Did My Ex-Wife Agree to Remarry Me Today? - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: The Explanation

“President Chi, what specific physical discomforts did you experience after the fever?”

Yu Ting was asking detailed questions about the effects of the specialty drug, both before and after injection. Since Chi Yun was a manufacturer who valued user experience, she answered candidly.

“At the start, I felt very dizzy, weak, and lethargic. Once the fever hit, my temperature rose rapidly. My head felt heavy, and while my body was burning up, my hands were freezing cold.”

“In severe cases, I lose clarity of consciousness.”

Yu Ting noted this down and asked, “And during the injection process?”

“Once the medicine is introduced, the discomfort fades quickly and the temperature drops.” The “specialty drug” developed by the Yusen Group specifically for the seasonal fevers of Phoenixes wasn’t just marketing; it was truly effective.

Of course, there were side effects.

“And after the injection? Any other discomfort?” As expected, Yu Ting asked about the lingering symptoms.

Chi Yun didn’t want to overshare, so she mentioned a few common points: “Right after it ends, I feel quite cold. My palms and the tip of my nose feel like they’ve been out in the frost icy. But it passes after a while.”

As Chi Yun spoke, Yu Ting recorded everything in her notebook with great focus. Worried she was talking too much, Chi Yun fell silent when she saw how much Yu Ting was writing. Feeling a bit awkward that her casual words were being treated like a formal deposition, Chi Yun leaned over toward Yu Ting’s notebook to see what she had written, perhaps to add a clarifying remark.

As she leaned in, Chi Yun’s peripheral vision caught a figure reflected on the polished floor. She froze.

For some reason, she felt that the shadow cast by the fluorescent lights looked remarkably like Li Zhou. She looked up, and her jaw nearly hit the floor.

In that instant, seeing the person she had been longing for, Chi Yun thought she was hallucinating. She blinked several times, dazed. It wasn’t until she met Li Zhou’s signature gaze—sharp and cold as an icicle—that she realized this was real.

A-Li had traveled all this way to see her. She should be happy, so why was her heart racing with panic?

Chi Yun asked herself this and immediately found the answer: Li Zhou’s eyes were wrong. This wasn’t the look of someone visiting a patient; it was the look of someone who had traveled a long distance to see a patient, only to be infuriated by what she found.

Her heart hammered harder. She glanced at President Yu beside her and realized A-Li must have misunderstood.

Before Chi Yun could form a thought, Li Zhou, wearing her mask and cap, retracted the step she had taken into the room and turned toward the exit.

“A-Li—!” Chi Yun cried out in a panic. She stood up from her chair and took two quick steps to follow.

The modern IV equipment was highly intelligent. Once it detected a patient making sudden, potentially dangerous movements, it emitted a piercing alarm. The sound startled everyone Chi Yun, Li Zhou at the glass door, and Yu Ting in her chair.

Only the doctor reacted with professional speed. Chi Yun’s doctor rushed over from nearby and held her down. “What’s happening? You can’t move around like this while on a drip!”

If you move, you take the stand with you. If the person runs and the stand stays, where is the needle in the vein supposed to go?

Chi Yun stared at Li Zhou, terrified she would disappear. She raised her hand and spoke urgently to the doctor: “Please take the needle out. I have an emergency.”

Yu Ting looked up at her in confusion. Li Zhou, now at the glass door, turned her head to look back. Chi Yun’s eyes pleaded with Li Zhou not to leave, while her words begged the doctor to hurry.

“The medication isn’t finished yet,” the doctor protested.

“It’s enough. Just take it out,” Chi Yun insisted, glancing at the half-full bottle. Because of her sudden movements, the needle had shifted. The medicine wasn’t flowing in anymore; instead, a small amount of blood was beginning to backflow into the tube.

Seeing the patient’s agitation, the doctor agreed to remove the needle.

During the delay, Chi Yun’s heart hung by a thread. She was afraid Li Zhou would leave, afraid she would be shut out again.

“President Yu, I have an emergency. I have to go,” Chi Yun said hurriedly to Yu Ting while pressing a cotton ball to her hand.

“Oh, okay…” Yu Ting replied, cradling her injured hand, a strange, unreadable light in her eyes as she watched the two figures vanish.

As soon as Li Zhou cleared the glass doors, Chi Yun chased after her, pressing her hand. “A-Li, wait!”

No matter how many times she called, Li Zhou didn’t respond. She walked straight to her car in the parking lot. She only stopped because Chi Yun threw herself between Li Zhou and the car door, face covered in sweat. “Let me explain.”

That sentence usually accompanies a guilty conscience. Li Zhou was certain Chi Yun had one. After all, wasn’t “stepping on two boats” a familiar tactic of hers? She had simply caught her again.

Li Zhou looked at her with freezing indifference.

Chi Yun’s thoughts were a mess, but she blurted out an explanation: “I ran into President Yu by chance. We’re business partners, so we just chatted for a bit. It’s not what you think.”

“Oh,” Li Zhou replied coldly.

Chi Yun had no idea what Li Zhou was actually upset about, so her explanation was effectively useless. In this situation, a bad explanation was worse than no explanation at all.

“Don’t misunderstand,” Chi Yun pleaded.

“I haven’t misunderstood anything,” Li Zhou said, stone-faced. “I’m in a hurry. I need to leave.” She gestured for Chi Yun to move her hand from the door.

