Chapter 24 - Moments Reading Level 10
Outside the hospital clinic.
Xie Zhuo hunched over the counter and chatted with the front desk receptionist for a few minutes before taking a thermometer over to Sun Zinan. “Here. Take your temperature.”
Sun Zinan wore a mask, his expression haggard as he stretched his hand out to take the thermometer. “Thanks.”
Xie Zhuo sighed and took out a mini makeup mirror from his bag. He glanced at his reflection. “You scared me this morning. I came out without even putting on makeup.”
Sun Zinan put the thermometer under his clothes. His voice was hoarse and it was a little difficult to talk, so he sounded rather harsh. “Good thing it wasn’t a heart attack; by the time you got there my body would’ve turned cold.”
“Pei, what do you mean?” Xie Zhuo playfully hit him, then took out his phone. “I should give Tang Kai a call…”
Sun Zinan raised his hand to stop him.
“En?”
“Don’t call him.”
Xie Zhuo, “What’s wrong?”
When he saw that Sun Zinan wasn’t responding, he immediately understood. “You guys fought? Why?”
It was strange thinking about it—every time Sun Zinan had something going on with Tang Kai, Xie Zhuo would immediately appear and discover something wrong. He was like a little assistant in a game.
“I…” He wanted to say there was nothing wrong, but he felt like Tang Kai was really angry this time. Sun Zinan didn’t think he had the ability to call him back so the words changed as they reached his mouth. “I guess we fought.”
Xie Zhuo rolled his eyes. “Fighting is fighting, not fighting is not fighting. What do you mean ‘I guess we fought’!”
Sun Zinan sighed feebly and told him everything that had happened the day before.
Xie Zhuo had never expected that after all his years of training, Sun Zinan would still sink under some other white lotus. This was a great provocation to him and he flung his arms about, saying indignantly, “I’ll go, what’s the woman’s name? Give her contact details to me. This old mother will have to meet with her.”
Sun Zinan felt a headache coming on. “Please rest for a while.”
“Tang Kai this bastard, you’re dead. Has a girlfriend and fucking pretends he’s gay.” Xie Zhuo fumed, “Don’t hold me back. I’m going to curse him so much today his mother won’t even recognize him…”
Sun Zinan, “He doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him. This isn’t his fault to begin with.”
“Big bro, are you the Virgin Mary?” Xie Zhuo asked in rage, “He’s made you so stressed you’re like this now, and you still defend him?”
“This really has nothing to do with him.” Sun Zinan said, “I did this to myself. I wanted to stand in the rain for a while to calm down.”
Xie Zhuo didn’t expect him to not hate his enemies. He had even written up his bad review but could only nestle back in his chair. “Oh, I know, you’re saying it’s a good idea to do this.”
Sun Zinan thought it over then said, “Actually, I don’t know how to handle this. I know this isn’t Tang Kai’s fault but I still feel bad about it.”
“So you didn’t tell him,” Xie Zhuo said coolly. “Trying to solve a problem by yourself, but when others don’t understand, you hurt your body and heart.”
Instead of replying sarcastically, Sun Zinan merely listened to him quietly. This made Xie Zhuo feel like something wasn’t quite right and he was finally aware of the gravity of the situation.
“You…huh.” He asked cautiously, “Do you like Tang Kai that much?”
Sun Zinan was stunned by his question.
“I thought we were planning on getting married.” He smiled mockingly to himself. “What do you think?”
“Oh.” Xie Zhuo immediately caught onto the main point of the issue. “So in that case, shouldn’t you guys just communicate and resolve everything? Tang Kai won’t turn away from you just for that woman, right?”
“Too late.” Sun Zinan looked down at the calendar on his phone. “He’s flying to B City today and is attending a forum there tomorrow. Li Ning…that woman, she’s going too.”
Xie Zhuo wondered out loud, “What does that have to do with anything? If you need to talk about it then talk about it. Can Li Ning run up to you and tackle you to the ground or something?”
“Even though I think Li Ning is probably telling lies, I can’t guarantee it. What if Tang Kai really has her in his heart? What if they really had just missed the timing in those years?” Sun Zinan coughed twice into his mask. “He’s free to choose his partner. I can’t interfere.”
Xie Zhuo never knew Sun Zinan was some hidden saint of love, but his mouth suddenly opened in an ‘O’ shape. “Ge, did the fever make you dumb!”
Sun Zinan took his thermometer out and looked at it. 39 degrees. “Huh, guess I really am dumb from the fever.”
As he said this, his number was called. He stopped the conversation, got up, and walked into the clinic. The Xie Zhuo who had been left outside began thinking.
He felt like this was developing in a weird direction, as if something wasn’t quite right.
B City, Blue Star Hotel.
As arranged by the organizers, Tang Kai shared a hotel room with another researcher from Tianhai University. The professor wasn’t arriving until tomorrow afternoon. Tang Kai put his bag on the table and sat down in a chair by the window. His upright posture relaxed. Looking out into the dusk, he couldn’t resist taking his phone out and checking his WeChat.
There were no new messages.
In his chat with Sun Zinan, the messages had stopped at yesterday’s ‘I’m going to class.’ There were also no movements in his moments.
Sun Zinan, this pig trotter! Didn’t even take the initiative to coax him!
Tang Kai sulkily threw his phone onto his bed.
He was very clear that this cold war had been started by him and that the person who had run off quietly to B City was him. If he thought about it carefully, he was the one who had made a rather big mistake. But he still expected Sun Zinan to come talk to him first and stretch out an olive branch of peace. Just as he had once accepted Sun Zinan’s stubbornness and naivety, he wanted Sun Zinan to let him know that even if he wasn’t perfect and made occasional mistakes, he would still have him in his heart.
