ps: A tale of a universally adored beauty whose looks could kill, whose face alone could hold an empire together. Romantic battlefields, but 1v1 with a happy ending. A cool, breathtakingly beautiful, sickly, innocent shou who is hopeless at socializing.
Pale walls, the smell of disinfectant spreading through every corner of the room. On the hospital bed, a pair of bloodless wrists lay still, bearing a hint of frail, forlorn vulnerability.
"Hello, is this Mr. Shen Sixian? Your younger brother, Shen Shuangjian, is currently receiving treatment at our hospital. We hope you can come over immediately. Should anything happen, we'll need his guardian's consent."
There was only silence on the other end. The nurse frowned in confusion and was about to ask again when the man's cold voice sounded, without so much as a fluctuation in tone.
"Mm. Understood."
Once the call ended, a busy tone began repeating. Somewhat taken aback, the nurse put away the phone. She looked at the pale profile on the hospital bed and finally let out a heavy sigh.
The instant the door closed again, the fingers of the young man who had been unconscious on the bed stirred slightly. His eyes slowly opened, until his gaze settled on the pristine white ceiling overhead.
"Beep-"
In the hospital corridor that afternoon, warm sunlight flooded the expanse of white. A nurse in a white coat wheeled her cart along the busy hallway.
"Heading to that room again?"
Someone passing by asked with a hint of teasing. The nurse smiled bashfully and gave a tiny nod.
"He's being discharged today, but no one from his family has visited since he was admitted. He's rather pitiful, and now, online..."
She trailed off, her voice growing more regretful. "If he were part of my family, my heart would absolutely ache for him."
"All right, you. Off you go."
Inside the private room, the television mounted on the snow-white wall played a video at low volume.
[A certain platform's hit show forced to delay airing for three days. The reason turns out to be...]
When the nurse entered, the young man on the bed was propped against the headboard, silently looking out the window. His pale blue hospital gown enveloped his thin, slender frame, his long hair spilling down.
"Mr. Shen."
She took out the patient chart and made a mark beside the name "Shen Shuangjian." As she put her pen away and looked up, her gaze happened to meet his slightly light-colored eyes.
The instant she looked at him, her heart missed an untimely beat.
The person on the hospital bed did not have features that struck the eye with overwhelming force, yet merely sitting there, he could effortlessly draw people's gazes to linger on him.
That face was cool and refined, with a pair of tender, tea-brown eyes. Whenever their outer corners lifted, the dark blue-green tear mole at the corner of his eye became particularly noticeable.
The fatigue of recent illness had not left him haggard, either. His body was ravaged by sickness, yet he resembled a night-blooming cereus in its fleeting bloom, possessing the splendor of flowers at the very end of spring.
His aloofness and coolness, too, always carried a measure of fractured vulnerability, like fresh snow quietly melting at winter's end, suffused with a silent chill.
Purer against the snow, more radiant after the frost.
"Sorry for troubling you with my care all this time."
His faint voice sounded just then, bringing the nurse back to herself in an instant.
She was dazed, but still answered instinctively, "You're welcome. However, your heart condition poses a very serious risk. I still recommend going to a bigger, better hospital to see whether the doctors there might have a solution."
As her somewhat hopeful words fell, the young man answered her with a slow shake of his head.
"Sorry. Shen Shuangjian doesn't need that, and neither do I."
Because by the instant he opened his eyes, the Shen Shuangjian who belonged to this world had already died of cardiac arrest.
Perhaps it was a twist of fate. He, too, had died after a heart attack despite treatment, and only then arrived in this body.
Their appearances had been eighty percent alike; after his soul descended, even their bearing made them completely identical. The same desperately frail body, the same aloof, withdrawn disposition.
The only difference was this body's identity: the illegitimate son of the Shen Family, a wealthy, established clan in the capital.
His father had brought him home at eighteen and publicly acknowledged him, but his elder brother, Shen Sixian, the current head of the Shen Family, had been deeply resistant to him.
