Perhaps he was truly exhausted, or perhaps X’s “good night” had genuinely worked some kind of magic, but Ji Wenyu slept exceptionally soundly that night.
He slept so heavily that the next morning he slept right through two sets of alarms and had to be pushed awake by the caregiver in the neighboring bed.
“Wake up, time to tidy up the ward. The nurse will be coming around to check the hygiene in a bit.”
Once the nurse came for inspections, all the folding beds had to be put away.
The man rubbed his eyes and gave a soft acknowledgment, climbing up in a daze to pack away the folding bed and shove it into the cabinet.
After the nurse finished the hygiene check and left, Ji Wenyu took the opportunity to run downstairs and buy breakfast. As soon as he finished eating, the doctor started the rounds. The attending physician checked Zhu Hong’s medication history over the past few days and wrote out a blood test order. He helped his mother go to the first floor to draw blood, and by the time they returned to the ward, it was already approaching noon.
Uncle Zhang came to the ward to relieve him, and Ji Wenyu shouldered his laptop and returned to the hotel to rest.
After taking a shower at the hotel, he sat on the large bed with his laptop in his arms and opened Qinghe.
X had left him a message.
For the document he had sent yesterday, X had added content and annotations beneath every single question. The content in the picture sections consisted of the results generated by his own model, while the text sections were listed in clean bullet points without excessive expansion. The annotations were densely packed with related materials, including scanned screenshots from textbooks and relevant research papers found online. X hadn’t entirely answered the questions for him, yet he had helped him prepare all the reference materials needed to answer them. With the model results already organized, Ji Wenyu only needed to cross-reference the reference materials in the annotations and expand the text sections according to his own understanding to hand Chen Wang a complete set of answers.
His heart tightened, and Ji Wenyu felt somewhat at a loss.
He subconsciously checked the timestamps of the annotations. They started from twelve-thirty in the midnight all the way past ten o’clock in the morning. Just as he had guessed, X had organized everything through the entire night.
In truth, if X had simply written out the answers to the questions himself using Ji Wenyu’s model results, it probably wouldn’t have taken long. Yet, that person had chosen this method, presenting all the reference materials right before him so that he could ultimately still be considered as having completed the questions himself, while also learning the knowledge Chen Wang wanted him to grasp.
It seemed as though no one had ever treated him in quite this manner.
X appeared to have seen through all the cautious concerns deep within his heart, selecting a method that could both help him and avoid affecting the ownership of these answers.
The desolation that had previously been running wild across his heart was soaked through by a torrential downpour in a single instant, sprouting tiny, tender shoots.
Ji Wenyu earnestly read through X’s annotations line by line, perfecting the responses to all five questions one by one.
He casually ordered takeout for lunch and finished it hurriedly in front of the computer. Busy all the way until dusk, he finally completed the assignment Chen Wang had given him.
Unwilling to overthink it any further, the young man checked it once more to confirm there were no typos, then hit the send button in his email.
With all of this done, he lay down on the bed for a quick nap, changed his clothes, and headed back to the hospital.
The morning’s blood test results were out, and overall the indicators had no major issues. The doctor explained that the reason the symptoms hadn’t fully recovered was due to Zhu Hong’s physical weakness, and she would slowly recuperate once she returned to Beijing. If she didn’t run a low fever by tomorrow morning, she could be discharged.
The two giant boulders pressing down on his chest were lifted at the same time, and Ji Wenyu felt a long-lost sense of relief.
At night, after Uncle Zhang left and the ward lights were turned off, Zhu Hong washed up and fell asleep. He stood at the very end of the ward corridor, waiting for the final bag of IV fluids for the night.
Tonight he wore an extra layer of clothing, and the wind blowing in from the window no longer carried a biting chill.
The chat box with X was parked on the document the other person had sent over. During the daytime, he initially hadn’t figured out how to reply, and later he had simply forgotten by accident. When he received a document, the other side could see it. In X’s eyes, he probably looked like he had run off immediately after taking advantage of a freebie, without even leaving a single word of thanks.
His thumb hovered in mid-air as Ji Wenyu hesitated for a moment before editing a message.
[Little Fish: No check-in today?]
After pressing send, he clicked into X’s homepage.
Two hours ago, X had posted a public note showing a screenshot of completed vocabulary tasks, but hadn’t sent it to him separately this time.
Why hadn’t he sent it to him anymore? X wouldn’t really think he had skipped town, would he?
The young man thought for a moment, then returned to the chat interface.
[Little Fish: I submitted my assignment, I should have time to come back and check in tomorrow]
If everything went smoothly, tomorrow he and his mother could embark on their journey back to Beijing. There were quite a few intercity high-speed trains from Qingcheng to Beijing, and since it wasn’t a holiday or festival season, plenty of seats remained available. He didn’t need to buy tickets in advance; he planned to book them tomorrow after completing the discharge procedures and leaving the hospital.
Following the half-open transom window, the young man gazed out into the boundless night view.
On the first night he arrived at the hospital, when he passed by this place to fetch hot water, the outside was pitch black and looked downright eerie.
Yet tonight, he suddenly felt as though the quiet night scenery had somehow gained a touch of gentleness, and even the sound of the wind had grown peaceful.
A vibration came from his palm, and a few minutes later, X replied with a message.
[X: Finished?]
Was he asking about Chen Wang’s questions? He always felt that what X was asking wasn’t just about that. Yet he clearly remembered that he hadn’t mentioned his mother’s hospitalization to the other person.
[Little Fish: Yeah, pretty much. Thanks a lot this time.]
He had wanted to add “I’ll treat you to a meal in a couple of days,” but it felt like he had already said that once; saying it again would inevitably carry the suspicion of making empty promises.
