Yan Hanxie's recovery moved as slowly as a glacier.
From barely being able to sit up to taking a few steps with support, from liquid food to semi-liquid meals, from sleeping most of the time to being able to stay awake for several relatively clear periods each day.
Every step was accompanied by the discomfort of medication adjustments, the hardship of rehabilitation, and unpredictable emotional lows.
She became extremely silent. Most of the time she only stared out the window or at the ceiling, her gaze empty. She responded to the nurses' questions and the doctors' examinations only in the simplest way, often merely nodding or shaking her head.
Zong Yi's daily visits continued as before. Fifteen minutes, like a precisely measured silent ritual.
She brought soft clothes to change into, brought nutritious soup stewed until tender (with the doctor's permission), brought the only trace in the hospital room that did not belong to the hospital—the faint scent from her apartment.
When she did these things her movements were extremely gentle, almost silent, as if Yan Hanxie were a fragile piece of glass that must be protected from every disturbance.
The words between them were pitifully few.
Usually Zong Yi would briefly ask, "How are you feeling today?" or "Is the soup temperature okay?" and Yan Hanxie would respond with an almost inaudible "Mm" or with the slightest nod or shake of her head.
Sometimes Yan Hanxie's gaze would linger on Zong Yi, or on the prayer beads at her wrist, for a long time. Her expression was complex and unreadable, yet she ultimately said nothing.
That silence was like a thickening layer of ice, freezing the two of them on their separate islands.
Zong Yi could feel that something within Yan Hanxie was dying, or perhaps being buried deeper and deeper.
Not her will to live—she still cooperated with treatment—but something more vivid and sharper, the vitality and edge that once allowed her to control the conference room and press step by step under the dim lights of a bar. Those things were gradually being worn away and stripped off by this serious illness and the extreme weakness that followed.
This made Zong Yi feel a kind of anxiety and helplessness like dull knives cutting flesh even more than seeing Yan Hanxie lying in the ICU on the brink of life and death.
She would rather Yan Hanxie get angry. She would rather she stab her with cold words or glances like before. It would be better than now—like a delicate puppet whose soul had been emptied out, having lost the warmth of responding to everything in the outside world.
Until one drizzly evening.
When Zong Yi walked into the ward, Yan Hanxie was leaning against the bed, her head turned to look at the glass window outside that had been washed into a blur by the rain.
Hearing the footsteps, she slowly turned her head.
The dim light of the rainy day made her complexion look even paler and more translucent, and the shadows under her eyes were especially heavy.
As usual, Zong Yi put down the things she brought and prepared to pour her a cup of warm water.
"Zong Yi."
Yan Hanxie suddenly spoke and called her name. Her voice was still hoarse, but it was clearer than usual, and… colder.
Zong Yi paused and turned around.
Yan Hanxie's gaze fell on her face. That look was no longer empty, but carried a kind of scrutinizing, almost sharp calmness, as if she had finally gathered a trace of clear will with difficulty from the long haze.
"The company," she asked, speaking very slowly, every word seeming to struggle out of heavy shackles, "how is it?"
Zong Yi's heart lifted slightly. This was the first time Yan Hanxie had asked about the company since she fell ill.
She quickly organized her thoughts and reported in the most concise and objective tone: "Vice President Sun is acting temporarily. Daily operations are stable. The 'Spark Plan' pilot data continues to improve. According to your previous authorization, preparations for the second stage expansion have begun. The quarterly review of the overseas market has been completed, and the report has been sent to your email." She paused for a moment, then added, "For now, there is nothing that requires your urgent decision."
Yan Hanxie listened quietly, without any change in expression on her face.
Only after Zong Yi finished speaking did she give a very slight nod. Her gaze moved away and once again fell on the drizzling rain outside the window.
"You've done very well," she said, her tone as flat as if she were evaluating a report unrelated to herself.
Zong Yi did not know how to respond to that praise.
There was not the slightest warmth in that praise. It even carried a hint of distant politeness.
Silence enveloped them again.
Raindrops struck the window with a monotonous sound.
After a long time—so long that Zong Yi thought the conversation had ended—Yan Hanxie spoke again. Her voice was pressed lower, carrying an almost self-mocking exhaustion:
"Am I… very useless?"
Zong Yi suddenly looked up at her.
Yan Hanxie was still looking out the window. The line of her profile looked unusually clear in the dim light, and also unusually fragile.
The corner of her mouth moved slightly. It was not a smile. It was more like a curve of self-disgust.
"One illness, and I can't do anything anymore," she continued, her voice as light as a sigh. "Lying here like a piece of trash. I can't even take care of myself."
"That's not true." Zong Yi almost blurted out the words, her voice tightening slightly. "The doctor said you need time to recover. This illness… was originally the result of long-term overexertion. It can't be rushed."
Yan Hanxie seemed not to hear her words, or perhaps she simply did not care.
Her gaze still fell blankly on the curtain of rain, murmuring softly, more as if speaking to herself: "I used to think that as long as I wanted something, there was nothing I couldn't grasp, nothing I couldn't accomplish. The company, projects, people…" She paused. That word "people" was spoken extremely softly, almost drowned out by the sound of the rain. "Now I realize it was all fake. When the body collapses, everything is gone."
