When Jiang Hezhou woke up again, it was three days later.
He opened his eyes and found himself lying in a hospital room. Someone was speaking at the foot of his bed—he weakly glanced over and saw a nurse giving instructions to his mother.
“Alright, I understand. I’ll make sure to pay close attention to his emotional state.”
The nurse nodded and turned to leave, but as her gaze swept across the bed, she was surprised to see that Jiang Hezhou had already woken up.
“Family member! The patient is awake! He’s awake!”
His mother rushed to his bedside excitedly. Just then, Zhang Jiting and Ji Chen, who had stepped out for a smoke, heard the commotion and quickly pushed the door open.
“Fuck, Jiang Er, you really are something!” The two brothers looked like they hadn’t slept in days—exhausted, unshaven. Zhang Jiting spoke first, his eyes reddening instantly after his outburst. He cursed again, “What, little sister-in-law gets sick and you don’t want to live anymore? She’d only been in the hospital for one day and you couldn’t wait to follow her to the grave?! Since when were you such a love-crazed fool?”
Ji Chen was calmer in comparison. He tugged at Zhang Jiting’s arm, signaling him to ease up, then stepped closer to the bed and asked Jiang Hezhou, “How are you feeling now? The doctor said the cut on your wrist was too deep, but thankfully the paramedics got there in time and applied pressure to stop the bleeding, and then—”
Before Ji Chen could finish, Jiang Hezhou suddenly interrupted him.
His voice was still weak and hoarse: “How did I get to the hospital?”
At that, Ji Chen also looked a bit puzzled. “The hospital said someone called emergency services and gave your home address, reporting that someone had slit their wrist there. When the medics arrived, your door was open, but there was no one else inside…”
Hearing this, only four words flashed through Jiang Hezhou’s mind: He had gambled right.
He didn’t say anything more about it, just asked them: “What about her? Has she woken up?”
Jiang Hezhou had expected a definitive yes, but after hearing his question, Ji Chen fell silent.
A bad feeling crept into his heart. His face, already pale as paper from blood loss, tightened with tension.
“What do you mean? Her illness didn’t get better? She’s still unconscious?”
Zhang Jiting and Ji Chen felt that their brother was not in a normal state right now. They didn’t understand why he would ask such a question—hadn’t the doctor already given them the news a few days ago? He had heard it himself…
His mother had been watching him the whole time. Seeing the state he was in, she quickly stepped forward.
“Hezhou, the doctor said you lost too much blood and your body is still very weak. You need to rest quietly after waking up—no moving around.” She adjusted his blanket for him as she spoke. “Lie down and rest a little more.”
It was clearly an attempt to change the subject, and Jiang Hezhou saw right through it.
He didn’t want to waste time on useless words. Silently, he used his uninjured hand to push aside the blanket and propped himself up, trying to get out of bed.
Everyone in the room rushed over to stop him.
“What are you doing? You lost so much blood and just woke up—are you trying to die again?” Zhang Jiting was still angry about the whole suicide attempt and his tone remained harsh.
Jiang Hezhou ignored him, just kept his head down and pushed weakly against them. “Move. I need to go see her.”
Afraid that struggling with him might tear his wrist wound, and seeing how insistent he was, they eventually stopped blocking him. They just followed closely behind as he made his way to Chu Luyu’s ward.
Chu Fanyin and Chen Mian were still keeping watch in the room. At this hour, Chen Mian should have been at school, but he couldn’t bear to leave. After notifying the school, he had taken a month-long leave to stay with his mother and care for his sister.
The ward door opened from the outside, and Jiang Hezhou walked in, his steps unsteady.
Both Chu Fanyin and Chen Mian looked surprised. They were about to say something to him, but they noticed he wasn’t looking at anyone—he just slowly, step by step, made his way to the bedside.
The others who had come with him also filed into the room.
His mother was still worried about his condition and hesitated, wanting to pull him back, but Chu Fanyin stopped her.
She understood her daughter and son-in-law better than Jiang’s mother did. Looking at the two of them, she held back her tears and said softly, “Why don’t we wait outside? Hezhou probably wants to be alone with Xiaoyu for a while…”
Jiang’s mother was still concerned: “But the doctor said he—”
Ji Chen stepped in to persuade her: “Auntie Jiang, even if we tied him down and dragged him back, he wouldn’t rest properly. Let’s just wait outside and let him have some time with little sister-in-law.”
In the end, his mother was convinced to leave. After they all filed out, only Jiang Hezhou and the still-unconscious Chu Luyu remained in the room.
The girl on the bed looked ill, her face no longer rosy and fair, her lips drained of color and tinged with a faint pallor.
Jiang Hezhou sat down, took her hand, and pressed it against his cheek. His gaze at her was intensely tender and devoted.
“Baby, are you angry that I didn’t take care of myself, and you’re not waking up just to scare me?” he murmured softly, his voice low with humility and pleading. “I know I was wrong. Next time before I make any decision, I’ll tell you first, okay? So please wake up soon… I’m begging you.”
