DJPWNK 12

At the stall in front of Jihua Hospital, Shen Fangyu was having a meal with his friends in the department, eating meat with his right hand and drinking a cold beer with his left, when he heard his phone ringing. He hastily put down his beer to take out his phone.

It was a professional habit for almost all doctors to keep their phones on 24 hours a day, never set them to silent, and to check any small message at the first opportunity, as it might be patient-related.

He tapped on the dialogue box with Jiang Xu and froze.

He scrolled up in disbelief and confirmed that all his chats with Jiang Xu were file transfers or official notifications, no such invitation had ever appeared.

But he was sure the message was from Jiang Xu himself, because he had a characteristic of ending messages with a yellow smiling emoji, but it was the kind with a smirk.

Because of this, Shen Fangyu often complained inwardly that Jiang Xu was an old man who didn’t even know that this emoji meant mockery among young people.

However, he didn’t know what kind of enlightenment he had today and suddenly asked the colleague next to him, “Does Jiang Xu put emojis in the messages he sends to you?”

“No.” Several colleagues were puzzled.

Shen Fangyu didn’t believe it, so he showed them the dialog box with Jiang Xiu, “Like this little yellow emoji.”

“There really isn’t, look if you don’t believe me.” The colleague immediately pulled out his phone.

After confirming that Shen Fangyu was indeed the only one who got this special treatment, his colleague’s expression was rather subtle, “He’s not mocking you….is he?”

“No way,” Shen Fangyu retrieved his phone without changing his expression. “The fact that he only sent it to me means he wants to smile at me alone.”

“……” Okay, you really have a thick skin; you can even justify that.

“But why is he asking to meet you though?” A colleague wondered, “Could it be another fight?”

“Who knows,” Shen Fangyu shrugged. “Ever since I made a joke asking him if he was pregnant, he’s never paid attention to me.”

He took a bite of his fried skewer and said, “He used to glare at me whenever we met, but now he just treats me like air. Last time I saw him throwing up in the toilet, I gave him a packet of tissues, only for him to use my tissues and leave without even saying thank you. I told him he was being impolite, but he turned around and stared at me-”

Shen Fangyu looked a bit depressed. “You don’t know; he looked at me as if I had made him pregnant, wishing to tear me up the next moment.”

A colleague laughed and said, “It seems that you made Dr Jiang angry by getting a place at the conference.”

“He’s too narrow-minded, their group that went last year.” Shen Fangyu sighed.

A colleague tapped his phone and asked, “So are you going to meet him?”

Shen Fangyu gave a chortle. “I’m not going; he’s like a queen giving me orders; why should I listen to him? ” While talking, he picked up another bunch of skewers. “Who does he think he is?”

His colleagues, who had seen the conflict between the two, clinked glasses with him and said, “Drink, drink; don’t think about it.”

It was almost nine o’clock when Shen Fangyu put down the last empty stick.

He took off his gloves and washed his hands with a hand sanitizer, took a sip of his beer, and, half-heartedly, glanced at his watch.

“You’ve got an appointment?” A colleague asked, “You’re *living in Cao Ying; how many times have you checked your phone? Are you in such a hurry to leave?”

*A metaphor for being on the opposite side, but thinking of the other enemy.

“Hey, weren’t you and Jiang Xiu both courting Zhong Lan before? Why hasn’t there been any movement lately?” Someone then gossiped, “Is there someone new?”

“Which new person?” Shen Fangyu retorted, but didn’t explain much. It was rude to help someone come out of the closet. At the repeated questions from his colleagues, he simply said, “It’s not appropriate for me to say.”

He had always been a mellow person with a casual attitude, and he was the type of person who felt he knew him well. After breaking away from his colleagues’ questioning, he looked at his phone and said, as if to himself or to the others, “Forget it, I’d better go and check, in case something is really wrong with him.”

With that, he stood up, and it was only then that his colleague came to a realization: “Hey, I thought it was someone else making you leave early, but it’s still Jiang Xiu.” He teased Shen Fangyu, “You’re really fast at slapping yourself in the face.”

Shen Fangyu put on his jacket and sprayed on some men’s cologne, asking, “Who made me a good person.” He lamented, “How can there be such a kind person as me under the sky? Not only did I not give in to Jiang Xu’s evil forces, but I also came forward to help him in times of crisis.”

