.
Back in medical school, he’d been indifferent toward “neuroses” or somatization disorders. He found psychiatry uninteresting. He used to think those so-called neuroses were just the result of sensitive, overthinking people unable to regulate their emotions, leading to neurotransmitter imbalances that manifested as physical aches. He hadn’t been able to empathize at all. Coronary heart disease made sense—there was a structural lesion. But neurosis? If it was something that appeared because you couldn’t “let go” and disappeared if you did, could it even be called a disease? Why couldn’t those people just let it go?
Only recently had he learned that this condition was very real. He had finally admitted he had the symptoms himself, which, to the old Ming Zhifei, felt like admitting he was weak.
But today, I won the case. I felt lighter than ever. Why is it happening now?
Lost in thought, he bit his lower lip. Ming Zhifei looked up, gazing at Yang Jianzhen with a lost, hazy expression.
Seeing him like that, Yang Jianzhen couldn’t help but snatch his glasses away again. Watching the man look so confused, so unaware of his “offense,” any lingering anger Jianzhen felt evaporated, replaced instantly by something that filled his heart to the brim.
“Just save it as ‘Jianzhen.’ And call me that from now on, okay?” Yang Jianzhen’s hand moved to Ming Zhifei’s cheek. His thumb brushed toward the man’s lip, but Ming Zhifei instinctively flinched away.
Ming Zhifei lowered his head. For some reason, his heart felt as if it were being bound by a cord, or placed near a slow-roasting fire. He couldn’t name the emotion. But whenever he met Yang Jianzhen’s gaze or when the man got too close, this was the reaction.
“Okay… Jian… Jianzhen.” Stuttering out the name felt like a spell. Ming Zhifei felt his heart pump all his blood straight to his head. Why else would his face be burning and his head spinning?
Ever since I developed this “weak” neurosis, I haven’t been myself, Ming Zhifei thought. But once Jianzhen moves out, I should recover. I’m probably just not used to someone being this close.
“Zhifei,” Yang Jianzhen said, smiling.
“You’re not calling me Fei-ge anymore?”
“No. I’m changing it. I want to call you by your name. Is that what your family calls you?”
“My parents usually use my full name. When I was little, they called me ‘Xiao Bao,’ but they stopped as I got older.” Ming Zhifei thought about it; truly, no one called him that. Teachers and classmates used his full name; colleagues and patients called him “Dr. Ming.”
“Then what did your ex-wife call you? ‘Husband’?”
As slow as he was, Ming Zhifei noticed the shift in Yang Jianzhen’s tone. He looked up; for once, the younger man wasn’t smiling.
Ming Zhifei couldn’t help but think: When he doesn’t smile, he looks so stern. He’s still handsome, but he looks like a different person.
“No. She just called me ‘Ming-ge’.”
“Ha. ‘Ming-ge’. ‘Ming-ge’.” Yang Jianzhen’s tone grew even stranger. “Why call you that? Didn’t you find it weird?”
“We met through a blind date. That’s what she called me at the start, and she never changed it.”
Yang Jianzhen made a face that clearly said, I really didn’t want to hear that. He eventually stopped talking, covering half his face with his hand and turning his head away.
“Then I’m the only person in the world who calls you ‘Zhifei’,” he finally grumbled.
“Mhm.” Ming Zhifei couldn’t understand Jianzhen’s thoughts—they seemed to twist and turn through a thousand iterations. His voice sounded so odd.
“And you’re the only one who calls me ‘Jianzhen’.”
“Then… should I go back to calling you ‘Yang Jianzhen’?” Ming Zhifei missed the weight of the statement entirely.
“No.” Yang Jianzhen gave a soft huff. “Don’t you dare get it wrong. You’re my lifesaver, and I’m yours. We have a bond forged in life and death—it’s a one-of-a-kind deal.”
Ming Zhifei couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’ve saved many lives before, but none of them ever claimed we had a ‘bond forged in life and death’.”
“That’s different. I’m not your patient,” Yang Jianzhen said with a touch of stubbornness. “I’m the person you saved after you stopped being a doctor. And I saved you once, too. I’m also the only person in the world who calls you by just your name.”
That night, lying in bed, sleep didn’t come quickly to Ming Zhifei. Yang Jianzhen lay beside him, the two of them under separate quilts—both brought over from Jianzhen’s place. Ming Zhifei was tucked under an incredibly soft silk quilt encased in a smooth, pale green silk cover; Jianzhen had insisted he use it. Jianzhen himself used a standard polyester-fill summer quilt with an old cotton cover Ming Zhifei had brought—apparently a spare Jianzhen rarely used.
Piled together, the difference in quality was glaring. According to Jianzhen, the bed was a 1.8-meter king, but with two grown men and two quilts, it felt crowded. Their bodies remained pressed together through the layers of fabric.
Because it was a bit cooler that day, the balcony door was left open and the air conditioning stayed off. Moonlight, accompanied by a chilling autumn breeze, spilled slowly through the doorway.
Suddenly, Yang Jianzhen rolled over, draping his arm over Ming Zhifei’s quilt as if hugging him through the fabric. The sound of steady, even breathing convinced Ming Zhifei that the younger man was fast asleep.
As a flicker of heat rose in his chest—not the irritation of being disturbed, but a searing sense of closeness and an indescribable warmth—Ming Zhifei realized with certainty that he had never felt this way about another person.
So, he was capable of such positive emotions toward a fellow human being. It wasn’t defense, competition, hostility, disdain, avoidance, or the desire to avoid trouble. It wasn’t the obligatory focus of a professional task, nor the forced maintenance of someone who was merely a “part of a life plan.” It was simply because he was him. This emotion felt utterly foreign to Ming Zhifei.
Yang Jianzhen’s arm was hot. He was wearing short-sleeved pajamas, and his arm was sturdy, the muscles firm—the unmistakable body of a young man—resting quietly and relaxed across Ming Zhifei’s chest. It wasn’t until much later that Ming Zhifei realized it wasn’t Jianzhen’s arm that was burning, but his own heart.
Despite it being the middle of the night, the moonlight on the floor was so bright it felt like dawn. He turned his head slightly, watching Yang Jianzhen sleep.
He was a bald kid, but a truly handsome one. Before bed, Ming Zhifei had checked the wound on Jianzhen’s head; it had mostly healed. Finally, that bald head could be wiped down with a damp cloth. As he helped Jianzhen clean his scalp, he noticed a dark shadow of stubble starting to emerge. Being young, his hair grew fast. While Ming Zhifei was wiping the top of his head, the obediently sitting Jianzhen had suddenly wrapped his arms around the doctor’s waist, resting his head against Ming Zhifei’s abdomen.
Ming Zhifei had meant to push him away, but seeing the wound, he tacitly allowed the proximity.
Perhaps Jianzhen wasn’t wrong; they did have a “life and death” bond. Though it differed from the cliché, Jianzhen was undeniably different. Ming Zhifei could feel the distinction between this man and everyone else, even if he couldn’t put a name to it. He could only borrow Jianzhen’s phrasing: because they had helped each other in such a dire situation, everything less extreme suddenly seemed trivial.