Chapter 100

Chapter 100

Every year, medical students from Kanbei Medical University, Kanbei University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Kanbei Medical College enter Kanbei Medical University Affiliated Hospital for their clinical rotations. These include students from Kanbei University’s School of Medicine, Kanbei University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Kanbei Medical College.

Gu Jinglan transferred to Kanbei Medical College, so logically speaking, the affiliated hospital was his home turf.

From being born in this hospital, to interning here during weekends and holidays in high school, to completing a two-year clinical rotation in college, and eventually taking over its management—this was Gu Jinglan’s whole life.

Taking control of the hospital, investigating the cause of his mother’s death, and resolving his lingering regrets were the things that drove him.

It started on a whim when, during his sophomore year, Gu Jinglan met his bunkmate—the one who had never shown up for classes.

At his core, he had a hint of youthful rebellion, and he used to mess with his bunkmate.

Perhaps it was disdain for such a stuck-up rich kid, but he pinned his bunkmate down on the grass, and the other boy stared daggers at him.

The dorm still didn’t like his bunkmate much, and the bunkmate made no effort to play nice with them.

It wasn’t until he accidentally discovered his bunkmate’s heart condition that things changed.

Out of instinct as a med student, he saved him once. But since his bunkmate didn’t want anyone to know about his illness, and out of uncharacteristic softness, Gu Jinglan kept the secret.

He saved him again when he realized someone like him was being bullied—both at school and within his own circle.

How could someone be so foolish? With just a little more tact, he wouldn’t have messed up such a good hand so badly.

Taking him home was also out of fear that his heart condition might kill him outside. This was the second time he acted out of pity for life.

And just like that, his bunkmate seemed to develop feelings for him.

Unfortunately, Gu Jinglan wasn’t gay. Moreover, deep down, he despised such people.

After these few “encounters,” Gu Jinglan stopped joining his dormmates in ostracizing him.

His bunkmate was fiercely competitive, both in appearance and academics.

Perhaps this was just a ploy to catch his attention.

But he was still a bit clueless, as if his family had never taught him how to navigate society.

All his reactions seemed hardwired into him—like that time he risked his neck to save Gu Jinglan on the cliff.

It was absurd. Heart disease, asthma, a silver-spoon upbringing, exceptional medical talent—piled with every disadvantage, yet he still risked his life to save him.

He discussed this with Nurse Fang, omitting the gender, saying only that a classmate had risked his life to save him.

Nurse Fang said, “This is your lifelong benefactor. You owe them big time.”

But how? The person already had everything.

Gu Jinglan continued studying, socializing, and competing. At the same time, he observed this bunkmate.

His demeanor remained cold and standoffish, just like when they first met in their sophomore year. But he seemed exhausted, holed up nightly in the dorm’s rooftop study before returning.

Back in the dorm, he would turn the lukewarm shower on full blast, water pounding the tiles.

A few times, Gu Jinglan woke up in the middle of the night to find his bunkmate slipping out like clockwork, only to return one to three hours later.

He was the only one among their peers who knew about his bunkmate’s heart condition. Though he could pretend not to notice, he owed this person a life debt.

He once pretended to be asleep and heard his roommate across the bed sneak out of the dorm around two or three in the morning, when everyone else was fast asleep.

He followed him outside. The person walked into a stairwell with motion-activated lights and sat alone in the dark hallway.

The roommate sitting on the stairs noticed him.

When the roommate lifted his face, he saw a tear-streaked expression—like that of a child.

Why was he crying?

Was it because his love was unrequited?

The last time Gu Jinglan had seen him cry, he remembered, was during an anatomy class when he got into an argument with Qi Yuanhan. Yet instead of taking his roommate’s side, Gu Jinglan had sided with Qi Yuanhan.

Afterward, his roommate across the bed had been in the bathroom with red, puffy eyes.

Why was he so quick to cry? That time, it had only been about something small.

How had someone so sensitive even made it this far in life?

Shouldn’t someone like his roommate—with status and background—have the world at his feet?

Weird.

He was born in the affiliated hospital of Kan Medical University and was destined to take over its management. His life was pinned in place, like a butterfly in a display case.

