My sister, whom I raised, has turned evil after faking her death for three years.

When Wu Yue walked into the inpatient department lobby with the two spotted apples in his pocket, the fluorescent lights at the front desk made the marble floor look eerily white.

The nurse on the night shift was looking down at the handover log when she heard footsteps. She looked up and saw him. She jumped up from her chair, the chair legs scraping against the floor tiles with a sharp, piercing sound.

"Mr. Wu! Where have you been? Why aren't you answering the phone!" The nurse's voice was urgent and shrill, echoing against the walls in the quiet night. "Aunt Yin has had an accident; she's in the operating room being resuscitated..."

Wu Yue could no longer hear what she said after that.

He took off running upstairs, his knee hitting the stair railing, which made him stagger in pain, but he didn't stop.

The corridor, the rooftop, the operating room—he had run this route countless times, always slowly walking with a thermos in his hand. This was the only time he actually ran.

As he stumbled around the last corner, the red light above the operating room door went out right in front of him.

The lamp went out quietly, without a sound or warning; it simply dimmed without a trace.

The door was pushed open from the inside, and the surgeon came out, taking off his mask as he looked up.

He paused for a moment when he saw Wu Yue.

This doctor has worked here for nearly twenty years and has witnessed too many life and death events, as well as too many family members who are panicked or indifferent in the face of death.

The only exception was the gray-haired man before them, who had stayed by his wife's bedside for over a decade, rain or shine, without ever uttering a single complaint.

He had seen Wu Yue sitting in the ward at three in the morning, holding his wife's hand; he had seen him ask about the side effects of each medicine in detail every time he got it; he had seen him sitting hunched over on a bench in the corridor, his hands clasped together and his forehead pressed against his chest, when his wife was wheeled into the chemotherapy room—the posture was always exactly the same.

He had seen people who could take such meticulous care of a terminally ill patient for more than a decade, but they were few and far between.

Even fewer people can do it without any complaints.

"Mr. Wu..." the doctor's voice was low, as if afraid of startling something, "The patient attempted suicide by cutting her wrists in the ward. When she was found, she had already lost too much blood. Her physical condition was extremely weak, and multiple organ functions were on the verge of failure. Despite all efforts to resuscitate her, she was unable to regain a spontaneous heartbeat..."

He paused, then slowly uttered the words he had said countless times throughout his career but never quite felt comfortable with: "Time of death, 9:53 AM... My condolences."

Wu Yue stood there, his hands still in his pockets, his fingers still clutching the two spotted apples.

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

The corridor was quiet, and the shadow of the potted green ivy outside the operating room remained motionless under the fluorescent light.

How could this be... How could she commit suicide? She was perfectly fine when he left. She was leaning against the headboard, looking out the window, the morning light shining on her face, and she even gave him a slight smile.

She was just a little colder than usual, said a few things that confused him, told him to leave, and just wanted to be alone for a while... How could she possibly commit suicide?

"We called you to let you know..." the doctor said softly, looking into his eyes, "but your phone was always switched off."

Shutting down...

  

He recalled Cui Jiayi's incessant chatter in the tea room, how he secretly pressed the power button on the side of her phone while she was looking down at her bag, and how he breathed a sigh of relief when the screen went dark.

He turned off his phone because he didn't want to be bothered by that woman's calls anymore, and because he didn't want to hear those same old hypocritical platitudes anymore.

He didn't even respond to the doctor; he just staggered and shoved open the operating room door and rushed in.

The operating lights were off, and the room was dimly lit, with only the spare light in the corner still on, shrouding everything in a thin, yellowish mist.

Yin Wan lay quietly on the operating table, covered with a white sheet, her eyes closed, her face pale, and her lips slightly white, as if she were just asleep.

Every time he came to the hospital, she would be sleeping peacefully like this. Then he would sit on the chair by the bed and wait for her to wake up. When she opened her eyes from her light sleep and saw it was him, she would give a very faint smile.

Today she didn't smile, didn't open her eyes, and didn't call his name in that soft, gentle voice.

Her wrist was wrapped in thick white gauze, and dark red bloodstains were faintly visible underneath.

On the nearby equipment table was a transparent sealed bag containing a bloodstained knife.

The bloodstains on the blade had dried to a dark brown color, and fingerprints and bloodstains remained on the handle that had not been wiped clean.

That was the knife he used to peel apples for Awan; it was the knife he casually placed on the bedside table after peeling the apple that day.

He slowly bent down and reached out to hold her fingers that were resting on the edge of the bed.

The hands he had held for a lifetime had joints that were slightly deformed due to long-term malnutrition, and the skin was so thin that you could see the blood vessels underneath.

