“Is the meeting tomorrow morning very important?” Lu Yixin wrapped herself in two blankets, curled up on a bench in the hospital emergency room waiting for Fang Yongnian to help her register, unable to resist her curiosity.

“…Just an ordinary morning meeting.” Lu Boyuan also looked puzzled.

Was he that important in the morning meeting?

Well, recently, several times when Fang Yongnian lost his temper, it was him who helped smooth things over.

“But indeed, it can’t go on without me,” Lu Boyuan added.

“He’s really familiar with the hospital.” Lu Yixin had another wave of curiosity.

“Isn’t his health bad? For a while he often came to the emergency department, you saw it just now, that nurse even recognized him.” Lu Boyuan wasn’t familiar with this hospital near their home, both the parking and the emergency area were led by Fang Yongnian.

Now he really felt his wife was right.

Their family truly owed Fang Yongnian a lot.

So late, in such cold weather, he was still accompanying them running up and down the emergency room.

“Daughter.” Lu Boyuan looked at Fang Yongnian’s lean back and spoke earnestly, “In the future you must treat your Uncle Fang well.”

Lu Yixin choked on a mouthful of phlegm, coughing violently.

“What’s wrong?” Fang Yongnian frowned as he came back from registration.

Lu Yixin’s eyes and face were both red; she really didn’t have the courage to repeat what Lu Boyuan had just said.

“In a while you might have to get your blood drawn.” Autumn turning into winter, many people caught colds or fevers and came to the emergency room in the middle of the night. There was still a line outside the internal medicine door. Fang Yongnian handed the registration slip to Lu Boyuan, but his words were directed at Lu Yixin.

Lu Yixin wrinkled her nose.

She was most afraid of injections and blood draws.

“You’re already an adult and still wrinkling your nose at an injection or blood draw.” Lu Boyuan couldn’t stand it. “Let you go out for midnight snacks without wearing a jacket!”

Lu Yixin: “…”

Fang Yongnian paused.

“I just saw at the pharmacy that the ambroxol hydrochloride tablets this hospital uses are from Ruiheng.” He suddenly said out of nowhere.

Lu Boyuan looked up. “Really? Huating Hospital still has Ruiheng’s medicine now?”

“Just didn’t see the dosage clearly,” Fang Yongnian said unhurriedly.

Lu Yixin sniffled and blinked.

Lu Boyuan looked at the crowded internal medicine line, then looked at Lu Yixin.

“You don’t stay here, when you’re here my head hurts.” At that moment, Lu Yixin suddenly felt her head no longer hurt and her vision no longer blurred; she waved cleverly at her father.

Lu Boyuan glared at her. The instinct of a father told him that even though his daughter had a fever nearly forty degrees in the middle of the night, he should be the one accompanying her no matter what.

But what his daughter said was also true.

Just looking at her sickly appearance made him uncomfortable, and when he was uncomfortable, he wanted to scold her.

Moreover, Ruiheng had reorganized the entire company last month, and many of their medicines had been discontinued. The ambroxol hydrochloride tablets from their company were something he had always wanted to buy back for testing.

“Sleep for a while, I’ll wake you when it’s your turn.” Fang Yongnian restrained the urge to ruffle her hair in front of everyone.

When he saw Lu Yixin in the elevator today, he nearly lost his composure.

After more than ten days without seeing her, the girl was leaning weakly against Lu Boyuan as if she had no bones, her whole person looking utterly exhausted.

Yet Lu Boyuan wasn’t even anxious—taking his time to find his keys, taking his time to say they’d go to the hospital in the morning.

So he couldn’t hold himself back.

He crossed the line, and after crossing it, he had no intention of regretting it.

He only sent Lu Boyuan off to buy some medicine, knowing he’d be back soon.

But he still let Lu Yixin hold his hand, only letting go when Lu Boyuan’s figure reappeared at the entrance of the emergency hall.

Once he released her hand, his palm felt a little cold.

Empty.

Lu Yixin’s fever reached 39.7°C, with inflammation in her body—fortunately, it wasn’t influenza.

The emergency room arranged an IV drip. Lu Boyuan, with his heavy smoking habit and growing drowsiness, went out for a cigarette four times during the two bottles of saline.

Fang Yongnian stayed the entire time.

He looked tired too, drinking two extra-strong cups of coffee, sitting across from Lu Yixin while replying to emails, occasionally speaking softly with Lu Boyuan about work.

After a long day of exhaustion, Lu Yixin finally grew sleepy. Half-conscious, she sensed her father had gone out again to smoke, and Fang Yongnian stood up to tuck the blanket around her.

“Fang Niannian.” She called his name in a sticky, sleepy tone.

“Mm?” Fang Yongnian touched her forehead.

Lu Yixin half-opened her eyes to look at him. “Are you unhappy when you’re working?”

She was still half-dreaming, but the words she overheard that night at Fang Yongnian’s company kept replaying in her dreams.

In her dream, Fang Yongnian sat alone in his office, the lights off. In the shadows, his right leg was missing.

Then she woke up, her heart aching tightly.

