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Have you all forgotten about a certain important issue regarding Jian Bianlin?
Chapter 6.1 — Love (1)Before they were dating, she had already known that he was busy, but she had not expected that his workload was so intense.
He had not even been back in Shanghai for a couple of days before he was flying out again.
Then, the day he returned coincidentally was the day Chu Jian had to go to Guangzhou to prepare for the trade show. Hence, Jian Bianlin compared their individual flight details over the phone with her, hoping that they could manage to see each other briefly in the airport.
His flight landed at six o'clock; hers took off at seven.
Time was tight to begin with, and then on top of that, Jian Bianlin's flight ended up being delayed. By the time he rushed to that VIP waiting lounge that they had arranged to meet in, Chu Jian was sitting in an inconspicuous corner, leafing through some Japanese-written material that she was holding while munching, a small bite at a time, on an apple that was still half green and not quite red yet.
"Taste good?" He took from her hand that apple that had less than half left and was already showing the core.
"It's okay." Could apples really be categorized as "tastes good" and "doesn't taste good"? Didn't they all just have an apple taste? Chu did not have a chance to savour that taste before she saw him bring his mouth down to bite into the spot on the apple that she had just bitten.
"What's wrong?" Jian Bianlin gave her a puzzled look.
Their relationship had changed, so some of the barriers that they had never broken through before now simply disappeared naturally. For example, right now, he was eating the apple that she had practically finished eating with only the core left. In the past, only her dad and mom would eat her leftovers and not be repulsed at all by doing so.
Behind them, a few staff members of his company as well as Xie Bin one after another took a seat, tossing their backpacks on the floor if so needed and acting as a screen for Jian Bianlin. Looking on from the outside, this corner seemed more like a team of staff members centered around him.
Chu Jian shifted her gaze away awkwardly, spotting on the wall that Beijing time was already six forty. It was time to board, she thought as she worked out the times.
Jian Bianlin also glanced at the wall clock. "Sit for just a bit longer. Three minutes."
Chu Jian nodded.
These two people who had not seen each other for eight days finally were able to meet up after overcoming the many obstacles, but actually, it turned out that there was not much interaction between them. Xie Bin, who was sitting directly behind them with his back toward them, could not help fiddling with his box of cigarettes, putting it in order. Sure enough, there are thousands of people out there, so there will be thousands of weird and different ways to date someone. The way these two were gazing at one another—oh, wait, no, it was just one person gazing at the other person—was certainly… annoying enough.
He took advantage of this moment when he was answering a phone call to glance at Jian Bianlin's expression. It was because of this type of expression that, the very first time he ran into Chu Jian, he had known that Jian Bianlin must have very special feelings for this girl.
Every time Jian Bianlin saw Chu Jian, his face that was normally set tightly would transform to become filled with sentiment. An extremely complicated emotion that he would be suppressing would meld into his eyes and brows—love. Or, perhaps it could be said, it was a feeling that was even more tangible and weightier than ordinary love.
Jian Bianlin pulled out a small red box from his pocket, stating, "Christmas gift."
"Christmas gift?" She was puzzled. "There are still another seven days." What was the rush?
It had been a good number of days where he had not seen her, and he just wanted to be a little closer to her. Alas, near and far, there were many strangers around them.
So, he could only make the most of that moment when she was taking the gift from him to press his two fingers against the back of her hand. He dared not even let them remain there for long. The pads of his fingers swept over those pale blue veins on the back of her hand, touched the curves of her knuckles, glided to her fingers, and then slid off.
Their fingers intersected and gently brushed together. Chu Jian's eyes flickered, and her palm tingled.
"I wanted to see you smile," he said in a normal, straightforward tone.
It was a rather senseless response, and it left her a little bewildered and also quite embarrassed. A slight tinge of red coloured her cheeks as she slipped that small box into her pocket, then grabbed her bag and ran away. But before she had taken even a few steps, Chu Jian doubled back again. "I'll bring your Christmas present back from Guangzhou."
Jian Bianlin was leaning his body forward, his elbows resting on the knees of his bent legs. Nodding, he lowered his head and carried on eating the apple. Even now, as he watched her leave, he still had not seen that smile from her that he longed for.
The piece of apple core that he crushed in his mouth gave off a faint bitter taste, but he was not aware of it in the slightest. All he could sense was the remnants of her warmth between his fingers.
Earlier, on the plane, the abdominal pain had been too intense, and even after deboarding, he still had not recovered significantly. Strugglingly, he had managed only to say those few words to her. He knew as well that he had been a little stuffy and boring, but he truly had not been able to force out another half a word, for fear that she would detect something.
Xie Bin poked his head over and asked, was he planning to not tell Chu Jian?
It hurt too much. He didn't want to move. And he didn't want to talk.
With a muted sound in response, he yanked over Xie Bin's black cashmere overcoat and threw it over his head, covering his increasingly ashen complexion. He no longer had the strength to move even one tiny bit.
