Chapter 89
Are you this nice to everyone?
Zhan Xinyue was stunned, and finally understood why he had suddenly become so ill.
She paused, then stepped back and turned on the light in the room: "Don't worry, we'll find it. Go back to bed and lie down first. We'll figure something out together once you're better."
The school's single apartments are quite nice, simple one-bedroom rooms with a sofa and kitchenette. There aren't many things in the room; besides basic necessities, most of the items are clearly for Panpan's use.
Zhan Xinyue had no idea how Shi Ziqian had been coping these past two days; there hadn't even been a drop of hot water in the house. As she boiled water, she turned to Shi Ziqian and asked, "Have you eaten anything?"
Shi Ziqian shook his head.
“It’s best not to take fever reducers on an empty stomach, since your stomach isn’t very good to begin with,” Zhan Xinyue pondered. “But the cafeteria is closed now, let me see if you have anything in your fridge that you can eat.”
She went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found it empty.
"No need, I don't have much of an appetite. You don't need to worry about it, I'll take my medicine later."
Zhan Xinyue stood in front of the refrigerator for a while, then suddenly turned and walked out. She walked quickly, reaching the door in a few steps, pushing it open, and stepping outside.
"Zhan Xinyue." Just as she stepped out, she heard Shi Ziqian call her name.
"Hmm?" Zhan Xinyue stepped back and looked at him.
Shi Ziqian, who had been sitting on the bed, leaned towards her. Seeing her looking at him, Shi Ziqian pursed his lips slightly and remained silent.
"I'm going out for a bit, I'll be back in a bit," Zhan Xinyue said. "I'm going to see if Teacher Wang downstairs has anything I can borrow. I borrowed the fever reducer from her earlier."
Shi Ziqian slowly leaned back. "Okay."
Zhan Xinyue rushed to Wang Zhiyi's place again, but this time there really wasn't anything to eat. Wang Zhiyi obviously didn't cook much, and the two of them rummaged through the kitchen cabinets for a long time, finally finding only a small handful of noodles and an egg.
"Should I go out and buy some groceries now?" Wang Zhiyi asked her.
"No need, that's enough," Zhan Xinyue said. "With my cooking skills, I can only make a bowl of noodles at most."
When she returned, the water had just been boiled. Zhan Xinyue mixed a cup of warm water and handed it to Shi Ziqian by the bedside. She noticed that his lips were dry and chapped, and she didn't know if it was because of a high fever, dehydration, or both.
He reached out to catch it, and as the glass landed in his palm, his hand slumped slightly. He quickly reached out his other hand to steady it.
Zhan Xinyue didn't say anything, only that, "Have some water first, I'll go make you a bowl of noodles."
"Okay," Shi Ziqian said. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, why don't you take a nap?"
Shi Ziqian shook his head. "I've been asleep for a long time."
"Okay." Zhan Xinyue took a pillow from the side and placed it behind him, then turned and went into the kitchen.
Shi Ziqian's kitchen had an induction cooker provided by the school, as well as cookware and even basic seasonings. Zhan Xinyue stood in front of the stove, preparing to fry the egg first. She turned on the induction cooker, poured some oil into the pan, and was waiting for the oil to heat up when she suddenly saw Shi Ziqian, who had gotten out of bed at some point, leaning against the kitchen doorway watching her.
The kitchen lights were dim, and Shi Ziqian's face was in the shadows, making his features less clear.
Zhan Xinyue had no idea what he was thinking. He looked like he could barely stand, yet he insisted on standing there watching her cook noodles.
"Don't worry, I won't set your kitchen on fire."
Shi Ziqian remained still, his head resting against the door, simply gazing at her quietly, his eyes somewhat dim.
When he woke up in the afternoon, he couldn't tell the time or how long he had slept. He only knew that he had slept the longest he had ever slept in his life.
The curtains were drawn, and the room was pitch black and completely silent. In this darkness and silence, he suddenly felt as if he were being abandoned by the world.
He hadn't been this sick in a long time; it felt like his internal organs were burning, and all his strength had been scorched and evaporated by the intense heat. He closed his eyes for a while to recover before reaching for his phone beside his pillow and turning it on. His eyes, long accustomed to darkness, took a long time to adjust to the bright light; the screen showed it was already past seven in the evening.
