"Bed 15, remember to go pay your bill."
"How much?"
"A little over two hundred, I think."
"That expensive!"
"...We specifically prescribed the cheapest medicine, sir."
"But that's still too expensive. You might as well kill me."
The argument went on and on.
It was truly irritating.
He frowned, opened his eyes, and woke from his stupor.
The familiar smell of disinfectant.
Incandescent lights.
A six-bed hospital ward.
...What happened?
The old man in Bed 15 across from him was red-faced, arguing incessantly with the nurse, his voice growing louder and louder.
Their voices made him increasingly irritated, and he could not remember a thing.
"Stop arguing!"
He spoke up.
The nurse and the old man both looked over.
The old man wore tattered clothes, his face covered in weathered wrinkles and his skin dark. The shoes in front of his bed were caked in mud, with a hole in them.
The nurse looked both angry and helpless.
It was already late at night.
Beyond the windowpane, another entrance bore the large word "Emergency."
-Was this the hospital's emergency room?
What was going on?
His mind was completely blank.
Forget it. Deal with what's in front of me first.
It's only two hundred.
"I'll pay for him," Shen Ye told the nurse.
The nurse sighed in relief. "Good-oh, you have an outstanding bill too. Remember to pay it."
With that, she quickly left the ward.
I have an outstanding bill too?
Shen Ye froze, felt around on himself, and opened his phone.
Balance: 2.5.
Payday isn't until tomorrow!
Right.
I remember now.
I passed out while working overtime at the office... My coworkers must have brought me here.
Shen Ye looked around.
Sure enough, there was a note on the table:
"The doctor said you had low blood sugar. Get