His words faded, but only silence answered him. Chu Luyu still lay there quietly, as if she were simply asleep.
Jiang Hezhou had never felt so powerless and panicked before. Even when he hadn’t gotten the answer he wanted from that female student, in the deepest, most hidden corner of his heart, he had still believed there would be a way. There had to be a way.
But now, he had already died once. If the so-called plot could even save him from slitting his wrist, why wouldn’t it just spare his girl?
The physical weakness, combined with the mental strain and tension, made his consciousness feel as if it were sinking into an endless void. Around him was darkness so thick he couldn’t see his own hand. He couldn’t sense the existence of anything at all.
After an unknown amount of time, it seemed a real mechanical voice sounded around him—or perhaps it was just a fragment of his own imagination—
[Jiang Hezhou, this is not your plotline. Wake up. Wake up now. The one who truly belongs to you is still waiting for you in the storyline.]
The voice repeated itself over and over in that darkness. Jiang Hezhou felt himself growing dizzier, his thoughts becoming less clear, his consciousness slowly plunging into an abyss.
And echoing through that abyss was only one phrase: [This is not your plotline. Wake up. Wake up now.]
Wake up?
His mind grew sluggish. He stood there in bewilderment, barely understanding what the voice meant.
But just then, someone seemed to be running toward him from not far away, carrying a beam of light that forcefully cut through all the surrounding darkness.
“Jiang Hezhou! Jiang Hezhou!” The person called out to him happily in a soft voice. The closer they got, the brighter the light became.
Jiang Hezhou remembered—it was his lover’s voice. His lover was calling to him.
Somehow, a dissection knife had appeared in his hand—his most familiar tool. He looked at the chaotic, illusory world around him, and his blurred consciousness gradually sharpened.
A moment later, he raised his arm and slashed the blade hard through the air. It was as if he had cut a gash in a massive curtain—the chaos scattered, leaving only the increasingly resolute coldness on his face.
“What plotline belongs to me, and what plotline doesn’t—none of you get to decide that…”
—
That day, Jiang Hezhou briefly fell unconscious for a while. When he woke up, he became even more silent than before.
He moved into Chu Luyu’s ward, watching over her day and night without rest. Everyone saw what he was doing, but no one could stop him.
By now, no matter what anyone said, it was as if he couldn’t hear them. He was completely absorbed in his daily routine of caring for Chu Luyu.
Aside from looking after her, he also inexplicably had people bring in a large stack of romance and time-travel novels. At first, when Zhang Jiting and Ji Chen saw the piles of books in the ward, they couldn’t hold back—they kept urging the doctors to check his brain.
But Jiang Hezhou remained calm, only telling them to stay out of his way while he read.
He read quickly—almost two books a day—and took thorough reading notes on each one. At first, his notes were clumsy, but soon he was fluently writing terms like [Female-Oriented Fiction], [Emotion-Driven Plot], [Female Lead’s Halo], and [Male Lead’s Halo]—all the unique jargon of the romance novel world.
On the seventeenth day of Chu Luyu’s hospitalization, Meng Wantian came to visit them at the hospital, carrying a bouquet of flowers.
The wound on Jiang Hezhou’s wrist was gradually healing, but his figure looked thinner and thinner. One glance, and Meng Wantian felt he seemed even more gaunt than the night they’d met in Shi City.
His eyes, however, had grown much sharper and more determined.
When Jiang Hezhou saw the flowers in Meng Wantian’s hand, he thanked her politely. His tone, as always, was courteous but distant.
Meng Wantian looked at Chu Luyu lying in the hospital bed, her heart full of complicated emotions.
She said to Jiang Hezhou, “She’s like this now because…”
“Plot kill,” Jiang Hezhou replied calmly. “We didn’t follow the original plot development and break off the engagement, so the plot began to intervene.”
Hearing him speak so openly about it, Meng Wantian still found it hard to believe.
In fact, even now, she still felt his talk about a fictional short-drama world was a bit far-fetched… But then again, since she herself had been reborn, she figured other strange things couldn’t be ruled out either.
After a moment of silence, Meng Wantian sighed and said, “I’m not sure how I can help you, but if there’s ever anything I can do, feel free to reach out to me anytime.”
Jiang Hezhou finally looked at her. His gaze was faint, but his eyes were dark and bright.
“Are you sure? If I really need your help later, will you truly be able to help us?”
Meng Wantian felt there was an underlying meaning in his tone. She hesitated, bit her lip, then nodded.
“I will. I’ll help you.”
Jiang Hezhou finally smiled—but the smile was unsettlingly strange.
“Thank you. And… I’m sorry.”
Meng Wantian didn’t understand what he meant. On the way back, she kept thinking about why he had said “I’m sorry.”
Was he apologizing for their relationship in the previous life? For not choosing her in this one?
But it wasn’t until a few days later, when she saw Jiang Hezhou again in an abandoned building complex, that she realized just how wrong her assumptions had been—
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