Her fingers were cold, colder than ever before, and the chill spread from his fingertips all the way to his heart, making him feel as if his whole body was freezing inch by inch.

He pressed her hand against his face, trying to warm her with his body heat, but she could no longer feel it.

He had held those hands for forty years. He remembered how soft they were when they were young, how they trembled slightly when he put on his wedding ring, how they knitted him a scarf in the rented room, and how they brought him a bowl of hot soup every night when he came home late.

Now they lie quietly in his palm, never to grasp him again.

"Ah Wan..." he called her name, his voice so soft as if afraid of waking her. "Ah Wan, open your eyes and look at me. I bought your favorite apples, the kind from Huaniu, the kind you said you wanted to eat."

He took the apple out of his pocket and placed it beside her pillow. The apple was bright red, her favorite color.

"You said you wanted to eat it, why didn't you wait for me to come back... why didn't you wait for me to come back..."

His voice finally cracked, as if something inside his chest had suddenly shattered, with fragments piercing his throat, rendering him speechless.

He knelt down by the bed, his knees buckling, burying his face in her palms, his shoulders trembling violently, a suppressed, broken growl escaping his chest like that of a wounded beast.

The sound echoed back and forth in the empty operating room, shattering the leaves of the potted green ivy in the corner, breaking the glass of the clock hanging on the wall, and causing the dim yellow light to sway gently.

The doctor stood silently at the door, watching the elderly man with gray hair kneeling beside his wife's bed, watching his trembling shoulders and his hand tightly gripping his wife's fingers, without going forward to disturb him.

He had witnessed many deaths here; some passed away peacefully, some in haste, some were surrounded by weeping relatives, and some were left all alone.

But he had never seen a farewell like this before.

He turned around and gestured to the nurse next to him to take the document inside.

The nurse took a folded piece of paper from the patient's file folder, walked into the operating room, and gently placed it next to Wu Yue. She said in a low voice, "This was found under the pillow when I was sorting through the patient's belongings. It should be a note for you."

Wu Yue slowly raised his head and took the paper.

The paper was ordinary A4 paper, folded once, and the edges were a little wrinkled.

It was a handwriting he recognized.

Every stroke of the characters above trembled, and every hook was written with great effort, as if the writer was using all his strength to carve each stroke onto the paper.

"Ah Yue, by the time you read this letter, I should already be gone. Don't be sad, don't regret it, and don't blame anyone. This is my own decision. I know my body; I should have passed away long ago. You've allowed me to live for so many more years. I remember telling you that the luckiest thing in my life was marrying you. But I can't keep pretending I don't know those things anymore. Ah Yue, you made a mistake, and a mistake is a mistake, no matter who it was for, no matter how many hardships you had. I don't want you to become that kind of person because of me. You should be the Ah Yue I first knew—upright, kind, and even if life is hard, you wouldn't do anything against your conscience. Go and confess. Tell them what happened, and let that child go back to where she belongs. Promise me you'll live well. Just for my sake. Okay?"

The strokes of the last line trembled violently. The word "I love you" was crossed out once and then rewritten next to it, as if she felt that her writing was too ugly, or as if she was afraid that the three words were not solemn enough and could not encompass all her feelings for him over the decades.

Wu Yue held the paper and read it word by word.

His tears had all dried up, leaving only the crisscrossing tear tracks on his face, which gleamed faintly in the dim light.

He was wrong, very wrong.

He once valued his pride so much, and cared so much about not being inferior to others in front of his master. He would rather do that heinous thing for Cui Jiayi than ask Jiang Mingyuan for help.

In retrospect, all that so-called dignity and pride was just an excuse he used to comfort himself; it was all a joke.

He thought he was being good to Awan, making decisions for her in everything, and never asking her if she actually wanted this kind of treatment.

She's so kind and gentle, she even buys extra bunches of vegetables that others can't sell at the market. How could she possibly live as if nothing happened after knowing what he did to the Jiang family?

He should have thought of it long ago, he should have understood it long ago.

When she told him to leave, she had already decided to use her own death to force him to turn back, and to use her life to repay the debt she believed she owed to the Jiang family.

She used that fruit knife to cut her wrist, cutting off all the self-deceiving excuses he had made over the years.

Wu Yue pressed the suicide note to his chest, lowered his head, and buried his face in Yin Wan's cold palm, the same posture he had adopted during their last meeting.

But this time, he would never hear her call his name in that extremely soft and gentle voice again.

The cold air in the operating room was still blowing silently, scattering his suppressed, broken cries into every corner.

The two spotted apples lay quietly beside Yin Wan's pillow, red and round, just as she had described.

For the first time in his life, he bought her the right thing, but she could never eat it again.