<h4>Chapter 17</h4>


    omytian i almost forgot but hey betterte than never lollol thank yous to Whitere and LurkingReader for the ko-fi donation (^з^)-☆


    First, there was a loud bang.


    The deafening sound rang right by his ear. All Qi Jing could remember was that he instinctively raised his hand to block the source of the sound.


    Then, his hand was assaulted with a sharp pain—


    And then what?


    There was a break in his memory from the point on, what came next was his consciousness being swallowed by the darkness. He had no idea what had happened.


    The first thing he lost was his sense of hearing which was also the first thing he regained.


    In the chaotic darkness, he heard something that resembled the sound of ss being shattered to a million pieces. As the crisp and cold sound went off, his eyes barely opened into a slit. He couldn’t tell which way was the right way up, it was as if the sky and the earth had been turned upside down.


    “Urgh...”


    Qi Jing’s head was spinning as cold sweat appeared on the tip of his nose, one after another.


    What really brought him back to his senses was the sound his throat made as he desperately gasped for air.


    From not too far away, he could also hear the heavy movement of a crane, the shrill siren of an ambnce, all sorts of metallic tter from stretchers, and the shouts of people echoing in his ear.


    “Someone is still in there!”


    “That vehicle is more severely bent out of shape. The person might have gone into shock and is unresponsive. Take extra care when you pry open that car!”


    Car?


    Oh right... he was on his way back from his business trip.


    They happened to be on a road that wound around a mountain when they were about a half an hour drive away from the city and they got caught in the heavy traffic of people travelling for the long National Day holiday. The mountain road had a lot of twists and turns and was still wet and slippery from the rain the previous night.


    Could it be that he met with a car ident?


    Qi Jing was in a daze. Then, he blinkedboriously and tried to move away from between the twoyers of twisted metal.


    However, with just that slight movement, intense pain shot through his left arm and right down to his very core. He felt as if his heart had stopped momentarily from the pain. Blood flowed backwards, causing his entire body to convulse.


    A whimper couldn’t help but escape his lips as he reflexively pulled his legs in to curl up into a ball, hitting the crushed seat in front of him which caused the broken ss to shatter onto the ground.


    “I heard something inside!” The person outside seemed to have heard his movement as they hurriedly called for help.


    “Can the person inside hear me? Can you answer me?” In the few seconds it took the EMTs to call out to him, Qi Jing could feel his cor being drenched in his cold sweat from the pain.


    “I can hear you...” Qi Jing replied weakly when he barely managed to move his mouth.


    In that narrow space, a strong metallic smell filled the air—it’s blood. He couldn’t tell where it wasing from but the smell was extremely pungent.


    It appeared that he had met with a car ident.


    Given the pain he was feeling in his left hand, it was most likely fractured. He just hoped it wasn’t crushed.


    The impact from the ident was really strong and the extreme pain received by his nerves from the bone fracture might have caused him to go into shock which was why he lost consciousness for some time. Luckily, his colleagues that came along with him were fine because he could hear them anxiously asking something of the EMTs.


    “We’re all from the provincial TV station! ...Yes, yes, we’re reporters!”


    “The one still inside is called Qi Jing, he was seated right where we collided! Our injuries are nothing serious! Please! You have to save him!”


    He heard their voices amidst the sounds of people rushing about and machinery dismantling the shells of what once were vehicles.


    It truly was a blessing that he did not lose his life; Qi Jing tried to be as optimistic as he could as he weakly gasped for air. He turned his head to the side to avoid choking on dust as the rescuers pried open the vehicle.


    And that’s because if he were to cough at this time, he would surely wound up affecting his whole body, including his fracture; there’s no guarantee the pain won’t send him into another shock.


    After being dug out of the car, Qi Jing specially took a look at the wreckage that was thepany’s minivan.


    ordingly, what hit them was arge truck. Both drivers managed to swerve their vehicle in the nick of time, preventing a car ident with fatalities. However, the front of the truck still crashed with the side of the minivan that he was on, throwing the entire vehicle off the road and onto the side of the mountain.


    As he looked back at the car, its wreckage was truly a sight to behold.


    “He’s got a fracture in his left upper arm. He’s suffered cuts in other areas of the body which need to be disinfected and the blood has to be stopped, but it shouldn’t be anything too serious.” The doctor who was checking on his injuries confirmed his previous suspicions.


    “The internal bleeding from the fracture is quite severe, so we need to fix it as soon as possible and send him to the hospital for an operation.”


    “Prepare the splint! Quick!”


    In order to do a closed reduction on his fracture there and then, the nurse gave Qi Jing some anaesthesia. He could not move his whole body, but his eyes were not idle.


