Chapter 14

The sun that day was perfect, warm and clear, spilling over them like melted gold. It was a picture-book kind of afternoon.
In the winter of their second year, on New Year’s Eve, Wen Ji waited under her dorm for three hours. No flowers, no heart-shaped candles, no sappy setup, just a single USB drive in his hand.
When Jiang Wei took the slim silver drive from him, she stared at it for a long time, completely unable to guess what it was.
“This is…?”
“Weiwei, this has your full DNA sequence on it. Ideally, I hope you’ll never have to use it. But if you ever do, I hope it’ll help keep you safe and healthy.”
She didn’t fully understand the technical side of it, but it sounded impressive. And serious.
“Thank you, Wen Ji.”
There was always this faint politeness between them. Wen Ji frowned slightly. He was about to leave the country; he’d be back, of course, but if he didn’t say the words now, if anything changed down the line, he knew he’d regret it.
“Weiwei, would you…”
His brows were fine and slightly arched, that clean, fair face tinged a soft pink, like a few plum blossoms dotting a snowy field.
For some reason, Jiang Wei felt her heart lurch violently in her chest.
Is he about to say what I think he’s about to say?
“Would you be my girlfriend?” he asked. “If you don’t want to, that’s… that’s okay too. We can stay just friends. That’s good as well.”
He forced himself to keep going, gathering all his courage, those ink-dark eyes shimmering as if they held an entire galaxy. His gaze was steady, burning and earnest, lifted to her the way Romeo once looked up at Juliet’s balcony.
The wind that night was vicious, icy air cutting to the bone. Yet for the first time, Jiang Wei felt spring water pour into the parched riverbed of her heart.
The night market in the distance was noisy, voices and hawkers endlessly rising and falling, but Wen Ji’s words cut through everything, reaching her clearly.
For Jiang Wei, time stopped in that moment.
“Okay,” she heard herself answer.
After they made things official, they drifted in honey for a while. Jiang Wei’s roommates, of course, had mouths sharp enough to slice steel.
The teasing never stopped.
“Oh, they’re just high school classmates.”
“‘We don’t have that kind of relationship.’ Uh-huh, sure.”
“Maybe he’s just really into law, you know?”
Once they were a couple, the roommates demanded a proper celebratory meal.
Li Xiaoxiao even parroted every excuse Jiang Wei had used in the past to brush them off, quoting her word-for-word in turns until both Wen Ji and Jiang Wei were red to their ears on the opposite side of the table.
Jiang Wei shot her a mock glare, making Li Xiaoxiao laugh so hard she nearly fell off her chair, her expression basically screaming, I knew you two were a thing from the start.
“You two are so thin-skinned,” Xiaoxiao tsked. “What are you going to do in the future, huh? Huh, Weiwei? Want me to share some… material with you?”
Jiang Wei frantically waved her hands. “No, no need!”
But sweet days never seem to last quite long enough. A few months later, Wen Ji boarded a plane overseas.
Weiwei, remember to take care of yourself. I’ll call you once a week.
He’d said it over and over, reluctant to let go of the phone.
Jiang Wei’s heart had been warm all day. She nodded and told him she understood.
As the years of university slipped by, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl were separated by a river of stars; she and Wen Ji, by an entire Pacific Ocean. Only, they didn’t even have a magpie bridge, just an Internet cable.
Even so, her life was genuinely happy.
Her only family was safe, her boyfriend was gentle and steady.
And she was walking, step by step, down the path she’d chosen, to become a lawyer who spoke for the poor and powerless, a defender for those in desperate straits.
Maybe fate can’t stand seeing things go too smoothly.
In her third year, while she was working as an intern at a law firm, she got a call that brought her face-to-face with someone she hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Hello, is this Jiang Wei?”
She was chatting with a colleague about a case when her phone suddenly rang.
“Yes, this is she. You are…?”
“Is Zhao Yufen a relative of yours? If so, please come to Second People’s Hospital as soon as possible. Your grandmother was in a traffic accident.”
The line went dead with a short series of beeps.
Her phone slipped from her hand. For one terrifying second, Jiang Wei’s mind went blank.
“What happened?”
Seeing her look as if her soul had flown right out of her body, Li Xiaoxiao frowned in concern.
“I, I have to go to the hospital.”
Jiang Wei grabbed her phone again, her voice trembling. She forced herself to stay calm, to breathe.
“What is it? Something happened?” Li Xiaoxiao pressed, worried that something terrible had gone wrong.
The hospital had given her no details. Jiang Wei herself didn’t know exactly what had occurred.
“My grandma… something happened to her. She’s in the hospital.”
Xiaoxiao gasped, head snapping up from the pile of case files.
“Weiwei, do you want me to come with you?”
Jiang Wei shook her head.
“You’ve still got work here. I… I can go alone.”
She gently turned down Xiaoxiao’s offer, then rushed out and flagged down a taxi.
“Nurse, which room is my grandma in?”
The nurse flipped through the chart in her hand without looking up. “What’s your grandmother’s name?”
“Zhao Yufen. Please.”
The nurse skimmed a few pages. “Your grandmother’s in Room 301. The gentleman who brought her in is waiting there as well.”
When Jiang Wei reached the ward, the sight in the corridor knocked the breath out of her.
Ling Ze.
He was in a suit now, every line of his body polished and restrained. A business elite, exactly like in the financial news and magazine interviews she’d seen, reports detailing his achievements, his strategies, and recently, his impending marriage to the Wang Pharmaceutical heiress.
