The ward reeks of antiseptic and rage. Yu Meng Long thrashes like a trapped animal, veins bulging, voice shredded from screaming at anyone in white. He tears out the third IV of the shift, blood spraying the sheets while he bellows that he still has lines to deliver, debts to collect, a life to finish. Nurses back away; even the crash cart team hesitates. For seventy-two hours straight he has turned the ICU into a battlefield, refusing sedation, refusing surrender, refusing death itself.
Then the lights dim a fraction.
A soft rustle of silk. The pale jade dress glides through the doorway like mist. Song Yi Ren. No bouquet this time, no tears, just the same serene face that once stared at him across a hundred red-carpet flashes. The room temperature plummets. Monitors stutter. Every fight left in Yu Meng Long drains through the floor the instant he sees her.
He stops roaring. His cracked lips tremble. A sound escapes that no one expected: a broken, childlike sob. Tears flood the eyes that were feral seconds ago. He reaches for her with shaking, blood-crusted fingers as if she is the only anchor in a storm only he can see. She takes his hand without hesitation, cool palm against burning skin, and kneels so their foreheads almost touch.
Whatever she says is too soft for microphones, too intimate for witnesses. But the effect is instant and merciless. His chest heaves once, twice, then settles into a slow, grateful rhythm. The snarling warrior becomes a man letting go of everything he ever clutched. Shoulders relax. Fingers. Pride. Life. The heart monitor slows to a lullaby, then sighs into silence.
Nurses stand frozen, defibrillator paddles forgotten in their hands. A doctor whispers “What the hell just happened?” but no one answers. Song Yi Ren stays kneeling another heartbeat, brushes a thumb across his cheek to close his eyes, and presses a kiss to knuckles that will never bruise again. Then she rises, smooths the jade fabric, and walks out without looking back.
The corridor camera catches her pausing only once: she lifts his bloodstained handprint from her sleeve, studies it like a love letter, and smiles the smallest, saddest smile the world has ever seen.
Within hours the clip loops endlessly: the beast who terrified an entire hospital reduced to tears by one woman in jade, reaching for her like a drowning man reaching for shore, and choosing to drown the moment she arrived. Fans flood the streets with jade ribbons. Investigators demand the audio enhanced, slowed, reversed. Nothing. Just the soft hush of fabric and the sound of a heart deciding it had fought long enough.
Because whatever Song Yi Ren offered in that whisper was stronger than morphine, sweeter than revenge, and more final than any machine could fight.
And somewhere out there, she still wears the stain of his blood on pale jade like a medal.
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