Disobedience To Control chapter 43
If
That night, Li Ke arranged for two shift nurses and solemnly asked Song Siheng to go home and rest. It was the first time Song Siheng left the hospital.
Unknowingly, his clothes were soaked with the smell of disinfectant. His eyes were red, his eye sockets slightly sunken, and his chin stubble had grown wild, giving him a somewhat disheveled appearance.
He had originally planned to go back to his apartment to take a shower and sleep, but for some reason, he turned his head and drove to the suburban villa.
The cleaned suburban villa had been uninhabited for more than a month, and when he pushed the door open, it seemed even more desolate. The blinds in the living room were half open, and the cold white moonlight was cut into slender blades by the grilles, falling on the polished floor.
Two single sofas were separated by a distance of two feet, and the TV in front was pitch black.
Song Siheng only turned on one of the living room lights, finally giving the entire space a hint of warmth. After looking around, he walked downstairs along the stairs. The barbell plates in the basement gym were still not put back in place.
He glanced around and found some neatly arranged miscellaneous items on the table near the window of the gym. On top of them was a white box, flat and small.
Song Siheng suddenly felt that the box looked familiar. Last time during the villa’s cleaning, the cleaner probably forgot to take it away and left it here.
He walked over and picked up the box. He shook it lightly in his hand, and it rattled inside.
The surface of the box seemed to have been scraped by a key or something hard, and the black words were completely unreadable.
He opened the box and saw two blister packs of pills inside. One pack had six pills, and one pack had already been taken, leaving only the aluminum foil packaging. There were a few words written on the packaging with a neutral pen: Take two pills twice a day. It was Yang Xiaobei’s handwriting.
He had seen this box more than once, but he had never looked at it carefully.
He held the blister pack of pills, and his legs felt as heavy as lead. He slowly squatted down. There was no overhead light in the basement, only a faint light from the skylight.
Spring had arrived, and whether it was a wild cat or a squirrel that had entered the wall, it rustled and disturbed the peace all night long.
That night, Song Siheng slept lightly, dreaming all night.
In his dream, he returned to the old swimming pool that Yang Xiaobei had taken him to. However, this time, there was no warm sunset shining, and the entire swimming pool was extremely cold, with water seeping into the walls.
Song Siheng jumped into the seemingly bottomless pool alone, the water icy cold. He tried hard to recall the details of the freestyle stroke that Yang Xiaobei had taught him.
Raise elbows, high-elbow catch, shoulder rotation, hip rotation, thigh-driven leg kick.
He looked up and couldn’t see the pool wall. As he swam, he felt more and more exhausted, as if all his limbs were frozen, and his movements gradually became distorted. Then, a huge wave surged, and Song Siheng couldn’t lift his head to breathe. He was swept into the deep water in one fell swoop.
He was engulfed by the whirlpool, unable to breathe, unable to make a sound with his mouth open, unable to grasp a figure with his outstretched hand. Then came a strong sense of suffocation, as if someone was tightly gripping his throat.
Five seconds later, Song Siheng was awakened by the nightmare, his breathing rapid and unable to calm down. He stared blankly at the ceiling. The next second, he quickly grabbed his phone from the bedside and lit up the screen.
Phew—After seeing the screen clearly, he breathed a sigh of relief, there was no emergency call from the hospital.
At this moment, only one thought remained in his mind.
Yang Xiaobei, why haven’t you recovered yet? You haven’t fully taught me how to breathe during freestyle swimming.
The next morning, before seven o’clock, Song Siheng got out of bed. He cleaned himself up again, changed into a more comfortable set of sweatshirt and casual pants, and drove to the Jiangcheng University dormitory.
Jiangcheng University’s Riverside Branch Campus covered a large area, and compared to the main campus, the buildings were somewhat newer. On weekdays, the campus was filled with college students riding bicycles and wearing wireless headphones.
Song Siheng didn’t greet the security guard at the entrance but walked straight in with the crowd.
The boys’ dormitory was in the second row of buildings after entering the north gate, as mentioned by Yang Xiaobei’s teammate, in Building 7 at the end of the road. The sides of the road were full of students’ bicycles, and a few stray cats were prowling among the bushes, grooming each other’s fur.
The exterior walls of the dormitory were painted with low-saturation dark red paint, and the camphor trees in the small garden grew tall, their branches already reaching the height of the third floor. The doors of the dormitory building were wide open in the morning, and no one was on duty. Song Siheng walked directly into the boys’ dormitory.
The dormitories of the Sports College were on the top floor, and there was no elevator on the sixth floor. It took him some time to climb up.
Room 608 was at the end of the sixth floor, and the door was slightly open.
Knock, knock—
Song Siheng lightly knocked on the door, and a male voice came from inside.
“Someone’s here, come in.”
Song Siheng pushed the door open and walked in. There was only one male student in the dormitory, wearing a sports tank top and long pants. The dormitory faced south, and the morning sun shone in through the balcony outside. The room was very bright.
There were four beds on each side of the room, with lockers underneath each bed. However, it seemed that only two people lived in this room, as one bed was neatly made up, with nothing on it.
The person in the room quickly recognized Song Siheng’s appearance. “Ah, you’re the one who answered my call yesterday, right? What should I call you?”
“My last name is Song,” Song Siheng nodded to him.
“Oh, hello, Song ge,” he said, then leaned forward and asked, “Are you his real brother? You’re so handsome.”
“No,” Song Siheng shook his head.