    Looking around, he found that other than his colleagues who were caught in the ident, his other colleagues who caught wind of the matter were on site as well. This news really was dominated by their TV station—whether it was the interview team or the people being interviewed, they all came from the same workce.


    Finding joy despite his predicament, a smile couldn’t help but slip through Qi Jing’s lips when he thought of that. And his colleagues who had paled from the sight of his injuries couldn’t help but chime in one by one to “scold” him forughing in this situation. Chubby Dahai, the one who was supposed toe on this business trip but managed to escape because Qi Jing took his ce, was here as well. He was in a mess as he stood next to Qi Jing’s stretcher, apologising and repenting profusely to thetter; that grown man was just shy of bursting into tears on the spot. In the end, Qi Jing even had tofort him instead.


    “It’s good enough that I’m not dead...” he muttered to himself with a nk look as a mixture of weariness and pain washed over him.


    He had handed in so many dry recordings and not all of the audio dramas were out yet. He still had some audio dramas that he epted but haven’t gotten to recording yet sitting in his folder, waiting for him. Luckily, he didn’t lose his life despite being at death’s door, otherwise, he’d have to remove the ‘ying’ from ‘ying dead’.


    “Sir, this is your phone, right?”


    The nurse who was dressing his wounds gently called out to him. He turned his eyes to the source of the voice and saw her holding up a phone that was covered in dust and blood, asking him to identify it.


    “Yes...”


    “Alright, we’ll help you hold on to it for now,” the nurse said with a nod and inadvertently revealed, “You’ve been holding a tight grip on it for a while now and it only fell from your hands when we administered the anaesthesia.”


    Qi Jing was stunned at her words; he blinked his eyes in a daze before closing them.


    It came back to him—just one second before the ident, he was still looking down at his phone, on the photos app, at the photo of that person and the cat.


    When he arrived at the Provincial People’s Hospital and did an x-ray, it was confirmed that he had suffered fractures in both the ulna and radius of his left forearm but fortunately, it was not aminuted one. Since he was sent to a tertiary hospital located in the capital of the province, they had a wealth of experience and the operation went very smoothly. After an open reduction, a steel te was ced inside while his arm was ced in a ster cast for reinforcement.


    As fractures in the ulna and radius are more prone to discement post-operation, the hospital suggested for Qi Jing to be hospitalised for a period of time for observation and only be discharged after all has stabilised. Since this car ident happened while he was on a business trip, it was considered a workce injury. Management from the TV station sent someone over tofort him and ask about his condition. They also told him to stay in the hospital with a peace of mind and that all his expenses would be reimbursed.


    Qi Jing knew that he wouldn’t be able to get back to news reporting anytime soon so he put aside any distractions and put his mind onto recuperating in the hospital.


    After his surgery, the nurse cleaned his phone and returned it to him, but after such a long time, the battery had already run out. As for his charger, he didn’t know if it got left behind at the crash site or something, but he couldn’t find it no matter how hard he tried.


    “Dahai, could you help me borrow a charger?” Qi Jing asked when chubby Dahai came with his wife to visit the following day.


    He couldn’t use his left hand at all so it was pretty inconvenient for him to use aptop. And if he couldn’t even use his phone to surf the inte or use Weibo while he was recuperating in the hospital, he definitely wouldn’t be able to survive.


    “What’s the model of your phone? I’ll go get you a new one.”


    Ever since Qi Jing’s ident, chubby Dahai kept ming himself, feeling that it was his fault, that it was all because he swapped jobs with Qi Jing during the Mid-Autumn Festival so he kept trying to make up for it.


    Meanwhile. Qi Jing didn’t take it to heart at all. In fact, he felt that it was worth it. Otherwise, if the same situation were to have happened on chubby Dahai, who knew how distressed his wife and children would be?


    However, if making a little material request could slightly reduce the guilt the other party felt, Qi Jing was happy to go along with it.


    “Well alright, you buy me a phone charger and we’re even, so you can stop beating yourself up too much.”


    “We can’t do that!” Chubby Dahai’s wife interjected before he could say anything, “A charger is nothing. What else do you want? Feel free to make any request of us, Xiao Qi! Our Dahai really owes you too much this time!”


    Qi Jing was the worst at dealing with such straightforward women.


    Hence, after pondering for a moment, he finally thought of one other thing.


    “Then, how about you guys get me some better food?”


    He had to say, the quality of the food served in the hospital’s public cafeteria was terribly disproportionate to their level of medical care. He had tried it once on the day of his surgery and it was really not appetising at all, which caused his craving for normal food to shoot through the roof.