There were no missed calls or unread text messages on my phone. Nothing at all.
He released his phone and slowly closed his eyes.
A thought suddenly popped into my head: if I just died like this, maybe no one would even notice.
That's what I was thinking.
The next moment, the doorbell rang.
"Go to bed and rest. I'll call you when the noodles are ready," said Zhan Xinyue.
Shi Ziqian snapped out of his reverie and slowly shook his head. Watching her movements, he suddenly said in a hoarse voice, "Zhan Xinyue, are you this kind to everyone?"
Zhan Xinyue was holding her hand over the pot to feel the oil temperature and didn't pay much attention. She casually replied, "I don't treat everyone like this. I'm not a saint."
Shi Ziqian smiled faintly, his voice low, and said as if talking to himself, "You can be very nice to everyone, but not to one person."
"What?" Zhan Xinyue didn't hear clearly. She had just cracked the egg into the pan when the splattering oil forced her to take several steps back. She wasn't being modest at all; in her previous life, she had basically never been to the kitchen. If she said she only knew how to make noodles, she really only knew how to boil water and put the noodles in. She wasn't even very skilled at frying eggs.
Just as she was frantically searching for a spatula to flip the egg, a hand blocked her way: "Watch out for the oil, let me do it."
"No need, I can manage." She remembered the weakness Shi Ziqian had inadvertently shown when he took the water glass, but Shi Ziqian had already taken the spatula from her hand without saying a word and skillfully flipped the fried egg over.
Shi Ziqian looked even more like someone who couldn't cook than she did. Although he seemed weak at the moment, his movements were quite skillful.
"Can you cook?" Zhan Xinyue asked.
"Yes, I know a little," Shi Ziqian said. "I live alone and sometimes I cook for myself."
The induction cooker wasn't very powerful, so he swished the pan around, waiting for the egg mixture to solidify. His rolled-up sleeves slipped down, and before his hand holding the spatula could react, Zhan Xinyue beside him reached out and helped him roll up his sleeves again.
He looked down at her, staring at her focused eyes for two seconds, and suddenly felt a moment of disorientation.
A rainy night, the dim light in the kitchen, and... the person I love most beside me.
The most ordinary life of all happy families in the world, the life he had imagined countless times.
It was precisely in this situation that a fleeting moment was achieved.
When the ending is known, will this fleeting, illusory moment bring happiness or deeper pain? He couldn't say for sure.
"The eggs are going to burn." Zhan Xinyue waved her slender white hand in front of him, and Shi Ziqian realized that he had been daydreaming again.
"Looks ready," Zhan Xinyue said. "Alright, now it's my turn. I'm quite good at cooking noodles too."
She pulled Shi Ziqian aside, and while pouring boiling water into the pot, she asked, "By the way, how did Panpan get lost?"
After Shi Ziqian finished recounting what happened that day, Zhan Xinyue was already scooping out noodles. She stopped Shi Ziqian from taking the noodles, placed the cooked noodles on the table, and said, "What you need to do now is to focus on getting better. I'll figure out what to do with Panpan."
Shi Ziqian's fever was higher than expected. He could barely eat a bowl of noodles before collapsing into a half-asleep state. Zhan Xinyue quickly shook him awake, gave him some fever-reducing medicine, and helped him lie down on the bed.
Shi Ziqian stared at her with hazy eyes for a while, but couldn't focus, and soon fell asleep again.
Zhan Xinyue quietly touched his forehead; it was still burning hot. She then fetched some water, soaked a towel in it, and applied it to his forehead.
Shi Ziqian did not sleep soundly; his face was pale and sickly, and his brow was constantly furrowed beneath his disheveled hair. His usually tall and imposing figure now appeared rather thin.
She didn't know what she could do, so she kept changing the towels. Several times when her eyes fell on the phone next to his pillow, she had the urge to call 120.
Fortunately, after a while, perhaps the medicine took effect, Shi Ziqian's furrowed brows finally relaxed, and the flush on his face faded considerably.
Zhan Xinyue breathed a sigh of relief, but when she was about to remove the towel from his forehead, her hand paused slightly.
There was a clear streak of water at the corner of Shi Ziqian's eye; it was unclear whether it was from the towel seeping through.
