Outside, the streets were packed with people and lit by countless lights, the distant cries of vendors faintly drifting through the air. Inside the car, however, it was so quiet that the drop of a pin would have been audible.
After a long, silent standoff, Jiang Xu broke the stillness. “Take me back to the hospital.”
He didn’t answer Shen Fangyu’s question directly, instead giving an irrefutable reason. “I still have the night shift tonight.”
“You’re on night duty tonight?” Shen Fangyu was startled.
Jiang Xu gave a low “mm.” “I was actually planning to go home, take a bath, and then come back for my shift.” He didn’t much like the hospital showers, and since his surgery had ended early and his home was close by, he could go back to change clothes.
Shen Fangyu, realizing he’d just done something rather inconsiderate: “…”
After Jiang Xu’s promotion to associate chief physician, he only worked second-line night shifts. Per Jihua’s regulations, he still had to stay in the hospital, but typically only got called if the first-line doctor encountered a particularly difficult case. It was much easier than before, sometimes a lucky second-line doctor could get through the night without being called at all.
But Jiang Xu had notoriously bad luck. Whenever he was on duty, a serious case inevitably came up. Even so, he still made a point of stopping at the second-line duty room door to solemnly pay his respects to the “god of night shifts.”
In their department, the night shift god was a stack of seven apples, symbolizing peace for all seven days of the week. Supposedly, it could help ensure a smooth night shift.
“When did you start dabbling in superstition? I remember you always looked down on this kind of thing,” Shen said in disbelief as he followed, watching Jiang Xu’s expressionless “worship.” “And you don’t even look sincere about it.”
“I’ve been doing it ever since I got pregnant.”
Shen Fangyu’s gaze suddenly flickered.
Half-reclining against the headboard, Jiang Xu drank a few sips of plain water, then picked up his tablet to prepare tomorrow’s lecture slides. Noticing Shen still standing there, he asked in surprise, “Why are you still here?”
Shen’s eyes landed on his plain water. “Don’t you think that stuff tastes awful?”
“If you stayed just to say that…” Jiang Xu tilted his head back and took several quick swallows of the white-coat-approved plain water Shen despised, a faint sheen of moisture lingering on his lips. “I think it’s fine.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Shen asked.
“If you can get some sleep on a night shift, you should. But…” Jiang Xu’s eyes returned to the tablet. “I’m teaching at A Medical University tomorrow, so I’m reviewing the slides one more time.” After his promotion, he also had to take on teaching duties at A Med, including giving lectures.
“How many periods?”
“Four,” Jiang Xu said. “Eight to twelve.”
In obstetrics and gynecology, doctors assigned to teach at outside institutions universally agreed that lectures were more exhausting than surgery. While working through the night and then scrubbing into back-to-back surgeries was routine, doing a lecture after a night shift was sheer misery.
The commute between the hospital and university ate up time, so lectures were usually scheduled in big blocks.
At least in surgery, you could rest during gaps, but in a lecture you had to stand the whole time. The long break between classes was spent either answering students’ questions or enduring critiques from supervising professors.
Talking non-stop for hours on end would wear your throat raw even with lozenges and there had even been a doctor who collapsed from a myocardial infarction mid-lecture on myocardial infarction, requiring emergency resuscitation.
Suddenly, Shen stepped closer and pulled the tablet from his hands.
Jiang Xu gave him a puzzled look, and Shen said, “Go to sleep. I’ll cover your shift.”
“My night shifts aren’t easy,” Jiang Xu said.
He had a reputation for attracting patients.
Shen hid the tablet behind his back like he was coaxing a child. “Go on, sleep. I’ve got good luck, tonight will be a peaceful night. If you’re worried, just sleep here.”
“What about you?”
There was only one bed in the duty room.
“I’ll just pull an all-nighter.” Shen sat down at the desk. “Haven’t played games in ages.”
Rubbing his hands together, he turned on Jiang Xu’s tablet. Jiang Xu’s phone and tablet had no lock screen, and even the wallpapers were default system ones, clean and unremarkable. But Shen unexpectedly found a mobile version of a game that had been wildly popular over a decade ago when it was still PC-only.
Jiang Xu didn’t stop him from playing, just turned over and planned to rest his eyes for a bit. Then Shen said, “Jiang Xu, it’s been one minute and I already got killed, in the beginner zone, no less.”
The account was brand new, so clearly Jiang Xu hadn’t played much either.