Finally, under the unforgiving gazes of his colleagues, Shen Fangyu returned to Jihua Hospital with his hands in his pockets.

When he opened the door, Jiang Xu was staring at the computer screen, still wearing his white coat, so he had probably just come from the ward.

The office was deserted at this hour, and the doctor on duty was not there either.

Shen Fangyu sat down next to him and saw what he was reading. “Hey, why are you interested in this direction lately-”

“Shen Fangyu.” Jiang Xu suddenly spoke out, interrupting his words.

He didn’t take up Shen Fangyu’s small talk, but released his grip on the mouse and turned around to face him. Jiang Xu was not wearing a mask, so when he turned around, Shen Fangyu saw the mole under his eye again.

There’s one thing Shen Fangyu was embarrassed to tell others. Ever since he saw Jiang Xu’s mole that day, he went back and had several dreams in a row, each one more daring and more absurd than the other, but the key was that they were particularly realistic, as if he had actually slept with Jiang Xu.

He also looked at Jiang Xiu in an unusual way during this time, but Jiang Xiu didn’t bother to look at him and didn’t notice his strange behavior.

Later, when Jiang Xu asked him to go to a fight, he threw a punch, but his fist inexplicably froze in the air when he saw the mole again, and then he was punched in the abdomen.

The devil had struck.

Fortunately, the evil fire in his heart finally dissipated with time. Dr. Shen attributed the successive erotic dreams to the fact that he hadn’t done it for too long and his body was too excited. But now that he was seeing the mole under Jiang Xu’s eyes again, he felt that the fire he had put out for so long was inexplicably flaring up again.

So he averted his gaze and said, as if casually, “Why did you call me?”

Jiang Xu stared at him and didn’t say anything right away.

Shen Fangyu knew that Jiang Xu was a straight-forward person; especially when it came to talking to him, he would combine three sentences into one and speak quickly, as if looking at him would shorten his life. So his current behavior was making Shen Fangyu inexplicably flustered.

He thought for awhile and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Jiang Xiu took a sip of water, withdrew his complicated gaze, and spoke in a businesslike manner, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Today, Jiang Xiu was not impatient, nor did he glare at him. Although he still looked at him with displeasure, at least, his voice was calm.

There must be a demon when things go wrong, and Shen Fangyu had a hunch that what Jiang Xu was about to say was not something good.

“Do you want me to help you with your shift? Or is it a change of operating schedule, or… something to do with the participation quota for the conference?” Shen Fangyu couldn’t think of anything else that would make Jiang Xu talk to him in such a serious manner, and to be honest, he didn’t even think that the ones he had just guessed would make Jiang Xu show such an attitude in front of him.

Jiang Xu listened and picked up a timer from the table, “First, I’ll give you a minute to mentally prepare yourself.”

Shen Fangyu froze, “Wait a minute -”

Jiang Xu didn’t wait, he glanced at Shen Fangyu and directly pressed the start button. No matter how difficult it was for him to talk about it, he didn’t want to appear shy now that he had decided to tell Shen Fangyu.

Shen Fangyu’s heart suddenly beat a little faster, and he had a feeling that what Jiang Xu was about to say was not good.

What was it?

What was so serious that he needed to prepare himself for it?

Time flew by as Jiang Xu’s left hand rested on the table, turning the timer continuously. The cuffs of his straight white coat fell back as he moved his hands, revealing a well-defined wrist.

Shen Fangyu kept wanting to say something, but as he watched the numbers on the timer get smaller and smaller, it was like watching the stopwatch move in the last few seconds of the exam when he couldn’t finish the questions, and the more anxious he was, the less he knew what to do.

Yet he had never been so inexplicably nervous during an exam.

It was only when the dust settled and the number on the timer reached zero that Shen Fangyu’s heart fluttered as the sharp, piercing bell suddenly rang out.

Jiang Xu quickly pressed the snooze button and turned off the timer, not letting it ring a second time.

“Don’t you-”

“I’m pregnant, and the baby is yours.”

Jiang Xu had his eyes lowered, his gaze falling on the timer as he spoke softly.

Shen Fangyu: “?”

A minute of mental preparation might not be quite enough.