Qi Chenyan still took Shi Xing to the hospital.
No other reason—he just wanted to see if there was really something wrong with her brain.
After getting into the car, he set her down. Shi Xing still wanted to lean into his embrace, but he remained cold as ever, saying, “Sit still.”
Shi Xing pouted, “A Yan, don’t you like holding me?”
She couldn’t help but feel that he was being very distant now.
Qi Chenyan leaned back in the car seat and asked lightly, “Were you this clingy with He Sheng before?”
She never spoke properly, only knew how to act spoiled. Like she had no bones, always wanting to lean against someone.
Shi Xing frowned and muttered softly, “Why do you keep bringing him up?”
Hadn’t she proven enough already?
Qi Chenyan simply turned his head to look out the window, too lazy to say another word.
Did he want to bring up He Sheng?
How many years had she liked He Sheng? Had she really forgotten?
At the hospital, Qi Chenyan arranged a comprehensive check-up for Shi Xing, even including a psychiatric evaluation.
Shi Xing remained silent. If the check-up could put his mind at ease, then so be it.
The other tests were fine, but when it came to the psychiatric diagnosis, she had to answer many questions.
No matter what the doctor asked, she said she didn’t know. Only when Qi Chenyan was mentioned did her eyes light up.
After the diagnosis, the doctor’s expression was complicated. In the end, he wrote three words on the diagnosis report and handed it to Qi Chenyan, who was waiting outside.
With a somewhat strange smile, the doctor patted the diagnosis report against Qi Chenyan’s chest. “Don’t worry, her mental state is normal, no major issues. Just this little problem.”
Shi Xing, who had followed the doctor out, only then realized that this doctor also knew Qi Chenyan.
The doctor’s name was Liang Zeheng. He glanced back at Shi Xing, smiled, and said to Qi Chenyan, “I’m still busy, so make yourselves at home.”
Shi Xing thanked him and watched as he turned and returned to his office. Then she walked up to Qi Chenyan, blinking her innocent eyes as she asked, “What did the doctor say?”
Qi Chenyan looked at the diagnosis report with a complicated expression, frowned, and handed it to her. “Read it yourself.”
Shi Xing took it and immediately saw the diagnosis at the bottom: Love-addled brain!
“?”
Combined with what Liang Zeheng had just said to Qi Chenyan—it meant her mental state was normal, no major issues, just a love-addled brain.
Shi Xing nodded and said with a smile, “This doctor is quite professional.”
Qi Chenyan: “?”
His mood grew even more complicated.
After a thorough check-up, Shi Xing’s body was indeed fine.
But that was the biggest problem.
If she was deliberately pretending to get close to him, what was her goal? If it wasn’t for He Sheng, what else could make her disregard her dislike for him and approach him like this?
If she wasn’t pretending, could a person really change so suddenly in just one day?
Qi Chenyan couldn’t help but raise his hand, patting Shi Xing’s head twice as if trying to feel for any bumps. At the same time, he asked her, “Did your head get caught in the elevator door this morning?”
Shi Xing: “…”
You could have been more obvious with your sarcasm.
She sighed helplessly and looked up at him. “Why can’t you believe that I really like you?”
Qi Chenyan withdrew his hand, straightened up, and met her gaze with deep intensity. “What do you think? If it were you, would you believe it?”
Fair point.
Shi Xing once didn’t believe he truly liked her either.
Until that fire…
Shi Xing pursed her lips and said honestly, “Actually, I’ve always liked you. It’s not like I suddenly started liking you today.”
“Always?”Qi Chenyan’s pupils contracted slightly, somewhat puzzled by the meaning of “always.”
“It’s just that I didn’t dare to like you before.”
Shi Xing lowered her eyelashes. “You were too outstanding, so handsome, so many girls liked you, and you always gave me such a cold shoulder…”
Her tone was overly dejected, and Qi Chenyan inexplicably retorted, “Shi Xingxing, don’t play the victim first! It was you who gave me the cold shoulder!”
Shi Xing: “That was because I loved but couldn’t have you, and my love turned into resentment!”
Qi Chenyan: “Being quick-witted doesn’t make you more believable; it just makes people think you’re shifting the focus.”
Shi Xing bit her lip. “Can’t you just give in to me a little?”
Why did he always have to be so aggressive?
She was seriously confessing her feelings.
Qi Chenyan fell silent. After a moment, suppressing the irritation in his heart, he turned and walked away.
Shi Xing frowned, standing still as she watched his retreating figure. When he was about ten meters away, she called out, “A Yan.”
Qi Chenyan stopped in his tracks, paused for a few seconds, and turned to look at her.
She gazed at him pitifully. “My legs hurt, I can’t walk. Carry me.”
Though her tone was delicate, it carried an unmistakable command. Qi Chenyan knew at once that her princess syndrome was acting up again.
Qi Chenyan tilted his head and scoffed lightly. “If you can’t walk, then don’t. Whoever wants to carry you can do it.”
He certainly wouldn’t!
With that, he turned and walked away again.
Shi Xing stood there, pursing her lips, neither moving nor speaking.
Qi Chenyan walked another ten meters or so. Just as he was about to reach the elevator, he closed his eyes and cursed under his breath, “Damn it!”
He turned around and strode back, bending down to effortlessly scoop up the girl standing motionless. Gritting his teeth, he whispered in her ear, “Shi Xingxing, I must have owed you in my past life!”
Shi Xing instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck. The man’s aura was cold and domineering, instantly enveloping her.
The corners of her lips curved upward, unfazed by his harsh tone.