Staring at his fallen character on screen, Shen scowled. “Damn it, this is your fault. Now I realize I don’t know what to do with myself outside of work.”
“There’s a copy of The Biology of Cancer on the desk,” Jiang Xu said lightly. “Might help you realize you’re not so great at your job either.”
“…” Shen glanced at the massive tome, thicker than a dictionary, considered for a moment, and then set down the tablet and opened the textbook, ready to receive the baptism of knowledge.
This book was a classic in oncology, the original English edition, long regarded as a beacon for cancer research, just incredibly hard to get through. Between its heavy pages were several sheets of paper, all notes written by Jiang Xu.
Back when he was a student, Jiang Xu’s handwriting had been fairly neat, but now it had grown increasingly messy. Still, as a fellow doctor, Shen Fangyu had no trouble reading it. Following along with Jiang Xu’s notes, Shen quickly got into the rhythm of studying, soon forgetting the passage of time.
Whether it was truly thanks to his so-called lucky aura or not, the night was unusually quiet. It wasn’t until the latter half of the night that the first-line doctor called, saying there was a patient with placental abruption showing signs of massive bleeding.
Shen Fangyu took the call and rushed out. Even though he answered quickly, the sound still stirred Jiang Xu from sleep. Jiang Xu had meant to ask what was going on, but Shen simply said, “Go back to sleep. It’s fine.”
Whether there was something magical in his tone or not, the usually light sleeper actually did fall back asleep.
By the time Shen returned, dawn was breaking. The placental abruption patient and her child were both safe, and it turned out to be a set of boy-girl twins.
Delivering babies was like opening a treasure chest, and in obstetrics, delivering twins of both sexes was always considered the first-prize jackpot, a sign of great joy.
Shen Fangyu, grinning from ear to ear, wanted to share the news with Jiang Xu. But seeing him asleep, he thought of sending a message instead, only to worry the notification sound might wake him. After a moment’s hesitation, he tore off a sticky note from the desk. But as his pen touched the paper, his hand suddenly froze.
When had he started feeling the urge to share things with Jiang Xu?
After a brief silence, Shen set the pen down, crumpled the paper into a ball, and tossed it into the trash.
His mind was restless, and he couldn’t get back into reading. He put the tablet back beside Jiang Xu’s pillow, pulled up a chair to sit next to him, and suddenly remembered something from the past.
The game on Jiang Xu’s tablet was one they had both once been very good at.
Their first meeting hadn’t been in a lecture hall at A Medical University, but in an internet café in City B. That year, right after the college entrance exams, Shen hadn’t even changed out of his school uniform before heading straight to the café for an all-nighter.
When he went to pick a seat with his internet card, he spotted another boy in the crowd who also hadn’t had time to take off his school uniform. Shen recognized at once that he was from No. 6 High School.
Shen’s own No. 4 High and No. 6 High were the two best high schools in City B, with results neck and neck every year. Each year, both would hang banners proclaiming themselves the top school in the city, to the point that no one could really tell which was truly number one.
The rivalry extended to every detail. One year, No. 6 High took student feedback and switched uniform suppliers, replacing their baggy, shapeless tracksuits with smart red baseball jackets that really did look much sharper.
No. 4 High, seeing this, immediately contacted the same supplier, didn’t even change the cut, only altered the school crest, and swapped their own uniforms to baseball jackets. Of course, to avoid confusion, the administration changed the color to blue.
Red and blue were both common school uniform colors, but with the new cut, students from these two schools became especially easy to spot, after all, they were wearing the same jacket design in two different colors.
Shen sat down next to the boy in the red jacket. The other didn’t spare him a single glance, his fingers flying over the keyboard with smooth, skillful movements.
He was playing a massively popular online multiplayer game at the time. As soon as the match ended, Shen extended an invitation. “Wanna team up?”
“No noobs,” the other replied curtly.
“What a coincidence,” Shen draped an arm over the back of the other’s chair. “Neither am I.”
Both had gone in with a “worth a try” attitude, but to their surprise, they played together as if they’d known each other for ages, remarkably in sync, the excitement building until they played straight through the night.
When they finally dozed off in the morning and woke again, the owner wandered over holding a stack of newspapers, tactfully offering, “Want a copy?”
It was the day after the college entrance exam, and the paper was printing all the answers. The two high schoolers exchanged a glance and immediately began comparing their answers right there in the café.
