Chapter 47
Ta-da!
"I've left your things at the door!" Da Bai called out from the doorway, then pushed the flatbed cart to knock on the next door.
Chu Yue put on her homemade plastic protective suit and mask, held up an alcohol spray bottle, and pushed the door open a crack.
Without any strategy, Chu Yue sprayed bullets across the doorway, then used a clothesline pole to skewer through the loops in the plastic bags and dragged in a week's worth of supplies, spraying them with alcohol for disinfection once more.
This has been going on for almost a month now, with no end in sight. I'm stuck in my tiny home of about 100 square meters, and the only connection I have with the outside world is through the window.
The city, a city of three million people, was brightly lit at night, but the streets were deserted. It had fallen silent; it turned out that humans could live without a sound.
The phone suddenly rang. Busy with work, Chu Yue never imagined she would one day know who was calling without even looking at her phone.
She hurried to the living room, instinctively disinfecting her hands before grabbing her phone. The video call connected, and Ji Mingfei appeared on the screen, holding June in her arms.
"Did the food arrive today? Are you still eating? Did you take your temperature? If you're not feeling well, you must go to the hospital right away, okay?" Ji Mingfei began with his routine instructions.
Chu Yue nodded, accepting every word of her wife's affection. Only after her wife had finished repeating herself could Chu Yue speak, but today she forgot to mention one thing.
"You haven't asked me if I've eaten yet?" Chu Yue added with a smile.
"Of course she ate it! The pot is still on the table behind her." Ji Mingfei always had sharp eyes; as soon as he answered the call, he saw the small milk pot on the dining table behind Chu Yue.
Chu Yue turned around to look, and it was true. She changed her angle so that she couldn't see the pot anymore, and said, "How's the situation at home? Is the epidemic serious? June is still so young, we mustn't let her get infected. Last night, several people were taken away from the community, and the ambulance sirens made people quite nervous."
Ji Mingfei asked worriedly, "Has someone in the community been infected? Is it far from where you live?"
"There are infected people everywhere, so distance doesn't matter anymore. Besides, I don't go out, so the virus can't just drift in through the window and infect me, can it?" Chu Yue comforted her with a smile.
"I should have held the wedding first..." Ji Mingfei said regretfully in a low voice.
"Wife, wife, look at me! As soon as I'm out of quarantine, I'll rush to you and give you a grand wedding! Do you like the beach, or the plateau, or maybe we should go abroad... Oh, it's too dangerous abroad right now, how about Beijing, Shanghai, Xinjiang, or Tibet? Let's just skip June and go on a trip!"
Hearing her name called in June, she suddenly looked up. Staring at the woman on her phone, she gripped the smooth screen tightly and started calling out "Aba aba."
"Your daughter isn't happy!" Ji Mingfei changed the way he held the baby, with his bottom facing the camera, so Chu Yue could only see the baby's diaper.
Chu Yue held her phone and tried several different angles before realizing her movements were useless, then said unhappily, "I don't want to see June's butt..."
“She’s always on her phone.” Ji Mingfei lifted the child onto her shoulder. “June has gained weight again, and I can barely lift her with one hand. She’s also very strong, and sometimes I can’t even take her away from her.”
Chu Yue stared incredulously at the little butt on her phone. "Do you think June might be an alpha? Didn't they say there's a 2% margin of error in test results? Maybe June is actually an alpha!"
"..."
That probability is too low.
"Wife," Chu Yue said in a drawn-out, coquettish tone, "The New Year is almost here again. At this time last year, I was driving to Takito."
"You said that day that you were in your most vulnerable period."
Ji Mingfei certainly remembered.
When she opened the door and saw Chu Yue standing outside, all her emotions surged to her chest. Her heart pounded fiercely at the sight of this woman, and she knew it wasn't because of pheromones.
Perhaps without realizing it, she had already fallen in love with Chu Yue, but her past failures kept pulling her back, preventing her from loving him.
Chu Yue lazily leaned against the sofa armrest, sharing her unexpected discovery with Ji Mingfei, saying, "Last night I was lying in bed and suddenly realized that all three of our family names have the character 'Yue' in them. Tell me, did you do it on purpose?"
Ji Mingfei covered her mouth without any attempt to hide it, "Ah, you found out!"
"..."
My wife's acting skills have deteriorated again.
Chu Yue did some quick calculations and said in a mystical tone, "One for me, one for you, that makes six in June. This must be a hint! We'll get married when the baby is eight months old!"
With less than a month until the baby is eight months old, and there's no sign of the lockdown being lifted in Takito, how could they possibly have time to prepare for the wedding?
Ji Mingfei pouted and said disdainfully, "You've been locked up and it's made you sick, haven't you?"
"Ah!" Chu Yue suddenly screamed, "How did you know? I'll go crazy if this continues! I've never stayed home for so long before. Every night I'm thinking about finding a rope to climb down the window for some fresh air."
“You live on the seventh floor,” Ji Mingfei reminded her. “We don’t have a rope that long.”
