Chapter 155 He Didn’t Die in a Pool of Blood

Just like Zhou Tianqing said, I feel so hurt now because I had expectations.

At this thought, tears welled up again. She couldn't control her emotions anymore, as if the switch that regulated her emotions had automatically broken down when Xu Sirui touched her. In the face of love, she automatically regressed to a primitive infant, unable to tolerate even the slightest pain. The slightest pain would trigger her to cry.

She vaguely felt Zhou Tianqing embrace her trembling body. She buried her head in her shoulder and stammered incoherently, "I know what I thought of him, but I don't know what to do... I don't want to like him anymore. I really don't want to like him anymore..."

She is not a moth that cannot fly into the fire again and again. She is a snail that will melt if salt is sprinkled on it once.

In front of him, she was not as brave as she thought. In fact, she was fragile and vulnerable.

Before she cried until she was almost out of breath, she heard Zhou Tianqing say to her, "It's okay, Yingning. You can make any decision. I support you no matter what you decide. Ruirui is not the only one who is my nephew. You are also half my child."

**

Grandma and grandpa's wedding anniversary ended up being just a private day for the two of them. Zhou Tianqing said she was going to pick up Xu Sirui and Zhu Yingning, but not only did she not pick them up, she didn't show up either. She just made a phone call, giggling and saying that something had happened and she forgot to rush over.

Fortunately, the two elders have always been strong-willed. As she chewed the king crab, Grandma calmly said to the phone, "Your dad and I would have starved to death by the time you guys got here. Okay, you don't have to come. We've almost finished the food. We can find a chance to invite the kids over for some cake later."

"Mom, you are so wise and powerful."

"Get out of here now."

After hanging up the phone, Zhou Tianqing took Zhu Yingning, who was tired of crying, to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

Zhu Yingning had no appetite and said she didn't want to eat anymore after taking two bites. She was awakened by Zhou Tianqing's reminder, "You have final exams coming up soon, so you need to take good care of yourself so that you can perform well."

Yes, she'd already been heartbroken, so was she going to fail her final exam too? The thought of failing in both love and school frightened her to death, so much so that she quickly ate two extra bowls of rice.

Final exams were on Thursday and Friday, leaving two days. Zhou Tianqing said that after she finished her exams, if she didn't want to stay at home and see Xu Sirui's face, she could move in with her for a few days. "My parents would definitely be happy to see you, too. They've been complaining about my age and lack of energy lately, and they prefer young people like you who are full of collagen."

It sounded like a demon sucking the essence of young boys and girls. Zhu Yingning smiled softly.

After dinner, Zhou Tianqing drove her home.

Since final exams were imminent and involved the reclassification of her senior year, Zhu Yingning felt she couldn't let Xu Sirui affect her mood. After much deliberation, she sent him a text message, saying she'd been busy reviewing for the past few days and would be going to school early in the morning and home late at night, so he wouldn't have to wait for her to go to and from school. After a long while, Xu Sirui finally replied with a "OK."

Escaping is shameful, but it works.

Although she couldn't help crying when she was emotional, not being able to see Xu Sirui's face did allow her to successfully control her emotions within a controllable range.

After successfully completing the two-day final exam and checking the answers with Zou Hao to confirm that she had performed normally, she finally let out a sigh of relief.

I had originally planned to move to Zhou Tianqing's house immediately, but my classmates suddenly suggested a get-together. After all, after our sophomore year, we all went to different classes. After two years together, there was still a foundation of camaraderie. As the class monitor for our sophomore year, Zhu Yingning couldn't be absent, so the trip to Zhou Tianqing's house had to be put on hold for the time being.

At the party, some boys ordered beer. Zhu Yingning didn't drink, but she couldn't resist the others' cravings. Since she couldn't hold her liquor well, she got drunk and started clamoring to toast her and Zou Hao, the new and old squad leaders. She used apple cider vinegar throughout the meal, but inevitably got some splashes of beer on her.

After the party, she smelled the smell on her body and felt very disgusted, so she planned to take a shower as the first thing she did when she got home.

When I arrived downstairs in the community, the roadside lights were already on. Mosquitoes were circling under the lights, and from a distance, they looked like small dark clouds.

She took the elevator to the 16th floor. The elevator door opened and she walked out. Before she even entered the house, she saw that the door was wide open.

People have an innate premonition of dangerous situations; it's hard to explain, it's just a feeling. Zhu Yingning's heart couldn't help but race. She walked through the doorway and looked around. The lights were on, but no one was inside. After she exited, she realized the fire door to the stairwell was wide open. The sound-activated light inside had gone off the moment she looked over, leaving her in complete darkness.

She walked in slowly, and the voice-controlled light came on again after she came in, illuminating the small space in the stairwell. She saw Xu Sirui standing on the stair platform, holding the handrail, looking down, with a dazed expression.

He never touched the stair railings because he thought they had been touched by many people and were covered with a thick layer of dust, making them very dirty.

She noticed that his mouth had also lost all its color, turning it into the color of lime. Following his gaze, she saw Xu Siyang lying motionless in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, his limbs limp and twisted into strange positions, like a cotton doll without a skeleton.

**

Zhu Yingning once read a theory that she once thought was far-fetched. It said that the human heart grows on the left side rather than in the middle, which shows that human nature is biased.

Now she realized the power of bias. After the initial shock, in such a critical and terrifying situation - her first reaction was not to care about Xu Siyang who was at the bottom of the stairs and whose life or death was unknown, but to turn her head to look at Xu Sirui beside her.

His expression looked like what the old people in the village often described as being in a nightmare. Although he was still standing in the same place, most of his soul and spirit had already gone, leaving only an empty shell like a cicada molting.

