The world rose like fog from a river; Tang Coco felt a mattress under her, her limbs floating like driftwood in a slow tide.
She forced her eyes open; a ceiling white as winter sky and an eye-safe lamp like a pale moon swam into view.
She turned her head, careful as a leaf turning in wind; the monitors and tubes ringed her like cold reeds.
This felt like a hospital, quiet as snowfall after a storm.
“This is… a hospital? I… came back?”
The thought landed like a pebble in a still pond, and ripples ran through her aching skull.
Pain pricked behind her eyes like tiny needles of rain; she blinked, and a sleeping figure by the bed came into focus.
Ye Yiyi lay folded over the rail like a willow bent by night wind, then stirred as if hearing a distant bell.
She lifted her head, tears glimmering like dew on lashes, and suddenly hugged Tang Coco like a warm quilt against winter.
“Coco! You’re finally awake. You scared me to death.”
“Yi… Yiyi-jie, what… happened to me?”
Ye Yiyi read the blankness in her eyes like a map without roads; she scrubbed the corners of her eyes, steadied her breath, and spoke.
“We came home at noon that day and found you collapsed on the floor like a cut kite.
Your knee and the corner of your mouth were bloody, and it scared me stiff.”
“That day? I… how many days was I out?”
“Three days already. Tang Coco, how do you feel now? Tell me, do you have a heart problem?”
“Heart disease? No.”
“Then what is it? The ER doctor thought it was your heart, but the full workup was clean as a clear sky.
What on earth happened to you?”
Her voice knotted like tangled thread; worry weighed it down like wet cloth.
“I don’t know. It felt like a knife in my heart, but I don’t know why…”
She swallowed the rest like a secret tossed into a well; even if she said it, it would sound like a dream blown away by wind.
Another thought struck like thunder rolling under the ribs: three days gone, erased like footprints in rain.
Her body hadn’t truly walked that other space, yet everything there was sharp as frost, even the pain.
She chased the question in circles like a moth around a lantern and found no door.
A tingle of bioelectricity flickered through her brain like lightning behind clouds, and heat climbed her face like a sunrise.
“Um… Yiyi-jie.”
“Hm? What is it? Are you hurting somewhere?”
Ye Yiyi heard the stammer like a thread catching on a thorn and leaned in, fear already rising like smoke.
“N-no. I… I want the bathroom…”
Since waking, pressure had nagged at her like a small drum; her body felt weak as paper, so she finally said it.
“Oh! That’s all? Just say it straight. Look at you now—what’s there to be shy about…”
Tang Coco’s cheeks flared red like peaches in summer.
“I am not shy, damn it!”
With Ye Yiyi’s arm like a steady branch under her hand, she made it to the restroom and back, breath easing like wind after rain.
Back on the bed, she ate fruit, sweet and cool like morning dew on grass.
A sudden clamor rose outside the door, rough as crows arguing on a wall.
“Hey! You can’t do this! This is a hospital!”
A nurse’s voice cracked like a snapped wire, sharp with panic and anger.
“Get out of the way, little nurse. Get in my way and I’ll have you pack your things.”
“You…”
The man’s middle-aged bark was crude, like a boot scuffing gravel, and then three shadows pushed in like a gust through a loose window.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Ye Yiyi stood, voice bright as steel, facing the intruders like a shield.
“Well, well. Third, you weren’t lying. There’s a beauty in this room.”
“Heh-heh. Would I dare lie to you, Brother Tiger? If I hadn’t spotted her on my stroll, we’d have missed a catch like this.”
A tall, broad bald man and a stooped man stared at Ye Yiyi, eyes sticky as flies to honey.
“How is this possible? This is a VIP ward. How did you even get in?”
Ye Yiyi’s anger flared like a brushfire as she snapped at the nurse.
“I—I’m sorry, miss. Th-they forced their way in. Security got called to a meeting, and I didn’t have time to call them back.”
The nurse’s voice trembled like a sparrow in wind.
The tall man who called himself Brother Tiger grinned, showing teeth like a stray dog’s.
“What do you mean, ‘people like us’? Beauty, that’s not right. What kind are we? We’re VIPs too.
In a small place like this, I go where I please, like a river breaking banks.”
He spoke and leered, laughter oily as a film on water.
“Get out now, or I’m calling the police.”
Disgust tightened Ye Yiyi’s face like frost on glass; her words rang like a thrown stone.
“Call? Let’s see if you can.”
The two men drifted closer, their steps spreading like oil across the floor.
Regret bit Ye Yiyi like a cold wind through a thin coat; three days ago, in panic, she’d chosen a hospital near the villa.
The care was fine, but the city was far as a distant shore, and now trouble had come like wolves to a lone gate.
“Heh-heh. Third, watch the door. I’ll have some fun with these two.”
“Got it. You, come with me.”
The stooped man grabbed the little nurse and dragged her out like hauling a net.
“No one’s here to bother us now,” the big man chuckled, voice thick as mud.
“Right, little beauty? And you, the one lying—”
His eyes finally landed on Tang Coco like a hawk spotting a hare; before, Ye Yiyi’s presence had stolen all his attention.
Tang Coco wore a hospital gown, wide as borrowed clothes, buttons left careless like sleepy moths.
Her white neck showed like snowlit porcelain, her hair loose like silk down her back, her hunger-weak aura soft as a mist.
The man froze, stunned as a hunter seeing a white deer at dusk.
“Whoa… oh hell. Too… too gorgeous. Hahaha! Heaven favors me, Li Hu.
To get warm with a beauty like this—now that’s sweet.”
Ye Yiyi felt danger coil like a snake; she moved in front of Tang Coco like a wall.
Through it all, Tang Coco said nothing; her focus had slipped elsewhere like a current under ice.
When the men barged in, their words splashed filth like black rain; fury rose in her chest like a struck drum.
She was about to snap when a voice unfurled in her skull, cold and metallic as frost on steel.
“Confirming threat. Erasure protocol initializing… 1%… 5%… 9%.”
No one noticed the change, but in the girl on the bed, pale-blue eyes bloomed a thin crimson like a drop of ink in water.
Surprise pricked her reason like sleet on skin, but clarity rang like a bell.
She couldn’t let that so-called protocol wake, so she clenched her feelings like a fist around a flame.
Sadly, the man kept poking the ember like a stick in a fire, kicking up sparks of rage.
“Go… go away… don’t… don’t talk…”
Her voice was a thread in wind; Ye Yiyi heard it and turned like a compass to true north.
She saw Tang Coco sitting with pain furrowing her brow like plow lines, bearing some inner storm like a boat in chop.
Ye Yiyi thought the illness was flaring again, and anger surged like a wave breaking the shore.
“You! Get out now! Do you hear me? Or else—”
Panic stung her eyes like smoke; tears gathered like beads of rain.
“Oh? Or else? What then?”
“Otherwise, you’re going to jail.”
A clear girl’s voice cut from the doorway like a silver bell in fog.
Ye Yiyi looked and saw two girls standing there like twin willows in spring; she knew one of them.
“Mu Yan! You’re finally here!”