We’ll talk about it when we get back to Beijing. His mother would still need to recuperate upon returning to Beijing, and he wasn’t sure if he would have the time to meet up with X.
His dad had an early morning flight tomorrow to come to Qingcheng and travel back to Beijing with them. However, the family business couldn’t go unattended indefinitely; Ji Zhiming could only stay in Beijing for a day or two at most and couldn’t accompany Zhu Hong for too long.
Should he just have his mother stay near the school? Ji Wenyu vaguely remembered that the family did own an apartment near Bauhinia University, though he wasn’t sure if it had been leased out to a property management agency. He would ask Ji Zhiming tomorrow; if not, they could just rent one on the spot. That way, he could bring meals back to his mother from the cafeteria every day and take care of her at home when he had no classes.
He had thought X would ask a few questions about the status of those problems, but the other person didn’t ask further.
Which was fine too; once the assignment was handed in, he didn’t have the mental energy to think about it anymore.
These past few days at the hospital, even though fragmented time was plentiful, Ji Wenyu hadn’t really used his phone much. Now having a bit of spare time, he replied to all the chaotic messages he had ignored over the past few days in one breath, and scrolled through his Moments completely. He didn’t have the energy to look at group chats, but presumably no one was looking for him anyway. He yawned, a sense of drowsiness gradually welling up, when Qinghe popped up with another message.
[X: Qinghe’s newly launched feature, want to try it?]
The young man was just about to ask what feature he was talking about when X sent a song over.
Ji Wenyu put on his headphones and tapped into it, discovering a “Listen Together” option popped up on the interface.
He pressed it.
The song sent by X shared the same name as his nickname.
Ji Wenyu had never heard it before.
The male vocals in the headphones were soft, with a few lines of Min Nan dialect mixed into the chorus.
The accompanying guitar sound felt like a babbling stream of water. As the drowsiness grew heavier, the man squatted down right there in the corner against the wall.
He suddenly heard X’s voice, interspersed within the gentle melody.
“Have you heard it before?”
Ji Wenyu shook his head, only realizing a moment later that the other side couldn’t see him.
Qinghe’s “Listen Together” feature could achieve real-time voice chat with the person on the other end.
He pressed the voice switch and spoke in a lazy tone: “No.”
“Sleepy?” X caught the weariness in his voice instantly.
Ji Wenyu let out a soft “mhm.”
“Then go to sleep,” X said.
The young man licked his lips: “In a bit.”
Neither he nor X turned off the real-time voice chat by tacit agreement.
“I need you, I need you, I need you to accompany me, I really want you, want you, want you to stay with me.”
These two lines of lyrics weren’t in Min Nan dialect, transmitting clearly and directly into the young man’s ears.
Listening to this together with X, wouldn’t it be more or less a bit ambiguous?
As if suddenly someone had tripped a switch monitoring his emotions, Ji Wenyu snapped back to alertness.
Yet he couldn’t bear to exit.
“Bed 10, time for your IV drip.” The nurse’s voice came from behind him.
The man flusteredly pressed off the real-time voice chat and turned his headphone volume down to the lowest setting: “Coming!”
Having received IV drips for days on end, Zhu Hong’s left hand had swelled up so they switched to the right, and now her right hand was swollen too, forcing them to switch back to the left.
“Does it hurt?” Ji Wenyu gently squeezed his mother’s hand.
The woman shook her head gently.
The nurse turned off the lights and left. The young man added water to the thermos cup, inserted the straw, and brought it to his mother’s lips.
Zhu Hong took a sip: “Lie down and sleep, the IV will take a long time yet.”
Each night, the IV drip took nearly two hours, and she was afraid her son wouldn’t be able to hold out.
Ji Wenyu picked up the old-fashioned thermos: “I’ll go get some water and come right back to sleep.”
Returning to the empty corridor, the young man pulled out his phone at the first opportunity and turned up the volume in his headphones.
The melodious tune was still flowing through his headphones, and for some inexplicable reason, he let out a sigh of relief.
X was still there; he hadn’t left.
Ji Wenyu tentatively reopened the real-time voice chat.
“Still there?”
He asked softly.
“Here.” X responded quickly, taking the initiative to share what he was doing: “Washing up.”
Ji Wenyu unconsciously curved the corners of his lips, his heart feeling as though it were stuffed full of honey, making even the air exude a sweet and sticky fragrance.
“I’m… getting some water, I’ll go straight to sleep when I get back.”
“Mhm.” X suddenly said, “I checked in today, our group’s points are still number one.”
Ji Wenyu was stunned for a moment before he remembered the message he had just sent to that person earlier.
X was responding to his message.
X had responded to every single one of his messages.
Every question, every puzzle, whether spoken aloud or left unsaid.
The young man had originally been extremely skilled at words of gratitude, yet he always managed to get stuck right in front of that person.
In front of X, he grew completely flustered and helpless.
“Oh, right.” Ji Wenyu heard his own voice floating lightly and aimlessly in mid-air, “I’ll come back and check in tomorrow too.”
Damn it, it sounded like he had just repeated himself.
“Mhm.” He heard X’s voice sound as though it carried a smile.
“Then… logging off?” Carrying the thermos filled with hot water back to the entrance of the ward, Ji Wenyu couldn’t bear to go back in just yet.
“Mhm, see you tomorrow,” X said goodbye to him.
He had wanted to return a “good night” to that person, but the words teetering on the edge of his tongue felt somewhat awkward once again.
In the end, it changed into: “See you tomorrow.”
See you tomorrow.
Because of this “see you tomorrow,” he began to look forward to tomorrow.