CH 69

Jiang Xu walked out of the hospital building numbly, hailed a taxi numbly, opened his front door numbly, finally sat on the couch numbly and poured himself a glass of wine.

It was just like the day Dr Kenn’s article was published and Shen Fangyu was alone at home, pouring and drinking wine.

Jiang Xu stared at the bright red and clear liquid for a long time, but ultimately didn’t take a sip.

He couldn’t afford to lose his composure, not now, at least.

No matter how anxious and worried he was at the moment, it wouldn’t help. He couldn’t contact Shen Fangyu, so he couldn’t lose himself.

He also had to think about Xiaoxiao.

A person’s mental state often easily triggers pain in the body. The waist and sacrum pain that had been plaguing him like conjoined twins seemed particularly clear in his fragile emotional state.

Jiang Xu knew he had to fall asleep quickly before the pain worsened. Otherwise, when the pain intensified, the vicious cycle of escalating pain and the bad mood would engulf him.

But sleep was always elusive when you needed it the most.

His hands and feet were cold, as if he were walking in a damp winter with only thin clothes, and even his bones were soaked through.

His sluggish thoughts stagnated for a long time, and Jiang Xu suddenly remembered the time when Shen Fangyu had coaxed him to sleep on the high-speed train, and how his scent had played a big role.

He sprayed Shen Fangyu’s cologne on the bed, hoping to soothe his mood a little.

But the scent was off.

He didn’t know what went wrong, it smelled similar, but it just wasn’t right.

The subtle difference was hard to notice, but once discovered, it was hard to ignore the gap between them.

The night enveloped Jiang Xu, his eyelashes like crow feather casting a shadow below his eyes.

After a while, as if suddenly remembering something, he walked straight to the living room and looked at the soft sofa.

Ever since they kissed that day, Shen Fangyu had been sleeping on the sofa. He left in a hurry and had not tidied up the quilt on the sofa.

If it were the previous Jiang Xu, he would not allow himself to do this. But today’s Jiang Xu hesitated for only half a minute before lifting Shen Fangyu’s quilt and wrapping himself in it.

As soon as he closed his eyes, he smelled the scent he wanted.

Pale-faced, Jiang Xu curled up his body and bit his knuckles, leaving teeth marks. The familiar breath was like a barrier, blocking the pain that had followed him like a shadow.

He suddenly felt his nose sour, as if his bones and blood vessels were being corroded by the acidity.

He was like a traveler who had been walking in the desert for a time and finally saw an oasis.

His heart gradually calmed down under the soothing of the oasis, and the exhaustion brought by the overwhelming thoughts and wild emotions finally overwhelmed his clear consciousness. As his external consciousness weakened, those tormenting pains finally subsided.

But Jiang Xu still frowned tightly, trapped in a grotesque dream.

————-

Near an abandoned workshop, several police cars surrounded an old car covered in mud and dust.

The doors of the old car were all open, but there was no one inside. After the bomb disposal personnel confirmed the situation, a heavily-armed police officer gestured to a car parked far away.

Shen Fangyu and the driver with red hair got out of the car. A burly police officer who was smoking a cigar nodded at Shen Fangyu and said, “Unbelievable, you actually found this car. When you called me, I thought you were going to say… you’re giving up.”

“I’m curious how you did it?” He then said with a hint of sarcasm, “Did you really use the child’s phone?”

“Yes,” Shen Fangyu glanced at him. “I used a stupid method.”

“A stupid method is still a method,” the officer smiled. “Tell me about it?”

“Keep going in one direction until the relative distance no longer decreases significantly, then switch to a direction perpendicular to it.”

“Sounds boring,” the officer remarked.

Shen Fangyu neither confirmed nor denied it.

“Your English is very good,” the officer asked. “Are you from Country M?”

“No, I’m from Country Z.” Shen Fangyu didn’t want to deal with this foreign officer anymore. “May I go to the car to check for my belongings?”

“Of course,” the officer watched Shen Fangyu’s hurried figure as he went to the car and sighed, “Patient and clever, you should consider immigrating to Country M.”

Shen Fangyu stuck his head out of the car and mocked without much emotion, “And then enjoy a life with a gun to your head?”

