The next two days felt like trudging through dense fog, unable to see the road ahead or recognize any direction.
Yan Hanxie's condition repeatedly swung back and forth between "temporarily stable" and "fluctuating again."
Zong Yi was no longer allowed to enter the ICU for visits. The doctors said the patient needed absolute rest and to reduce all external stimu-lation.
She could only stay in the waiting area outside, catching fragments of the life-and-death struggle behind that heavy automatic door from the nurses' brief updates and the doctors' occasionally grave expressions.
She was like a body whose soul had been removed. The company's matters were completely handed over to her assistant and the team, and she would only briefly and mechanically involve herself when a signature or an irreplaceable decision was required.
The rest of the time she just sat there, or stood there, her gaze unfocused, her whole person wrapped in visible exhaustion and anxiety.
The prayer beads on her wrist seemed to have grown onto her hand. She rubbed them more and more frequently, sometimes even unconsciously using force, leaving deep red marks pressed into her wrist bone.
On the night of the third day, it began to rain again.
Fine threads of rain tapped against the window, making soft rustling sounds.
Only Zong Yi and another pair of family members who looked like a couple remained in the waiting area, each curled into a corner of the sofa, soaked in fatigue and worry.
Close to dawn, the nurse who had been responsible for Yan Hanxie's ward hurried out, her gaze going directly to Zong Yi.
"Miss Zong," the nurse said in a very low voice, carrying a hint of urgency, "Ms. Yan just had another severe ventricular arrhythmia. It has been temporarily controlled after emergency treatment, but she is very weak. Her consciousness is somewhat blurred, and she has been… speaking indistinctly."
Zong Yi's heart instantly jumped to her throat. She abruptly stood up, her vision going dark for a moment from moving too quickly.
"She… what is she saying?" Her voice was dry like sandpaper scraping.
The nurse hesitated for a moment, seeming to choose her words.
"She seems to be… calling someone's name. It's not very clear, but she keeps saying 'don't go' and 'stay here'…" The nurse glanced at Zong Yi. "The doctor allows you to go in for a moment, very briefly. Perhaps… you can calm her down a little. But she is not fully conscious now. Whatever she says or does might be uncontrollable. Don't stimu-late her. Try to keep her calm."
Zong Yi almost stumbled as she followed the nurse once again into the domain ruled by machines and the smell of medicine.
Her heart beat fast and chaotically, slamming painfully against her chest.
The curtain around Yan Hanxie's bed was completely drawn.
The nurse gestured for her to go in alone.
Zong Yi took a deep breath. Her fingertips trem-bled coldly as she gently pulled the curtain open.
The sight on the hospital bed made her breathing stop.
Yan Hanxie's face looked even more ashen than before, her lips a bloodless bluish purple.
The nasal oxygen tube was still there, monitoring electrodes were attached to her forehead, and additional precordial leads had been added, making the body beneath the blanket look even thinner, tangled and restrained by various tubes and wires.
Her eyes were half open, her gaze unfocused and without a focal point, blankly staring somewhere above. Her lips moved silently, indeed saying something, but her breath was too weak to hear clearly.
The waveform on the monitor was more unstable than before, the jumping numbers frightening to watch.
Zong Yi slowly walked to the bedside and bent down, leaning closer.
"…Cold…" an extremely faint word slipped from Yan Hanxie's cracked lips.
Zong Yi's heart tightened fiercely.
She subconsciously reached out her hand, wanting to hold Yan Hanxie's hand that was exposed outside and just as cold, but stopped halfway, afraid that her touch would cause more discomfort.
Yan Hanxie's unfocused gaze seemed to move extremely slowly, landing on Zong Yi's blurred figure.
Her pupils shrank slightly, then spread again, as if trying hard to recognize her.
"…Is… it you?" Her voice was like a thread of wandering breath, broken and fragile.
"It's me." Zong Yi's voice caught in her throat, almost unable to come out. She could only nod hard, not caring whether Yan Hanxie could see clearly.
Yan Hanxie's brows knitted tightly, as if she had fallen into some chaotic memory or dream. Her body struggled almost imperceptibly, only to be restricted by her weak strength.
"Don't… don't go…" She repeated the words the nurse had mentioned, a trace of childlike panic and dependence hidden in her voice. "Stay here… stay with me… it hurts…"
Every word was like a red-hot needle piercing Zong Yi's eardrums and stabbing into the softest, most helpless place in her heart.
Hurts?
Where did it hurt?
Her heart?
Or… somewhere else?
She looked at Yan Hanxie's pale face slightly twisted from discomfort, looked at the cold sweat seeping from her temple, looked at how weakness and pain had stripped away all her sharp outer shell, leaving only the most primitive fragility.
A powerful, almost piercing heartache mixed with all the anxiety, helplessness, and those heavy emotions she could not name that had accumulated these past days, crashing through every barrier of her rationality.
