Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Lu Xingwen all but fled out of the hospital room.

His head was pounding like it was about to explode, everything was a blur of phantom shapes, and his scent gland was going crazy. Before he totally lost it, he called Lu Hean and drove away from the hospital.

He'd had a long-term lease on the top floor of the Zecheng Hotel. By the time Lu Hean arrived, Lu Xingwen was lounging in the outdoor pool. It was October, raining, and you'd need a jacket even at night.

Lu Hean hauled him out and cussed him out: "You crazy or what? Trying to off yourself early?"

Lu Xingwen put on his pajamas, lay back in a chair, and closed his eyes. "The meds I've been on—give me a few more bottles."

"The last dose I gave you was supposed to last a month!" Lu Hean stood up and said, "You're a top-grade Alpha. Those meds are supposed to suppress your pheromones. For years, you've refused to let an Omega comfort you—that's why your pheromones have piled up into chaos and started messing with your nerves. This stuff has side effects—you know that, right?"

"I know." Lu Xingwen opened his eyes, revealing a dead white void beneath.

Lu Hean was shaken by that look—there wasn't a single spark of life in it. He kept pushing: "Keep taking this, and you'll get hallucinations, delirium, schizophrenia—you'll end up a total lunatic!"

Lu Hean was his cousin; they both had their mothers' last names. Lu Hean's mom was a famous pheromone doctor, and he was a shrink himself.

As if a dream had been broken, Lu Xingwen suddenly laughed. What's so bad about seeing the person you want to see? Hallucinations? Delirium? This was the only way he'd been able to see Chen Chen in years—the only thing keeping him going.

For someone at the end of his rope, how was this not a kind of salvation?

Lu Hean gave him two pills, and Lu Xingwen finally calmed down a little.

His mom had sent him to help his cousin. If anything happened to his cousin, his mom would kill him.

"You seeing hallucinations again? They feel real, right? Him at seventeen?" Lu Hean didn't even dare say the name, scared of setting his cousin off again.

Lu Hean carefully asked, "Did he smile at you? Talk to you? Or what?"

Lu Xingwen nodded. "Smiled, talked to me, had all these expressions and moves I'd never seen before. He even asked why I never marked him."

That's it. Totally done.

Lu Hean figured his cousin was a lost cause. He said, "This is hallucinations on top of schizophrenia, and I can already tell yours is severe. You've even made up a person who doesn't exist—someone who can talk to you, interact with you, and do what you expect based on what you want."

Lu Xingwen said flatly, "Okay."

He saw in his cousin's eyes nothing but anticipation, and a crazy excitement that kept building.

He'd dealt with this before. Lu Hean wrote him a few bottles of meds. "I'll go home and look up some papers. I'll come find you in a couple of days."

This was his first patient. Honestly, Lu Hean was thinking about switching fields.

Lu Xingwen nodded. After Lu Hean left, he cracked open a bottle and downed half of it.

*

Su Xingze went to bed early and got up late. He got woken up by a phone call. Without that call, he'd have slept till two in the afternoon.

Still half-asleep, he saw the contact name on the screen—weird one. Something like "Life-Saving God"?

Curious, he answered. A guy on the other end started chewing him out: "Seriously, what's your deal? You don't reply to my texts, you don't pick up video calls, and I had to blow up your phone just to reach you. What are you even trying to do?"

He wanted to ask, "Bro, who the hell are you?"

But the guy on the other end acted like they were tight, saying a bunch of stuff only friends would say. Maybe a friend he'd picked up in the last five years?

Su Xingze yawned. "What do you want?"

"Life-Saving God" said, "You lost your mind? Tomorrow's Ying Ying's birthday. The cufflinks you had me buy came in. When you free? I'll drop them off?"

Su Xingze, still half-asleep and wanting to crash again, mumbled the hospital and room number, then flopped back down.

Birthday?

Oh right—tomorrow was Lu Xingwen's birthday!

This was the perfect chance to patch things up with his bro. He had to grab it.

Man. So damn sleepy.

Su Xingze passed out. When he woke up again, the sun was already high. He yawned a few times and vaguely remembered "Life-Saving God"?

He opened WeChat, and sure enough, the contact was there. Good thing after those four characters there was a dash and a name.

Yang Ye.

Who's this? Why do they text every day, all lovey-dovey like that?

Su Xingze scrolled through, frowning hard.

Life-Saving God: Why aren't you buying Ying Ying a gift?

Life-Saving God: Just send him cash! The more, the better!

Life-Saving God: Trust me, go big—buy him a house!

...

Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy...

It was all buy this, buy that, spend, spend, spend. Almost every message had that word in it.

Su Xingze felt like he was about to forget what that word even meant.

And who the hell was Ying Ying?

Didn't know him. Didn't want to. So annoying.

Su Xingze blocked and deleted him in one shot—bye forever. [Manually waving hand]

Yang Ye was on his way to the hospital, planning to send Su Xingze a pic of the cufflinks to shake him down for some cash. But when he sent the message, a red exclamation point popped up, with a line of small text under it.

[The other person isn't your friend yet. Send a friend request to message them.]

Yang Ye: ???

I got deleted? How could that hopeless romantic resist Ying Ying's charm?

When Yang Ye walked in, Su Xingze was eating off a little bed table. A plate of crispy pork in light oil, a basket of soup dumplings, and a bowl of hand-pounded beef meatball soup.

All brought in by the bodyguards, exactly to his liking.

Yang Ye grabbed a chair, sat by the bed, and set the gift-boxed cufflinks down. "Check these out—they're beautiful."

Honestly, Su Xingze still had no clue who this guy was. He'd hoped a look would jog his memory.

