"You killed Qin Ruoshui, didn't you?" Qi Yi'an turned to face her, his tone indifferent.
Li Feiyan did not answer. She continued to puff away as if nothing was amiss.
"..."
"..."
When her cigarette burned out, she spoke.
"That was a dream."
"It's a dream now."
Qi Yi paused for a moment, then lowered his head and smiled bitterly, "Then I don't want this dream, I hope I can wake up soon."
She reached into her coat with her right hand and pulled out the gun that had shot Lin Yan.
Li Feiyan took off her sunglasses.
"Okay, I'll help you..." she said with a bitter smile, tinged with sadness.
Qi Yi'an placed his index finger on the trigger, raised the gun, and aimed.
The instant she looked up, a flash of white light streaked across her vision. It was blinding; was it the reflection from Li Feiyan's sunglasses?
For a split second, Qi Yi'an's vision froze. After the sudden burst of bright light, everything went black.
The next second, his throat was impacted, and for a moment Qi Yi'an was unable to speak or breathe.
Warm, almost scalding, bright red liquid spurted out and splashed onto the tender green meadow. The dripping continued unabated.
Qi Yi'an finally saw clearly that Li Feiyan had used a long fork from the fence of the meadow to pierce her throat.
The rusty fork had three spikes: one grazed the cheek, one pierced the throat, and the other went through the shoulder.
That's really ruthless.
Qi Yi'an swayed twice and collapsed to his knees. He gasped for breath, gushing blood, unable to breathe due to lack of air. He hadn't even registered the pain.
“…Just like I helped her.” Li Feiyan released her grip on the long handle of the steel fork.
That was the first time Qi Yi'an had seen sadness on Li Feiyan's face.
…
The bay is azure and serene; the wind and waves cease to make a sound here.
Li Feiyan put on sunglasses and surveyed the horizon. The person lying on the cliff edge was too weak to struggle anymore. She turned to leave.
…
Pain surged through him, a pain that pierced to the bone. With his last ounce of strength, Qi Yi'an, through a blurry, swaying vision that was gradually darkening, crawled toward the edge of the cliff.
come down.
Everything returned to calm. Completely meaningless.
Chapter 35 Bai.
"That was a dream."
Li Feiyan told her that Qin Ruoshui, the patient, was in a car accident on the first day of 2020 and has been brain dead ever since. Thanks to advancements in medical technology over the years, her condition improved after Li Feiyan took over her care a few years ago and began using new treatments.
"Ms. Qin, please don't worry too much. Our medical team and your family will do everything they can to help you recover. You don't need to worry."
"Auntie...it's alright, we'll take it slow..."
Qin Ruoshui looked up and surveyed the crowd. No one understood what she was saying; everyone looked at her with pity, convinced that she was physically and mentally ill. It was like waking from a dream, a world away. She looked down at her hands, long unused and somewhat deformed and weak. How had they become like this?
Due to paralysis of her lower body, Qin Ruoshui often suffers from phantom limb pain, experiencing uncontrollable spasms and throbbing pain that keeps her awake all night, forcing her to stay awake until dawn. The pain is like sawing off her leg and gouging out flesh, a slow and agonizing torture day and night. Her spine is deformed, with protruding bones, causing her excruciating lower back pain during the day when she sits. In addition to her inability to move, many of her daily inconveniences include the inability to completely control her bowel movements, which could easily lead to kidney failure in the long run.
She said it was a dream... then why did she wake up?
What is the point of spending one's entire life in a wheelchair, consciously facing the daily torment of illness?
That was a dream...
She kept recalling what Li Feiyan had told her, trying to convince herself to give up.
Don't overthink it... The medical staff and your family will do everything they can to help... Don't worry...
family…
Qin Ruoshui suddenly looked up and asked, "Xiaoxing, where are Dad, Mom, Grandpa, and Grandma?"
"Tell me the truth."
In the initial period after waking up, Qin Xinglan only said that her family members were all busy abroad and would return after receiving news. Before she knew it, months of rehabilitation had passed without her seeing a single familiar face. If, as those people said, she had been in a coma for several years after a car accident before waking up, how could she have been completely ignored by her family members? How could such an abnormal situation not be a dream?
Qin Xinglan froze, her expression betraying her feelings despite being only a teenager. Qin Ruoshui stared at her with wide eyes, but Qin Xinglan simply avoided her gaze.
"..."
Qin Ruoshui laboriously rolled her wheelchair to the table next to her and waited quietly for her answer.
"..."
"What are you afraid of? Why can't you say it?"
Qin Xinglan lowered her head and bit her lip, speaking a little too quickly when she finally opened her mouth.
