Disobedience To Control chapter 47
Overlapping Youth
Outside the operating room, there was a waiting area with three rows of long benches for family members to rest. Song Siheng sat alone in the last row.
In front of the waiting area, there was a huge display screen on the wall, scrolling the information of patients undergoing surgery and their real-time progress.
Last night before the surgery, Song Siheng specifically contacted Fu Xuehua to inquire about the approximate duration of the surgery. Fu Xuehua told him that if everything went smoothly, it could be finished in six hours.
Song Siheng glanced at his watch, and it was exactly ten o’clock in the morning.
Yang Xiaobei’s name appeared on the third row. After about ten minutes, the smaller text behind it finally changed from “preparing” to “anesthesia.”
That day, Sicheng had two important meetings, so Song Siheng couldn’t go to the company to attend. Li Ke arranged for him to join the meetings online. Song Siheng sat on a bench in the waiting area with his laptop on his lap, wearing wireless earphones to listen to reports from his subordinates.
At the beginning of the year, due to the EM’s theft of Sicheng’s new product plan, the R&D department worked intensively for a month to create a brand-new model. For this, Song Siheng paid a considerable bonus.
At the same time, Li Ke coordinated with various departments such as risk control and operations to strengthen the internal network security firewall and establish a strict sample borrowing process to prevent the leakage of unreleased sample models from happening again.
After the first meeting, there was a confidential tripartite meeting between Jin Shuming, Song Siheng, and Li Ke. Last month, under Song Siheng’s leadership, Jin Shuming met with the young master of the Lin family.
Interestingly, the first time the young master of the Lin family saw the seemingly dull Jin Shuming, he seemed to have found a treasure. That night he repeatedly praised Song Siheng, “Your acting general manager seems more like an intellectual than you do. I like to interact with knowledgeable people like you; it’s much more interesting than clubbing.”
Song Siheng also couldn’t understand why a young master who indulged in revelry every day would be interested in a bookworm like Jin Shuming.
Coincidentally, both of these men were drinkers. Jin Shuming, a geek with no private life, was also taken to the bar by the young master of the Lin family, and they drank until late into the night.
But the good thing was that after Jin Shuming took office, everything went smoothly with the help of the young master of the Lin family in all aspects, progressing even more smoothly than expected.
Jin Shuming rented an entire floor of brand-new offices by the riverside in Nanjiang. Young master Lin family connected him with a well-known interior designer in Jiangcheng to plan the office area’s decoration, and soon, he came up with a beautiful plan.
Regarding personnel arrangements, Jin Shuming also transferred a group of elite soldiers he had cultivated in the northern city to Jiangcheng. Then, through Li Ke, he contacted the media in the industry and released news that the executives of the northern branch of Sicheng had left with the core R&D team.
Soon, Xu Lang got wind of this so-called “inside information” and sent one of his market managers to find Jin Shuming, hinting at wanting to establish a cooperative relationship with him. Song Siheng didn’t expect Xu Lang to take the bait so quickly; his plan progressed faster than expected.
After the two meetings were over, more than an hour had passed. Song Siheng placed the laptop on the nearby chair and stood up to stretch his muscles. He looked up at the screen in front of him, and the text behind Yang Xiaobei’s name had changed from “anesthesia” to “surgery.”
After some thought, he picked up his phone and called Li Ke.
The call was quickly answered.
“Is there anything else you didn’t clarify during the meeting just now?” Li Ke was somewhat surprised to see his call.
“No,” Song Siheng pondered for a moment. “Keep a close eye on Ming’an Hospital. Song Qin might have contact with someone he’s bribed.”
“Understood. I’ve already contacted the caregiver at the hospital. If there are any suspicious characters visiting, I’ll be the first to know.”
“Good.” With that, Song Siheng ended the call.
Until the case was closed, Song Siheng felt like he was hanging on a knife edge and couldn’t sleep peacefully.
He stared at the screen for a long time without moving his gaze. Until suddenly, there was a noise behind him. When he turned around, he saw a little boy running past from behind. The boy was probably following his mother, running all the way, and the sound of his footsteps echoed through the waiting area.
Suddenly, Song Siheng fell into some kind of contemplation. Five minutes later, he picked up his laptop again, opened the search engine, and entered a few keywords.
He browsed through several pages of search results and finally found the video he wanted.
It was a video from the National Galaxy Cup Swimming Selection Tournament four years ago, in the men’s freestyle event.
This competition was not broadcasted live on television, so most of the videos circulating on the internet were shot by spectators, with unclear picture quality and shaky footage.
The video began with a quiet panoramic view of the venue, occasionally accompanied by some commotion from a corner. Then, the list of participating athletes appeared on the screen on one side of the venue. Song Siheng enlarged the screen and found “Jiangcheng, Ling Xiaobei” among the eight names.