"I hope I'm not locked up forever! By the time I get out, June will be getting married, and she'll be coming to see me with her omega and child... I've missed not only her growth but also her wedding. Oh my god, we haven't even had our wedding yet! Are we not going to have it after June?!"
Chu Yue's ramblings became increasingly outrageous, so Ji Mingfei simply hung up the phone, leaving her to go crazy alone at home.
Looking down, Chu Yue noticed her phone screen was black. Her wife had hung up on her, and suddenly she felt even more pessimistic.
"Let me out! I'm not married yet!"
Chu Yue's howls echoed throughout the entire neighborhood.
The volunteers distributing supplies downstairs shook their heads upon hearing this, saying, "Well, another one gone mad."
"Wasn't it her yesterday?" another volunteer whispered. "She said she wanted to watch the children grow up and something."
The others looked at each other in bewilderment, then continued distributing the supplies.
…
The 48th day of the lockdown.
Chu Yue woke up feeling unwell in the middle of the night and found that she had a fever.
The thermometer reads 38℃!
Chu Yue packed her things immediately and notified the volunteers in charge of epidemic prevention and control in the community. While waiting for the ambulance, she called Deng Jie.
"Boss, don't scare me! How did you get infected? Is the thermometer broken...?"
“If it gets damaged, the temperature will only drop lower…” Chu Yue leaned back on the stool by the door and said weakly, “I should have known better than to video chat with Mingfei every day… If she can’t reach me tomorrow, she’ll definitely look for you. Just tell her I’m volunteering and can’t answer the phone for the time being.”
Deng Jie was almost in tears, "Mrs. Ji won't believe it..."
"Let's keep it a secret for as long as we can; we'll deal with the rest later!"
Chu Yue was beginning to fear the future. The daily increase in new cases and deaths reminded her that she would face death's judgment on equal terms.
But what will happen to my parents, my wife, and my children if she dies... Dog virus, Americans, damn it!
Chu Yue grabbed the doorknob and pressed it hard. Several large white coats appeared at the door with a stretcher, and she was taken away by them while she was still dizzy.
She glanced back at the empty hallway, and these words surfaced in her mind:
Death sits in the hallway outside the door, in the shadows, where mortals cannot see, patiently waiting for me night after night. I don't know when it will rise and say to me: "Hey, let's go."
The wind was cool that night, the car headlights were flashing, and the air felt free…
…
Ji Mingfei learned the news from Deng Jie the night after Chu Yue was taken away. How could she possibly believe such nonsense as "volunteers"!
After that day, Chu Yue seemed to have vanished into thin air, and there was no news of her ever again.
A few days later, Shen Qing'an appeared. She stood at Ji Mingfei's door wearing a mask, and only dared to enter after confirming that there were no children inside.
Ji Mingfei looked somewhat haggard. She served the coffee she made for Shen Qing'an without even stirring it.
Shen Qing'an picked up the cup and took a sip.
"I've heard about Chu Yue's situation and asked around. She's still receiving treatment in the hospital, so you don't need to worry too much."
Ji Mingfei nodded, though it was unclear how much he actually took in.
"Actually, I hope you two will be happy. The reason I was so entangled with Chu Yue before was because there were too many things in the past that I couldn't let go of. I also really want to talk to you, but I don't know if this is the right time."
"Go ahead and say it," Ji Mingfei said, tucking her messy hair behind her ear.
Shen Qing'an hesitated for a long time before saying, "Do you know she has a scar on her back?"
“I know, she said it was left over from a previous surgery.”
Didn't she tell you what kind of surgery it was?
"No."
Shen Qing'an sighed.
"That was seven years ago. My father suddenly passed away, and according to the shareholding ratio, I should have succeeded him as chairman. But my father had too many brothers and sisters, and I couldn't compete with them at all. Being an omega was a limitation for me. Chu Yue heard about my situation and said she wanted to help me. I thought she was just joking. When I was desperate, I decided to let her give it a try!"
“If a young person in power announces that he will promote someone to a high position, it will definitely arouse the jealousy and resistance of others. But if that person is the person in power’s lover, this resistance will immediately disappear. So, Chu Yue became my girlfriend in name only.”
“I remember it was New Year’s Eve. I had booked a restaurant and was waiting for Chu Yue to come and celebrate the New Year with me. But instead, I received a farewell call from her! She said that she would trade her life for Shen Jianan’s inheritance rights. She had a 50% chance of winning. When I arrived at the hospital, she was in the emergency room. The police told me that she had been hit by Shen Jianan’s car and thrown more than ten meters away. The surveillance video was very clear. It was Shen Jianan who deliberately injured her.”
"She won the gamble! She spent three months in the hospital. Later I found out that she deliberately called Shen Jianan that day to provoke him, so that he would drive over her and leave the last chance to gamble to me and his father. Shen Jianan fell for it because Chu Yue already knew that my uncle had a serious heart condition and that he had no chance of becoming the chairman."
"How can I believe that someone who was willing to give up his life for me doesn't love me at all?"
Ji Mingfei slowly raised his head and bluntly stated, "A friendship that would go to great lengths for someone is indeed the best kind of friendship."
"..."
This explanation immediately pulled Shen Qing'an out of the dead end.
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