Chapter 33

Hearing her description, Wen Yan couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh.

The laugh rippled through the narrow break room, carrying both helplessness and a sweetness touched by being cherished.

“It’s not that exaggerated.” She shook her head, looking at the tenderness overflowing in Jin Zijin’s eyes, and her heart softened completely.

Then she suddenly reached out and lightly caught Jin Zijin’s slender wrist between her fingers; beneath her fingertips were distinct bones and cool skin. “Besides, compared with me, you’re the one who’s more ‘pitiful.’”

She looked up, her gaze falling on Jin Zijin’s exquisite face, her voice gentle. “Look how thin you are; your wrists are so slender. You must not be eating properly.”

Jin Zijin let her hold on, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly as she retorted, “How so?”

“My assistant keeps a very tight watch over me. Three meals a day, balanced nutrition; I’m in excellent health.”

She tipped her chin up a little, carrying a touch of reserved confidence. “I have a very good body.”

“I do too.” Wen Yan let go and gestured at herself. “I’m even healthier than most people. My fitness numbers might even be better than some athletes’.”

“That’s different.” Jin Zijin shook her head, her gaze returning to Wen Yan’s face as that same heartache rose again. “You’re too busy; your schedule isn’t yours to control. How could your meals possibly be regular?”

“When you finally manage to sit down and eat something properly, it’s usually after a major surgery that has drained you physically and mentally. It’s like...”

She paused, searching for a more fitting comparison, then said softly, “like those stray dogs that have to fight with their own kind, or even with the environment, just to grab a little food; only after they’re covered in wounds do they manage to drag back a single bone.”

“They win, but they’ve only won the bare minimum needed to keep going.”

Wen Yan: “...”

She was choked by the overly specific analogy.

After a while, she finally found her voice, with a mix of disbelief, confusion, and a trace of inquiry. “So, are you saying I’m ‘like a dog,’ or are you just feeling sorry for me?”

Jin Zijin’s gaze enveloped her gently, like a warm tide under moonlight; candid, and deeply profound. “Both.”

Wen Yan grew even more puzzled. She was rarely this serious about emotional metaphors, so she frowned slightly. “Do you really like dogs?”

“Meh.” Jin Zijin answered casually. “Not especially. Not enough to like them, and not enough to hate them either.”

“Then why do you keep comparing me to a dog?” Wen Yan pressed, her eyes behind her glasses clear and stubborn.

Jin Zijin suddenly smiled, and that smile carried an almost indulgent leniency.

She leaned in, fingertips brushing Wen Yan’s cheek again, her voice lowered as if sharing a secret fantasy only the two of them would understand:

“Because the way you look right now makes me think of a little dog that’s been soaked by the rain until it’s trembling, yet still stubbornly huddles under the eaves, carefully gnawing at the little scraps it finally found.”

Her fingers slid to Wen Yan’s jaw and gently stroked it. “If it were that kind of little dog, I think I probably wouldn’t be able to resist taking it home.”

Jin Zijin’s eyes suddenly deepened; her tone was gentle, but full of possessiveness. “I’d put the softest collar on it, wipe its fur dry, smooth away the claws it had to bare just to survive, give it the safest shelter possible, and then... slowly tame that little bit of untamed wildness in its bones that refuses to bow its head.”

She looked into Wen Yan’s eyes and said, word by word, clearly and slowly, “Until it belongs entirely to me.”

Wen Yan stared at her, momentarily dazed.

Outside, the night was thick; inside, the lighting was dim, yet Jin Zijin’s eyes shone with startling brightness. Within them churned feelings Wen Yan knew well and that also made her heart tighten.

Pity. Fascination. And, deeper than either, a calm, ocean-deep desire to possess.

She couldn’t tell whether what Jin Zijin was describing was the imagined little dog, or herself standing right here.

Perhaps there was no need to tell them apart at all.

Not long after, a knock came from outside the door, followed by the slightly urgent call of a nurse: “Dr. Wen, patient in bed 3 has some issues and needs you to take a look.”

Wen Yan instantly withdrew from the lingering, ambiguous atmosphere and her expression cleared.

“I’m coming.” She answered, quickly finished the last few bites of the food in the lunch box, and moved with brisk efficiency.

Standing up, she looked at Jin Zijin and said with concern, “I have to get back to work. You should hurry home and rest properly.”

“Okay.” Jin Zijin also stood, adjusting her collar and restoring her usual composure.

“Be careful on the way,” Wen Yan reminded her again.

Jin Zijin nodded, her gaze lingering on Wen Yan’s face for a moment.

The two of them walked out of the break room together.

The hospital corridor late at night was empty and quiet, the lights cold and white; only their footsteps echoed softly.

When they reached the elevator, they happened to run into the nurse Lin Xiao, who was hurrying past with a clipboard in her arms.