With such a carefully planned future ahead, he also knew he would marry a dutiful wife.

Someone like Xia Yiyi, for example—refined, educated, the whole package. A good match from a similar background.

Yet inexplicably, his mind couldn’t stop thinking about his roommate’s tears.

Then he noticed that his roommate seemed to be seeing someone else.

Good. That way, they could each go their separate ways and live their ideal lives. He would inherit the hospital, get married, have children, build a career. His roommate could live his cushy, privileged life, footloose and fancy-free, falling in love and wasting time as he pleased.

But for the first time, his heart was veering off track.

He couldn’t make sense of his own feelings.

He kept remembering how his roommate’s eyes turned red, how he cried, how he gasped through an asthma attack but refused help, how his proud exterior masked an unusually fragile core, how his older brother was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—democratic in appearance, authoritarian in truth—and how his roommate collapsed with cardiac shock at the university gates. He remembered the way his roommate used to search for him with silent, lingering looks, never saying a word.

Countless images overlapped until finally forming the image of his mother bleeding out on the operating table.

Even though he had never actually seen his mother, he unconsciously linked her to his roommate across the bed.

Some weird, nameless feeling.

If he didn’t help him, he would be forever crying in his head, forever hurt.

Was he following his heart—or betraying it? Gu Jinglan had no answer.

It was like all his self-discipline had flown out the window, leaving him fixated on that one person.

He started noticing things—his roommate walking dogs with someone else, hanging out in convenience stores with others, going to weekend paintball matches with friends.

Was his roommate into that guy?

Still, he was weirdly sure—his roommate was still hung up on him.

Okay.

Just like that, he won his roommate back.

See? His roommate did still care about him.

For the first time, he did something different from the life plan carefully mapped out by himself and his parents since childhood.

Gu Jinglan felt no regret, no anxiety, no heaviness—only a sense of relief and a deep, spontaneous happiness welling up inside.

With his roommate from the opposite bed, he experienced a happiness he had never known before.

He pondered something: If he unraveled the mystery of his mother’s death and took revenge, would the happiness he gained be the same as what he felt now?

Perhaps he could have twice the happiness.

Or maybe this current happiness was false, and only fulfilling the wish he’d held since childhood would finally free him from living in the shadow of that crying face forever.

Was that how it worked?

Only after they started dating did he realize that his roommate’s social circle was way more complicated than he’d thought.

Their social codes made no sense to him.

When he found out his roommate had betrayed him, he should have broken up with him then and there.

But seeing his roommate’s tears reminded him once again of a life spent in the shadow of tears.

So he went back, took his roommate’s hand, comforted him, and went through with their trip as scheduled.

He didn’t know if his roommate would change, but soon he got his answer.

During winter break, while working in cardiology and sent out on an ambulance run, he saw his roommate with his best friend.

Maybe they were arguing—or perhaps… he stopped himself from thinking further.

Mid-heart attack, when his roommate saw him, his eyes were wide with shock—mixed with guilt, shame, and regret.

Then his roommate’s blood vessels ruptured, turning his white coat red with bloody vomit.

After that, he never saw his roommate from the opposite bed again.

Soon after came serious threats and pressure from the roommate’s older brother, strong-arming his father into delivering an ultimatum:

If he didn’t transfer schools and cut ties with that person, he would never inherit the hospital.

And so, he transferred.

Through chats with his old dormmates, he learned that his former roommate had switched to commuting and later dropped out again.

He wondered if it was fate’s doing—and now, fate’s final word.

This cycle of tears kept repeating throughout his life. If this chapter ended here, did it mean his test was finally done?

After transferring, he fit right into his new crowd.

Plenty of girls were into him, and even some guys showed romantic interest.

Yet, all he really cared about was finding out how his former roommate from the opposite bed was doing.

Has his bunkmate given up? Is his physical condition any better? Was his leave of absence due to emotional or physical health? Will he continue his studies? Will he become a doctor in the future? If he does, will they meet again? And what then? Will they both have new partners by then?

So on the third day of Gu Jinglan’s rotation at Kan Medical University's affiliated hospital, he encountered Qi Yanyu, who had been assigned to the gastroenterology department.