Jian Bianlin's gift to her was a bracelet that was one of a matching, couple's set.
She had seen this particular design before. Slipping it on, she discovered that the size was perfect. It should have previously been adjusted in the store and had a few links removed from the chain already. She had once asked Tong Fei, why did celebrities like to wear couples' things that had the same style? Weren't they worried that someone else would have the same thing as them? Tong Fei's answer was incisive and to the point: It was precisely for the reason that an item was repeatedly seen that no one would suspect it was actually a token of love between a couple. That was because everyone was wearing one.
When she saw the Korean brand product representative two days later, the other party was very sharp-eyed and immediately recognized the design as the one a relatively hot and popular Korean celebrity had worn during a photoshoot for a poster. After escorting the representative back to the hotel room, Chu Jian turned her wrist over back and forth, using the light in the hallway to examine that bracelet on her wrist that gave off a faint matte, red-gold glow. She still could not erase from her mind that brief meeting with Jian Bianlin in the airport lounge.
She dialed his number. On the other end of the line, the sound echoed hollowly. "You're still not asleep?" When the call was connected, a question was first fired in her direction, his tone a little serious.
"Aren't you not asleep, too?" Chu Jian countered.
There was the sound of a door being shut. Then he said, "I was asleep, but your phone call woke me up."
Chu Jian did not utter anything in response. Before she had a chance to tell him, "You keep sleeping then. It was nothing important," he immediately followed up with a few more words. "Just joking. I'm reading through a script. Haven't slept yet."
Thinking for a moment, she replied, "I'm calling to ask, what gift do you want for Christmas?"
Jian Bianlin did not answer the question, and instead, he unexpectedly lowered his voice to ask, "Miss me?"
"A little bit? Or not at all?"
"A—" Chu Jian had originally wanted to go along with what he had said and answer, "A little bit," but when the words came to her lips, she swallowed them back down. With a stammer, she changed it to "Mm-hmm, missed you."
Quite some time passed before his faint, forbearing sigh echoed out from that hollow-sounding background. "Go sleep now." So full of emotions were those words it seemed they would spill over as he paused there. After a long while, he repeated his instructions. "Sleep well."
Just that one little sentence caused her to toss and turn for an entire night in a fitful sleep filled with many dreams. She awakened at some time past four in the morning and stared blankly, watching as the sky gradually brightened. After barely managing to get through the wait to seven o'clock, she gauged that he should be awake by this time. However, when she called him, his mobile phone was turned off.
She had originally just wanted to say hi and ask how he was doing, nothing really serious, but now, with this powering off of his phone, she actually grew panicky. This was because, as far as Chu Jian knew, since he began using a mobile phone, he had never left it shut off before. To a certain extent, Jian Bianlin was actually a very strict and meticulous person. He would not allow the situation to occur where his mobile phone's battery died and his family could not find him.
For half an hour, Chu Jian continued to dial his number until, unexpectedly, the call connected.
"Hello? Hello? Is it Chu Jian?" Xie Bin answered the phone cheerfully.
"Where's Jian Bianlin? Why is his mobile with you?"
"His phone died, and he asked me to charge it for him."
"… You're lying to me?" she replied out of intuition.
"Why would I lie to you?" Xie Bin was amused. "You, kid, are so funny. His phone really did die…" Before Chu Jian could even press him with another question, Xie Bin was already sighing and overturning his previous statement. "Forget it. I can't fabricate the story any further. He's in surgery. It just started half an hour ago…"
Surgery?
Xie Bin was still describing the situation to her, but Chu Jian's mind was already in utter chaos. Throwing on some clothes, she dashed out. Amidst Xie Bin's outpouring of everything on his mind, Chu Jian surprisingly kept a cool head and asked him for the hospital location and the surgery start time. Hanging up the phone, she immediately booked the earliest flight back.
Jian Bianlin, you jerk! Don't say anything, do you? Just die from keeping it all in, you. You'd deserve it if you die from keeping everything to yourself!
When Chu Jian was booking the flight, she disgracefully cried from anger. Incessantly, she wiped at her tears. The agent on the phone who was doing the booking was baffled, and prior to hanging up the phone after everything was completed, he privately expressed to her, "Miss, don't be too grieved. All things shall pass."
Pass what? It won't pass.
This whole thing had been wearing on her since September. There had been issue after issue, from the feelings between them, to his sickness, then to the reevaluation of their relationship over these last twenty years, to the forcible altering of their relationship into one of an intimate type. She had practically been worn down to the point that she was beginning to doubt her life's journey over these last twenty-five years and four months. And wasn't it all because of, first, his dad's work-related injury and then, afterward, this illness of his that could zap half his life away?!
And the result of all that was that this time, he decided to perform this little act of covering up the situation and not telling her!
Jian Bianlin, you big jerk, you!
Chu Jian had thought that the journey back would be unbearable.
But in reality, it had felt as if she was floating, and then she was there.
