If I Die, Will You Still Hate Me? - Chapter 20
He saw Jiang Xuzhou.
“It’s not suspicion,” Jiang Xuzhou said. “I just find this report information a little odd.”
It came too coincidentally and too quickly. It hit the Baiwen Group at an inconvenient time, carrying a strong implication of kicking a man while he’s down.
The informant must be someone who particularly understands the current situation of the Baiwen Group.
“The stop-work order states that our concrete strength is below standard,” Jiang Xuzhou called up the supplier list on his computer. “This supplier has been working with us for a long time. Many of our projects use this type of concrete.”
“Furthermore, as far as I know, the Baiwen Group is one of their biggest partners. Reporting us is doing more harm than good for them.”
Jiang Xuzhou frowned deeply.
“Jiang Xuzhou, then what’s the meaning of Cong Heng reporting us?” Wu Yi asked. “His parents both fell seriously ill at the beginning of the year, his only child has leukemia, and his wife left them. Our company even approved a condolence payment for him recently. Ethically and logically, there’s no way he would report us.”
Wu Yi’s speaking pace subconsciously quickened, and his tone was displeased: “Jiang Xuzhou, I don’t think we have any reason to suspect anyone until the informant information is released.”
“Wu Yi, that’s not what I mean, it’s just a possibility,” Jiang Xuzhou explained. “Calm down.”
“I am calm,” Wu Yi took a deep breath, settling his emotions. “Xuzhou, you haven’t interacted with him, and you haven’t been to his house. You don’t know many of the details.”
Wu Yi couldn’t forget the day he delivered the condolence money to Cong Heng’s house—
The forty-square-meter room was packed with four people: the young, sick child, the paralyzed, elderly parents, and the table full of medicines. Nursing supplies in the corner filled the entire living room.
Cong Heng cleared a few plastic stools, poured water, and busied himself with hosting.
Wu Yi noticed that the young man in his early thirties already had white hair beginning to show.
“Big brother, are you daddy’s boss?” Cong Heng’s daughter was named Cong Hao. The little girl had sparse hair, a pale face, and an IV line taped to her slender arm, yet she smiled with innocence.
Wu Yi’s heart ached. He bent down and said yes.
Cong Hao took a few nearly melted milk candies from her pocket as if presenting a treasure, placing them in his palm, and whispered: “The nurse sister gave these to me as a reward. Thank you for looking after Daddy.”
“I don’t need that many, just one is fine.” Wu Yi regretted his lack of foresight for not bringing anything suitable for the little girl to eat or play with.
His guilt deepened.
He excused himself, ran to a few toy stores, and bought a lot of stationery and dolls for Cong Hao.
The little girl looked up, saying earnestly: “Big brother has already been very kind to Daddy. I can’t take any more things from you. Big brother’s money doesn’t just grow on trees.”
Wu Yi almost blurted out that his money did grow on trees. But he quickly changed his words: “That money is a reward for Daddy’s good work performance, and these are rewards for you for getting your shots and being a good patient.”
Cong Hao tilted her small head, thought for a few seconds, decided Wu Yi made sense, and happily accepted the gifts.
After recounting the story, Wu Yi turned and asked Jiang Xuzhou: “Why do you think Cong Heng would throw away his own livelihood?”
Jiang Xuzhou couldn’t answer.
The two remained silent the rest of the way. Wu Yi didn’t even notice that Jiang Xuzhou’s breakfast was still sitting neglected nearby.
The construction site, which was once a hub of bustling activity, now only held a few inspectors measuring data. The workers rested in the temporary prefab houses.
When Jiang Xuzhou got out of the car, his vision went black, and his legs turned to jelly. He nearly collapsed into the mud, holding onto the car door for a long time to steady himself.
He assessed his physical condition, fearing he might not be able to last the day. Thus, he reluctantly opened the now-cold soy milk.
The sweet, cloying smell of the soy milk traveled up his nasal passages, clinging to his throat, triggering waves of nausea in his stomach.