At the 6:20 a.m. pre-rounds huddle in the hospital, Gu Jinglan arrived neither early nor late.

He saw Qi Yanyu at the back of the conference room, where the department head and attending physician were quizzing the medical interns on what they had learned the day before.

The interns up front held their breath.

His gaze lingered on Qi Yanyu, whose face had that model-student look—misleading, of course. Then, Gu Jinglan watched as Qi Yanyu was called out into the hallway by the attending physician, while the other interns visibly relaxed. Gu Jinglan slipped out after them.

In the hallway, Gu Jinglan overheard the attending’s reprimand, but his bunkmate took it in stride.

After several minutes of scolding, the attending finally left. His roommate remained indifferent, his face a blank slate, as if the reprimand had nothing to do with him.

Qi Yanyu returned to the meeting with his pen and notebook. Soon, it was his turn to be called up and questioned by the attendings and chiefs about his internship progress.

He answered thoroughly—interns never got off easy.

The senior physicians clearly admired him, asking simple questions like whether an NG tube or a PEG tube would be more suitable for their newly admitted patient, Zhang XX, who had suffered a stroke, severe psychiatric complications, and respiratory paralysis. Qi Yanyu answered: PEG tube. Though the patient was unconscious, he still had sensory awareness—nasogastric feeding would be *disrespectful* to the *person*.

Yes, he said *person*, not “patient.”

A memory from not too long ago resurfaced in Gu Jinglan’s mind.

There was a reason his roommate had been disliked by their dormmates—he was all edges.

Unsurprisingly, this answer annoyed the attendings.

Qi Yanyu returned to his seat, and the attending turned to say something to him.

Gu Jinglan wondered: Had he picked the NG tube because he’d been on one himself?

After that, every time Gu Jinglan finished his rotation or worked the night shift, he would go up to the gastroenterology floor—though he didn’t want to run into Qi Yanyu directly.

He could rattle off the hospital’s equipment serial numbers in his sleep. The nurses and doctors on each floor were familiar to him—except for Qi Yanyu’s new attending, whom he wasn’t yet acquainted with. He had already schmoozed with nearly every doctor and nurse in gastroenterology:

“That intern, Qi, is a good friend of mine. He’s a bit reckless, but his heart’s in the right place. Please look out for him…”

Around 8 p.m., as Gu Jinglan climbed the stairs, he saw the gastroenterology interns heading out for dinner.

The doctor’s office was empty except for his roommate—his slender frame draped in a wide white coat.

And a face that invited bullying but never quite allowed it.

Gu Jinglan pretended to pass by the gastroenterology office and stopped at the nurse’s station. “His family sent him some food. Could you give it to him?”

“Why don’t you take it to him yourself?” The new nurse—knowing he was the dean’s kid but a seasoned doc himself—smiled as she picked up the thermos bottle. “You should talk to your friend. He’s got a mouth on him—he’s already pissed off several doctors in the department.”

Gu Jinglan feigned nonchalance. “So they dump all the work on him?”

“He doesn’t seem to refuse. His temper’s good when it’s good, but sometimes it’s not,” the young nurse fiddled with the phone cord. “Your friend’s allergic to hospital politics—it’s eating him alive. And he’ll keep getting screwed over.”

The nurse’s station phone rang. “I’m on it—I’ll get it to him!” she said before answering.

At 11 p.m., Gu Jinglan swung by the GI floor and found the thermos bottle still on his desk—but the man himself was gone.

He walked into the office, opened the thermos, and found no signs that anyone had eaten from it.

Qi Yanyu noticed Gu Jinglan during this same week.

This week, the pre-university entrance exam physicals for several high schools landed on the overworked med students, who barely had time to eat.

Behind the white curtain, Qi Yanyu, wearing a long, oversized white coat, waited for the male student to come in for a stomach exam. Instead, a female student entered. As soon as she stepped in, she quickly pulled down her pants, then screamed sharply.

What followed was Qi Yanyu being accused of sexual harassment and taken to the administrative office.

The girl sobbed in the hospital’s administrative office, while Qi Yanyu stood in another administrative room.

Cui Qiuli from the administrative department eyed the standoffish and composed medical student before him and said, "Tell the truth. If you don’t, we’ll call the police."