As if guided by some unseen force, she raised her hand—not to hold Yan Hanxie's hand, but toward her forehead.
Her fingertips touched a patch of cold, damp skin.
Yan Hanxie seemed to trem-ble slightly, her unfocused eyes staring blankly at Zong Yi's face leaning close.
Using the pads of her fingers, Zong Yi extremely gently wiped away the cold sweat at Yan Hanxie's temple.
The movement was clumsy and unfamiliar, carrying a cautiousness that was almost reverent even to herself.
Then, as if drawn by some invisible force, she lowered her head and leaned closer.
Closer to those lips that had lost all color and were slightly parted from pain.
Closer to those tightly shut, trembling eyelashes.
Closer to that pale, smooth forehead now covered with fine beads of sweat and traces left by electrode tape.
Her lips stopped when they were only a hair's breadth away from that cold skin.
Their breaths mingled, carrying the smell of disinfectant and each other's faint warmth.
She could see the tiny hairs on Yan Hanxie's skin, could feel her slightly hurried breath brushing against her cheek because of discomfort.
Just a little lower…
Just one gentle touch…
That layer between them—thin like soaked window paper, something unclear and indescribable—seemed as if it would be easily pierced by this unfinished motion.
Once pierced, those chaotic, heavy emotions that made her flustered yet unable to escape might finally find a name, an outlet, a place to rest.
Zong Yi's eyelashes trem-bled violently like butterfly wings in the wind. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, blood rushing to her head and then freezing in her limbs.
What was she doing?
What did she want to do?
Kiss her?
Use a kiss to comfort?
To confirm?
To… possess?
Or to fill the same barren, nameless panic in her own heart?
She didn't know.
She only knew that Yan Hanxie lying on the hospital bed right now, her consciousness blurred and her body unbearably fragile, made her heart ache so badly it felt like it would split apart.
Made her want to do something regardless of everything, to drive away the pain and cold surrounding her.
But…
What if?
What if this overstepping, absurd action stimu-lated her and made her already unstable condition worse?
What if after piercing that layer of window paper, what awaited was not clarity after release, but an even more unmanageable aftermath and embarrassment?
What if… when Yan Hanxie woke up, she didn't remember at all, or… didn't want it at all?
Zong Yi's breathing stopped, her body stiff as stone.
That suspended distance felt like an eternal rack of torture.
In the end, at that nearly frozen moment, her lips did not fall.
Instead, extremely gently, with an almost imperceptible trem-ble, she let out a breath warm like a sigh against Yan Hanxie's cold forehead.
Like the trace left by a kiss that never fully formed—damp and burning.
Then she suddenly straightened up and stepped back, as if burned by that unfinished touch.
Yan Hanxie seemed to sense that temperature and breath approaching and leaving. A faint confusion passed through her unfocused eyes. Her lips moved again, but in the end she only let out a very soft, indistinct moan and closed her eyes again, her brows still tightly knitted.
The numbers on the monitor seemed to show another slight disturbance because of that brief closeness and the change in breathing.
Zong Yi stood beside the bed, her face no better than Yan Hanxie's, pale as paper, her chest rising and falling violently.
She looked at the fingertips that had almost touched just now. They were icy cold.
The curtain was gently pulled open by the nurse, signaling that the time was up.
Zong Yi gave one last look at the person on the bed who had sunk back into drowsiness, turned around, and almost fled the ICU with hurried steps.
Standing again under the cold bright lights of the corridor, leaning against the wall, she realized her legs had gone weak and her back was soaked with cold sweat.
She raised her hand and looked at the prayer beads on her wrist. The deep brown wood was silent under the light.
That moment just now—that unfinished, inexplicable closeness—had torn open a gap, exposing all the chaotic, unclear emotions in her heart before her own eyes, naked and bleeding.
She still could not name what it was.
But that urge to approach, to touch, to comfort and confirm in some way, that feeling of heart-wrenching pain because of the other person's fragility, that thrilling moment of teetering on the edge of losing control…
All told her with undeniable truth—
Something had changed.
That layer of window paper, though not pierced by her lips, had already been burned through by her breath, leaving a scorched hole with curled edges.
Through that hole she could glimpse the surging, dangerous, yet strangely alluring unknown light inside.
And she and the woman still drifting on the line between life and death had both not reached out to tear that paper open completely.
Perhaps neither of them dared.
Or perhaps both were still waiting.
Waiting for a more suitable moment, waiting for a clearer confirmation, waiting for a… "later" that might or might not ever come.
—
T/N: If you're enjoying this translation, feel free to check out my Patreon. If you're unable to support financially, you can still subscribe for free and receive chapters two hours earlier, along with updates and announcements. Paid tiers offer early access and daily chapters.
Thank you so much for reading!
patreon.com/Baenz