She raised the hand that looked even thinner and paler because of the IV infusion and lack of movement, holding it toward the dim light, and looked at it for a long time.
On her wrist, aside from the tape of the indwelling needle, there was nothing.
The string of Buddhist beads that once seemed to grow on her wrist was now with Zong Yi.
"I can't even keep… a string of beads," she said softly. It was impossible to tell whether there was regret in her voice, or relief.
Zong Yi's heart tightened fiercely because of that sentence.
Subconsciously, she clenched her left wrist. The beads pressed into the flesh of her palm.
"President Yan," she heard her own dry voice say, "that string of beads… I kept it. When you get better, you can take it back anytime."
Yan Hanxie finally withdrew her gaze from the window and turned it toward Zong Yi.
That gaze was very deep. Inside it surged extremely complicated emotions that Zong Yi could not understand—fatigue, self-mockery, some deeply hidden pain, and perhaps even a trace of… almost desperate clarity.
"Take it back?" she repeated. The self-mocking curve at the corner of her mouth deepened. "Take it back for what? Continue wearing it, deceiving myself and others, saying I believe in it, praying for peace of mind?"
In her tone there was a sharp bitterness Zong Yi had never heard before.
"Look," she pointed to herself, then vaguely toward the world outside the window that was surrounded by illness and medicine, "the Buddha didn't protect me. What should collapse still collapsed."
Zong Yi stood there, her hands and feet cold.
She looked at the bottomless gray defeat and sharp self-denial in Yan Hanxie's eyes. She looked at the woman who had once been proud to the point of arrogance, whose confidence and belief had now been shattered by illness and weakness.
Suddenly she understood what was dying inside Yan Hanxie.
It was the sense of control over herself. It was a certain conviction about the world. It was that almost obsessive "I can" that had supported her all the way to this point.
And now, in the face of this sudden illness born from the collapse of her own body, that conviction had shattered everywhere.
"That's not how it is." Zong Yi heard her own voice sound in the quiet ward, firmer than she herself had expected. "Being sick… isn't your fault. And it's not about whether you believe in something or not. Your body… just needs rest and repair."
She stepped forward, getting closer to the hospital bed. The sound of the rain seemed to be cut off outside.
"That string of beads," she raised her left hand, letting the beads fully appear in the dim light between them, "I picked it up not because I believe it has any use. I just felt… it shouldn't be thrown into the dust."
She looked into Yan Hanxie's eyes and said word by word, very slowly:
"Just like you shouldn't… give up like this."
Yan Hanxie froze.
She looked at Zong Yi. She looked at those eyes that were unusually bright at this moment, as if burning with a flame she had never seen before. She looked at the string of beads calmly flowing around her wrist—something that belonged to her yet no longer belonged to her.
Zong Yi's words were like a stone thrown into the stagnant swamp in the depths of her heart, which was filled with self-disgust.
Not giving up?
Then what was it?
Was it dragging this broken body back into that suffocating arena of fame and profit, continuing to wear a mask, playing the role of the omnipotent President Yan? Or…
Her gaze involuntarily moved from the beads to Zong Yi's face.
That face was still young, but because of the recent days of running around and the rare agitation at this moment, it showed a beauty that was both weary and resolute.
In those eyes that were usually calm and distant, her reflection was clearly mirrored now, along with some kind of warmth she did not dare to explore yet was inexplicably drawn to.
The air in the ward seemed to slightly stagnate and warm because of Zong Yi's almost "defiant" words and that burning gaze.
The rain, at some unknown moment, had begun to fall even harder.
It crackled against the glass as if trying to drown everything.
Yan Hanxie looked at Zong Yi for a very, very long time.
So long that Zong Yi almost thought her rashness had offended her, her heart beating uneasily in her chest.
Then Yan Hanxie slowly, extremely slowly, and extremely wearily closed her eyes.
She did not speak again.
But Zong Yi saw that her tightly pressed pale lips loosened slightly, almost imperceptibly.
And the self-disgust and gray defeat that had always lingered between her brows, so thick it could not be dissolved, seemed… to have been chiseled open by those words just now, forming an extremely tiny crack.
Although weak, it truly existed.
Zong Yi did not say anything more.
She silently placed the soup bowl she had brought, adjusted the angle of the bedside lamp so the light fell more gently on Yan Hanxie instead of shining harshly on her face.
Then she retreated to her chair and sat down quietly.
The rain continued.
In the ward, only the uneven sounds of the two of them breathing remained.
Zong Yi lowered her head and looked at the Buddhist beads on her wrist.
Those words just now had almost exhausted all her courage.
Now that she thought about it, her fingertips were still trembling slightly.
But she did not regret it.
At least she had pierced that suffocating silence of self-abandonment.
At least she had let Yan Hanxie know that someone did not think she was "trash," that someone felt she "shouldn't give up."
As for that deeper thing—the thing that made her heartbeat lose rhythm, that made her want to approach yet hurriedly retreat—she still did not dare to touch it.
But perhaps, just like this violent storm, after washing away some of the surface dust, some buried things could finally reveal their true form.
She raised her head and looked again at Yan Hanxie, who was resting with her eyes closed on the hospital bed.
The rain outside the window seemed to have become lighter.
—
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