Seeing the conversation reach this point, the officer shrugged and remained silent.

It was the red-haired driver who said to Shen Fangyu, “I’m sorry.” He could have spoken up to alert Shen Fangyu earlier, but with the gun pointed at the back of his head, he was too scared to utter a word.

“It’s not your fault,” Shen Fangyu said.

The red-haired driver paused for a moment and said again, “And…thank you.”

Although his car was just a pile of scrap metal in the eyes of the officers, worth nothing and not even worth recovering, it was still a significant asset for an ordinary person like him.

He knew that if it weren’t for the young man in front of him who gave him the courage to chase after the car and provided constant guidance, never giving up, he wouldn’t have dared to chase after it himself, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t have been able to find it.

Shen Fangyu didn’t say “no need to thank me” this time. He hesitated for a moment and shamelessly asked, “Can you lend me some money to buy a plane ticket? I’ll repay you with interest when I return to my country.”

He didn’t have a foreign bank card, and all the money he had was cash brought from his country after exchanging it.

Perhaps because they were afraid of the weight and the possibility of a tracker, the robbers took the money out of his wallet and threw it back into the car. Although he had unexpectedly recovered his lost IDs, he was now without money or a phone, and he was also worried that transferring funds would take too long and Jiang Xu would be worried if he delayed in returning.

The red-haired driver was taken aback by his straightforward request, hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Then…” Shen Fangyu took advantage of the situation and pleaded, “Can I borrow your wife’s phone to make a call?”

“Huh?”

All the tension and exhaustion faded away, and Shen Fangyu finally let his vulnerability overflow.

He remembered the scene of the red-haired driver returning home after surviving the ordeal, hugging his wife with tears in his eyes, and then explained softly, “I also want to call the person I want to hug the most after surviving this ordeal.”

————————

As the sun rose, Jiang Xu was trapped in an extremely painful dream. He watched as Shen Fangyu’s body was about to be pushed into the crematorium when suddenly, he heard an urgent ringing in his ears.

Jiang Xu suddenly woke up from his dream and realized that his phone was ringing.

When he saw that the call was from a foreign number, his heart skipped a beat, and his hand trembled as he answered the call.

On the other end, Shen Fangyu seemed surprised at how quickly Jiang Xu answered the call. “You even answer unknown international calls so quickly, aren’t you afraid of scams?”

When Jiang Xu heard Shen Fangyu’s voice, tears that he had been holding back all night suddenly fell.

“Shen Fangyu, you’re really something! You’re even better than the police,” he wiped his face fiercely, choosing to use a harsh tone to hide his momentary vulnerability, “You dare to chase after armed robbers in a car?! If you’re tired of living and want to die, come find me. I’ll give you a few shots of anesthesia to make sure you won’t feel any pain when you die.”

“How did you know…”

He had only wanted to hear Jiang Xu’s voice after surviving the ordeal, but he didn’t expect that his actions had already spread throughout the entire department.

“Didn’t I tell that brat Zhang Cheng not to tell the department?”

Emotions that had been suppressed all night suddenly erupted, and now that he had confirmed Shen Fangyu’s safety, Jiang Xu was so angry that he couldn’t hold back, “If it weren’t for Zhang Cheng, would I even know that you’re alive or dead?”

His voice was unstable, and his chest heaved up and down.

This was the first time Shen Fangyu had heard Jiang Xu lose his composure like this.

He took a deep breath and tried to maintain a calm demeanor as he comforted, “Jiang Xu, it’s not as serious as you think.”

In the deserted field, the man stood in the darkness of the night, with his shirt half pulled out of his pants, messily and loosely draped over his body.

Shen Fangyu’s suit jacket and pants were taken by the robbers, and he was now wearing the driver’s old pants that his wife ( driver’s wife) had found at home. They didn’t fit well, and they hung loosely on him, along with the dusty leather shoes, making him look particularly haggard.

But Jiang Xu couldn’t see him, so he could casually paint a rosy picture over the phone. Except for a slight tremor in his voice, there was no telling clue.

