All the pre-operative preparations were already quite sufficient.

So there was nothing more to consider. If even this level of human effort was not enough to dispel the dark clouds, then everything could only be attributed to fate.

…Although that’s what they said.

Although that’s what they said, Dean Xun still came to the hospital early in the morning, arriving outside the operating room ahead of time.

Xun Zhen personally signed the surgery consent form. He was quite interested in the two characters “Ming Chi” on it. After asking about the situation, he jokingly called him Captain Ming and shamelessly tried to reserve a few tickets for the popular holiday cruise routes.

The Ming family’s new captain was lying in the preparation room, most of his face covered by an oxygen mask, his consciousness already a bit blurry. Still, his ears turned red bit by bit, and he smiled at him with curved eyes.

…

The doctors and nurses had experience with countless surgeries, and the procedures progressed in an orderly manner.

From sending the patient into the pre-op room to the red “In Surgery” light turning on, it was only half an hour.

Xun Zhen paced back and forth in the corridor outside the operating room. On his tenth lap, he was finally stopped by Ming Lu. “Dean Xun.”

Xun Zhen immediately stopped. “Sorry…” After he said it, he came back to his senses and smiled helplessly. “I’m just too nervous.”

Ming Lu naturally understood and spoke kindly, “Please rest assured. No matter the outcome of the surgery, the Xun family will not be implicated.”

Xun Zhen nodded, speechless. “I know.”

If, in the beginning, handling Mrs. Luo according to Ming Weiting’s instructions was indeed for the sake of the Xun family, then the things Xun Zhen did later were not entirely for those reasons.

The dean of a hospital hopes for a successful surgery. A meticulously assembled medical team facing a surgery of considerable difficulty is like facing a final, critical exam.

After so much preparation, so many discussions and studies, no one wanted to fall short at the last moment… besides.

“Besides,” Xun Zhen said, “I personally want him to get well too. Having been his doctor for so long, once he recovers, perhaps I’ll have the chance to be his friend.”

Ming Lu smiled, “You’re welcome anytime.”

“When the young master is well, the master wants to invite him out to sea for a while,” Ming Lu said. “Dean Xun has secured his ticket, so you can be our guest anytime.”

Xun Zhen knew he still had to fight for the ticket himself and nodded with a wry smile. “I definitely will… By the way, Steward Ming.”

“He asked me to give this to you and to ask you to keep it for him.”

Xun Zhen took out a letter and handed it to Ming Lu. “If everything goes smoothly, please keep it for him forever.”

Ming Lu nodded and took the letter. “Is it for the master?”

“No, he said the one for the master is hidden on the computer.” Xun Zhen shook his head. “He made a small program. You have to score ten million points in Subway Surfers to unlock it.”

When Xun Zhen was examining Luo Chi at the time and received this rather special request, he couldn’t help but ask what would happen if Mr. Ming found someone to play for him.

…

The resourceful Young Master Luo seemed to be quite devastated. The doctor brought by Xun Zhen had already finished all the examinations, but Luo Chi was still sitting on the bed, deep in thought, considering whether to add a camera component for facial recognition.

But time, after all, was too short.

At that time, there was only one day left before the surgery. Luo Chi really didn’t have time to get a suitable component, nor did he have time to modify the program again.

Time was just too short. Luo Chi had already done everything he could to seize the time, finally sprinting all the way here to hand over the most cooperative version of himself to them.

So Xun Zhen thought, perhaps this was also why, no matter what, he really wanted to cure him.

“So he also wanted to ask you to… supervise.” Xun Zhen never dreamed that this word would one day come out of his mouth, and be connected with the three words “Mr. Ming.”

He was passing on a message for someone, half nervous and half relishing the words. “Supervise Mr. Ming… to make sure he does it himself.”

Ming Lu was speechless. “No need.”

Xun Zhen was taken aback. “What?”

“No need to supervise,” Ming Lu’s expression was gentle. “How could the master not do it himself?”

Xun Zhen was stunned for a moment, then turned his head to look at the long bench in the corridor.

He saw the figure sitting there. It seemed that from the moment the operating room door closed, that figure had been sitting there.

…

Coming back to his senses, Xun Zhen realized that Ming Lu had already put away the letter.

Ming Lu was asking him, “Who is the letter for?”

“For the people outside. He said he hadn’t thought of this before.”

Xun Zhen said, “But it’s not urgent. As long as everything goes smoothly, this won’t be needed.”

These were things Luo Chi had only decided to prepare yesterday during the final pre-operative preparations and check-ups. He had been struggling these past few days about whether it was necessary. Right before the surgery, he decided to be completely safe and dictated this letter.

He had a night to chat with Mr. Shadow, so now he was seizing the time to handle other matters.

The night before a major surgery, it’s almost inevitable for the patient and their family to experience an explosion of anxiety and tension.

