As evening fell, Qi Fang sat in the wheelchair gifted by Qin Xiaosa. Under the watchful eyes of Li Congming and Chen Ke, he left the hospital with Shen Yu.
While Shen Yu wasn’t looking, Li Congming hastily stuffed Shen Yu’s test results from when he was unconscious into Qi Fang’s arms, lowering his voice:
“We didn’t find any issues. Shen Yu’s condition is most likely MSBP. Chen Ke says there are very few hospitals in the country with experience treating this. She’ll look into it when she has time. Contact her directly if you have any questions. For now, it’s best to go along with Shen Yu’s wishes. Don’t try to forcibly change his mind.”
Clutching the papers, Qi Fang asked in bewilderment, “What about my illness?”
Li Congming retorted, “What illness could you possibly have?!”
Qi Fang pointed to the left side of his chest, saying in confusion:
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong here? Why did Shen Yu suddenly think I had heart disease after waking up? There must be some trigger, right?”
Li Congming pondered for a while, unable to come up with an explanation. He finally shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe Shen Yu knew someone with this condition before.”
Qi Fang stroked his chin, “How many people could Shen Yuyu know well enough to be aware of their physical condition?”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Li Congming replied offhandedly, exhausted from the past few days, “Wasn’t Shen Yu’s father—”
His words came to an abrupt halt.
After exchanging glances with Qi Fang for a moment, Li Congming muttered, “It must be a coincidence, right?”
Seeing Shen Yu emerge from the restroom after washing his hands, Qi Fang crumpled the test results and stuffed them into his pocket, telling Li Congming, “I’ll contact you later on WeChat.”
Shen Yu had changed back into his usual clothes. The cool night breeze made his profile appear even paler, with barely any color left on his lips. He looked like a beautiful ice sculpture, his long lashes lowered, concealing the expression in his dark eyes.
Since waking up, Shen Yu had barely spoken.
Qi Fang felt both heartbroken and distressed. He wanted to offer his wheelchair to Shen Yu, but remembering his current role as a “weak, sickly heart patient who would fall down at the slightest breeze,” he had to forcibly suppress the urge.
—He couldn’t worry Shen Yu any further.
Qi Fang’s car was being repaired, and they couldn’t get the car from their home garage. Li Congming glanced at the wheelchair beneath Qi Fang and decisively called for a cargo transport vehicle on the platform.
Five minutes later, seeing the vehicle Li Congming had called arrive, Qi Fang glared at him, gritting his teeth, “Li Congming, you can forget about going on any more blind dates. I’ll send eight or ten bodyguards to ruin all your future dating prospects.”
Li Congming: “?!”
Shen Yu did not have any opinion on the cargo transport. Li Congming paid extra and added a note: the truck was new, the cargo compartment was clean, and the driver was strong enough to lift the wheelchair. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
Except for Qi Fang’s sour expression.
Before getting on the car, Shen Yu looked at Qi Fang’s face and suddenly stepped closer. He gently grasped Qi Fang’s right hand, which was hanging by his side, releasing it half a second later.
“It’s better than squeezing onto a public bus with a wheelchair,” Shen Yu said in a flat tone.
Qi Fang froze in place.
Shen Yu boarded the vehicle first with the driver. Qi Fang turned his head, asking Li Congming in a daze, “Did you see that? Did Shen Yu just hold my hand on his own?”
It was dark, and Li Congming hadn’t seen anything, but that didn’t stop him from playing along, “What? Shen Yu touched you?”
Qi Fang pondered for a moment, then added, “He even comforted me just now.”
Li Congming was utterly confused, “What? Shen Yu coaxed you?”
The more Qi Fang thought about it, the more elated he became. He patted Li Congming’s shoulder, his anger from a few minutes ago completely gone, and said pleasantly, “Alright, you sure know what to say. Go on your blind dates in peace. I won’t give you any trouble.”
Li Congming: “???”
*
After returning to the apartment, Shen Yu set down the simple luggage they’d brought from the hospital and immediately began working busily on his computer.
Qi Fang operated the wheelchair awkwardly, moved next to Shen Yu and peered over, asking, “What are you busy with?”