He was placed in the fourth lane, indicating that his qualifying time was the fastest among all the athletes.
Soon, after several tens of seconds, the video showed one tall and thin boy after another, each looking immature. When everyone entered, they all kept their heads down without looking at the audience. Only Ling Xiaobei waved his arms vigorously towards the stands, showing his big teeth, looking like a famous swimming star.
“You conceited brat,” Song Siheng chuckled lightly, shaking his head.
At that time, Ling Xiaobei was only slightly shorter than he was now, and his tall and long-armed figure stood out among the crowd.
In the 100-meter race, athletes only needed to swim back and forth in the pool, with very little room for error. Therefore, the atmosphere was extremely tense at the start.
Ling Xiaobei placed his long arms in front of his body, slightly arching his back, with one leg in front and one leg behind, with the soles of his feet against the platform.
Beep! The starting gun sounded.
The eight athletes all jumped into the water together, and their reaction times at the start looked almost the same. But as they approached ten meters, some began to emerge from the water, and Ling Xiaobei’s advantage in the fourth lane became apparent.
Different from long-distance freestyle, athletes generally start kicking in the first stage of the 100-meter freestyle. Ling Xiaobei’s kicking efficiency was extremely high, like a rapidly rotating propeller. Soon, he took the lead by half a body length.
The boy’s body moved through the clear water of the pool, with his slender muscle lines constantly stretching, exuding a vibrant beauty.
In the first fifty meters, he touched the wall first, followed by a perfect turn. With the powerful force of his slender Achilles tendon, he looked like a beautiful flying fish racing towards the finish line.
The competitors behind him chased after him, and soon, the opponents from lanes four and five caught up, trailing him by only half an arm’s length. After five meters, the two began to alternate in the lead, making it difficult to distinguish between them.
Song Siheng’s palms even started to heat up slightly.
In the last ten meters, Ling Xiaobei seized the rhythm of the turn, held his breath, and surged forward with all his might.
Splash! The water surged, and he touched the wall before the swimmers in lane five.
The audience erupted into thunderous applause.
The camera cut to the display screen on the west side of the venue, where the words “Jiangcheng, Ling Xiaobei” appeared, followed by a string of extremely beautiful finishing times.
The camera cut back to him, already holding onto the buoy and emerging from the water, splashing water all around. He excitedly waved his hands towards the stands, smiling brightly and freely.
Song Siheng pressed the spacebar, freezing the frame at this moment.
The teenage boy at fifteen, full of vigor and vitality.
He looked up again, and on the wall in front of him, there were still only five words.
—Yang Xiaobei, surgery in progress.
He turned his gaze, looking through the window at the end of the corridor towards the sky. The flowing clouds dispersed, and the mist lingered, uncertain about tomorrow’s weather.
Song Siheng rewound the progress bar back to the first frame, and the video began to play repeatedly before his eyes. He didn’t even know how many times he had watched it.
Spring equinox was approaching, and the days were getting longer in Jiangcheng. Before the Spring Festival, the afternoon in Jiangcheng would start to darken around four o’clock, but now it was past five o’clock, and it was still not dark outside.
After more than ten minutes, a hint of orange clouds appeared in the sky, indicating the onset of sunset.
Until the twilight faded from the horizon, and the deep blue of the night emerged outside the window, Song Siheng glanced at the clock in the lower right corner of the computer screen. It was already past seven in the evening.
But Yang Xiaobei was still lying in the operating room. Nine hours had passed since ten in the morning, but there was still no news.
He got up and took two steps before sitting back down. The hospital was quiet at night. On the entire third floor, except for the operating room, there were only two examination rooms left. The doctors on duty had already finished their shifts, and there was no sound of footsteps in the corridor.
Song Siheng sat back on the bench, lowered his head, and opened the computer screen, clicking on that video.
After some time had passed, his eyes gradually became dry, and the screen’s flickering shadows danced. The teenager swimming swiftly in the water had gone back and forth in the lane countless times. The applause of the audience in the video seemed to be the ticking of a clock, reminding him of the passage of each minute.
At nine o’clock in the deep night, the window was completely dark outside. There were no stars that night, and the moon was obscured by clouds.
In the waiting area outside the operating room, only Song Siheng was left sitting on the rows of benches. The surgery had already exceeded nine hours. Song Siheng’s legs were almost numb from sitting for so long.
Suddenly, the minute hand on Song Siheng’s wristwatch moved forward one notch, and on the waiting area display screen in front of him, the line of text after Yang Xiaobei’s name also jumped down a frame.
—Surgery complete, waking up.