"The company was found guilty of involvement in organized crime. My father committed suicide by jumping off a building two years ago, and my mother went to prison. After the incident, my grandparents fled abroad first, and they both died last year after contracting a new variant of the coronavirus."
She spoke softly, but Qin Ruoshui heard every single word clearly.
"..."
That was a dream...
…medical staff…and your family…
That was a dream...
This is the dream, isn't it?
I hope you wake up soon.
Qin Ruoshui grabbed the fruit knife from the table beside her and slashed her wrist hard, drawing blood.
-----
When the bodyguard saw Li Feiyan walking back alone, and was unusually unsteady, he went to help her from a distance.
"Boss...you..."
Li Feiyan gestured for her bodyguard to be quiet and went to the driver's seat to drive. She then turned back to look towards the sea.
"Are you alright? Is there anything I can do for you?"
It was easy to notice that the woman who had been with them was gone, and Li Feiyan exuded a chilling aura under the blue sky and white clouds.
Li Feiyan's expression was unreadable behind her sunglasses. She stood there for a long time before taking hesitant steps to approach and open the car door.
"Just drive along the coast, wherever you want."
-----
When he crashed into the sea, Qi Yi'an felt as if several of his ribs had broken, and he couldn't breathe for a moment. After that, he couldn't even breathe.
She was swept away by the undercurrents beneath the surface of the sea to the depths of the ocean, sinking from deep blue to darkness in the Pacific Ocean, getting further and further away from the sunlight, and getting colder and colder.
It took a very, very long time to sink; time seems so long in the depths of the ocean. Perhaps this is what they mean by the extended perception of time before death.
There was none of the agonizing suffocation he had expected before Si's death. He felt no water around him, no difficulty breathing, as if he were in a dark, weightless space. Qi Yi'an felt as if he had opened his eyes, seeing an infinite space around him, with light scattering in the darkness. It felt so comfortable, his whole body tingling, and he no longer had to worry about anything.
The Pacific Ocean is so vast and deep, it allowed a desperate life to fall freely. Qi Yi'an jokingly thought that he had actually felt a kind of empathy that transcended time and space in the last moment of his life. It was truly moving. Hehe, well, it was a bit absurd.
The sea was so quiet, save for a few soothing waves and the faint sounds of marine life. Her consciousness was drifting away as she wished. What if...something...fish...whale...would eat me...?
…
Qi Yi'an sank deeper and deeper into the Pacific Ocean. She felt the light on the surface of the sea dimming... For a long, long time, in an infinitely extended space-time, she seemed to fall to the seabed, to the pure white sand. She sank into the sand, sinking deeper and deeper. Then, for a long, long time, light shone through the sand, and she sank to the Earth's core, where the light shone like flowing fire. The Earth's core contained golden lava, somewhat warm, like another sun. And then, for a long, long time still, she pierced through the Earth's core, penetrating the dark, porous volcanic rock layer, returning to the tranquil darkness.
Slowly levitating from the darkness to the deep blue, a current of energy lifted her upwards into the shallow, turquoise sea. As she rose above the shallow sea, she was surprised to feel the long-lost white sunlight. When had sunlight become so stingy? Just a single point, a beam of light. Qi Yi'an was pushed by a force, emerging from that white, luminous void…
The light was so strong that it took Qi Yi'an a long time to adjust and focus his pupils. Inside the round white fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling were the corpses of some small insects.
Reborn? Or reincarnated? Please, that's too cliché.
She hoped that humans could only live once, but no one can be sure of that until death. Given her current condition, the chances of her being saved are slim.
"Qi Yi'an." A familiar female voice called her, "Qi Yi'an. Can you hear me?"
What is that sound?
"If you can hear me, blink your left eye twice in a row."
All my consciousness gradually focused on blinking.
The thoughts, joys, sorrows, memories, and dreams in my mind receded like the tide, leaving no trace.
Qi Yi'an felt so tired, so very tired. She tried her best to focus all her willpower on her eyelids and blinked with difficulty.
"..." "Great! Dr. Li!" Other voices rang out from the side, some cheering softly, others talking.
Qi Yi'an was so tired, it felt like he had slept for a very long time and hadn't woken up yet. He had many dreams, but he couldn't remember any of them.
She opened her eyes, then closed them again.
White fluorescent lights, a bright day.
Author's Note:
I've tested positive for COVID-19. I have a fever. I hope I'm okay.
Chapter 36: Lament.
In this city, it was that season again when the poplar leaves had all fallen, when you breathed out white puffs of air, and when the wind was as sharp as a knife, capable of chilling you to the bone. The wound on her wrist had almost healed. Qin Ruoshui looked at the pale pinkish-purple new flesh growing from the knife scar, the needle marks on either side like centipedes lying on her pale skin, and a wave of self-loathing washed over her again.
I can't wake up from this dream.