    The couple brought him a delicious meal as promised, which Qi Jing gratefully epted, treating himself to the nourishment he needed after his recent surgery. However, both husband and wife had their jobs to attend to, so it was impossible for them to visit him every day.


    After his phone got revived, in order not to trouble the couple, the first thing he did was call chubby Dahai. Qi Jing told Dahai that he had someone elseing to deliver food for him, so thetter didn’t need to worry about it. Then, he continued to get his meals from the hospital’s cafeteria—coarse rice and some simple side dishes. Qi Jing slowly got used to the food one bite at a time; there was nothing that couldn’t be stomached.


    Perhaps it was because of the National Day holiday, there weren’t many people staying in the wards. Everyone that could be discharged was probably taken home by their families.


    Like most hospital wards, the walls were white, the bedding and pillows were all white, and even the bed frame was painted white. In this season, the colour palette made it feel especially cold and lonely.


    He’s used to being busy these few years, rarely has he been so idle that he had nothing to do and nothing he could do. When he strolled along the corridors of the hospital, it was as if he was in a trance. He watched the busy traffic of the city in the distance, spent ten minutes counting the fallen leaves in the courtyard, but most of his time was just spent staring nkly into space.


    Not to think about anything.


    It wasn’t that he had nothing to think about, it’s just that he didn’t want to think too deeply about it. Just like writings on a paper, when ced too far, the words on it be so small that one might think it’s still a nk piece of paper.


    There were four beds in the ward Qi Jing resided in and his was by the window. At first, he thought the other three beds would remain empty, but he didn’t expect that on the third day of his hospitalisation, an elderlydy, who came to town from the smaller counties for operation, would move in. Apparently, it was also a period of postoperative convalescing for her, so she just chatted with him to relieve boredom.


    The olddy’s children worked in the city and her elderly husband, who apanied her to the city to seek medical treatment, usually stayed with their daughter during the period that they were in town. Whenever meal times came, he would bring his home-cooked dishes to visit her.


    The old man was a good cook and his food smelled delicious and must have tasted good too, because the olddy was happy every time she ate, and the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes bloomed more as her smile grew.


    As he watched her eat, even the rice in his own mouth seemed to be slightly more ptable. Hence, he would always eat at the same time as the olddy, that way, it wouldn’t take him an hour to finish the contents in his takeaway box.


    Seeing that he was eating food sold at the hospital, the old man asked curiously, “Hey, young chap, your wife didn’te to send you any food?”


    Qi Jing replied with a smile, “There’s no wife, I’m not married yet.”


    The old man probably must have a lot about young people in the city preferring to marryte and thought that Qi Jing was one of them.


    He couldn’t help but shake his head as he began to say to Qi Jing, “Why didn’t you marry earlier? If you did, you wouldn’t wind up not even having someone to bring you food.”


    Since he felt indebted to the hospital for the surgical treatment they had provided him, Qi Jing felt that he should help maintain the image of the hospital.


    “The food provided by the hospital cafeteria is still not too bad.” At least he wouldn’t go hungry.


    “I’m not just talking about food,” the old man said as he continued shaking his head, “What’s good about being all alone with no one to apany you?”


    “Oh, the youngd is still young and doesn’t understand. Once he reaches our age, he’ll know that it’s too hard to live without apanion.” The olddy joined in the conversation while gently looking at her husband.


    Qi Jing didn’t say anything in response. He just lowered his head and smiled silently.


    This time, he still hadn’t finished his food even after an hour. When the olddy finished her dinner and went out for a walk outside the hospital with the help of her oldpanion, his pair of disposable wooden chopsticks were still resting on top of the rice, fiddling back and forth with a few pieces of hard white rice.


    He had just suffered a bone fracture and a lot of internal bleeding; he needed to eat and rest.


    Thus, he had to continue eating.


    Qi Jing took a deep breath before picking up the endive sitting atop the rice and bringing it to his mouth.


    Just then, his phone suddenly started ringing. He could only put his chopsticks aside for the time being and reached for his phone on the bedside table, but he stiffened when he saw the number on the screen.


    Oh right...


    In the event of car idents like this, thepany would usually notify the family as soon as they could.


    “Xiao Jing? You finally turned on your phone?”


    The voice of the woman on the other end of the phone was one that was once familiar to him, and was starting to get unfamiliar in recent years. However, it did still belong to someone he had called his sister for over twenty years.


    “My phone died, I only managed to get a charger two days ago.”


    “I see.”


    Then, they fell silent. Perhaps, it was because they hadn’t contacted in so long that starting a conversation was more difficult than expected.


