Chapter 4545. The flower that blooms has no desire to turn around
Xie Kang opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness. He felt dizzy and felt like a fish out of water.
He thought he was still there, unable to leave. After slowly adjusting to the darkness, he realized he was lying in a hospital bed. All three beds in the ward were occupied, but the other two were fast asleep. The main lights were off, and a small nightlight was dimly lit by the bedside. Looking through the gap in the curtains, he could tell it was already midnight, and the room was pitch black and silent.
Zhuang Yongyuan was also there, sitting on a wooden bench beside the bed, resting beside Xie Kang's hand where he was receiving an IV drip, his only remaining earring gleaming. He wasn't sleeping deeply, but Xie Kang's movements startled him awake. He sat up straight, rubbing his eyes and saying sleepily, "You're finally awake."
Xie Kang asked him, "Why am I in the hospital?"
"Do you remember what you did in the afternoon?" Zhuang Yongyuan asked back.
Xie Kang was silent for a moment, then said, "I remember."
"You suddenly fainted at Grandma Shen's house and fell straight from the chair to the ground. It was so fast that we didn't have time to help you. You hit your head here. Call an ambulance. You have a mild concussion, but everything else is fine." Zhuang Yongyuan pointed at his forehead. "Does it hurt?"
Xie Kang felt his forehead and, sure enough, felt a large lump on the upper right side. It hurt when he touched it. He quickly asked Zhuang Yongyuan, "Is your face not disfigured?"
"What time do you still care about this?"
"You'll bother me even more if your face is disfigured."
Zhuang Yongyuan put his hand over his mouth and said, "There are people around, don't talk nonsense."
Xie Kang leaned back to avoid his hand: "I'm not afraid."
Their eyes met for a moment in the dim light of the night lamp. Zhuang Yongyuan then asked him, "What did you see?"
"So what did you see?"
"I didn't see anything." Zhuang Yongyuan lowered his head, his tone somewhat lost. "Grandma told me to pay attention to the light in front of me, but I couldn't find it at all."
“Grandma Shen still talks to you?”
"She's been talking, didn't you hear?"
"I just heard her chanting some kind of spell..." Xie Kang muttered. Suddenly, he stared at Zhuang Yongyuan nervously and asked him, "Do you think this is real?"
"What really? What did you see?"
Xie Kang answered the question irrelevantly: "It's been so long, and you still haven't asked me why I came back in the first place."
"It saves you from getting angry again." Zhuang Yongyuan said, looking away.
"sorry."
"I didn't come back to hear you say sorry."
Their voices grew louder as they became excited. The person in the next bed turned over and sighed impatiently. Xie Kang suddenly pulled out the IV needle from the back of his hand and said to Zhuang Yongyuan in a low voice, "Let's talk outside."
Zhuang Yongyuan hesitated for a moment and said, "Can you do it? Don't let me faint again."
Xie Kang shook his head and got out of bed. Zhuang Yongyuan stuffed his coat into his hand and said, "It's very cold outside."
Xie Kang put his coat on over his hospital gown as he walked, then opened the door and went out. The hallway was brightly lit, and the overhead light tubes emitted a hissing sound of electricity. As he entered the elevator, he encountered a patient being wheeled in from the operating room. The nurse next to him looked at Xie Kang, a patient wandering outside in the middle of the night, with a strange look in her eyes. She wanted to ask questions but was too lazy to bother, so she swallowed them back.
A cold wind howled beneath the inpatient building, and the wisteria flowers entwined along the back corridor wilted in the depths of winter. Zhuang Yongyuan and Xie Kang sat down in the middle of the corridor. Xie Kang spoke first, "I want a cigarette."
Zhuang Yongyuan lit his cigarette and said, "I really can't tell where you quit."
"I had quit smoking and hadn't smoked much in the past six years. It's all your fault." Xie Kang licked the teeth marks on the cigarette holder left by Zhuang Yongyuan and said, "Do you really want to know what I saw?"
"What can't be said?"
"I was afraid of scaring you."
Zhuang Yongyuan deliberately tapped the wound on his forehead, causing Xie Kang to gasp in pain. "Who on earth is going to be scared? Now I finally understand why you always refused to accompany me to horror movies. I thought you found them boring, but I didn't expect you were afraid."