"...Xu Sirui." She stood in front of him, called his name, and found that his eyes were also out of focus.

"Xu Sirui!" She reached out and shook his arm, shouting a little louder.

He still didn't react.

The situation now demanded no further delay. She patted his face, but finding he still hadn't recovered, she steeled her resolve and slapped him. Though she tried to control her strength, her grip was powerful enough to deliver the blow. The resounding sound of the slap echoed through the narrow stairwell.

Xu Sirui's face was knocked to one side by her blow, and his eyes became focused, as if only now did he see clearly that she was standing in front of him.

"Calm down, look at me, and take a deep breath."

She squeezed his hand hard, her fingers digging into his knuckles, causing pain in the bones of his knuckles and little fingers. This pain, along with the stinging pain on his face, awakened his dormant senses, and he felt the beating of his heart again, like a frightened bird, running rampant in his chest, as if trying to break through the flesh and escape from his body.

He also saw her eyes. Under the pale light of the voice-controlled lamp, her eyes were dark and shiny, like an arrow shot straight at him with the power to penetrate the fog.

"Breathe deeply—inhale." She repeated the instruction and patted his chest vigorously with her free hand.

The steady voice reached his eardrums, registering in his cells. He finally took his first breath, his shrunken lungs instantly filling with air, aching slightly. His breathing was completely chaotic, and he gasped for air like a drowning man emerging from the water, sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, trying to adjust his breathing to her command. The hand she had held tightly to him also clasped her fingers tightly, so tightly that there was no gap, as if he were grasping at a lifeline.

Seeing that he had almost adjusted himself, Zhu Yingning calmly pried his fingers apart: "Let go, I'll go down and check on Xu Siyang."

Xu Siyang was still in the same posture at the bottom of the stairs.

The first thing she did after going downstairs was to check his breathing and heartbeat. After discovering that he was still alive, she realized that her back was covered in cold sweat.

"No one is dead...call 120 first." She said to Xu Sirui without turning her head. Her voice, which had been steady until now, became unstable at this moment.

She took the opportunity to carefully examine Xu Siyang's limbs. Fortunately, there were no broken bones, he had just fainted, so his limbs looked limp. She opened his mouth and found no blood clots, but it was still impossible to tell if his internal organs were damaged. The blood on the ground all came from his forehead. The small hole on his forehead was unknown how deep it was, and it was still bleeding. With limited resources, she quickly fished out a pack of tissues from her pocket, pulled out two pieces of paper, and gently pressed them on his wound to stop the bleeding.

Xu Sirui had already called the emergency number and briefly explained the address and the situation on the scene to the medical staff opposite, but he never came over. He stood far away on the staircase platform, his face pale, his hands and feet weak, like a child who had done something wrong.

"Xu Sirui, come here." She turned around and called him.

He shook his head and shrank deeper into the shadow of the corner.

"Come here!" She said with a stern tone in her voice.

Xu Sirui then walked out slowly, moved to Zhu Yingning's side, and squatted down exhausted.

Two folded tissues, stained a glaring crimson with blood, she gestured for him to take over and help Xu Siyang apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Xu Sirui hugged his knees in resistance, not moving. She used her free left hand to forcefully pull his right hand, which was tightly gripping his knee, away from him, spreading his curled fingers apart and teaching him how to press down on the tissue with the pads of her fingers.

The tissue was wet, and through this layer of moisture, he could vaguely feel the warmth of Xu Siyang's skin and blood.

Tears rolled out of his eyes, and Xu Sirui bit his lower lip and sobbed softly.

"Look, he's not dead." She whispered beside him, "He's still warm. Xu Sirui, people are not as fragile as you think."

He nodded desperately with tears in his eyes.

The ambulance arrived 15 minutes later. Medical staff brought out a stretcher and took Xu Siyang into the elevator.

"Who among you is the patient's family member?" one of the nurses took the time to ask before getting on the ambulance.

"We all are." Zhu Yingning pulled Xu Sirui into the ambulance.

She moved too quickly. The nurse originally wanted to say that only one family member could go up, but then she saw that they were both children and Zhu Yingning looked very small and would not take up much space, so she swallowed the second half of the sentence and concentrated on cooperating with other medical staff to check Xu Siyang's condition and treat his wounds.

When the ambulance was halfway there, Xu Siyang woke up once. The medical staff asked him some basic questions, but his answers were vague and incoherent. They were more like interjections murmured unconsciously in a coma than answers. After that, he fell into a coma again.

After arriving at the hospital, the doctor and nurses wheeled him in for an X-ray. The nurse who had spoken to them came over and asked if they were adults. When she answered no, she told them to call an adult guardian: "You are too young to make decisions about some things. Please ask your parents to come over."

After she finished speaking, she left, leaving Xu Sirui sitting on the stool in panic. He unconsciously grabbed the corner of Zhu Yingning's clothes, as if seeking shelter.

Zhu Yingning took out her cell phone and dialed Xu Zhengkang's number on the screen.

"Don't..." He sat up straight suddenly and tried to stop her, his voice unusually hoarse.

She looked up at him: "Are you afraid of him?"

Xu Sirui froze.

After a long silence, he stammered and tried to defend himself: "I'm not afraid of him, it's because... I didn't... Xu Siyang is not me... I didn't push him... He pushed himself..."

"Stop, you don't need to tell me this." She raised her hand to interrupt him, "Because no matter what the truth is, I'm on your side. You just need to know this. Xu Sirui, I don't care about the truth."

It's you I care about.

He looked at her in confusion, as if he had been cast into a spell, and remained motionless. Just when Zhu Yingning thought he hadn't heard her clearly and she needed to repeat herself, he finally moved the next second, raised his arms, and suddenly hugged her.