After finishing strolling the second floor, when Nan Zhi brought him downstairs to eat, she jokingly asked him, if she were to find a corner at the bottom of the “凹” and cut a piece of the partition to install an elevator, and then tidied up the empty walk-in closet across from her to let him live in it, would he be willing.
Song Qing didn’t hesitate at all, almost immediately replied: “Willing.”
Replied too quickly, which made Nan Zhi freeze for a moment, and after a while she added a sentence, “Use your yang energy to suppress the house.”
Grandma had told her long ago, she herself also paints, sometimes paints ancient clothing, more or less has to understand the dynasties of those times, so she knew.
In ancient times, high-ranking officials and nobles, no matter how rich they were, no matter how extravagant their food and drink, their rooms were all small, because a house too big couldn’t be suppressed by one person’s yang energy.
It would leak energy; too big, and in invisible corners it would easily hide filth and unclean things. \[In traditional Chinese belief, excessive space without enough yang energy invites yin (ghostly/unclean) energy.]
Those big lords were already like that, let alone someone like her, with a body already not in great condition, and a mind not very healthy either.
She had considered moving Song Qing upstairs for a long time.
One more person, going in and out every day, would be much better.
But he had a big problem — an elevator must be installed. She had looked into installing an elevator, and it would cost tens of thousands.
This wasn’t something urgent. She still decided to get Song Qing his prosthetic first — that was a pressing matter. It’s just that the craftsman they booked was quite busy, so they still had to wait a while.
She also wasn’t clear on the exact price — it had to be calculated based on the actual customization — so the savings they currently had, she didn’t dare spend recklessly.
Handle his matter first, then deal with the elevator.
“Okay.” Song Qing held the bowl, answering very sincerely.
Nan Zhi: “……”
Why is he so easy to bully?
She wasn’t someone with a particularly bad temper, but normally she didn’t bully him any less. Whenever she got angry or the two of them had a spat, she would use his money to buy things for herself.
He had already saved quite a lot, but she told him it was only five or six thousand, the rest had been spent by her. He didn’t even check, just nodded and said he knew.
Every time the two of them went out, Nan Zhi was unwilling to spend her own money, making him — someone who only had 1,000 yuan a month — pay.
That 1,000 yuan of his, missing a few hundred, apart from buying groceries, was basically all spent by her.
Even with her bullying him like this, he was still the same as always.
Extremely stingy with himself, couldn’t even bear to buy a bar of soap, everything he used was her leftovers, but when she wanted to spend his money, no matter how much, he would obediently and properly pay.
Going to the supermarket together, she hugged a big plushie — something flashy but useless to him — and he didn’t say a word.
A person like this, if it were someone else, wouldn’t they have eaten him down to the bone crumbs?
So he could only stay with her, couldn’t be let out to be bullied by others.
“Let’s talk about it later. I don’t really have any thoughts lately.”
Nan Zhi finished speaking, finished off the kelp egg soup, then split a hot apple with him half-and-half, gnawed on it, and then went to sleep.
After her side quieted down, Song Qing turned off all the lights on the first floor, didn’t sleep, and continued working on the new software testing.
The new software had been rushed online a bit urgently. He was a little worried it wouldn’t work well, and there were still some bugs that needed fixing.
Only around past three in the night did he rub his tired brow, pushed the wheelchair quietly to go wash up, and before getting on the bed, as usual, took a pill. The difference was, this time the water wasn’t hot, it was warm, and he didn’t drink it so hurriedly, but after swallowing the pill, he still experienced dizziness and vertigo.
Song Qing collapsed onto the bed, not forgetting to reach out a hand and toss away the pill.
After this experiment, he was already very certain — it was because of the pill.
Nan Zhi wasn’t wrong — other things being expired didn’t matter, only medicine couldn’t, really.
Next time medicine expires, he’ll never drink it again.
Song Qing closed his eyes and drowsily fell asleep.
—
The next day around nine in the morning, Nan Zhi magically woke up bright-eyed and full of spirit. It was still early. Song Qing had gone back to sleep after finishing up something in the early morning. Afraid to wake him up, she didn’t go downstairs and lazed in bed looking at Song Qing’s account.
He really had high efficiency in doing things. As long as he had the idea, he would go and do it, then research related stuff, study. There was a comment saying his voice-over wasn’t pleasant to listen to, and that his environment and setup was more suitable for immersive cooking. He lived by one principle — listening to advice. Really, he no longer did the system’s mechanical voiceovers, just added subtitles.
Sometimes the two of them would eat at the table on the balcony, and behind them were the vegetables he planted. The seasonings he used for stir-frying on regular days were all picked from here. Someone said they wanted to see the process of him picking the vegetables, felt like it would be very healing — he really added that whole section in.