He despised Shen Shuangjian's illegitimate birth, despised this product of a tainted marriage. Not long after Shen Shuangjian returned home, Mr. and Mrs. Shen both died in a car accident, leaving the Shen Family entirely under Shen Sixian's control.
Though he had not thrown Shen Shuangjian out, he had never acknowledged their relationship as brothers, either, carrying his disregard through to the bitter end.
Shen Shuangjian occupied an awkward position among the capital's wealthy families. He stayed home and trod carefully, yet through a livestream, he came to admire and envy Xie Qingchi, the highborn, arrogant, unrestrained crown prince of the capital's elite circles.
And so, at a private banquet, he could not help voicing some abrupt, presumptuous remarks.
The original owner had only made an offhand comment, but somehow it reached Xie Qingchi's ears. Xie Qingchi loathed being coveted by a man he had never met and looked down on his illegitimate birth from the bottom of his heart.
He demeaned the original owner into the dirt. And so this illegitimate son, disregarded and unacknowledged by Shen Sixian and detested by Xie Qingchi, completely lost any foothold among the capital's rich and powerful.
To resolve his predicament, clear up the misunderstanding, and build a friendship with Xie Qingchi, the original owner had no choice but to drag his sickly body onto the show Xie Qingchi was participating in.
He had thought he could turn his life and circumstances around, but reality answered him with pointed remarks full of disgust on Xie Qingchi's Weibo.
Soon afterward, news of Xie Qingchi's withdrawal from the show spread online.
Like him, the original owner had congenital heart disease. He fell seriously ill and was hospitalized, leaving him unable to participate in the show on schedule, either.
Thus, a show eagerly anticipated by countless fans was forced to delay because of one deadweight, and for such a disgraceful reason at that. As a result, the original owner suffered frenzied online abuse.
The instant Shen Shuangjian arrived in this body, the original owner's heart stopped, and he never opened his eyes again.
Replacing him was Shen Shuangjian, who was likewise cold and withdrawn, likewise desperately frail, whose parents had passed away, and who had no relatives or friends.
That was why, when the nurse urged him to find better doctors and a better hospital, Shen Shuangjian had spoken those words so calmly.
Shen Shuangjian did not need that, and neither did he.
"Hello, sir. Your total comes to seventy-eight thousand five hundred yuan. Will you be paying by card?"
The nurse at the hospital reception desk took the bank card from a hand pale even to its fingertips and processed it with practiced movements.
While paying, Shen Shuangjian also saw the balance in the original owner's bank account.
Though he was also a child of the Shen Family, compared with his elder brother's wealth rivaling a nation's, he had only a little over a hundred thousand yuan to his name. After paying more than seventy thousand in hospital fees, there was even less left.
"Here's your card. Please keep it safe."
When he pushed open the door and stepped outside, Shen Shuangjian instinctively pulled his clothes tighter around himself. It was early spring in March, when warmth gave way to cold again, the hardest time of year to endure.
The chilly wind was like a needle hidden in seemingly soft cotton. As it swept his hair up and let it fall, Shen Shuangjian involuntarily turned his head and gave a quiet cough.
The phone tucked into his jacket pocket abruptly rang. Shen Shuangjian answered, and on the other end, the show's director delivered a stern notice.
The show had already been delayed three days because of his health. The viewers were now pressing hard. If Shen Shuangjian still could not participate on time after this postponement, he would have to pay the full contractual penalty and withdraw.
Faced with the director's ultimatum, Shen Shuangjian slowly lowered his eyes, lightly covering his thin lips with his knuckles as he answered weakly:
"I can."
Shen Shuangjian could not afford the penalty of three million yuan, nor could he possibly ask the original owner's nominal elder brother for it.
Because the other man would only continue sitting high above him and coldly tell him he had brought it on himself.
ps: The whole story is sweet, with some spice in the middle. The protagonist has an emotional disorder! An avoidant personality! He will never take the initiative! The spice also comes from the main gong's perspective and other perspectives. Everyone has a secret or open crush on him, with frequent romantic battlefields in the middle.