Lin Xiao looked up; the instant her eyes landed on Jin Zijin, she seemed to freeze.

Her eyes widened, and her face filled with unabashed astonishment.

Jin Zijin was dressed in a perfectly tailored dark suit, with a top-quality cashmere coat draped over it. She stood tall and straight, her features breathtaking.

Just standing casually in the hospital’s cold, pale corridor, she seemed to carry a soft glow of her own; elegant and noble, like carefully displayed Eastern white porcelain in a museum case, so beautiful it seemed untouched by dust and ordinary life.

She was completely out of place amid the busy surroundings, like two entirely different layers mistakenly overlaid together.

“D-Dr. Wen...” Lin Xiao stammered, unable to look away. “Th-this... this is...”

Wen Yan was about to introduce her when Jin Zijin had already given a slight nod and offered Lin Xiao a polite, distant smile, her voice clear and pleasant. “Hello, I’m Wen Yan’s wife.”

Lin Xiao’s face turned red in an instant. She hurriedly nodded. “Oh, oh, o-okay. H-hello.”

She looked completely flustered, nearly dropping the clipboard in her arms.

Just then, the elevator doors opened.

Jin Zijin stepped inside and turned back to look at Wen Yan.

Wen Yan waved at her and said softly, “Bye.”

The elevator doors slowly closed, cutting off that impossible-to-ignore figure.

Only when the indicator light started descending did Lin Xiao finally seem to find her voice again.

She sidled up next to Wen Yan, her voice hushed with excitement, stars practically sparkling in her eyes. “Dr. Wen! Oh my god... your wife is so, so beautiful! Like a movie star...”

“No, no, not even movie stars have that kind of presence. She’s practically... practically a fairy descending to earth.”

Wen Yan was helplessly amused by her exaggerated praise, though the tips of her ears had gone slightly warm.

She patted Lin Xiao on the shoulder. “Alright, stop staring. Get back to work.”

“Ah, right!” Lin Xiao snapped out of it and ran off with the clipboard in her arms.

After running a few steps, she still couldn’t help glancing back at the already closed elevator doors, clicking her tongue in admiration.

Wen Yan shook her head, suppressing the faint embarrassment of having their private moment seen by someone else, and turned briskly toward the ward.

Yet her heart felt as though a spoonful of warmth and honey had been poured into it by that brief encounter and Jin Zijin’s open, generous introduction.

More than an hour later, after handling the patient’s sudden complication and finishing the emergency progress note, Wen Yan finally had time to return to her office for a short break.

Her phone screen lit up at just the right moment; it was a WeChat message from Jin Zijin.

When she opened it, there was a photo.

In the picture, Jin Zijin was clearly already back at their home.

She was wearing the black cotton loungewear Wen Yan usually wore; on Jin Zijin, it was obviously far too loose, the collar hanging open and slipping to one side, exposing a large stretch of white, jade-like collarbone and a faint glimpse of what lay beneath.

She was lying on her side on the side of the bed Wen Yan usually slept on, her jet-black hair spread across the pillow, eyes half-lidded, her expression toward the camera lazy and deliberately alluring.

The warm yellow bedside lamp bathed her in a soft glow, creating a strange contrast with the room behind her, which was somewhat colder and more minimalist.

Beneath the picture came several messages: “So this is what it feels like to be alone at home, waiting for my wife to come back from work.”

“Not bad at all.”

“The blanket smells like you; hugging your clothes... it’s like hugging my comfort object.”

Wen Yan: “...”

She stared at the phone screen, feeling her face burn at once, even her neck flushing red.

This person!

Every single time, she managed to tease Wen Yan so precisely, always in the most casual yet intimate ways.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she typed back quickly: “Go to sleep right now and get some rest!”

After hitting send, she could almost see the triumphant, mischievous smile on the other side of the screen.

Wen Yan’s cheeks burned, and her heartbeat thundered through the silent office.

————————

As a surgeon, Wen Yan’s life moved like precision machinery.

Again and again, more or less the same.

Before long, it was Friday.

In the morning, the sky was overcast, and lead-gray clouds pressed low over the city.

The forecasted strong cold front arrived as promised, and the temperature dropped sharply.

Winter rain came wrapped in chill, falling in a fine, steady drizzle and shrouding the whole world in damp, cold haze.

In the morning, Wen Yan had a sports medicine lecture at the Peking University medical school.

She stood at the podium; through the window, she could see the campus scenery blurred by rainwater, while the winter wind occasionally struck the glass with a faint whistling sound.

In the afternoon, class ended.

Wen Yan packed up and left the teaching building with the students.

The cold air wrapped around her instantly. Even though she had already put on a thick down jacket, the penetrating chill still made her shiver slightly.

The rain hadn’t stopped; it had merely softened from the earlier downpour into a lingering thread of cold rain.

She opened her umbrella and walked into the rain curtain with her head lowered.