“Did… did you come to see me?” Chi Yun wished she had more brains and more mouths to say everything she needed to say.

“I was just passing by.” Li Zhou pulled the door handle. She really was in a rush.

“Where are you going? I’ll go with you.” It was 10:00 PM. The parking lot was empty. Chi Yun had walked here; her car was at home. It would take ten minutes to run back and get it. In ten minutes, Li Zhou would be long gone.

“Why would I take you?” Li Zhou’s voice was low and bristling with thorns.

With that one sentence, Chi Yun felt all her recent efforts and the “good image” she had built over the last two days crumble. A-Li had reverted to the cold, distant stranger who didn’t want anything to do with her.

“I can explain more.” It was a terrible line, but Chi Yun’s panicked mind could think of nothing else.

Li Zhou’s face dropped. “Move.”

Seeing that Li Zhou’s anger had reached its peak, Chi Yun realized that if she pushed any further, she wouldn’t just be back at square one—she’d be blocked and erased entirely. She stepped aside.

Li Zhou got in and drove away without a backward glance. As she passed the other end of the parking lot, she saw a figure: the woman who had been sitting with Chi Yun was walking toward the hospital entrance.

Li Zhou couldn’t help but speculate. From the moment she entered the clinic, she had recognized Yu Ting as the woman Chi Yun was chatting happily with at the Shazhou harbor restaurant. And here they were again.

“My body feels cold… my palms and nose feel like they’re freezing…” Chi Yun had told that woman those intimate details. Yet, when Li Zhou had asked her during the previous injections if she felt unwell, Chi Yun had simply shaken her head and said “no.”

Thinking of this, Li Zhou’s gaze grew colder, and she floored the accelerator.

She had only been there because a worker at the exhibition had accidentally broken some whale bones. Rather than gluing them, Li Zhou insisted on re-printing them at her studio. It was a two-hour round trip. A whole team was waiting for her, yet the moment she started the car, her steering wheel had instinctively turned toward Jianghua.

Why did I come? To seek out pain? She should have just stayed in Shitoucuo.

At the clinic parking lot, Chi Yun trudged toward home. When she found she couldn’t send a message to Li Zhou, she realized she had been blocked again.

She reached for a cigarette out of habit, then remembered she had promised Li Zhou to quit. Feeling helpless and overwhelmed, she did what any “junior” does: she called her mothers.

“Mom, I’m finished…”

Compared to the high-spirited calls of previous days, this “I’m finished” told Sheng Minghui and Long Xi everything. “Did you make A-Li angry?”

Chi Yun recounted the events at the clinic. “She saw me sitting and talking with another woman. Is she angry because of that?”

“Obviously. Jealousy is inevitable,” Sheng Minghui stated.

“But there’s nothing between me and President Yu! We were talking about professional matters.” Chi Yun reviewed the scene. No physical contact, no inappropriate words.

Long Xi chimed in: “Jealousy is an expression of possessiveness. Even if the content was serious, the vibe might have been the problem. Maybe an unintentional ‘intimacy’ in your conversation triggered her.”

“I have to disagree,” Chi Yun protested. “She’s a business partner. I’m social and maintaining a professional distance.”

“Possessive people amplify details,” Long Xi explained. “Just like you view anyone talking to A-Li as a rival. You can’t replace A-Li’s perspective with your own. If it’s not that, think: did you talk about something A-Li cares about deeply? Or look at it from another angle.”

“I’ll analyze it when I get home,” Chi Yun said miserably. “She blocked me again. What do I do? I want to go to her, but I don’t want to be a nuisance while she’s busy.”

Sheng Minghui took the phone. “Usually, I’d say don’t pester her while she’s busy. But you are now a ‘guilty party.’ Redemption has a deadline. If you miss it, the grudge will settle in her heart.”

Chi Yun became determined. “Then I’ll find a way to get into the exhibition site tomorrow.”

Sheng Minghui logged into her government account. “The official inspecting the setup tomorrow is an acquaintance. I’ll have him bring you in.” As a leader in the autonomous region, Sheng Minghui held significant influence. The Jiangwu area had the highest Phoenix population, and the government often invited the Phoenix Matriarch to events. Usually, she was too lazy to go. But for her daughter, she’d secure a formal title. Her daughter would walk in with her head held high.

“Thanks, Mom!” Chi Yun saw a glimmer of hope.

Long Xi took the phone back. “Biscuit, about that President Yu you met at the hospital… Mommy thinks there’s something fishy there. Let’s look into it.”

“Mom feels the same,” Sheng Minghui added while typing.

“Really?” Chi Yun had thought it was a coincidence.

“Tell me her reason for being there again.”

Chi Yun repeated the story about the cooking class. The typing stopped. Sheng Minghui found the flaw. “There are no cooking classes near our neighborhood. Remember your school cooking competition? I studied at an institute then. The closest one is in your aunt’s neighborhood, right next to that community clinic. If she were really taking a class, she would have gone there.”

Chi Yun checked a map. Her mother was right. There were no such institutions nearby.

“She sounds calculating. To protect your relationship with A-Li, I suggest you block her.”

Chi Yun hesitated. “Mom, we have business ties and an ongoing partnership. If I block her and the deal collapses…”

Sheng Minghui gave her the most direct advice possible: “Why worry about a deal? What you lack right now is a wife, not money.”

Chi Yun realized her mother was absolutely right.

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