“Sorry, I’m confused. Your last name is Song, and his is Yang. How could you be real brothers? Forget I asked.” The male student took out a sports jacket from the wardrobe and put it on.
“By the way, how is Xiaobei doing now? Have the test results come out?” he asked again.
“He’s… okay,” Song Siheng didn’t say much and instead looked around the room, changing the subject. “Which one is his desk?”
“Oh right, his stuff is just lying on the desk. You can take it directly,” the male student pointed to the desk under the neatly made bed.
Song Siheng turned sideways and walked to the desk. There was a parcel on the desk, looking very light. Without opening it, Song Siheng put it directly into his backpack.
“By the way, if he can’t come back in a short time, do you mind packing up his things and taking them away? So he won’t have trouble finding them when he needs them.”
“Okay, thank you,” Song Siheng nodded at him, then suddenly remembered something and stopped, “By the way, roughly when did he move out?”
The male student rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “It was just last month. It hasn’t been long. He used to come back regularly for classes and training.”
“Did he have any anomalies recently?”
“Anomalies? Nothing much, just that his training results have been unstable for the past few months. He even got scolded by the coach half a month ago.”
From the tone of his teammate, Song Siheng could tell that he probably didn’t know about Yang Xiaobei’s physical condition.
The male student suddenly looked at Song Siheng, “Hey, Song ge, do you think he got dumped by his girlfriend? Or got rejected after confessing?”
Song Siheng turned abruptly. “Girlfriend? Well, does he have a girlfriend?”
“Tsk, there are only two of us in the dormitory, and he often doesn’t come back at night. If it’s not a girlfriend, what else could it be? I know this kind of thing.”
After saying that, the male student leaned over and whispered, “His neck often looks red and purple. The first time I thought he was using cupping therapy behind my back. But then it happened every week, and we felt embarrassed to ask during training.”
Song Siheng cleared his throat and touched his earlobe. “Oh, really? I’m not sure.”
The male student chuckled, and the conversation ended there.
“Oh, don’t touch the drawer under his desk. He never lets me near it. If he comes back and sees things messed up, he’ll definitely scold me,” the male student bent over to tie his shoelaces, patting his pants ready to go out, “I’ll go to training now, you take care.”
He walked out, and the dormitory door was closed behind him. The small room was left with only Song Siheng.
In front of him, that drawer, unlocked but tightly closed, lingered in his mind.
He walked back to the desk, gently pulled open the drawer.
The drawer was deep, but there weren’t many things inside, neatly arranged in stacks.
On the top layer was a used desk calendar. Song Siheng picked it up and glanced at the cover, it was this year’s date. There were no marks in January, and when he turned to the next page, February 13th was circled in red. There was also a small birthday cake drawn next to it.
Song Siheng’s Adam’s apple moved, and he looked down without making a sound.
The next few pages were clean, and Song Siheng was about to close it and put it back when he suddenly saw several consecutive dates on the second to last page circled in red. There were no words written next to them, just the circles drawn meticulously, looking particularly heavy, as if they had been drawn several times over.
Song Siheng didn’t understand the significance of this series of dates, so he had to put the desk calendar back into the drawer.
Below that was a thin booklet. He took it out and found it to be a medical record, with three or four pages detailing Yang Xiaobei’s follow-up visits. The doctor’s instructions were illegible, but there were several medication lists mixed in, which matched exactly with the ones the hospital doctor had requested that day.
On the last page of the medical record was a piece of paper. Unlike the hospital’s documents, the paper felt completely different. Song Siheng unfolded the paper, but suddenly froze.
The contents of the paper were extremely familiar to him. Upon closer inspection, he found it to be a signed page of a car purchase contract. This contract had been kept in the drawer of his suburban villa’s study. It was the contract for the new car he bought for Fu Xuehua last year, which had been kept in his possession.
What surprised Song Siheng was that this paper didn’t contain any details of the contract; it was simply a page for the signatures of the parties involved. However, there were several words circled in black ink, with a question mark next to them.
“Buyer: Fu Xuehua.”
…
So, Yang Xiaobei, did he only see this when he went to the study at the villa?
Turning to the back of the paper, there were several unfamiliar names written in black ink. However, each one was crossed out, leaving only the name of Fu Xuehua. Song Siheng used his phone to open a webpage and searched for those names, only to find that they were all cardiac surgeons in Jiangcheng.
Yang Xiaobei had been searching for specialists who could cure him. But why did he refuse the doctor’s surgical advice when he went for follow-up visits? What exactly was his concern?
Song Siheng still had some doubts in his mind. Finally, he took a photo of the contents of the paper and put it back neatly.
As Song Siheng was about to put the medical record back into the drawer, his finger accidentally touched it, causing a light-colored envelope to suddenly fall out from the side of the drawer. He took it out, and as his thumb and forefinger touched, he felt that the envelope was very thin.
The envelope was not sealed with glue. He pinched the sides of the envelope, and it opened, causing two photos to fall out with a rustle. Song Siheng bent down to pick up the photos and flipped them over.
After just a glance, he was stunned.
The protagonists of these two photos were actually him.
The first photo showed his back. It was taken on a street at night, with the bustling night scene of North City beside him. Under the pink and golden neon lights, he was wearing a gray coat, walking along the roadside.
The second photo was taken from a distance. Inside an old swimming pool, with shimmering waves, Song Siheng sat by the poolside, his feet in the water. The orange sunlight from the glass roof shone diagonally, casting a perfect light on his hair.
In the blank space of the second photo, a faint word was written in pencil: “If.”