Just like the fairy tale he’d once told her, the prince had indeed become a king, holding power and prestige in his hands.
Jiang Wei couldn’t help the sigh in her heart.
Ling Ze studied the girl who’d rushed over, her clothes still dusty from the day, her face bearing a faint resemblance to his fiancée’s. There was puzzlement in his gaze. The way she was looking at him… as if they’d known each other for many years.
He lowered his eyes and searched his memory.
There was nothing.
“Senior, what are you doing here?” she asked.
So she does know me, he thought.
“You’re the family member for the patient in 301?” he replied evenly. “I was driving today when the elderly lady in that ward suddenly collapsed in front of my car. There’s surveillance footage proving my car never touched her. I suspect her health was already compromised.
Once I saw she’d fallen and wasn’t moving, and since my schedule wasn’t that tight today, I brought her to the hospital.”
He explained calmly, though the question still lurked in his mind, Do I actually know this girl?
“Do we know each other?”
Jiang Wei froze.
Senior Ling… didn’t remember her.
How?
Was it because of that car accident?
But the follow-up news reports had never mentioned anything about memory loss.
She couldn’t help thinking back to her own half-serious prayer before his accident, that Senior Ling would stop remembering her. Had the heavens really listened?
She didn’t want her wishes granted at another person’s expense. But this wasn’t the time to get lost in that. Her grandmother was still lying inside.
She steadied herself and smiled politely.
“I’m a student at A University. You come back a lot for lectures, events, charity programs… You’ve helped a lot of students in need. Basically every A University student knows who you are, Senior.”
Ling Ze’s brows drew together slightly.
That explanation didn’t quite resolve his unease. If it were “just” because of the university connection, she wouldn’t have looked so stunned, and there wouldn’t have been that complicated flicker of remembrance in her eyes when she called him “Senior.”
“Oh. So that’s how it is. You’re a junior, then.”
“About today… I really appreciate it. Thank you, Senior.”
Their hands met in a brief handshake. Their eyes locked, and something subtle shifted, like dust being stirred in a long-sealed room.
A beat later, Ling Ze withdrew, slightly stiff.
His assistant stepped forward to murmur, “Vice President, we should get going. The shareholders’ meeting is about to start.”
“Mm.”
Just before he turned away, some impulse made him pull out a business card and hand it to Jiang Wei.
She stared at the card for a moment after he left.
Then, the instant she stepped into her grandmother’s ward, she tossed it into the trash.
Since he doesn’t remember, she thought, there’s no need to tangle things up again.
Besides, it had been a long time since she’d had that recurring dream from years ago.
When she walked in, Grandma had already woken up. The old woman was trembling as she struggled into her clothes, clearly intent on being discharged.
“Grandma, what are you doing? The doctor said you have to stay for observation. The test results aren’t even out yet.”
“Weiwei, I’m not sick. I just fainted because I didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Once I go out and get something to eat, I’ll be fine. Let’s go home.”
Muttering under her breath, Grandma Jiang grabbed her vegetable basket and started for the door.
Jiang Wei snatched the basket from her, putting on an angry face. “Grandma, the results aren’t out yet.”
“I’m not sick. I’m going home.”
Jiang Wei’s chest ached. She knew all too well this was just because they had no money, and Grandma was terrified of falling ill and becoming a burden.
In her heart, Grandma believed that as long as she didn’t do tests and never saw any “results,” then she wouldn’t be sick.
But the body doesn’t lie. Lately she’d felt herself running out of breath more and more often, her memory growing patchy. She couldn’t help wondering if it was just age catching up, if she was simply getting more and more useless.
“I know. Of course Grandma’s not sick. But we already paid, didn’t we?” Jiang Wei coaxed gently, trying to calm her down.
“Tell them to give the money back, Weiwei. Grandma really isn’t sick.”
Those cloudy, scattered eyes, the dry, twig-thin hand like old bark clutching her sleeve, her mouth still repeating over and over: I’m not sick, tell them to give the money back.
Jiang Wei couldn’t bear to look at her like this, but she didn’t dare show a hint of her own despair in front of Grandma.
She forced herself to perk up and pull out a grin as bright as a sunflower. “Of course you’re fine. My grandma’s tough as nails.”
It took a lot of soothing before Grandma finally settled down. Jiang Wei’s stomach chose that moment to growl; she grabbed a quick bite just to pad it a little. On the way she got a text: internship salary, 2,100.
She told herself it was okay. Things would get better. They had to.
But heaven rarely cooperates.
The doctor said her grandmother likely had a cerebral infarction.
For her, the words were like a bolt from a clear sky.
It was another winter night, like the one when her mother had left her outside that tiny convenience store and walked away without looking back.
She suddenly felt so cold, a chill that had nothing to do with wind or snow, but seeped out from her very bones.
Her ears buzzed. For a moment she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.
She had tried so hard.
Just then, having heard the doctor say her condition was “temporarily stable,” Grandma started clamoring to be discharged again, and before anyone could stop her, she’d wandered off.
Back home, after only a few days, the thing Jiang Wei had been dreading day and night still happened.
Grandma’s stroke flared up. The doctor said they needed to do a craniotomy. Conservatively, the cost would start at five hundred thousand, with only a forty percent chance of success.
There was a lot unsaid in his tone: he was urging her, gently, to give up.