Not only was Tang Kai a person who sulked easily, he was rather possessive. He wanted to eat Sun Zinan’s vinegar but still wanted Sun Zinan to care about his feelings. He was clearly at the point of bruising his own intestines, but he refused to be the first to show weakness.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Seeing that his phone was still dead with no sign of any messages, he huffily went downstairs to eat dinner.
At the same time, in Sun Zinan’s apartment.
Xie Zhuo poured Sun Zinan’s congee into a bowl and added a few side dishes before knocking on the bedroom door. After a while, Sun Zinan lazily dragged himself into the dining room. He coughed for a while after sitting, then thanked Xie Zhuo. “I’ve troubled you.”
“Do we have to act like strangers?” Xie Zhuo handed him a spoon. “Have some congee. You haven’t eaten all day.”
Sun Zinan slowly picked at the rice grains, every mouthful even smaller than a bird’s. Xie Zhuo felt secondhand anxiety from just watching him. “Are you still uncomfortable? Should we go to the hospital for an IV?”
“I’m fine.” Sun Zinan forced a smile, his expression haggard. “I just woke up so I don’t have much of an appetite. I’ll be okay in a bit.”
When Sun Zinan visited the clinic in the morning, the doctor had told him he was suffering from upper respiratory tract infections and bronchitis. He was prescribed a collection of anti-inflammatory drugs for colds. The doctor suggested that if he wanted to get rid of the fever quickly, he could get a shot for reducing fever. Sun Zinan had a bit of trauma over needles so he took the medicine and went home to sleep the entire day instead.
He felt a little better now than he had this morning probably due to the medicine, but his temperature was still a little high.
Xie Zhuo didn’t taste any of the food he ate. He was thinking that Sun Zinan wasn’t suffering from just a cold, but also mentally. He still remembered Sun Zinan had seen a doctor for depression when he was abroad, so he was especially concerned about his mood swings, fearing that would he have a relapse if he wasn’t careful.
If no one watched and Sun Zinan jumped off a building, Tang Kai would definitely come for Xie Zhuo’s life.
“What are you thinking about?” Sun Zinan looked at him strangely. “Your face is twitching.”
“Ah…it’s nothing.” Xie Zhuo quickly retracted his wild thoughts and said, “I’m thinking, don’t you think it’s a little strange that Tang Kai is angry?”
Sun Zinan raised his brows in bewilderment
Xie Zhuo, “I’ve been feeling like there was something wrong since this morning. It’s understandable if he’s a little upset because you don’t care about your health, but this is a trifling thing; isn’t his reaction a little too strong?”
Sun Zinan, “En…you’re right.”
During Sun Ying’s birthday banquet, things had been so out of control, yet Tang Kai was still able to remain calm. His anger this time was truly out of the ordinary. But up until now, Sun Zinan could not figure out where the flames had been ignited. He could not think of anything else that would make him angry.
“I have a guess, although it’s very dog blood, but it makes sense.” Xie Zhuo said solemnly, “Let’s start from the beginning. After you met with Li Ning, you went out in the rain and wandered around on the street. Then you met Tang Kai. He stopped you for a while, you ignored him, so he got angry. Is that how it went?”
“Right.” Sun Zinan nodded.
“Have you realized? You’ve overlooked a key issue.”
“What?”
Xie Zhuo knocked the table in a mysterious, lofty manner. “Think about it, you were randomly walking around. How could you have just coincidentally run into Tang Kai? What if he had been following you?”
Watson, you’ve found the blind spot.
Sun Zinan’s mind had been in a disordered state at that time. After Xie Zhuo mentioned it, he suddenly realized Tang Kai had really seemed like he had already been waiting for a long time…did he follow him from the parking lot?
Then did he…already see Li Ning?
Detective Xie Zhuo continued to analyze it in detail. “My overall hypothesis is, Tang Kai saw you and Li Ning, but he didn’t recognize his ex-girlfriend because the two of them have been separated for so many years. He thought the woman you were with was an old acquaintance, and you were in a depressed mood. If he accidentally mistook the situation and thought you were in love with the woman, then it’s pretty likely he was angry from eating vinegar…”
Sun Zinan’s mind buzzed numbly. He was completely bewildered.
His downfall was that he watched too few TV dramas. His imagination was too limited and he had never thought this train of thought was possible. Xie Zhuo, on the other hand, had used his dramatic thinking to put together a complete picture of the incident and even guessed it pretty correctly.
“It can’t be that much of a coincidence.” Sun Zinan didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. “What kind of fucking thing is this…”
“A coincidence or not, won’t you know after asking him?” Xie Zhuo opened his WeChat moments and as soon as he mindlessly refreshed it, his eyes suddenly widened. “Fuck, speak of the devil!”
“En? What?”
Xie Zhuo pushed his cell phone over. “Look look! What did I say! My old uncle’s new moments status.”
Sun Zinan thought to himself, this guy had just been cursing all morning but now was calling Tang Kai old uncle again.
He took the phone and looked at it. The newest status update was from Tang Kai. He rarely saw Tang Kai post daily life status updates. The person wasn’t in the picture and there was only the fiery sunset outside the window, along with a cup of coffee on the dining table.
The caption was a [goodnight] emoticon.
Sun Zinan wondered out loud, “Can he sleep after drinking coffee at night? And still say goodnight?”
Xie Zhuo was beside himself. “Are you stupid! Look at the location he tagged! B City’s Blue Star Hotel! When has he ever tagged a location in his statuses!”
Sun Zinan, “So?”
“He’s using a different method to make peace with you.” Xie Zhuo was like a dog that had stuffed himself, plopping himself over the table, howling, “That ‘good night’ was obviously for you to see…”