CH 35

At that moment, his consciousness seemed to be half in reality and half immersed in a dream.

He struggled to open his eyes, and it seemed that he saw a doctor in a white coat and a nurse pushing the door open and walking in. At that moment, the corridor light shone through the opened door, and the light was very white. His eyes stung and he turned his head away, and it took a while to regain his vision.

The two people who came in were both wearing masks. Ou Renjin squinted and stared at them in confusion. He watched them walk slowly to his mother’s bed and carefully observe the various data on the machines.

The nurse standing behind handed over a disposable syringe, lowered her head and very carefully took out three glass ampoules from her pocket, easily broke them open one by one and handed them to the doctor as well.

The doctor seemed to chuckle lightly, and then injected the medicine into the large IV bottle.

At that time, Ou Renjin didn’t notice anything wrong. He didn’t make a sound or make any movement, and soon he was drawn back into his sleepy state again.

The next day he woke up early, his back aching from sleeping on the floor all night, and he couldn’t help but cry a little, so he leaned over the bed and complained to his sleeping mother quietly, his voice childish and full of fear and grievances he couldn’t suppress.

Uncle Guan, who was taking care of him, woke up early in the morning and didn’t see Ou Renjin in the ward. He was scared out of his wits. He hurriedly found Mrs. Ou’s ward and breathed a sigh of relief seeing the little figure leaning over the bedside. 

“You got up early in the morning and ran over here to look for your mom.” Uncle Guan pulled him up from the cold floor and rubbed his head. “Don’t worry, the doctor said yesterday that your mom will be fine soon.”

As he said, he glanced at the hospital bed, then subconsciously glanced at the monitor, then his pupils shrank suddenly, and he ran out, trembling and stumbling.

Ou Renjin was left alone in the ward, looking blankly at the back of Uncle Guan rushing out. He didn’t know why but his heart seemed to sink a little bit at this moment. He seemed to have some kind of premonition but he didn’t want to believe it. 

The doctor rushed over quickly and shoved him aside, lifted his mother’s eyelids and pressed the stethoscope to her chest.

Uncle Guan pulled him over and blocked him behind his back, and began to call the Ou family in a choking voice.

His grandfather and his uncle’s family came quickly. His aunt began to cry and throw herself to the ground, as if she had such a deep friendship with his mother. His grandfather was sharply questioning the doctor why his daughter-in-law died suddenly after her condition had improved, and why her body was already stiff, but the monitor did not give any alert.

There was chaos, and countless voices mingled together. Ou Renjin was stiffly holding onto the door frame of the ward, looking at the white cloth on the hospital bed that had been pulled up to cover his mother’s face, feeling that it all was so surreal.

He watched quietly for a long time, then suddenly turned and ran towards his father’s ward.

There he saw his uncle sitting on his father’s bed, soaking a cotton swab with water and moistening the lips of Ou Renjin’s father, who was forbidden to drink water. After two times, his uncle threw the cotton swab aside, suddenly lowered his head, and let out a suppressed, painful sob.

Ou Renjin’s tears finally couldn’t help falling at this moment. He was about to walk in when he heard his uncle open his mouth and say tragically, “Sister-in-law passed away this morning. If you can’t make it through, leaving Xiao Jin to be a child without a father and mother, what will he do in the future?”

It was like a curse.

The man in the bed seemed to move his fingers, and the heartbeat monitor immediately issued a sharp, piercing alarm.

Ou Renjin was shocked. He stared at Ou Yiyun with a look of disbelief. His brain was as dull as rusty gears. For some reason, he couldn’t feel grief or fear but a strange thought grew in his mind like a vine. 

He felt that his uncle did it on purpose.

He took two steps back and looked at the chaotic image that seemed to be repeating itself again and again before him, his hair standing on its end, and a voice kept saying in his head: he did it on purpose.

That day, Ou Renjin lost both of his parents.

Much later, when his parents had been buried, he kept dwelling on the words uttered by his eldest uncle at his father’s bedside. In front of the whole family, with his face wet with tears, he questioned him loudly in a tender childish voice.

But all they gave him back were incredulous looks. They thought he was very unreasonable and that he had broken his eldest uncle’s heart.

One night, not so special, he was suddenly awakened by a nightmare.

In his dream, he was lying in the dark, and the sound of footsteps stepping on his heart was clearly audible, and then he suddenly woke up and watched two medics wearing masks walk into the ward in the light from the corridor, walk to his mother’s bedside, and inject a medicine into her IV bottle.

At that moment, the scene that seemed to be a dream and not a dream was suddenly deeply imprinted in his mind, and every sound they made and every action they made seemed to be like a coherent and clear movie.

Trembling all over, he jumped up from the bed and ran downstairs to find his grandfather. At the entrance of the stairs, he tripped and fell hard but got up without making a sound and continued to run downstairs, running into Ou Zhenghui’s room and suddenly grabbing his hand.