She simply held his neck tightly, leaned close to his cheek, and planted a soft kiss on his face before whispering, “No, it’s me who owes A Yan.”
The girl’s soft lips pressed against his cheek, her sweet breath brushing against his.
Qi Chenyan’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and the restlessness in his heart eased slightly. Carrying her toward the elevator, he snorted coldly, “If you owe me, shouldn’t you be the one carrying me? Have you ever seen a debtor strutting around in front of their creditor?”
Shi Xing answered him very seriously, “Normally, it’s not easy for creditors to collect debts. The bigger the debt, the harder it is to collect. So, creditors have to coax and accompany the debtor properly, and only then might they slowly get their money back.”
Qi Chenyan scoffed lightly.
She certainly had a lot of twisted logic.
Then, Shi Xing leaned close to his ear again and whispered, “The debt I owe A Yan is very, very big. So, if A Yan coaxes me and stays with me for a lifetime, then we’ll have a whole lifetime for me to slowly repay my debt to A Yan. Okay?”
A lifetime?
Qi Chenyan’s gaze deepened instantly.
He carried her into the elevator, looking down at her intently. “Shi Xingxing, do you know what a lifetime means?”
“Of course I do.”
Shi Xing’s eyes were bright as she looked at him, answering word by word, “A lifetime means never leaving, never abandoning, not even in life or death.”
~
Qi Chenyan and Shi Xing now lived in the same residential complex, in the same apartment building—he lived upstairs, and she lived downstairs.
After Shi Xing was kicked out of the Shi family, she had nowhere to go for a while. This apartment was rented for her by Song Lan.
It was only later that Shi Xing found out the apartment actually belonged to Qi Chenyan. He had secretly arranged for it to be listed and rented to Song Lan at a low price.Qi Chenyan took Shi Xing home.
Even at the end, she was still trying to be cheeky. “Are you really not going to let me stay at your place?”
Qi Chenyan only gave her a look. “Shi Xingxing, have some restraint.”
Shi Xing finally let out an “oh” and obediently went home, though she kept looking back every few steps, putting on a show of how reluctant she was to leave him.
Qi Chenyan’s eyelids twitched fiercely, but he just crossed his arms and leaned against the elevator wall, his expression unmoved and indifferent.
Shi Xing took one last look at him, confirming that he really wasn’t going to invite her to his place, and finally, with lingering reluctance, stepped inside.
Only after her door closed did Qi Chenyan’s forced composure finally crack. He tilted his neck, covering his face as he rubbed his stiffened cheeks, his lips curving up before pressing down again.
He felt as though this single night had been more intense than all 23 years of his life, with emotions constantly rising and falling.
Even now, his heart was still racing wildly over her words in the hospital elevator: “I won’t leave you, not even in life or death.”
Yet it all felt surreal.
Like a dream.
Without a shred of reality.
He didn’t even know what emotions he should use to face Shi Xing now.
What if she was just acting on a whim? What if she was just toying with him?
She had no idea that her actions, her words, had unleashed the greed he had suppressed for so many years.
God only knew how much restraint it had taken him just now to resist the urge to bring her home.
Because even he didn’t know what he might do if he truly let that greed consume him, only for her to later tell him it was all just a game.
Qi Chenyan took one last look at the tightly closed door of Shi Xing’s home before turning and heading upstairs.
Entering the bathroom, he let icy water pour over him from head to toe, trying to cool his boiling emotions and clear his mind.
But it was no use.
His emotions remained restless and unsettled, his mind constantly replaying the image of her gazing at him with shimmering eyes, and the intimate sensation of her soft, red lips pressing against his in a kiss.
Qi Chenyan leaned against the cold wall, tilting his head back as he took slow, deep breaths, his Adam’s apple gently moving with each inhale and exhale.
Water droplets trickled down from his hair, across his cheeks, and along the taut veins of his neck.
“Xingxing…”
His low, hoarse voice mingled with the sound of the water, but in that instant, a sharp pain shot through the back of his hand, as if something had clawed at it violently.
His emotions instantly cooled.
Frowning, he opened his eyes and lifted his hand.
No wound, nothing at all.
Yet the lingering pain remained, refusing to fade.
The pain felt all too real.
Qi Chenyan furrowed his brows, turned off the water, and casually draped a bathrobe over himself before stepping out of the bathroom.
He sat on the sofa, raising his hand to examine the back of it.
The pain had slowly lessened but hadn’t completely disappeared.
Narrowing his eyes, he recalled the sensation—it felt like something sharp, like claws, had scratched him.
After a moment of silence, he leaned back against the sofa, thinking self-mockingly that perhaps the heavens found him too despicable and had intervened to stop him.
Qi Chenyan closed his eyes, leaning against the sofa as he tried to calm his emotions, until the doorbell rang.
He straightened up and glanced over, immediately spotting the mischievous little face on the video doorbell.
“Huh?”
Qi Chenyan closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, letting out a helpless sigh.
This troublemaker.
Couldn’t she let him have a moment of peace?
Then he laughed at himself again. Truth be told, hadn’t he been hoping she would come?
Qi Chenyan stood up, opened the door, and leaned lazily against the doorframe, arms crossed as he looked down at the girl standing before him. His tone was resigned. “Shi Xingxing, do you know what time it is?”Shi Xing was still wearing that beautiful pink gauze dress, and who knows what she had been doing all this time since she went back.
She stood at his door, and upon hearing his words, she extended her hand toward him with teary eyes, complaining pitifully, “But my hand was grabbed by Yan Bao, and it hurts so much~”