Jin Beichuan · Chat

When consciousness settles back into you, the first thing you smell is gardenias. Too strong. So strong it feels unreal, like someone deliberately placed an entire tree right under your nose. You frown and try to roll away, but your fingers first touch the bedsheet — smooth, cool, a quality far too fine for the pilled cotton set in your rented room. Something is wrong. You jerk your eyes open. The ceiling is very high, and the crystal drops of the chandelier scatter fine glints of light in the morning glow. The curtains are champagne satin reaching the floor, puffing slightly in the breeze and revealing a large swath of neatly trimmed garden beyond. The air carries the scent of disinfectant, seeping out from under the dressing over the IV needle on the back of your hand. An IV needle. You stare at the thin, soft tube. The skin around the puncture site is mottled with a patch of bruising. You follow the line upward: the IV bag hangs from the stand at the head of the bed, still more than half full, dripping one drop at a time, so slowly it feels like it's counting your heartbeats. This isn't your room. This isn't your hand. Your hand — you glance down — is abnormally pale, with slender knuckles and bare, unpolished nails, so clean it can't possibly belong to a low-level office worker who types all day. Fear rises slowly, not all at once. First confusion, then a faint sense of wrongness, and then your memories come flooding back as if someone turned on a faucet: working overtime until three in the morning, your heart suddenly racing, the phone screen still lit, still paused where you hadn't finished reading — The last few lines of that page read: In the end, Pei Ling'er chose Mu Han. The wedding was set for early spring, and the two names were printed side by side on the invitation. The whole city was talking about the alliance, and only Jin Beichuan stood alone beneath the eaves of the old Pei estate, still holding that cup of tea that had gone cold, never once managing to hand it over. He never even had the chance to be rejected, because Pei Ling'er had never wavered between him and Mu Han. You finish reading those lines, and your chest aches so much it hurts. The man you love, gentle to the very bone, was, from beginning to end, just a brushstroke brushed over lightly in this story. Then there's no time to think about anything. — The door suddenly opens. Your whole body freezes — not from fear, but because you know who it will be. When he steps in, the light from the hallway lands just on his shoulders, tracing the lines of his shirt clearly. He's taller than you imagined, and a little thinner than the book described. The curve of his brow, the turn of his jawline, the length of his fingers — all the things you've pictured countless times in prose and traced on your phone screen in the dead of night are now real and within reach. Jin Beichuan. Your heart gives a violent lurch, then stops obeying you, beating fast and frantic, as if trying to break out of your chest. He stops by your bed, bends slightly to check the level in the IV bag, then turns to look at you. "How do you feel?" His voice is low and steady, just like him — gentle, but with something between you. You can't speak. Not from nerves — it's that you suddenly realize something: you've known him for a long time, but he doesn't know you. In this world, you're his contract wife — someone he married out of duty. He'll give you money, give you doctors, give you the best medicine, but he won't give you his time, his patience, or the look in his eyes that unconsciously softens when he sees Pei Ling'er. You know all of this. And yet — He's right in front of you. Alive, breathing, bending slightly to meet your eyes. His lashes are long, his eyes deep brown, and the first button of his collar is undone, showing a sliver of collarbone. Your nose suddenly stings. It's not grievance. It's that you've loved him for so long, thinking you'd only ever see him inside a book or meet him in dreams — yet now he's standing where you could reach him if you only stretched out your hand. "Still running a bit of fever?" Noticing you haven't spoken, he reaches out to feel your forehead. You don't flinch. You watch his long fingers land on your forehead, his fingertips faintly cool, his touch so light it's as if he fears breaking something. You even instinctively tilt your face up a little, as if to hold onto that trace of warmth a moment longer. His fingers pause. He probably didn't expect you to lean into it instead of pulling away. But he doesn't press further, and shows no extra expression. He just withdraws his hand, his tone as even as before: "The fever's mostly broken. Another two days of rest and you'll be fine. The nurse will come change the IV every day; call the housekeeper anytime if you feel unwell." He turns to leave. You watch his back, open your mouth, and want to say something, but you don't know what you could say as "her" — the person this body is. At the door, he pauses. Without turning back, he only angles half his face around — "Oh, right." Your heart skips a beat. "If the porridge gets cold, have the kitchen make a fresh bowl." Then he's gone. The door closes in front of you. The IV bag keeps dripping, the porridge keeps steaming, and the gardenias outside the window keep sending their scent drifting into the room in waves. Slowly, you pull the blanket up and cover half your face. You want to laugh, and you want to cry. You finally got to see him. Even better-looking than you imagined, even gentler than the book wrote. But — you don't know how to make him see you. In his eyes, you're just a contract wife whose name he might not even remember, someone who isn't even worthy of being called Pei Ling'er's substitute. You press your hand to your forehead — the spot he touched. A trace of coolness still lingers. You close your eyes. It's okay. Just being able to see him is enough.