Jiang Xuzhou took a deep breath and took a tiny sip, then resolutely tossed the sickeningly sweet drink into the trash can, tearing up the steamed bun to feed to the small dog the workers kept.
He patted the dog’s head, held the car door, and stood up, watching Wu Yi emerge from the prefab house with two white hard hats.
Just as the dog finished the last bit of meat, Wu Yi approached him: “The comprehensive report will be out in an hour. How about we go take a look first?”
“Have you checked the construction logs and supervision records?” Jiang Xuzhou put on the hard hat.
“Yes, they’ve been checked. All acceptance procedures are compliant.”
“All that’s left is the report,” Jiang Xuzhou said. “If the report is fine, we can apply to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development to suspend the investigation.”
His black pupils darkened: “I’d like to see what the original evidence of this informant is.”
“Oh, right,” Wu Yi said. “Jiang Chengzhi was beaten up again yesterday and taken to the police station. Your parents couldn’t reach you and called me.”
Jiang Xuzhou’s private phone was always turned off and tossed aside when he was working.
“Beaten up by the loan sharks, I suppose,” Jiang Xuzhou said, unsurprised.
After all, a person like Jiang Chengzhi was bound to get a reckoning in society sooner or later.
“No, it was a passerby. Your parents didn’t know the specifics. They wanted you to post bail, but I said you were busy and refused.”
“A few days in jail will be a good lesson for him,” Wu Yi said.
Jiang Xuzhou felt the same way.
The two inspected the project progress and safety conditions at the construction site. Before they knew it, it was time for the report.
The report was exactly as they expected: fully compliant, with no issues whatsoever.
Wu Yi breathed a sigh of relief. After Jiang Xuzhou retrieved the report and thanked the testing agency staff, the two walked out of the construction site side-by-side.
Jiang Xuzhou handed the report to Wu Yi, “I have a dinner engagement tonight. I’m leaving this matter to you.”
Wu Yi took the report and conveniently opened the car door for Jiang Xuzhou.
The car door shut with a heavy sound.
The midday sun was dazzling but couldn’t penetrate the thick curtains. The room was dark, and Ye Xun was sleeping soundly.
Suddenly, the phone on his bedside table vibrated, waking him. Annoyed, he rolled over, hugged the blanket, and answered the call.
“Son, son, are you up?” Nie Xialan’s anxious voice crackled over the line.
Ye Xun glanced at his wrist. It was already noon. He quickly sat up in bed, took a sip of water to clear his throat, and replied: “I’m up, I’ve been up for a while.”
Such a clumsy performance actually fooled Nie Xialan, or perhaps she simply had no time to notice such details.
“Your father has been coughing a lot these past two days and complaining of chest pain. He went to the hospital, and they said there’s a tumor on his bronchus,” Nie Xialan sighed, the sound of Ye Wenmao’s coughing faintly audible on the other end. “Now he refuses to go to the hospital.”
“Why are you only telling me now? I’ll be right there.”
Ye Xun threw on his clothes, grabbed his car keys, and drove straight to his parents’ house.
For as long as he could remember, Ye Wenmao had smoked. From one cigarette a day when Ye Xun was little to one and a half packs a day now, he smoked harder and more frequently.
Ye Xun had tried to persuade him, but quitting smoking wasn’t just about external encouragement; it required self-will.
Like a relationship, only mutual consent can lead to a good marriage or a broken mirror being mended.
When he pushed the door open and entered, Ye Wenmao and Nie Xialan were arguing.
“What’s the point of going? Whether it’s benign or malignant, it’s fate!” Ye Wenmao argued. “If it’s benign, fine. If it’s malignant, there’s no escaping it.”
Nie Xialan’s voice was choked and hoarse: “Where do you get all these ridiculous arguments? Let’s go for treatment first, and we can discuss the rest later.”
“Sigh, why bother? It’s expensive and exhausting,” Ye Wenmao couldn’t win the argument with Nie Xialan, so he resigned himself to smoking at the dining table.
