You're my wife, don't doubt it!

Then, her face fell.

Shen Jie isn't a love-obsessed person, but that doesn't mean she hasn't imagined the scenario or the way she might lose her first kiss.

No matter what, as a girl, you always need a sense of ritual.

Someone mysteriously "stolen" something from your hospital room? This wasn't part of the plan.

Even if you've already tentatively decided that this person is someone you're interested in, it's still not acceptable.

She grabbed the pillow in her hand and lunged at it.

After being hit on the head two or three times with the pillow, Xiao Yao jumped out of bed and backed away, saying, "Wife, calm down, I was wrong! I was just arguing with you—"

Shen Jie didn't get out of bed; she just threw the pillow at him forcefully.

Xiao Yao fell to the ground upon hearing the sound, lying motionless.

The acting was quite convincing.

The girl ignored him, turned her back, and lay on her side.

……

Two or three minutes passed, and Xiao Yao remained silent.

She sat up and turned her head: "Still pretending? You're a grown man, are you faking your death all day long?"

Xiao Yao didn't speak, he just lay there and started twitching in his limbs.

"Keep acting!" Shen Jie laughed, "You truly are a man who aims to get into acting school. I have high hopes for you!"

Xiao Yao's convulsions became even more severe, and white foam even came out of the corners of his mouth.

Shen Jie's smile froze.

She jumped out of bed, without even putting on her slippers, rushed to Xiao Yao's side, and picked him up.

"Nurse—!!! Nurse—!"

A sharp, piercing shout filled the entire ward.

A short-haired girl in a hospital gown ran barefoot to the ward door, craned her neck into the corridor, and shouted again, "Nurse!!!"

At this moment.

Dozens of kilometers away, on a suburban highway.

The bus that Yu Luying was riding sped off toward Yushan.

Leave application for Spring Festival

2023-01-28

I never think about the Spring Festival, but these past two days I've had so many guests and so much to do that I have no choice but to postpone this for a day or two.

Chapter 96 Miss Yu Running Wild

2023-01-31

Fifteen minutes before Xiao Yao collapsed at the hospital, on the Tosatsu Highway.

The bus that Yu Luying was riding sped off toward Yushan.

They set off from the gate of St. Francis Secondary School after lunch. This "quiet retreat" lasted for three days. In addition to her uncle Yu Bo, the group was led by another priest, Father Yang, who was in his fifties.

At this very moment, Father Yang, with his graying temples, is leading a busload of parishioners in chanting the Rosary.

Yu Luying sat by the window, holding her agate rosary, her eyes unfocused as she stared at the trees rushing past outside the car window. She mechanically chanted along with the others: "...Holy Mary, God, for us sinners, we pray to God, and to us in our time of death, Amen."

This tune is adapted from Buddhist scriptures, using a mix of Shanghai dialect and classical Chinese. The older generation calls it a "respectful tune," which was adapted by Jesuit missionaries in China for localization... Was it Matteo Ricci? I don't know, whatever.

The young girl was reciting scriptures without really understanding them—especially since there were few young people among the participants in this event, which made her even more disheartened.

Yu Luying disliked formalities and had no interest in participating in the retreat; she was simply accompanying her mother. However, Yu Lihua had something come up at school and could only come in the evening.

Yu Luying has always believed that she has never been a devout and enthusiastic person.

That is probably indeed the case.

Yu Luying's maternal grandfather, Yu Baolu, kept a family genealogy. According to the genealogy, the Yu family has been practicing Christianity for nearly twenty generations, and the earliest can be traced back to the time of Xu Guangqi at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Yu Luying disagreed with this, because it was hard to imagine how the family's "beacon of faith" could still be passed down and survive after Emperor Kangxi banned Christianity.

Of course, she had no intention of actually asking further questions.

In fact, like most children from so-called old church families in this city and this era, she has never been in a lukewarm state regarding her faith.

Her mother told her that Yu Luying was baptized on the eighth day after her birth and given the Christian name "Thérèse." This naming system is actually quite useless in this country, because half of the women in the church are named Thérèse and the other half are named Mary—which fully illustrates how lacking in imagination and creativity the older Catholics in this country are.

From the age of three, she naturally embraced the identity of a church member, inheriting the glorious faith of her parents—oh, her mother.

Fridays are for fasting, Sundays are for going to church, prayers are to be recited before meals, and marriages are to be made with the children of older church members. This and that are things to do, and that and that are things to avoid. That's roughly how it goes.