Xie Kang shrugged, agreeing. Zhuang Yongyuan burst into laughter, and Xie Kang asked him again, "What's so funny?"
"I never thought before that it was because you were scared."
Xie Kang picked up the dead leaves that had fallen from Zhuang Yongyuan's head. Zhuang Yongyuan continued, "At that time, I felt that there was nothing in the world that would scare you."
"I'm a living person, it's normal for me to be afraid of ghosts." Xie Kang said, looking up at the round moon. The moonlight was as frayed as the red cloth that Shen Xifu handed to him during the day.
Xie Kang said, "Aren't you asking me what I saw?"
"Yeah, tell me."
"You really want to listen? You can't regret it."
"Go ahead."
Xie Kang exhaled a puff of smoke and said, "I saw Li Xiuyu."
"Li Xiuyu? What did you see about him?" Zhuang Yongyuan became interested.
"I saw him die that day." Xie Kang looked at Zhuang Yongyuan with a sharp gaze. "I actually went back that day."
Zhuang Yongyuan frowned, confused: "What do you mean by going back? Where?"
"On the day Li Xiuyu committed suicide, we came back from camping. After sending him home, we sat at his house for a while, and then I sent you home. Do you remember?"
Zhuang Yongyuan's breathing stagnated: "I remember."
Three hours after Zhuang Yongyuan was sent home by Xie Kang, he was woken up from his nap and received the news of Li Xiuyu's death. Of course he remembered it.
The call of a spotted dove emanated from the nearby old banyan tree. Xie Kang's voice was dry, "After we separated, I suddenly felt a USB drive in my pocket. It wasn't mine. I suspected it was Li Xiuyu's; he'd bought a lot of that model. I didn't take the USB drive from his house, so he must have slipped it into my pocket."
"I immediately felt bad, but I couldn't explain why. I couldn't wait to get home, so I found a nearby internet cafe to see what was on the USB drive..." Xie Kang took a deep breath. "Back then, we didn't know how to use music arrangement software. Li Xiuyu arranged several songs and put them on that USB drive, along with documentation explaining his arrangement logic and a software tutorial he wrote himself."
"Although there was no suicide note, the USB drive looked exactly like his belongings. He came back from the martial arts school and asked us to go camping so that he could see us one last time."
Zhuang Yongyuan stared at the bugs crawling on the vines. There was something wrong with Li Xiuyu during the camping. He didn't respond when he spoke to him several times, and he forgot what he had just said the next second.
But he never expected that Li Xiuyu's condition would be so serious.
"His phone was confiscated, so I couldn't call him. I called his parents, one was on a business trip, the other was at work. I called Du Jiahao, but he didn't answer. I rushed to his house, but motorcycles weren't allowed in the neighborhood. I left my bike at the door, too late to even get the keys out..."
"I'm already running fast... I only have two legs..." Xie Kang repeated these two sentences like a man possessed, his eyes becoming increasingly confused and his nerves trembling. Zhuang Yongyuan held his face and asked anxiously, "What do you mean? What did you see?"
"I...I..." Xie Kang was still murmuring. Zhuang Yongyuan hugged him tightly, so tightly that not only Xie Kang, but also himself could not breathe.
"I was already very fast, but Li Xiuyu still died in front of me." Xie Kang's chin was pressed on the back of Zhuang Yongyuan's shoulder. Through the thick winter clothes, he seemed to be able to touch Zhuang Yongyuan's raised ice cream cone tattoo.
His voice drifted over from behind Zhuang Yongyuan's head: "When I went there, Li Xiuyu happened to fall down right in front of me and almost hit me."
"I just realized how loud the sound is when someone falls to the ground. His arms and legs were broken, so it must have been very painful. His face was facing me, and I could tell from his expression that he was in pain."
Xie Kang's tone and voice returned to normal. His light brown pupils looked almost transparent in the moonlight. He spoke to Zhuang Yongyuan word by word, "Didn't you ask me what I saw when I watched Luo Yin? I told you, and you said..."
"Tell me, is Li Xiuyu still blaming me for letting me see this?"
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