“The driver had GPS tracking data, and we weren’t blindly chasing after the car. Besides, the robbers were only after money, they wouldn’t really shoot. And after we caught up to the car, we immediately called the local police, and we didn’t rashly approach to confirm. The police checked the situation after they arrived and said that the robbers had abandoned the car and fled, so there was no one in the car. Don’t worry, everything is fine.”

“Shen Fangyu…” Jiang Xu pinched his brow, and the pain exploded along his brow ridge, “Tell me, why did you chase after the car? What could possibly be worth risking your life for in that car?”

The driver was willing to chase after the car because it was his job, but what about Shen Fangyu?

He was not the kind of person who would put himself in such a dangerous situation just for a few hundred or thousand US dollars.

He couldn’t understand why Shen Fangyu would do such a thing.

“I…”

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to be like Lei Feng and do good deeds.”

*Lei Feng was a soldier in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army who was known for his selflessness and acts of kindness, and he has been used as a symbol of altruism and selflessness in Chinese culture.

Shen Fangyu had planned to use these words to evade, but Jiang Xu ended up saying them for him. He sighed deeply, fell silent for a long time, and then asked, “If I tell you, can you promise not to be angry?”

“If you don’t tell me, I will definitely be angry.”

The night wind blew through the man’s hair, and Shen Fangyu paused for a moment, looking down at the folder in his hand.

“Information.”

He told Jiang Xu, “Notes and information about male pregnancy from the meeting.”

The brief answer traveled through countless electromagnetic waves, crossing the ocean and reaching Jiang Xu’s ears.

Jiang Xu, who had just been angry, was suddenly stunned and he fell into a long silence.

He never expected Shen Fangyu to give such an answer.

The sun slowly rose outside the window, casting a soft orange light that filtered through the sheer white curtains of the living room, illuminating Jiang Xu’s face.

His heart beat faster.

It was strange.

Even though there was a time difference between them, and it was currently nighttime where Shen Fangyu was, Jiang Xu felt like the sunlight was coming from Shen Fangyu.

The sunlight illuminated his heart brightly, revealing all the fears and hesitations, leaving nothing hidden.

He knew that he should be angry, like that time with the Huang Bin incident not too long ago, and tell Shen Fangyu that he didn’t need to put himself in such a dangerous situation for him.

But he couldn’t muster up the anger.

Because he realized that if the roles were reversed, he would also choose to chase after the car, just like Shen Fangyu did.

It turned out that there was a difference between truly loving someone and just having a liking for them.

With love that has accumulated step by step, and broken through the threshold to become a true affection, Jiang Xu suddenly realized that he no longer wanted to passively “give it a try” to see if it was feasible.

On the contrary, he wanted to give all his love to the other person, to fill the gap called reality.

When love is not enough, even a little setback can break a relationship.

But when love run deep, Jiang Xu knew that nothing could separate two people who truly love each other, except death.

He was not an assertive person, but no one could remain passive in true love.

Jiang Xu seemed to understand why Shen Fangyu was so persistent with this relationship.

Love makes people timid, but it also makes them brave.

Liking someone may breed concerns, but when love accumulates to the point where it can overcome those concerns, the desire to possess someone’s heart arises.

He wanted to be with Shen Fangyu for a long, long time and he wanted them to be together as lovers.

For this, he was willing to take all the risks.

Just like when he decided to keep Xiaoxiao back then.

No more fretting, no more worries.

Not long after hanging up the phone, Shen Fangyu sent him his flight number.

Jiang Xu glanced at the message and made a phone call to a hotel near the airport.

“Do you have airport pick-up service?” Jiang Xu asked.

“Yes, sir, we have it 24 hours a day.”

“Please help me reserve a meeting room,” he said. “And also, could you do me a favor? Around 9:30 p.m. tonight, please pick up a man with a bright yellow suitcase at the airport. I will send you the flight number shortly.”

Jiang Xu added, “When you see him, just tell him… it’s Jiang Xu’s arrangement.”

“Understood, sir,” the receptionist noted down the information and asked, “May I ask what the meeting room is for? Would you like us to arrange it for you?”

Jiang Xu opened the white window curtains, allowing the warm sunlight to freely fall on his chest and crimson face.

Then he said to the person on the phone, “A confession.”