Maybe it’s because she herself didn’t have this, so she was especially envious of others who raised vegetables well, eating vegetables they planted themselves and such. Nan Zhi was the same — before he came, she followed many, many similar bloggers. Swiping through various platforms, aside from art accounts, there were several hundred of these kinds of bloggers.
Living in this kind of complicated, oppressive, and miserable society, really needed to watch these kinds of videos to heal oneself.
She scrolled through — under his account there were lots of comments saying how much they liked it, how much they yearned for it, asking him how to raise the vegetables, weren’t there little flying bugs?
There weren’t — because he would pull up the weeds, burn them into ash, and cover the surface of the soil. That way, bugs wouldn’t grow. Beneath, he buried things too — the nutrients were enough, so the growth was especially lush.
Short-season crops grew batch after batch.
Sealed inside the windows, the temperature wasn’t as low as outside. So even now, it was all green leaves, and sometimes even flowers bloomed.
In previous years, there weren’t any — so it really was because he raised them well.
His kind of flower-raising, vegetable-planting, cooking, tidying-up-the-house, simple and plain life was also something Nan Zhi envied. But when she looked at it, a lot of people envied her.
Many people said — really want to live in such a house.
Living with a person like this must be very happy, right?
Really want to become the female owner.
He would even stew white fungus soup for the female owner, and when the female owner said she wanted to drink roasted milk tea, he made it too.
Nan Zhi had never appeared in his videos, but her voice had — most of the time when he cooked, she was there, sometimes even she was the one filming.
But she really thought it was for that family’s videos, so she didn’t think much of it. Didn’t expect that he had secretly raised so many accounts, and even made a few that could earn money already.
An unexpected pleasant surprise — she also unexpectedly discovered that her current days were already something others envied greatly and called a dream they yearned for.
When she was in the hospital, she said someone cooked for her and tidied the house, and gave all the money he earned to her — no one believed her, said she was bragging.
So, the current life really is very blissful. Don’t keep thinking about unhappy things all the time.
Nan Zhi’s self-adjustment worked. According to past experience, she had a sense of it in her heart — at least she could manage to not feel too bad for three to five days.
Like when encountering something like a patient in the ward putting on an animal-pattern facial mask before bed at night, scaring another patient into screaming, and then that other patient complaining about her, saying management wasn’t in place, and that she hadn’t reminded the person with the animal mask that wearing that kind of thing late at night could easily scare people.
The one who was always unlucky — was her. But she had also found other little tricks to adjust herself.
In her free time, she would switch her phone to ring mode and then listen to the sound of money arriving.
Alipay received — 2 yuan.
Alipay received — 7 yuan.
WeChat payment received — 0.9 yuan.
All payments from Song Qing’s mini program went to her — Alipay, WeChat, even his b.ank card.
The 7 yuan one was for the quarterly subscription. There was also a half-year one — 9.9 yuan, and for a year it was 16.8 yuan.
The 0.9 yuan one was the discounted price after watching an ad.
The ad was a preview for his next software.
He really is so smart.
Have to say, this sound really is quite healing.
Whenever her mood was bad, just listening to it for a little while would sweep away the depression, and she’d go back to work all bright and full of energy.
Unless it was something really big, normal things couldn’t affect her anymore.
At the end of November, Song Qing’s part-time cooking job was almost finished, and she was about to go on break too. In her heart, Nan Zhi prayed that before that, nothing would go wrong — let her go out and have fun smoothly.
But the more you fear something, the more likely it comes — on her last night shift, something still happened.
It was still that same patient from before who had the nasogastric tube inserted. He was elderly, and on top of that had diabetes. The wound hadn’t healed well. Even up till now he was still a high-priority monitored patient.
Nasogastric tube on, and urinary catheter too.
Originally this task wasn’t supposed to be hers, but basically all the nurses who had operated on this patient had been scolded before. Even their head nurse wasn’t spared when changing the gauze — they’d argued for a long time.
Now everyone was pushing it away, unwilling to go to that patient’s bed. Things left undone during the day shift ended up falling on her.
When she inserted the nasogastric tube, she had been scolded. When inserting the catheter, it was the same — and she was even recognized, scolded again and again. She was still in the standardized training internship period — she didn’t have many chances to get hands-on with these kinds of procedures. The family members were difficult and emotionally agitated. She was a bit worried about actually doing it and just wanted to get it over with quickly. In the end, a few drops of blood came out.
Inevitably, her ears were hit with another bombardment. Even after finishing work that evening, Nan Zhi still felt buzzing sounds in her ears.
She herself had also been scared — not by the few drops of blood. A bit of blood when removing a catheter is normal. Her pressure came from not being able to understand the family members. Most importantly, last time she could still go back and practice. This time…
The patient was a man.