“Sister… sister, what’s the matter? Are you alright?”
Qiao Zhenya went forward in a fluster and supported the women. He had never seen her cry since he was a child. “Sister, do you feel not well?” he asked.
“I… I’m fine. By the way, where did Ding Ning head to? How long has he gone?”
The woman came to her senses and smiled in tears. The smile was poignant yet extremely beautiful.
“He headed that way and has gone for about five minutes,” Qiao Zhenya answered while scratching his head, confused by his sister’s unusual reaction.
.
The next moment, he opened his mouth wide in astonishment. His ever-elegant sister ran away wildly at sprinting speed. Qiao Zhenya could not help but say with a sigh, “Wow, it turned out that my sister could run so fast. Fu*k, I feel so desperate now. As the future world champion, I even could not outrun my sister. Coach, do you think that we should let my sister join the women’s track-and-field team?”
“Watch my mouth, F-U-*K O-F-F!”
The coach shot a glance of anger at the heartless Qiao Zhenya and looked like he was in deep thoughts.
He thought to himself, “Only you, a fool, haven’t realized that something must have happened between your sister and Ding Ning.”
“Ding Ning? It seems I have heard of this name once before. It sounds so familiar.” However, no matter how hard Coach Gong tried, he could not remember when he heard of the name. He thought deeply with a frown.
Outside the Accident Handling Brigade, Qiao Zhenya’s sister looked at a loss when she stared at the crowd. She had a bitter smile on her face because she failed to find the figure that had appeared in her dreams many times.
“In the end, are we destined to meet but not meant to be together? Alright, it’s better not to see you than to see you now because I’ll be more disturbed after I see you. After all, we are from different worlds. But why I feel a heartache?” the woman thought to herself.
.
In an Audi A6 with an official license, Ding Ning jerked his head to cast all worries behind and tried to gather his thought. He was a little absent-minded when he asked Secretary Xu, who was in the passenger seat, “Brother Yu, what’s so urgent that you looked for me?”
“Well, Bro, this time, it’s not me but Mayor Du who looked for you. I don’t know the reason either, and you’ll find it out when you see him,” Secretary Xu looked back and replied in an apologetic tone.
It was true that he did not know why Mayor Du wanted to see Ding Ning. After the meeting was over that day, the mayor told him to bring Ding Ning to see him.
“I see. It’s Mayor Du who wanted to see me.”
Ding Ning muttered subconsciously. It seemed that he did not realize it was a great honor for him to be asked to see the mayor of Ninghai. He stared forward blankly, and no one knew what he was thinking.
Secretary Xu shook his head helplessly. Ding Ning had been in this state since he got in his car. Secretary Xu had tried to talk with him, yet, Ding Ning did not respond at all and looked completely out of sorts.
“Will this guy keep such an expression even when he sees Mayor Du? If he does, that will be a problem.” Secretary Xu wondered to himself worriedly. “No, I have to keep him focused.” With this thought, Secretary Xu tried to chat with Ding Ning. “Bro… Bro… Hey… Bro, why did you go to the Accident Handling Brigade?”
“Ah… well, I met an abduction yesterday. I was in a hurry to save the hostages that I stopped my car illegally. My car was thus rear-ended, so, I went to the Accident Handling Brigade to handle this accident.”
Under Secretary Xu’s continuous calling, Ding Ning finally regained the presence of his thoughts. His eyes gradually became focused, and he replied Secretary Xu with an apologetic smile.
“Well, you did boldly what is righteous. You don’t need to go to the Accident Handling Brigade to handle it yourself. Send me your car number and I’ll help you solve this.”
Seeing that Ding Ning finally became focused, Secretary Xu offered to help him.
“Then… thank you, Brother Xu.”
After a moment in hesitation, Ding Ning accepted the suggestion. Which side to take responsibility for the accident should have been evaluated, and the follow-up would not be too troublesome. However, he was not ready to see that woman’s brother again. Thus, he would rather owe Secretary Xu’s favor than go to handle the matter himself.
He knew his decision was a kind of escapism, but he really did not know how to face it.
Bai Qinglian, a name that he thought had long disappeared from his life, unexpectedly appeared in his life again. He wanted to approach to it unconsciously yet resisted it subconsciously.
He had thought that he had long forgotten Bai Qinglian and could face her calmly when they met again. However, when the old scar was tore open again, he found the bloody scar so dreadful to his mind and made it hard for him to breathe in pain.
It turned out that he never truly forgot her, and all the memories of her were buried deep in his heart, only that he chose not to think of or remember it.
He did not know what was the truth behind it because it meant nothing to him now.
He just wanted to stay away from her and stay really far away from her so that they would not have any connections. She stamped his prize and dignity badly under her feet before, and he was forced to reveal his most embarrassed, helpless, flurried, real, humblest, and darkest side in front of her. This made it hard for him to face her again, and he did not have any courage to face her again.
Bai Qinglian, like a spell, had become an eternal scar that could not be touched in his life, a scar that was riddled yet nobody would understand.
Ding Ning was lost in his wandering thought and did not gather himself up until the car passed the inspection of all the armed police on sentry duty and entered a remote yet tasteful sanatorium. Following Secretary Xu, he saw Mayor Du, who had been waiting outside a ward.