    Under the pressure of such a suffocating atmosphere, Qi Jing chose to get straight to the point to end this call quickly. “Can I help you?”


    A rather awkwardugh came for the Qi Xi on the other end of the line as she answered with a very low and cautious tone, “Yourpany called home a few days ago saying that you got in a car ident and are currently hospitalised. I tried to call your phone several times but I kept getting the automated message saying that it was off...”


    “I’m fine, the surgery was a sess,” Qi Jing exined the situation sinctly.


    “That’s good, that’s good...”


    The siblings exchangedmon pleasantries that even strangers could carry out; formalised greetings and formalised replies.


    Then, Qi Jing suddenly heard the voice of another woman in the background.


    It was his mother.


    With a sad and angry, yet helpless voice, she muttered the same few words, “Why does he still refuse toe back to his senses? If he had realised the err in his ways and changed sooner, he cane back to work in his hometown, and should anything happen, we can also take care of him.”


    Thest time he heard those same words was when he decided to leave his family and move to a foreign city all by himself.


    “Refusing toe back to his senses.” Yes, those were his mother’s favourite words and that was indeed the way she talked.


    Next, came his father’s voice.


    Just like in his memory from a few years back, the voice that had been ruined by smoking sounded hoarse and decrepit.


    Being an alcoholic addicted to Chinese spirits, he sounded even more irritable than before as he shouted, “If he could change, he wouldn’t be in this mess today! A car ident... The car ident is just retribution! Of all things, he likes to mess around with men! He’s utterly disgraced me!”


    His father’s angry yells were coldly interrupted by Qi Jing’s younger brother, Qi Zhe, who said, “Dad, can you not shout so loudly about such things? Being heard by our neighbours—that’s what’s truly disgraceful.”


    Qi Jing subconsciously moved the phone away from his ear before slowly putting it back.


    His breathing was starting to get a little ragged.


    Qi Xi probably heard the change in his breathing and seemed to have covered the receiver with her hand as the voices became muffled. Then, he vaguely heard her yelling for them to stop.


    His mother started sobbing hysterically while his brother stopped talking.


    Only his father refused to listen and even strode over to grab the receiver and said, “Listen here! I don’t care if you were in a car ident or whatnot, if you still insist on screwing around with men, don’t evere back to this house—”


    “Beep.”


    He mmed his finger on the screen to terminate the call and he did it several times. Those words kept ringing in his ear as his finger trembled so badly he didn’t even know if he was pressing on the right ce, or if the call had been ended. He just kept pressing, as hard as he could, over and over again.


    Only after thirty whole seconds did the pressing finally stop.


    Qi Jing released his thumb which was slightly bruised from using excessive force. He lowered his head and gasped for air. Somehow, it felt like there was ack of oxygen in his lungs and he had no choice but to breathe heavily, doing what he had to to survive. As he panted, he moved his stiff thumb from the screen to turn off his phone, cutting off all contact.


    In this empty hospital ward, surrounded by monotonous white colour from all sides, the sound of his heavy breathing appeared even clearer and louder.


    As he panted, Qi Jing tucked his phone under his pillow so that it was out of sight and he didn’t need to look at it for the time being while the memories of the various sounds that came out from it yed in his mind.


    “Eat,” Qi Jing suddenly opened his mouth and murmured numbly to himself.


    That’s right, he should eat. Wasn’t his meal still unfinished? He should first eat his meal, fill his belly, then lie down and get some sleep, and when tomorrowes, it would be another bright and sunny autumn day.


    Qi Jing readjusted his box of food, picked up the chopsticks and tried to grab the food inside. However, his hands were just trembling so hard that it took him quite a while before he picked up anything and before he even put it into his mouth, it fell back in. Something else fell in as well. He didn’t taste it but it rained down from his face, dripping onto the coarse rice one after another.


    It was too hard to swallow.


    “Huk...”


    After the first sound escaped, the rest could no longer be held back. Fortunately, there wasn’t anyone else in the ward to hear him so he could slightly let go of himself and cry for a while in the worst voice he’s ever heard since he started voice acting.


    He hadn’t been like that in a long time so he had to give himself a little more time.


    After that, he would continue to finish his soiled food. He just needed some time.


    A/N: When I was halfway through this chapter, I decided to delete everything and start over, so it took a little longer.


    But I feel like I finally got the right feeling.


    But I also feel like I’m probably on the verge of asking Grandpa to heal me... TAT


    Lilies: lol the names of the Qi siblings are single words made up of two characters that can be broken to form standalone words: “誩”→“言”, “囍”→“喜”, “喆”→“吉”


    The next chapters will be updated every sat :>