“How’d you do?” Shen tossed down his pencil, smiling at his new acquaintance.
The new friend wasn’t modest in the least. “See you in the paper.”
In those days, when smartphones weren’t yet widespread, most of City B’s residents got their news from the City B Daily. Every year, this top-tier newspaper devoted a quarter of a full page to publishing the year’s top arts and science scorers.
Shen raised an eyebrow. “What’s your name?”
“Jiang Xu.”
That was the first time he’d heard Jiang Xu’s name, unaware that the two of them had already been the subject of countless conversations among the principals of No. 4 and No. 6 High, and that bets had been placed more than once on which school would produce the year’s science champion.
“Shen Fangyu.”
Before his new acquaintance could ask, he introduced himself. “See you in the paper.” Standing up, he took the school jacket draped over the back of his chair and slung it over his forearm, flashing a provocative, cocky smile. “Only it’s not me seeing you, it’s you seeing me.”
Back then, no one could have imagined that just over a month later, the two of their photos would appear side by side in City B Daily, one on the left and one on the right, like a wedding invitation.
The bold headline stated their victory and defeat outright:
“Two Science Champions Emerge in City B!”
In even larger, eye-catching type, the reporter had added a clickbait subheading:
No. 4 High vs. No. 6 High Once Again: Which Twin Star Will Come Out on Top?
The two science champions appearing together in the paper became a favorite topic of conversation for many City B residents at the time. Few cared about how intentionally provocative the headline was—yet unexpectedly, it turned out to be prophetic, foreshadowing the decade-long rivalry between Shen Fangyu and Jiang Xu.
The games they had once excelled at were left completely on the shelf. And after it was turned into a mobile game, the long out-of-practice Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu fared miserably, their days as passionate 17- and 18-year-olds battling at their computers reduced to nothing but memory. All that remained were two doctors leading bland lives, with no hobbies outside of work.
Medicine required talent, but even more, it required repetition.
It demanded an enormous amount of time.
“If we hadn’t been classmates in university, these years might have been a lot easier.”
Shen Fangyu’s expression grew subtly complicated, as if remembering something from the past.
He asked, “Do you regret it?”
Jiang Xu didn’t answer.
Shen Fangyu shook his head with a smile and was about to sit up when Jiang Xu suddenly let out a muffled groan. Shen’s face changed at once. Seeing Jiang Xu frown, a sheen of cold sweat on his forehead, one leg drawn up as his hands instinctively gripped it, it was clear he was in considerable pain.
Shen instantly realized he was having a calf cramp. As the pregnancy progressed, Jiang Xu’s early pregnancy symptoms had eased somewhat, but because the fetus had entered a faster growth stage, his body’s calcium levels couldn’t keep up, leading to frequent nighttime spasms.
Shen placed both hands on Jiang Xu’s leg, pressing down slowly but firmly. Unlike Jiang Xu’s own half-asleep fumbling, Shen’s technique was precise, and before long, Jiang Xu’s brow began to smooth as the pain subsided.
“Does it hurt often?” he asked.
Jiang Xu, still groggy, gave a faint “Mm.”
Jiang Xu had a strong tolerance for discomfort. Even during the worst of his early pregnancy symptoms, he had never shown a trace of weakness during the day, often to the point where Shen almost forgot he was carrying a child at all.
Only at night did the hardships of pregnancy sometimes slip onto his face.
“Go to sleep,” Shen said. “I’ll keep watch. If it hurts again, I’ll massage it for you.”
Jiang Xu seemed to hear him, or perhaps not. After a brief pause, he abandoned the thought and drifted back into sleep.
Shen looked at him, his expression faintly complicated.
When Jiang Xu woke in the morning, Shen had already gone to the office. Instinctively reaching for his phone, he instead noticed a glass of milk on the small table by his bed. He touched the cup, neither hot nor cold, just the right temperature.
Under the cup was a note:
“Drink this before going to lecture. You’re a bit low on calcium.
PS: Had a placental abruption case last night, delivered boy-girl twins!”
Shen Fangyu’s handwriting was sharp, each stroke pressed deep into the paper. Jiang Xu’s gaze lingered on the neat, decisive exclamation mark, his eyes flickering almost imperceptibly.
Holding it up to the light for a moment, he suddenly noticed there seemed to be writing on the back.
Flipping it over, his eyes froze.
“PPS: Have you considered… living with me?”