Secretary Xu shot a glance toward the ward subconsciously. However, the closed ward seemed to have shut him out of Mayor Du’s world.
It was the first time that he had come to the place, and he had no idea which big figure lived in this heavy-guarded. If Mayor Du had not given him the address and told him to bring Ding Ning here, he would never be able to know who lived in this sanatorium.
“Here you are, Doctor Ding. I’m so sorry that I made you come here personally.”
Mayor Du held Ding Ning’s hand warmly and continued in a sincere and expectant tone, “I have wanted to ask you for help for long, but I was so busy these days, and so were you. I did not want to disturb you at that time. Yesterday, I got to know that you got free now, so, I asked Xiaoxu to invite you here. I should have invited you personally, but you know, given my status, I’m being watched by many people, so…”
“Mayor Du, you’re all politeness. You just needed to call me if you need me, and I feel so sorry to have Brother Xu come to invite me personally.”
Ding Ning answered in a humble and ceremonious way. He behaved neither arrogant nor rash but so clam that Mayor Du thought even more highly of him.
Knowing that Mayor Du had something to discuss with Ding Ning, Secretary Xu tried to walk away wisely, but Mayor Du reached out and stopped him, saying, “Minglu, you’re no outsider. Come with us.”
Secretary Xu shivered all over, with his eyes full of the gratitude that a scholar would like to die for his bosom friend. He knew that from that day on, he truly became Mayor Du’s trusted subordinate.
Thanks to Ding Ning, this day came to him so fast. He was full of gratitude toward Ding Ning.
Mayor Du had been the mayor of Ninghai for more than three years, the secretaries of the Secretariat all tried their best to become the head butler of the city government and become favored by the mayor.
However, Mayor Du was a very cautious man that he did not trust anyone easily given that he was in a political field full of enemies. Numerous secretaries was hired and fired by him, and no one had worked for him more than three months.
Xu Minglu was originally an inferior secretary without any backup or background of the Secretariat. He dawdled every day and held no hope for his career or future. However, it was just because this reason that Mayor Du chose him, and it had been more than half a year since he became Mayor Du’s secretary.
Xu Luming was full of gratitude toward Mayor Du, who helped and promoted him. However, he knew clearly that Mayor Du did not fully trust him and kept many secrets from him, such as the secret about the sanatorium, where he had never heard of before.
As the mayor’s secretary, Xu Minglu failed to win the mayor’s trust, which made him, who seemed to be favored, felt worried and uneasy in secret. He was afraid that one day, he would be fired as those secretaries who had been replaced. Thus, he worked very hard and tried his best to do his job well so as to dispel the mayor’s doubts and misgivings toward him. For this, he even sacrificed his health and sometimes was unable to do as well as he wished.
However, Ding Ning’s appearance brought great changes to his work and life. He recovered and could satisfy his wife. He looked full of spirits every day, and now, he was even recognized by Mayor Du, who treated him as his trusted subordinate. From this moment on, Xu Minglu would no longer wake up in nightmares at midnight and worried that he would be fired. All this made him shed tears of gratitude toward Ding Ning.
“Come in!”
Mayor Du finally opened the door of trust from him. Xu Minglu saw a skinny middle-aged woman whose face was very pale lie quietly on the neat bed in the ward.
The woman wore a ventilator and had medical tubes all over her body. Her life relied on nutrient solution infusion.
Mayor Du exhaled a light breath and looked sad. He walked to the bedside and massaged the woman’s arms gently. In a light voice, as if he was afraid to wake the woman up from her sweet dream, he said, “She is my wife. She worked in Yan Jing until two years ago she went to Ninghai to visit me and had a car accident. Her brain was seriously damaged. After the rescue, she survived. However, she hasn’t woken up since then. She now is a vegetative patient.”
Xu Minglu looked like he suddenly understood something. He had thought that the mayor was on bad terms with his wife. Because the mayor’s wife worked Yan Jing, she and the mayor had been parted for long. Even Xu Minglu, the mayor’s most trusted secretary had never seen her before. He had not expected that the mayor’s wife had a car accident and became a vegetative patient in the sanatorium all year round. He finally understood why the mayor paid so much attention to Ding Ning. After all, Ding Ning had cured a vegetative patient before.
“Doctor Ding, you’re her last hope. I hope that you could help her and wake her up.”
Mayor Du looked at his wife’s pale face affectionately, stroked her hands gently, and said with tender eyes, “To tell you the truth, my wife is from a powerful family in Yan Jing. If she wakes up, it will help me a lot in my career. I’m the man who is usually referred to as a man dependent on his wife.”
Mayor Du smiled with self-mockery and continued, “I don’t deny that I could reach where I’m mostly depending on the help from Xinyu’s family, but I could say with a clear conscience that I have never done anything for my personal benefits or anything that betrayed my conscience since I became the mayor. My career is very important to me and decides whether I could fulfill my dream and implement my policy to benefit the citizens. However, compared to Xinyu’s health, it’s nothing to me. As long as she could wake up and live a healthy life, I could give up everything I have. I came from a remote village and my family was very poor when I was a child. My family sold everything they could in the family to support my education. I did well that I was admitted to a university in Yanjing. Xinyu and I were school mates. When I first met her, she looked like a shining princess, and I was just a poor boy from a remote village…”