Surprisingly, Shen Yu’s computer screen showed not a video conference or academic article, but a colorful travel website page, with the cursor hovering over the customized tour option.
Qi Fang glanced at it and raised an eyebrow, “Did your computer catch a virus?”
“…” Shen Yu clicked on the customized tour page, quickly scanning through it, and said in a flat tone, “I’m planning to take a week off.”
Qi Fang sensed trouble, “What for?”
Shen Yu lifted his long lashes, “I plan to go on a trip with you. Can you leave work the day after tomorrow?”
Qi Fang was stunned.
Putting aside how incongruous the word “trip” was with Shen Yu, just the premise of “going together” was enough to shock Qi Fang.
“Wait—” Qi Fang’s gaze involuntarily swept over the travel webpage, his voice light with excitement, “Why? Shen Yuyu, don’t you need to supervise your students’ experiments?”
Shen Yu had never voluntarily suggested traveling before. Even with numerous opportunities for academic exchanges, whether in-city, out-of-province, or abroad, the pure purpose of “travel” had never been enough to catch Professor Shen’s attention.
Hearing Qi Fang’s question, Shen Yu was silent for a moment before answering, “You don’t have much time left.”
Qi Fang: “Huh?”
Shen Yu looked up at him. His usually cold, dark eyes seemed to ripple with a faint wave of emotion, but before it could fully surface, it was forcefully suppressed by his calm self-control.
—That hint of unusual emotion was extraordinary, and Shen Yu instinctively felt it was best not to let it ferment further at this moment.
“Qi Fang.” Shen Yu called his name very solemnly, softening his tone, “As your legal spouse, it’s my duty to accompany you on your final journey.”
“I’ll take care of everything at the university tomorrow,” Shen Yu said. “You should also quickly settle your company’s affairs. If you pass away, I don’t know how to manage a company.”
Qi Fang: “……”
“Also,” Shen Yu added, suddenly remembering something and saying seriously, “Don’t throw away that smart cooking machine. I might need to use it to cook in the future.”
Qi Fang opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. After repeating this several times, he finally let out a helpless laugh.
So Shen Yu was planning for his future as a widower?
“We leave the day after tomorrow?” he asked, going along with Shen Yu’s words.
Shen Yu nodded. The day after tomorrow was Monday. Leaving on Monday wouldn’t interfere with the following week’s class schedule, and if they returned early on the weekend, he could still work overtime to handle any backlog.
After hearing Shen Yu’s reasoning, Qi Fang had no objections. He immediately called his assistant, Xiao Lin, and announced, “I resign.”
Assistant Xiao Lin was on his way home from work. Hearing this, he took the phone away from his ear, confirmed the caller’s name, then returned to the call and sincerely replied:
“Boss, resignation requires you to submit written materials to the company. Resigning from a position above manager needs the company president’s approval.”
Qi Fang: “Oh, then what procedures are needed for the president to resign?”
Xiao Lin thought for a moment and said, “There’s no precedent for this, but I think at least the president’s spouse would need to approve the president’s resignation.”
Qi Fang: “.”
Shen Yu, listening from the side, neither approved nor disapproved of Qi Fang’s outrageous behavior, but still politely told Xiao Lin, “Qi Fang will be traveling with me next week. If the company has any issues, you can contact Mr. Qi or call Qi Fang directly.”
The Mr. Qi that Shen Yu mentioned referred to Qi Fang’s father, the previous CEO of Qiling Group.
Xiao Lin: “Alright, no problem. I’ll record that the boss is taking a week off.”
After hanging up, Assistant Xiao Lin logged into the company’s internal system on his phone and methodically followed the procedure to submit a leave request for Qi Fang. In the ‘Reason for Leave’ column, Xiao Lin pondered for a moment before slowly typing:
“Boss on honeymoon”.
*
The next day, Shen Yu took the bus to the university.
He had been often out of sight these past few days, and when the students came in for a group meeting, they exchanged meaningful glances, but no one dared to be the first to ask.
“Minqing,” a senior female student whispered to Zhao Minqing, “Do you know where Professor Shen has been these past few days? It’s rare to see him away from the lab.”