Zhan Xinyue watched for a while, then gently wiped it away with a towel.
After confirming that Ziqian's condition had stabilized, she boiled a glass of water and placed it on his bedside table along with the kettle that had been boiled. She then went to the bedside to open the curtains and cracked the window slightly to ventilate the room.
The window here faces the basketball court. Pulling back the curtains and looking out, the rain casts a dim, yellowish glow on the streetlights beside the court, and turns the puddles on the rubber court into a yellowish-orange hue. Further on, there are rows of brightly lit school buildings; the first evening class has probably already ended.
Zhan Xinyue withdrew her gaze and prepared to leave. There was a desk by the window, with several carving knives and some tools whose purpose she couldn't figure out on the corner. She glanced at them casually, then her eyes suddenly fell on a row of trinkets on the windowsill.
There were many, many wooden carvings in the shape of small dogs, standing side by side on the windowsill. The first few were still rather rough, but the outlines became more and more delicate. The last one was already clearly shaped like Panpan.
Its shape is 90% similar to the pendant she received.
When Zhan Xinyue returned to the classroom, it was already the third evening class. Dai Yun turned around and quietly asked her, "Where did you go? Old Zhou asked just now, and I said you went to the physics teacher's office to ask questions."
Zhan Xinyue thanked her and mumbled, "I wasn't feeling well, so I went to the school clinic."
After class, Shi Qiyue came over again. Zhan Xinyue told her about the situation there and said worriedly, "He was a little better when I left, but he was alone in the dormitory, and he was still..."
Shi Qiyue said, "Thank you, sister. You don't need to worry about it anymore. I'll call home tonight and ask them to pick him up."
Zhan Xinyue nodded: "That would be best."
When Shi Ziqian woke up again, it was midnight. The room was empty, but it wasn't very dark. Zhan Xinyue had left a small lamp on the dining table before she left.
He felt his fever had subsided, and his mind was much clearer. He slowly sat up, and the towel, half-dried from being burned by his body heat, slid off his forehead and into his palm.
The room was no different from usual, now empty and desolate again. The water glass by the bed was open, the water cold. Whether it was Zhan Xinyue or Panpan, they had come and gone, leaving the one left behind with even more difficult days than before.
After sitting on the bed in a daze for a while, he got up and sat back down at the dining table. The bowl of noodles he hadn't finished was cold and clumped together. He picked up his chopsticks and stuffed the icy noodles into his mouth, bite by bite.
For some reason, Aunt Chen appeared at his door the next morning, bringing him some porridge she had cooked herself, and even a doctor who prescribed a whole bunch of medicine. He wasn't feeling well, and after taking the medicine, he remained in a drowsy state. Aunt Chen stayed there until evening, then tried to persuade him to go back with her. He refused, and Aunt Chen left, saying she would bring him food again the next day.
By Wednesday morning, he felt much better. He called Lao Zhou to ask for two more days off, and then called Aunt Chen to tell her she didn't need to come over today. He felt he was almost fully recovered, but he didn't plan to go back to class; instead, he intended to go out and look for Panpan again. But when he noticed the time on his phone, he suddenly remembered something extremely important.
So much had happened these past few days that he almost forgot: his grandmother's death anniversary was approaching.
Panpan hasn't been found yet, but he has to go back for his grandmother's death anniversary. He thought about it for a long time, and finally could only call his driver, Xiao Li, to ask him to help look for Panpan in the next few days and also to book a plane ticket back to his hometown for him.
After quickly packing his things, he put on his coat and prepared to go out. He felt a little better physically, but his spirits were even heavier.
Before I even reached the door, the doorbell rang.
Normally, few people would ring the doorbell. Shi Ziqian looked up and glanced in that direction, and suddenly, as if sensing something, a slight feeling stirred in his heart.
The moment he opened the door, a black figure unexpectedly squeezed in through the crack, just like every other day, wagging its tail and steaming hot as it bumped into his leg.
Before he could react, he instinctively looked up and met a pair of familiar eyes.
Outside the door, Zhan Xinyue, dressed in the chill of late autumn, looked weary, but her eyes were smiling as she looked at him.
"Shi Ziqian, I've found Panpan."
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