[Greek Mythology] The Demons Under My Command - Chapter 61

She struggled to lift her eyelids. Her eyes were met with a blinding white—the ceiling of the hospital room, which blurred into a hazy mass, like water-soaked paper, making her feel groggy and heavy.

The smell of disinfectant pulled Li Jia’s consciousness out of its wandering state, like an invisible net.

“System…”

The two words that scraped out of her throat were dry and hoarse; she didn’t know how long she had been asleep.

Li Jia subconsciously tried to prop herself up. As soon as her arm tensed, a stiff, heavy sensation came from her lower body. She looked down to see off-white plaster casts running from her knees to her ankles, like two cold sculptures, locking her legs firmly to the bed.

As she struggled, the bed gave a slight creak. Footsteps sounded at the door. The nurse on rounds pushed the treatment cart in and suddenly stopped her motion of checking the medication.

She looked up, her gaze falling on Li Jia’s shifting eyes. The medicine tray in her hand hit the metal railing with a clank.

“Doctor! Quick! The vegetative patient in Room 403!”

“She woke up!”

The nurse’s voice suddenly rose, carrying an unbelievable tremor, and she turned and ran towards the end of the corridor.

Li Jia lay still, listening to the footsteps fade away, and reached out to pinch her arm hard.

It hurt.

It could hurt.

She was still alive…

The skin beneath the plaster seemed to still retain the sharp sensation of pain, but the familiar mechanical voice in her mind had yet to sound.

She was sick for a few more days, during which Li Jia was in a daze, with very little time spent awake.

Using the limited time she was awake, she communicated with the nurse caring for her. The information she gleaned confirmed that she had indeed returned to modern society.

But it wasn’t her original body. After her original body died suddenly, the hospital couldn’t contact her family.

The only father figure they could reach casually replied, “Dead? Just bury her. She’s a good-for-nothing.”

The call was disconnected. A body couldn’t stay in the morgue indefinitely. Fortunately, Li Jia had bought herself a burial plot and insurance. Since she couldn’t afford a home while alive, having a one-room tomb after death was, in a way, a final resting place.

This disease was something she had carried since birth. Li Jia didn’t want to trouble anyone and had prepared everything for herself well in advance.

People are born naked; anything gained is a profit.

This current body wasn’t much better off than her previous one, though the only difference was significantly better financial conditions.

It belonged to the spoiled daughter of a nouveau riche family. The “nouveau riche” backstory was cliché: the original couple grew rich, the husband got money, found a mistress, and had a son. The biological mother felt her husband was disappointed because she only bore a daughter, so she divorced him, went abroad, and was never heard from again.

She was neglected by both sides. The eldest daughter was neither loved by her father nor her mother, developing a willful and unruly temperament. To gain that pitiful bit of parental love, smoking, drinking, and fighting were commonplace—a genuine delinquent.

Speeding at 250 km/h straight onto a mountain road, she truly lived up to the slang term for a fool.

She broke both legs, barely clung to life, and became a vegetative patient. The doctor declared her brain dead. Due to humanitarianism and a court ruling (as she was under eighteen), her guardians still had to bear responsibility.

So both sides paid the medical bills, keeping her alive.

She lay in the hospital for a full six months before her body recovered, and life gradually returned to normal.

Her parents left her an apartment and a card with a monthly allowance automatically deposited. Li Jia was once again living alone.

It was as if the world in the book had just been a fleeting, illusory dream.

Today was New Year’s Day, a time for families to gather and celebrate reunion.

Li Jia suddenly craved sweet fermented rice with osmanthus. Quick to act, she put on a mask and rode her electric scooter to the nearest supermarket to buy ingredients.

Mini tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) and the fermented rice wine were easy to find, but osmanthus was not. This wasn’t the City of Fragrance and Springs (a city known for osmanthus), and it wasn’t the blooming season; dried osmanthus or osmanthus jam were unavailable.

Li Jia hated trouble and figured it was fine if she couldn’t find it; fermented rice soup with tangyuan was tasty enough on its own.

Yet, her legs seemed to disobey her, taking her to every major supermarket in L City, still without success.

Finally, she came up with a compromise: she bought two boxes of osmanthus cakes with a long shelf life.

Back home, she turned on the heating and took off her coat, letting out a long puff of breath that instantly misted. Li Jia wondered if she had a mental problem, roaming the streets searching for osmanthus late at night in sub-zero temperatures instead of staying home.

She lit the stove and waited for the water to boil, adding the fermented rice wine and tangyuan sequentially. She dumped both boxes of osmanthus cakes in, stirring until it became a thick, gooey pot of soup.

Li Jia served a ceramic bowl and carried it to the living room, tuning the TV to CCTV1, which happened to be replaying the evening weather forecast:

“L City is about to experience a major blizzard. Heavy snowfall is entering its strongest phase. Localized snowfall may be extreme, potentially breaking historical records for this period. Please take precautions…”

She scooped a spoonful of the thick, soupy liquid into her mouth. She couldn’t quite place the taste; the osmanthus mixed with a lethal amount of sweetness was quite unpleasant.