As Chu Jian stood outside the operating room with her head tilted upward and saw that the light over the door was still lit, her heart was about to break.
Although her entire return journey could be considered smooth, it had still taken nearly seven hours.
The surgery still had not come to an end yet.
In the short span of less than two months, she was twice faced with such a scenario. In this moment, she finally understood the feeling of being drained to the point of collapse. Another hour passed, and then Tong Fei also came rushing over. The light still glowed with the words "surgery in progress."
Her eyes red, Chu Jian clutched Tong Fei's wrist and rambled, "I'm telling you, if he comes out, I am so going to beat the heck out of him. Tong Fei, I am so going to give him the biggest tongue-lashing. Trust me…"
When the time was past five in the evening and the sky, little by little, was dimming, the light over the operating room door was at last extinguished. Thankfully, Jian Bianlin was not at an older age like his father, and his body physically was fit. He did not need to spend time in the intensive care unit and was transferred directly to a recovery room.
After nearly ten hours of open abdominal surgery and examination, the doctor had finally found a one-centimetre tumor by his bile duct that had been placing pressure on the duct. Worried that this tumor was malignant, the surgeon had extracted a circle centering around the growth… Anyway, when the thing that had been cut out was brought to them to see, Xie Bin was actually even quite happy and felt that this was all no big deal, pulling out his mobile phone and taking a photograph of it.
As Chu Jian stared at that bloody mass and thought about the fact that it had been cut from Jian Bianlin's body, a pain seemed to seep out, bit by bit, from the very seams of her bones, and a cold sweat, now after the fact, broke out in her palms.
But when she went to his hospital room and saw him there, lying on the bed with his eyes closed and still unconscious, all those words that she had said—as she rushed back the entire way from Guangzhou, when she arrived outside of the operating room, when she held on to Tong Fei and babbled nonstop—became invalid… I won't yell at you, and I don't blame you for doing it secretly without talking to me first.
Jian Bianlin, hurry and wake up. Please hurry…
The doctor leaned over and attempted to wake Jian Bianlin.
Amid the tick, tick, tick sounds of the monitoring equipment, Chu Jian anxiously stood at the side of the bed, watching him. Waiting. Waiting for him to open his eyes. Slowly, those eyelashes that lay on his face fluttered slightly, but his eyes still seemed somewhat unable to open.
He was not simply weak. That lost, confused look that appeared in his slightly-squinted eyes seemed like that of a little animal that could not find its way home, like someone who could not figure out who he was or where he had been abandoned and could only helplessly search around for something familiar.
Last time, Uncle Jian had been in intensive care after coming out of surgery, so Chu Jian had never seen anyone gradually regain consciousness after being under general anesthesia for a long period. She somewhat… did not dare move, lest he was unable to find her. She thought, if Jian Bianlin were to try to find something that was most familiar to him, it would most certainly be here that he would look, this spot where she was standing.
Sure enough, when Jian Bianlin's gaze fell on her, it stopped.
After a few seconds of hesitation, he said, in words that were somewhat indistinct, "Don't… bike to school by yourself. It's snowing…"
Amused by this, the doctor explained to everyone, "He's good. He's likely still a little disoriented."
In his hazy state, Jian Bianlin’s brows creased together, and he drifted back to sleep. The doctor informed them that they would need to wait for another period before he was completely clearheaded. Right now, the effects of the anesthesia were just wearing off, and drifting between sleep and consciousness was very normal.
In short, there were no real issues.
The entire time since he mumbled those couple of sentences, Chu Jian had been caught in a daze. Tong Fei had also been worried about Jian Bianlin, and after listening to everything the doctor said, she nodded and bowed incessantly in thanks. From Xie Bin to the assistants to Tong Fei, everyone was extremely grateful, and clustering around the doctor, they all saw him out the door.
When Tong Fei returned, Chu Jian still looked exactly the same as before and had not so much as shifted.
"Hey, hey, what are you thinking?" Tong Fei waved her fingers randomly in front of Chu Jian's eyes. "It's okay, it's okay now. He just needs to rest up now, and then he'll be fine."
Chu Jian sluggishly glanced at Tong Fei.
No one knew what Jian Bianlin had been talking about. It had been too much like normal, incoherent babble.
But she knew.
That year's winter, Jian Bianlin had been running a high fever. Some time past five in the morning, when she crawled sleepily out of bed with her head still slumped to her chest, she saw him standing feebly in the living room, talking to her parents. His eyes were already a lackluster type of black and did not carry their usual brilliance. Seeing her walk out, he handed to her the absence request slip that his dad had written. At the time, what he spoke were those words: "Don't bike to school by yourself. It's snowing. The roads are slippery."
Additional Comments:Nothing significant to say, just that the last two paragraphs make my nose tingle and my eyes misty. Don’t know what’s up with me. LOL
Completed:
20 of 36 Chapter segments
0 of 1 Epilogue