The old tree-lined path of the medical school was sparsely populated. Fallen leaves were soaked through and clung tightly to the wet ground; stepping on them made no sound at all.

About halfway along, a faint sound, almost drowned out by the rain, drifted intermittently into her ears.

“Meow... meow...”

The sound was tiny and trembling, full of helplessness.

Wen Yan stopped and looked toward it.

Her gaze swept over the puddles beneath a wet bench and, in the most hidden corner under the bench, she finally found a small, curled-up grayish shape.

It was a kitten, looking to be only one or two months old.

Its whole body was soaked through, fur plastered miserably to its tiny frame, shivering as it let out a few feeble whimpers now and then.

Its amber eyes looked dazed and frightened in the dim light.

Wen Yan stood where she was and looked at it quietly for a few seconds.

Cold wind, carrying icy rain, swept across her face.

After spending so long in the hospital, she was already used to natural selection and the unpredictability of life and death.

She shouldn’t have meddled.

She barely had time to take care of herself, let alone another life just as small.

And yet, at that very moment, Jin Zijin’s appearance from a few days ago in the on-call room flashed unbidden through her mind.

With a voice both gentle and heartbroken, the woman had said, “Like a little dog soaked by the rain, gnawing at dog bones under the eaves...”

There were no dogs.

Could a cat do?

Wen Yan lowered her head again and quickly checked the weather alert on her phone.

The warning said that from evening into the night, this rain was very likely to turn into the first snow of winter.

The temperature would fall below freezing.

Sleet, or even snow.

For such a frail kitten, already losing body heat, survival in a night like this was almost zero.

Wen Yan pressed her lips together and didn’t hesitate much longer.

She closed her umbrella, walked quickly to the bench, crouched down, and extended a hand toward the trembling little life.

Her palm was broad, her fingers long, looking as though they could bear anything.

“Come here...” Wen Yan lowered her voice, her tone gentler than even she realized.

The kitten struggled to lift its eyelids and looked at her timidly with wet eyes before shrinking back in fear; its whimper grew even fainter.

Wen Yan let out a silent sigh.

She didn’t try to get closer; instead, she kept her hand extended and waited patiently for a moment.

Perhaps it sensed that she meant no harm; perhaps it was simply too cold to muster the strength to run anymore.

In the end, the kitten no longer avoided her.

It cautiously edged forward two steps, its wet body brushing against the edge of Wen Yan’s palm.

Only then did Wen Yan gently gather it into her hand.

The little thing was so light it was nearly weightless, its whole body ice-cold, the trembling clearly transmitted through its thin skin.

She lifted it carefully and, without the slightest hesitation, unzipped her down jacket and tucked the small, cold, wet bundle into her embrace, shielding it with the warm, dry lining and her own body heat.

With her free hand, Wen Yan quickly used her phone to search for and confirm the nearest pet hospital with decent reviews, along with the route there.

After getting the approximate location, Wen Yan put her phone away, opened her umbrella again to block the falling cold rain, and hurried toward the school gate.

The fine rain was woven like thread; the winter wind cut like a blade.

Holding the kitten against her chest, Wen Yan’s mind kept drifting to Jin Zijin’s gentle eyes.

She had looked up some books on running a marriage when she had free time.

One concept in the books was that a marriage had to have a major conflict both people faced together.

Whether it was one’s family of origin or resisting the storms of society... facing something together and sharing responsibility could forge a deep bond between spouses.

That was also why some couples with children were often less likely to separate.

Because there was benefit, and additional emotional entanglement.

She didn’t want to bind Jin Zijin.

But sometimes she also wondered...

When dopamine and hormones faded, when passion was gone and only an ordinary life remained, what kind of way should they use to stop their feelings from thinning out, so that this relationship could last longer, and even longer still?

After all, in this world, nothing lasted forever.

Liking didn’t.

Desire didn’t.

Passion especially didn’t.

She had long since gotten used to it; used to her parents not loving her, used to being ignored and therefore becoming especially independent, all in order to sever herself from her family.

Used to being softhearted, even though reason told her she should cut ties with home; yet whenever she saw her parents pleading, she still helped them again and again...

Because she knew clearly that as the years passed, she would eventually say goodbye to her parents and part from them for good.

So she had grown used to handing everything over to time.

Now, she had grown used to Jin Zijin.

She began to think, and began to try... to make time pass a little more slowly.

Like someone having a beautiful dream and refusing to wake up, repeatedly telling herself in her mind to stay in bed...

Best to stay there forever, until the end of the world, until she died in the dream.

————————

Wen Yan didn’t know how to date, but she was trying hard to maintain this relationship, to make it last a little longer.

Because from childhood to adulthood, nothing had ever belonged to her.

Her parents didn’t love her at all; who else could she possibly expect to love her for very long?

So deep down, she really was quite pessimistic. [eat melon]