She couldn't say she was annoyed, but she certainly didn't like it either.

She'll just follow as many rules as she can.

If you ask her if she believes it, she probably does, but she's not particularly interested in these things; she just treats them as a lifestyle and a social circle.

Therefore, she was too lazy to distinguish which of the two completely different and even opposing ideologies she had been instilled with since childhood was the truth.

She hasn't even been able to finish reading that Bible from beginning to end.

She doesn't care.

In fact, children of church members like my cousin Yu Yage are actually a minority: generally speaking, due to the psychological effect of "convert fanaticism," this level of enthusiasm often occurs more often in those who convert later in life.

Yu Luying considers herself to be a naturally cold person, meaning that this coldness in her personality is not only directed at religion.

But recently, she's developed a kind of, well, not-so-proper, passion.

In any case, it's hard to get rid of these unnecessary... thoughts.

Take now, for example. She was reciting the Rosary along with everyone else, looking at the scenery outside the car window, but her mind was not on the prayer, nor on the upcoming retreat, nor on the so-called Our Lady of Yushan.

She was thinking of Xiao Yao.

She was thinking about which episode of Ultraman she missed because she mischievously poured tap water into the refrigerator.

If we were to use that inexplicable analogy... then she would be a good child who listens to her mother and diligently finishes her homework.

I finished my homework, and then I realized that the episode of Ultraman had ended and would never be rebroadcast.

In fact, Yu Luying never cared about those comical helmeted freaks—she liked Sailor Moon, but she felt such regret and pity so deeply.

It was as if I had personally experienced it.

In fact, there was no need to witness Xiao Yao's "emotions" firsthand in the hospital after Shen Jie's "death," where it seemed as if his soul had been burned out, leaving only a walking corpse wandering the world—because she could personally experience Xiao Yao's "emotions" through symbiosis.

That immense grief, like a tsunami, swept over her, leaving the young girl with lingering fear to this day, and she dares not relive it.

When I die, will anyone grieve for me like Xiao Yao did that day?

Will it happen? Ah, I really want to try...

No, no, no, this is insane.

Yu Luying shook her head, dispelling the absurd, fleeting thought.

Sitting next to him was his uncle, Yu Bo, the most popular clergyman among young people in the entire Shanghai diocese, and also the clergyman most disliked by Bishop Jin and some old priests.

At this very moment, the young priest, affectionately known as "Brother Bo" by the young people, was also chanting prayers absentmindedly, his brow furrowed, his mind seemingly lost in thought.

“The columbarium is just ahead,” Father Yang said, standing in front of the car with a microphone in hand, his back to the driver like a tour guide. “We will hold a public memorial service at the columbarium first, and then head to Yushan.”

A columbarium, as the name suggests, is a place to store the ashes of church members, similar in nature to a diocese cemetery in other countries.

After I die, will my body be burned to ashes, stuffed into a box, and placed here to be pointed at and talked about by passersby? The girl thought involuntarily.

Then, she suddenly stopped thinking.

Yu Luying was sitting in a high-backed seat and was wearing a seatbelt, so her initial spasms and twitches did not attract the attention of those around her.

By the time Yu Bo noticed his niece's abnormality, she had already started foaming at the mouth.

A flurry of panic and commotion erupted inside the car.

“Master Zheng,” Father Yang turned to the driver, “do you know the nearest hospital? Let’s drive straight there!”

"Okay," the driver said, "The nearest one should be the South Campus. It's not far from there."

“Let’s go to the South Wing! Father Yu, call the hospital and tell them to prepare.” Father Yang made the decision immediately.

"Wait a minute!" Yu Bo stuffed a wad of handkerchief into Yu Luying's mouth, observed her for a while, then stood up and discussed with Father Yang, "Can we turn around and go back to the city hospital?"

Father Yang frowned: "Well, I know the conditions at the hospitals here may not be as good as those in the city, but we don't have a doctor on the ambulance and the ambulance is slow. Let's take him to the nearest hospital for examination first. If the South Hospital really can't handle it, it's not too late to transfer him to the city by ambulance."

“No, I can’t take that risk. We can’t go any further.” Yu Bo’s attitude was resolute.

"What kind of attitude is this? I know she's your niece, but that doesn't mean we don't care whether she lives or dies." Father Yang's face turned red with anger.

“She has epilepsy, right? A regular hospital can handle that, Father Yu…” The elderly women in the car also began to have doubts.

"Or let us get off the bus. We can't risk going any further." Yu Bo reached out and helped Yu Luying up.