Zhao Minqing, who was dressed casually, was scrolling on his phone. He looked up briefly at the question and scoffed, “Probably taking care of that crippled husband of his.”
The senior student was focused solely on academics that she was also slow to catch up on gossip. She was taken aback, “Ah… Professor Shen is married?”
She remembered something, “Last time when Professor Shen received a call and left, wasn’t it you who drove him off campus? Did you meet Professor Shen’s partner then?”
Zhao Minqing’s finger tapped irritably on the screen, replying impatiently, “I saw him. Nothing special.”
“What do you mean by ‘nothing special’?” The senior’s gossip instincts finally reignited, and she whispered, “I really can’t imagine Professor Shen actually getting married…”
Zhao Minqing locked his phone screen and shoved his hands into his pockets. Recalling Qi Fang’s face, he said with a hint of sourness, “He looks decent enough, I guess.”
He paused, then added casually, “Pretty rich too.”
“Wow.” The senior student took in this gossip, unable to resist asking, “Where does he work? To be so rich.”
“Don’t know,” Zhao Minqing lied without changing his expression. “Never saw him going to work. Might be a rich second-generation kid living off his family.”
The senior student clearly didn’t believe it. “Would Professor Shen be interested in a rich second-generation guy? I think he must have qualities we don’t know about. Anyone who can win over Professor Shen can’t be ordinary.”
“…” Zhao Minqing felt irritated hearing this. How would he know why Shen Yu was interested in Qi Fang? If it was about being a rich second-generation, he was one too. Why didn’t Shen Yu choose him?
He couldn’t think of any qualities Qi Fang had that he didn’t.
Feeling increasingly dejected, Zhao Minqing walked quickly into the meeting room, tossing back, “Think what you want.”
The senior student shrugged, saying helplessly, “He can’t even handle the truth.”
Many group members had noticed Zhao Minqing’s feelings.
During Shen Yu’s absence, Zhao Minqing rarely replied to WeChat messages from his seniors. When they called him to come over to learn experimental procedures, he made excuses about being busy. He never looked at the group’s shared documents and often loitered outside Shen Yu’s office. He was clearly slacking off academically, and only there because of Shen Yu.
The seniors’ views of Zhao Minqing gradually changed.
“Ten minutes to organize your thoughts,” Shen Yu sat down in the front chair of the meeting room, turning on the projector. He said in a flat tone:
“After ten minutes, report in order of your project topics. Each person has fifteen minutes. After the reports, I’ll give feedback. Please record and adjust your plans accordingly, then form a mid-term summary report. Send the summaries to my email before leaving work this afternoon.”
The students tensed up. Although they were used to Shen Yu’s efficient work style, they were still nervous about getting back into the rhythm after several relaxed days.
Then, Shen Yu called out the names of several students, including Zhao Minqing. After a pause, he said, “You’ve had less time with the projects. Just report on what you’ve been studying recently.”
The students reported one by one. Two hours later, it was Zhao Minqing’s turn, the last one.
“Professor,” Zhao Minqing closed the game on his phone and cleared his throat, “I’ve learned quite a lot recently, but it’s hard to summarize right away. Can I compile a document later and send it to you? We can discuss it on WeChat.”
Shen Yu frowned and said coldly, “I remember sending a notice last night about today’s meeting, asking you to prepare materials.”
Zhao Minqing smiled at him innocently, “Professor, I didn’t see it.”
Shen Yu nodded, scanning the room of students with varied expressions, and calmly said, “Today’s reports are over. If you have any questions, stay behind to discuss with me.”
“I plan to take five days off next week.”
He stood up, gathering materials from the table while saying, “Today, I’ll finish all emails and submitted article revisions. The daily work of the research group will be arranged by each team leader. For non-urgent matters, don’t contact me. Resolve them yourselves.”
The students were stunned by Professor Shen’s sudden vacation announcement, sitting in their seats like dazed geese.
“Also,” Shen Yu, finished packing up and about to leave, caught something in his peripheral vision. He paused, turned to Zhao Minqing.
“Starting tomorrow, you don’t need to come to my group anymore,” Shen Yu said unhurriedly. “I’ll write to the department to assign you a new advisor.”
“This place,” Shen Yu said, “isn’t quite suitable for you.”
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