The June of Blossoming Yearning

The way Shen Zichen looked at Chu Ruilin at the moment, resembled the very picture of a primary school child getting sick and acting cute to get his mother to pamper him to the utmost, to have her lay his head on her lap while she stroked his hair gently and comfortingly.

However, Chu Ruilin wasn't a gentle, endearing mother. Scratch that, he wasn't a mother at all. He wasn't going to sing Shen Zichen any sweet lullabies instead, perhaps he could recite by memory the last textbook or research paper related to neurology or neuroanatonomy that he had read to Shen Zichen.

The term 'authoritative father' was more fitting for a man like Chu Ruilin.

So he, very methodically wiped Shen Zichen's forehead and neck with the damp towel. There was no gentleness behind his actions but nonetheless his actions were still very caring.

Shen Zichen watched as the man attended to him, the man's lowered long, black eyelashes glimmered like tiny light catching strands as the beside table's lamp shone on them.

There was a sudden itch in Shen Zichen's heart.

After Chu Ruilin was done wiping him, he changed to another towel dampened with lukewarm water, folding it neatly and placing it on Shen Zichen's forehead.

At this moment, Shen Zichen seemed to be about to say something when the doorbell suddenly rang.

It was the staff bringing up the requested medicine and the chicken soup.

Shen Zichen's words were left unsaid.

Instead a pill was shoved down his throat with the chicken soup following suit.

The soup was piping hot, almost scraping off a layer of his tongue but Shen Zichen didn't seem to feel it. He just mechanically, shoved one spoon after another into his mouth.

It was Chu Ruilin, who noticed the obvious steam rising off the soup. When he had passed him the bowl, he had also felt the high temperature of the soup.

Had this boy always been so impatient and lazy?

Chu Ruilin couldn't help but snatch the tray with the soup bowl on it from Shen Zichen before this guy subjected himself to the torture of 'burning tongue hell' while he was still alive.

"Let me feed you if this isn't the last time you want to taste food", came his exasperated voice.

After which, without waiting for Shen Zichen's response, he scooped out a spoon of soup, brought it near his own lips and gently blew on it. After affirming that the soup had cooled down, he brought the spoon to Shen Zichen's lips.

Shen Zichen's mind had turned rather sluggish by now. It was only after he stared at Chu Ruilin's hand holding the spoon for a while, that he finally opened his mouth and drank the soup.

The soup he tasted now was indeed much cooler. The heat of it, comforting not burning.

It even tasted better, somehow?

After 5 minutes, the chicken soup was finally finished by Shen Zichen with Chu Ruilin's help.

The taste and temperature of this particular soup he had, however would linger on his tongue for a long while to come.

After Chu Ruilin was done with Shen Zichen, he went to check his phone. Switching it on, he saw a large number of missed calls from the hospital staff.

Chu Ruilin had an ominous feeling.

He immediately called back the number displaying 17 missed calls while clutching the car keys in his trouser's pocket, ready to rush over to the hospital at any moment if needed.

However, he really wasn't needed.

The hand holding the keys stiffened for a moment before finally loosening the grip on the car keys, as he listened to the voice speaking over the phone.

It was news about the woman he had performed an emergency surgery on, in the morning. After performing the surgery, he had transferred her to his colleague, Dr. Yan, who was also a reputed neurologist in the same hospital.

Thinking of her, he remembered the emancipated little boy, who was waiting silently outside the operation theatre for news, with fat teardrops streaming down his thin cheeks.

After Chu Ruilin had walked out of the OT, he was met with the little boy's crying face clutching his pants with his chubby little fingers. The boy had pleadingly asked him in a quivering voice, "Doctor uncle, Is my mother going to die?" "Is she finally leaving me?"

Looking into the boy's eyes, Chu Ruilin who seemed to always have an answer to any question thrown at him, suddenly didn't have an answer anymore.

He could only bent down after a while, lowering his surgerical mask, to answer the boy softly, "If you really don't want your mom to leave you and your mom also doesn't want to leave you, then no matter happens, she'll stay with you, never to leave ".

As he spoke, a very beautiful face of a certain woman flashed in his own mind.

He gave the boy a rare gentle smile before walking away.

That boy's mother had apparently passed away, 4 hours after he had to spoken to the little boy.

Chu Ruilin had hardly ever had patients dying under his scalpel.

When he had spoken to the boy, he had himself faintly felt sure, that the woman would most likely survive.

After all, there is only a 1-3 percent risk of stroke following surgery.

But fate was a rather unpredictable thing, working in the cruelest of ways. It turned the unlikely into likely, with a casual flick of its finger.

The boys' mother had left him. He didn't have a mother, anymore.

After hanging up the phone, Chu Ruilin stared off into space for a long while. His thoughts could not be deciphered from the expression on his face.

Shen Zichen, who was lying on the bed pretending to sleep watched the man's straight back as he stood facing the huge glass window, overlooking the hotel's scenic views.

He faintly felt that the man's always straight spine seemed to have curled a little for a brief moment before straightening again.

Perhaps, it was his illusion.