He tried hard to express his thoughts and suspicions, but his words were a mess. Ou Zhenghui, who had comforted him too many times in the past after his strange and bizarre nightmares and was secretly angry with him for insisting that his eldest uncle had deliberately stimulated his father to death, had long passed the point where he could control his impatience for his grandson. He reprimanded him without waiting for him to say a few words and waved his hand to send him away.

Ou Renjin’s words were suddenly cut off, and an inexplicable sense of emptiness spread, painful and desperate, as if the whole world had gone dark. Ou Renjin could still remember that feeling clearly until now.

The death of his parents was the biggest blow for him and the source of his deepest frustration, but it was the night when his grandfather indifferently rebuked him and told him to go back to his bed quickly that he instantly understood that no one in the world would become his fortress. He had no one to rely on, he could only grow up by himself.

“Did you ask her what happened that night?” Snapping out of his memories, Ou Renjin tried to keep his tone calm.

“I didn’t dare to ask directly, but I found that she said that she lived in China a long time ago and was fired once, having to carry the pot for the hospital because of a malfunction in the hospital’s equipment.” The man’s tone is a bit strange. ”Do you think I should try a soft or hard approach?”

“I don’t care about that, I just need to know the result.”

“I see, I will give you the result within half a month.”

When Ou Shaowen quietly walked into the villa with a pillow about the same height as himself, he breathed a sigh of relief at the empty living room, deceived by his narrowed field of vision, and was about to secretly transfer things to his room while Ou Renjin might be working in the study. 

Qi Yue took him to a bjd doll customization studio, where there was a room full of exquisite and beautiful dolls, which he admired for a long time, making sure that this was his favourite thing in the world.

He got a photo of Ou Renjin from his mobile phone and sent it to the store manager, paid the deposit, and made an appointment to get the finished product in forty days.

While waiting for the invoice to be issued, he found another thing that made him stunned. The store manager explained that this could be made right away and he could get it on the same day. Ou Shaowen pursed his lips, thought for a moment with a meaningful look in his eyes, and finally made a decision.

Treat the doll as a gift for Ou Renjin, and leave the pillow to yourself.

He did not forget that Ou Renjin’s previous promise was to stay in the villa until the end of the month, but the feeling of being accompanied to sleep was too beautiful. As Qi Yue said, if you couldn’t afford to buy a real person, at least you could buy a substitute.

After that, he could fall asleep with the cuddle pillow every night and could ravish it as much as he wanted. Kiss it, hug it, talk to it, and not even worry about waking it up in the middle of the night.

He hugged the pillow and walked in the direction of the stairs. While walking with a satisfied look, he lowered his head and rubbed it against Ou Renjin’s face on the pillow.

“What are you carrying?” A low voice sounded abruptly behind him.

Ou Shaowen was startled and trembled slightly, wrapping his arms around the cuddle pillow’s waist tighter.

Ou Renjin poked his head out from behind the back of the sofa. His thin pyjamas were unbuttoned, revealing most of his chest. He glanced at Ou Shaowen lightly, his tone quite casual, “It’s not a cuddle pillow of me, is it?”

Ou Shaowen: “……”

Why can Ou Renjin always easily guess what he is thinking and what he has done?

Is this his special ability? Like his own ability to regenerate and heal quickly.

Ou Renjin looked at him with a shocked expression on his face. Although he was not really in the mood to laugh, he still habitually raised the corner of his mouth, “A gift for me?”

Before Ou Shaowen could answer, he heard the second half of the sentence.

“Or are you going to give it to yourself?”

He pressed the head of the pillow into the nook of his neck with one hand and tentatively asked, “I want to keep it for myself, can I?”

If it was the usual Ou Renjin, he would have smiled and given him a teasing remark, something like: you already own the real person, isn’t it superfluous to look at the pillow one?

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it now. He let go of the hand he had propped against the backrest and let his whole body fall back onto the sofa, looking up at the ceiling and slowly replying, “Yes.”

Ou Shaowen quickly ran upstairs to put his pillow, then he jumped down three steps at a time, squatted next to the sofa, and kissed him heavily on his cheek, “Ou Renjin, I am very happy today.”

“Really?”

He didn’t open his eyes.

Ou Shaowen didn’t care either, leaned over to his face and rubbed it gently, just like he rubbed the pillow just now. It was a bit of a pity that it was still a happier feeling when he was rubbing against a real person.

When he was about to get up after kissing and rubbing, Ou Renjin took his hand and suddenly pulled him into his arms.

Ou Shaowen was really taken aback this time. He was afraid that his head would accidentally hit Ou Renjin’s chest, and he tilted his head upwards when he was pulled down forcefully.

With a thud, his forehead knocked on the armrest of the sofa.

Ou Renjin stopped moving, looking at Ou Shaowen’s dumbfounded eyes, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

He stretched out his hand to gently rub his forehead, “Are you here to make me laugh?”