“You’re still smoking! Do you want to die!” Nie Xialan was weeping, her entire body uncontrollably trembling.
Ye Xun heard this, didn’t even take off his shoes, walked in, snatched the cigarette from Ye Wenmao’s mouth, and tossed the entire pack and lighter on the table into the trash: “To the hospital.”
Ye Wenmao was startled by his sudden appearance and reached for the trash can to retrieve the cigarettes.
“You don’t care about your life, why care about cigarettes?” Ye Xun kicked the trash can away.
He dared not say anything more, afraid of revealing the fear in his heart.
This kind of fear had been ubiquitous, penetrating every day of the past four years, focused on Jiang Xuzhou. Now, four years later, it resurfaced, this time focused on his own father.
Ye Wenmao couldn’t argue with his son’s determination and Nie Xialan’s tearful pleas. He hesitated for a moment and agreed to go with Ye Xun.
The disinfectant smell of the hospital was like a sword hanging overhead, making the tense atmosphere maddening.
Ye Xun completed the admission procedures, but because it was the weekend and the doctors weren’t working, they could only admit his father first and discuss the treatment plan with a doctor on Monday.
He went home to grab some clothes for Ye Wenmao, bought some necessities at the downstairs convenience store, comforted Nie Xialan for a while, and returned to the ward around six or seven in the evening.
Ye Wenmao lay restlessly in the hospital bed, pulling Ye Xun into fragmented conversation until he finally fell asleep around eleven at night.
Ye Xun couldn’t sleep. He went to the small garden outside the inpatient building, found a clean bench, and sat down, his mind replaying the various possibilities he had researched on his phone.
The brightly lit emergency room was not far from him.
Ye Xun had been to the emergency room many times, mostly thanks to Jiang Xuzhou.
Jiang Xuzhou…
His thoughts began to scramble.
By his count, they hadn’t seen each other for three or four days. When they were apart before, even without meeting, their mutual friends would mention the other in casual conversation. But for the past three or four days, there had been no news at all, as if he had evaporated into thin air.
Ye Xun touched his own heart. It beat faster and stronger than Jiang Xuzhou’s. He involuntarily thought of Jiang Xuzhou clutching his chest and gasping for breath.
Didn’t he have the surgery?
Why is he still like this?
Is the recovery incomplete, or are there complications?
He couldn’t help but recall the stack of consent forms he signed before Jiang Xuzhou’s heart surgery. They listed nearly ten possible complications.
…Ten kinds.
Could Jiang Xuzhou be experiencing one of them?
He slowly snapped out of his reverie, realizing he had inexplicably walked toward the emergency room, and was now sitting inexplicably on a bench in the emergency lobby.
There were only a few patients in the lobby. A doctor was dozing at a desk, and the sound of a child crying came from the pediatric clinic behind them. It wasn’t exactly quiet, nor was it loud.
The environment was oppressive, uneasy, and frightening.
Ye Xun disliked this feeling. He stood up, preparing to go back to his father’s room to sleep.
Suddenly, the roar of an engine grew from a distance, finally stopping at the entrance. The nurse abruptly woke up and pulled a gurney to the door. The screeching of the wheels across the floor pressed on everyone’s heart.
Ye Xun’s heart began to pound uncontrollably, and his breathing quickened. He rushed to the doorway, first seeing the blinding red on the gurney. The smell of bl00d rushed to his head.
Too much bl00d. How can a person cough up that much bl00d?
“Move aside!” a nearby nurse shouted.
He stumbled back two steps, his breath catching instantly—
He saw Jiang Xuzhou.
This was a scenario he had not expected, a scene he desperately did not want to see.
“Xuzhou…” Ye Xun murmured.
The person on the gurney seemed to hear him. His head tilted toward Ye Xun, his dark eyes half-open, and his pale lips curved slightly. He moved his mouth and said something, then his body convulsed, and another stream of fresh bl00d gushed out.
Ye Xun forgot how to breathe.
He had heard Jiang Xuzhou’s words.
He was calling his name.