He opened it again to look, then closed it. This guy's WeChat messages were basically no different from a pushy scammer's—besides getting him to buy stuff, it was all about spending money on that Ying Ying, which really seemed like a scam operation.

Yang Ye chuckled, "Pretty, right? I knew you'd love it." Only then did he remember to make small talk: "How'd you end up in the hospital? You good with that head injury? Oh, by the way, this suit button was specially snagged for you—buddy price 68.8, just transfer it to my account."

Su Xingze: "..."

The real point is those last few sentences, right?

Su Xingze pulled up his transfer history and saw there was indeed a card he sent money to all the time, so he transferred 68.8 over. This was the last time he'd do it. Looking at the chat history, it was something he'd asked for himself anyway—it wasn't pricey, so he'd just pay up and get this guy out of his hair.

Yang Ye heard his phone buzz and, sure enough, pulled it out, ready to bounce. But when he opened his phone and checked the message, his face went pale as a ghost. He stormed back with the phone to confront him: "Wait, you forgot the 'w'? I said 688,000, and you sent me 68.8? What's that supposed to mean?"

688... grand?

Su Xingze stared down at the still-open gift box, absolutely floored. Is this thing made of gold? Why the hell is it so expensive!

Now Su Xingze could only come clean: "I don't have the money."

"You don't have money? Then go hit up your childhood friend for it!" Yang Ye said excitedly: "It's not like it's the first or second time you've done this! Every time you ask, he hands it right over! He's happy to be the sucker—what can you do?"

"Ask your childhood friend," "first or second time," "the sucker." It seemed he'd pulled this kind of stunt plenty of times. Even Yang Ye could say that out loud, which meant in everyday life, he was probably just that rotten.

Su Xingze felt bad for Lu Xingwen. He kept his head down, silent. How was he supposed to fix this? Probably no amount of fixing would help now, huh?

After all, he'd been using Lu Xingwen's money to take care of someone else—how could he even ask Lu Xingwen to forgive him?

Yang Ye saw he wasn't talking and figured he was on board, so he suggested: "Look, you're lying in the hospital now. Why not milk it and hit up your childhood friend for more cash?"

Outside the door, the Alpha—who'd slept all night from the meds and gone to the office for a meeting that morning—was wiped. His hand had just landed on the door handle.

Lu Hean had said that in his current state, he'd see hallucinations of Chen Chen, but he hadn't seen any last night, nor had he seen any when he went to the company this morning.

Only yesterday at the hospital had he caught a brief glimpse. He figured it might be the hospital, so after the meeting wrapped up, he came straight over. He never expected to hear that at the door.

Right. Tomorrow was Ying Ying's birthday—how could that guy not be getting ready for it?

He must've dropped a ton of cash on a gift, right? Probably blew through his money these past few days, so he's pulling this crap again, using it as leverage to squeeze money out of him.

Damn it, why did it have to be him?

Why not a vision of Chen Chen?

Where the hell was Chen Chen's vision? He didn't want to see the person he hated most in this hospital.

Since Chen Chen's vision wasn't here, there was no reason for him to stick around.

Lu Xingwen drifted back to the office in a daze, like a zombie.

Not long after he left, a loud crash exploded from inside the hospital room.

Su Xingze pointed a piece of glass shard at Yang Ye's neck and said, "Get out, and never show your face in front of me again!"

"You're insane!" Yang Ye tried to dodge, but Su Xingze was faster—he closed in instantly and pressed the glass shard in deeper.

"I think I am insane too! For trusting a liar like you and willingly handing over my money!" Su Xingze said angrily: "If you dare say one more bad thing about Lu Xingwen, I'll make you lie here just like me!"

That expression wasn't fake. Yang Ye knew Su Xingze's methods well—his face looked innocent and harmless, but inside he was pure darkness. His expression changed, he stopped talking, opened the door, and walked out.

As soon as he left, Dr. Zhao came in with two nurses, trying to calm him down: "Don't get angry, don't lose your temper—be careful not to tear the wound."

Su Xingze slowly held his head and said to the doctor, "Can you help me call Lu Xingwen? I want to talk to him."

"I'll call him, but you must not get agitated, or the gland will rupture again." Dr. Zhao made the call right in front of Su Xingze. The phone rang, but unfortunately Lu Xingwen didn't answer—because the phone was ringing right outside the hospital room door.

A bodyguard walked in and handed the phone to Su Xingze: "The boss was here just now, then left. He threw the phone to me."

Su Xingze's face stiffened: "When did he come?"

"Probably shortly after your friend went in. The boss was about to knock, but he stood there for a while and then left."

Su Xingze's face grew worse and worse. He quickly asked the bodyguard, "Bro, can you lend me three thousand yuan? I'll pay you back in a few days."

The little money he had on him had also been given to that idiot Yang Ye, and tomorrow he wouldn't even have money to buy Lu Xingwen a gift.

"Sure. But let me give you a heads-up—it's best not to call the boss or go find him these next couple of days."

"Every time these days come around, the boss takes leave from the company and won't answer anyone's calls."

"I know." Su Xingze remembered how every birthday in past years, he had been the one to spend it with Lu Xingwen. He knew Lu Xingwen was afraid of his birthday, and he knew his terror of it.

Because the first time he ever met him was on his birthday. That day, Lu Xingwen was small, hiding in a wardrobe, his eyes full of panic, his shoulders trembling nonstop.

Until Su Xingze opened the wardrobe door and pulled him out in one motion.

==========Author's Note:==========

From now on, updating daily at 24:00.

It's a daily update! The author has backup drafts.

Comments get gifts

until the coins run out. (Should still be able to give out a dozen or so.)