Fang Yongnian froze. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just… if you’re really unhappy…” Lu Yixin sniffled, “then go open a fruit shop.”

A fruit shop was full of fragrance. He wouldn’t need to wear shirts or suits, or lace-up leather shoes.

He wouldn’t need to be so tired.

“You don’t have to care what my dad says, or what anyone else will say,” she whispered softly. “You can do anything you want.”

Do whatever he wanted to do.

He wasn’t a unicorn.

He wasn’t a psychopath.

“I can support myself,” she started talking about money again. “A fruit shop can make money too, and Yu Hanfeng’s money—you can slowly pay it back, you’ll be able to pay it all off.”

Fang Yongnian didn’t speak.

“Don’t wrong yourself,” she frowned. “I don’t like seeing you wrong yourself.”

He had already been wronged enough.

He was the only survivor of that car accident. He was left disabled, burdened with the blame for leaking the project documents, and lost his job.

He had endured grievances for so many years. When the truth finally came to light, people still pointed fingers at him because of his disability.

Perhaps he really did have a bad temper—but an ordinary person’s bad temper would never make others call him a “unicorn,” nor make people question if he was mentally unstable.

He was such a proud man. Why should he have to live so aggrievedly?

“My dad didn’t resign because of you. He’s a grown man, losing his job doesn’t mean he can’t eat.”

“Besides, there’s still me. Once I graduate from university, I can support the family. My dad is my responsibility.”

“Don’t take all the responsibility onto yourself.”

Her voice was soft, muttering quietly.

The things she said were scattered—some were guesses, some were what she believed to be true.

She looked especially aggrieved, her eyes reddened at the corners.

Fang Yongnian still didn’t say anything.

Lu Yixin had gone to the company today, so she probably overheard some things she shouldn’t have.

He knew what she might have heard. When intellectuals gave people nicknames, it was often more humiliating than what the vulgar would say.

She told him not to wrong himself. She said he could open a fruit shop. She said he shouldn’t carry everything alone.

What she said was naïve, yet when stripped of all the practical realities, he actually found that her kind of naïveté seemed possible.

The money owed, he could just pay it back slowly.

She was, since the incident, the only one who had truly encouraged him to open a fruit shop.

Whether it was his parents, his brothers, or Lu Boyuan—everyone was waiting for him to step out of the shadow of the past. Everyone believed he would definitely stand up again.

After all, he was Fang Yongnian. In the eyes of many people, he really was indestructible.

Wu Yuande believed that even if his career had a stain, he could still rise again; Lu Boyuan kept waving the original drug research data before him, trying to persuade him that this was the path he should continue walking.

As an adult, he knew they were all right.

It was just that, in this world, apart from Lu Yixin, no one thought he had been wronged.

Lu Yixin was probably tired. After finishing what she had to say, she curled up in the blanket, blinking as she looked at him.

He still didn’t speak.

He straightened up and glanced at Lu Boyuan smoking and looking at his phone outside the emergency hall, then sat down beside Lu Yixin.

“You don’t want me to be successful and prosperous?” His voice was hoarse, but his expression was relaxed.

Lu Yixin blinked. “Successful and prosperous?”

“Yes.” Fang Yongnian counted for her, “Win some awards, make some money—both fame and fortune.”

“Uh…” Lu Yixin was stunned. “Your wish for the future is to be… successful and prosperous?”

Such an… old-fashioned idiom…

Fang Yongnian laughed.

“I really want to try,” he said, word by word.

It was the first time he had spoken those words since the car accident.

“But… it always feels unjust.” He lowered his head. Under the fluorescent lights of the emergency hall, he wasn’t hidden in shadows—he simply bowed his head.

Those things had happened, and they had been resolved. Every adult believed he should move on.

But he hadn’t.

Wu Yuande never apologized. When he begged him to forgive his son, he still didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

Wu Tao was imprisoned. According to his older brother, he might be sentenced to death, or at least life imprisonment with reprieve. But what did that have to do with him?

He had lost a leg. To clear his name, to seek revenge, he had dragged that leg through four long years.

No one had ever apologized to him.

Everyone had their own stance—even Wu Tao, if one were to listen, had his share of grievances.

And he too was aggrieved.

So he found fault in everything, lost his temper at everything—anything that even slightly displeased him would make him furious.

Like a child throwing a tantrum.

When a child feels wronged, they always hope someone will notice them.

He had been wronged for so many years, and the only one who truly saw him was Lu Yixin.

Fortunately—someone could still see him.

“Then… a hug?” Lu Yixin suggested, her voice thick with congestion.

“Wait till your dad leaves.” Fang Yongnian turned his head and, unexpectedly, wrinkled his nose at her.

Looking completely aggrieved.

Lu Yixin’s eyes widened.

“Damn.” She started swearing. “Why do you have to say that now!”

When her dad was right at the door, and she was weak and feverish!

Fang Yongnian laughed aloud.

At last, he wasn’t alone after all.

Besides that proud fat cat, there was also Lu Yixin—who could always, so precisely, understand what was in his heart.

His luck, after all, hadn’t been bad all the way to the end.