It wasn’t even one-tenth as delicious as what Winslow made.

The porcelain spoon tapped against the bowl. Li Jia pushed the empty bowl away. She got up to close the window. Cold air, laden with tiny snowflakes, rushed in, landing on the back of her hand, chilling her fingertips until they went numb.

Just like the temperature radiated by the bowl wall of the hot noodle soup she ate in the perpetually snowy Northern Territory.

The weather forecast on TV continued, but the announcer’s voice was muffled by the wind and snow. Li Jia reached out and pressed the mute button.

Only the low hum of the heater remained in the living room. She watched the increasingly dense snow outside the window and suddenly realized her hands were trembling.

It turned out it wasn’t a mental issue, nor were her legs disobedient. She roamed the streets searching for osmanthus simply because she wanted to cling to some trace of that other world in this unfamiliar winter.

The moment she thought of her again, it was like a recurrence of an old illness.

The snow fell heavier and heavier; the streetlights downstairs were now just hazy, yellowish blobs wrapped in a mist of snow.

Li Jia went back to the pot and served another half bowl. She slowly scooped a spoonful and swallowed it. It was still horrible, sweet to the point of bitterness, yet not eating it felt worse.

Born then dead, dead then born.

Whenever Li Jia felt utterly weary of this world, she would think of Hera, and the thought that Hera was alive somewhere in some unknown world made her willing to accept everything.

She placed the empty bowl on the coffee table. Feeling full and restless, she walked to the window, watching the snowflakes fall one by one onto the glass and slowly melt.

As the first large snowflake landed on the window ledge, Li Jia softly said, “It’s snowing.”

Her voice was very soft, swallowed by the wind and snow, yet it felt like a greeting spanning time and space.

A sudden warm, itchy sensation appeared in her nasal cavity. Li Jia raised a hand to wipe it, and her fingertips were instantly smeared with a striking patch of fresh blood.

She paused, looking down at the red spreading across her pale hand. Li Jia didn’t dare delay; she bundled up her coat and rushed into the blizzard.

The heat in the taxi made the air stuffy. She stared at the frost forming on the car window, her fingertips repeatedly stroking the lingering bloodstain on the back of her hand.

The kind driver noticed a young girl heading to the hospital late at night and asked, “Are you going alone? No family with you?”

“My family is quite busy. I’ll be fine alone,” Li Jia replied with a small smile to the kindly man.

“Have you got a partner? It’s not safe to be alone this late. It’d be safer to have a boyfriend accompany you.”

“I have one, but it’s not a boyfriend,” Li Jia lowered her head and murmured.

“Oh, I see. That’s good too. It’s rare to meet someone caring and lovable in a lifetime. Why isn’t your partner coming with you?”

“She’s quite busy, handling matters all across the country.”

“I see.”

The taxi stopped at the hospital entrance. Li Jia paid the fare, and the driver reminded her to take care of herself. Li Jia smiled and agreed.

As soon as she pushed the door open, the cold wind rushed into her collar, causing the warm sensation in her nose to return. She pressed her hand against her nose, blood seeping through her fingers, leaving tiny dark red spots in the footprints she made in the snow.

The emergency room lights were blinding. The nurse glanced at her as she handed over a tissue. “How long have you been having nosebleeds? Has this happened before?”

Li Jia shook her head, her voice slightly muffled. “First time. It just started suddenly.”

The doctor gave her a slip for a blood test. There weren’t many people lining up at the phlebotomy window. Li Jia stood at the end of the line, gripping the slip, watching the person ahead hold their relative’s hand, and suddenly remembered the driver’s words.

She lowered her head and touched the phone in her pocket, scrolling through her contact list. There was no one she could call right now.

The father of this body hadn’t contacted her in years, her mother was far away overseas, and the person she truly wanted to contact was in another time and space.

Would Hera also, on some snowy night, suddenly remember her, yet be unable to send even a single greeting?

When it was her turn for the blood test, the nurse rubbed her arm, her tone sympathetic: “Such a skinny girl. You should eat more often.”

Li Jia nodded and meekly said she would.

While waiting for the results, Li Jia sat on the long bench in the emergency room, watching the snow outside fall increasingly heavily.

“Li Jia?”

The nurse approached with the report, speaking in a very soft tone, and called her into a small room.

“Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The situation is quite serious. With active treatment, you probably have about two years.”

Li Jia took the report, her fingertips white where they gripped the paper. The words on the page crawled into her eyes like ants, but they didn’t make her cry.

She only recalled how she had also been lying in a hospital before her death in her previous life. Only then, her thought had been, “Finally, I’m free.” Now, her thought was that she could actually live for two more years.

As she walked out of the emergency room, the snow had lessened, and a faint glimmer of light appeared on the horizon.

Li Jia walked slowly along the roadside, the snow crunching softly underfoot. She took out her phone, typed a message to the empty recipient field: “Hera, I have two years left.”

Then she deleted it.

She knew Hera couldn’t receive it, but she still whispered into the wind and snow, “When the snow stops, wait for me. I’m coming to find you.”

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