Chapter 3

I took a deep breath, forcing down the turbulent emotions in my chest, and picked up the phone by the bed.

After a few taps, the screen displayed: Transfer successful.

When I walked downstairs, he was standing in front of the living room’s floor-to-ceiling window, his back to me.

He heard my footsteps and turned around.

The phone was in his hand, the screen lit up, showing the notification of the transfer he had just received.

He looked at me, his gaze deep, like a pool of icy water with no visible bottom, unreadable.

“This is?”

He spoke, his voice still hoarse.

“An advance payment for the stand-in.”

I cut him off.

I tried to make my voice sound casual, laced with a haughty air of charity. “Or, last night’s service fee. Think of it however you want.”

“As long as you can satisfy me in the future.”

He was silent for a few seconds. “…Alright.”

……

The car headed once again toward the city’s central hospital.

The closer we got, the straighter Xu Qing sat.

The smell of disinfectant hit me, so strong it suffocated me in an instant.

Xu Qing was clearly familiar with this place.

He led me through the noisy outpatient hall, and we stopped outside a ward.

He glanced through the glass window in the door before gently pushing it open.

The room was quiet, only the faint, regular beeping of monitoring equipment breaking the silence.

On the bed by the window lay a frail little girl, a breathing mask over her nose.

Her face was almost translucent, blue veins visible beneath her skin.

So, it turned out he’d been fighting in illegal matches all this time to pay for his sister’s surgery.

Xu Qing lowered his head, silently watching his sister’s sleeping face.

In that moment, all the deliberate mockery and arrogance I’d worn melted away from me.

A cold tide of shared fear and helplessness surged up, drowning my heart in an instant.

Looking at that little girl, I seemed to see myself not long from now, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines.

That powerless struggle against death, the desperate longing for life tangled with despair…

I knew it all too well.

I stepped forward, standing beside Xu Qing, my gaze falling on that fragile little life as well.

I took a deep breath, swallowing the lump in my throat, and in a voice more resolute than I ever thought I possessed, I said softly to him,

“Don’t worry.”

Xu Qing turned to look at me, a flash of astonishment and unguarded vulnerability in his eyes.

Meeting his gaze, I spoke with utmost seriousness, word by word: “I will find the best doctors to treat her, use the best medicine, the best equipment.”

I paused, as if making a promise to him.

Or perhaps, praying to the fate that might exist in the darkness, begging it to show this girl…

And maybe me as well, a little more mercy.

“She will get better.”

Xu Qing stared at me, stunned.

His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, no sound came out.

He quickly turned away, looking back at his sister.

All he left me was the tense line of his profile and the faint tremble of his fingers.