When Xun Zhen brought people to examine Luo Chi, he also specially brought a professional psychological counselor for pre-operative guidance. In the end, the biggest contribution the counselor made was helping to write this letter down on paper.

“If I don’t wake up,” Luo Chi sat on the examination table, “then in a few years, I’ll have to trouble Uncle Lu to find a suitable time… if they still run to the seaside late at night to wait for the sunrise.”

Luo Chi thought carefully, “By that time, their work and families should be very stable, and their careers should have pretty much reached the height they wanted to reach… Looking at this then probably won’t be sad.”

Luo Chi thought for a while and added, “It’s okay to be a little sad. If they still feel sad, just have Fang Hang teach his son to call me little uncle.”

Xun Zhen was looking at Luo Chi’s examination results. Hearing the message Luo Chi was dictating to the psychological counselor, he looked up.

Luo Chi was leaning on the examination table, his chin resting on his arm, hugging his bent right leg, with his left leg dangling and swinging slowly.

He was in a blue and white striped patient gown. The size was specially adjusted for EKG monitoring, so it was definitely ill-fitting.

The slightly loose collar of the patient gown opened up, making him look younger in this posture, almost like the most normal, ordinary young man.

Luo Chi was thinking about those people’s future work and lives, speaking slowly with longing and anticipation. At the end, he sighed with a serious, steady, and world-weary air.

The super steady and world-weary Young Master Luo sighed, rested his chin on his arm, and thought with his head down for a long time, muttering, “I really want to be a little uncle.”

…

So Xun Zhen thought.

No matter what, he had to find a way to cure this person.

Ming Lu nodded, taking note of the message Luo Chi had asked Dean Xun to pass on.

He also understood why Xun Zhen was saying this at this point in time—once the surgery was over, no matter the outcome, they would probably have no mood at all to deal with these things.

…Besides, this period of time was just too difficult to endure for everyone, both inside and outside the operating room.

So difficult that it always made people want to do something to distract themselves, to actively think about other things to block and ignore the thoughts that constantly flooded their minds.

Even Ming Lu, in fact, was a little restless, which was why he had come to stop Xun Zhen for a few words.

Ming Lu thanked Xun Zhen. He returned to the long bench. Ming Weiting was still sitting in his original spot.

He noticed Ming Lu’s footsteps and looked up. “Uncle Lu.”

“Master.” Ming Lu sat down at the other end of the bench. He noticed Ming Weiting was operating the computer and tentatively asked, “Are you reading the young master’s letter?”

Ming Weiting shook his head. “Whatever he has to say, he will say it to me personally.”

The letter and the small program Luo Chi left were only for that one possibility. Hoping that in the worst-case scenario, it would still give him something to do, to pass the time, so he wouldn’t spend all that time thinking about one person.

He was aware of this, but he just didn’t want to consider that possibility right now, because Luo Chi was using all his effort to desperately try to live.

So he was helping him think too.

“I was just thinking, this feeling is really not good at all.”

Ming Weiting said, “So he must forget it.”

Ming Lu was stunned for a moment before realizing what Ming Weiting was talking about—the night Mrs. Ren was rushed to the emergency room, Ren Chenbai had fainted from the shock, but Luo Chi had stayed awake, waiting.

Luo Chi stayed awake and waited for the worst outcome. He went to bear this result as Mrs. Ren’s child, to bear the displaced anger of others who had lost a loved one, to bear the bewilderment of losing everything, and fell into the bottomless abyss of a nightmare.

Luo Chi’s best dream was falling asleep on the beach and being woken up by Mrs. Ren. The day he boarded the ship, when Ming Weiting found Luo Chi on someone’s behalf, it was also on a beach.

Lying on the beach, Luo Chi no longer had Mrs. Ren by his side, only a cold, dark night so thick it couldn’t be dissolved.

Ming Lu slowly nodded. “He should forget.”

If Mrs. Ren knew what happened later, she would definitely have done everything she could to make Luo Chi forget it all completely.

“I’m organizing the experiences of these past few days.”

Ming Weiting brought the topic back, his gaze also returning to the computer. “When he wakes up, and pursues his idol again, he can use this as a reference.”

Ming Lu tentatively made a questioning gesture. Seeing that the master didn’t mind, he got up and walked around to the other side to bend over and look.

Ming Weiting’s notes also had a very clear personal style. Rational, precise, meticulous. He had organized all independent and non-independent events according to a timeline and had even rigorously scored each event.

Anything scoring below 75 was placed in a pending column, and failing scores were deleted directly. As for events scoring 85 or above, they were specially marked and then categorized by color.

Ming Lu really couldn’t help his curiosity. “Master, what is the scoring standard?”

“How happy he was,” Ming Weiting said. He was stuck on scoring the event of having Cantonese-style dim sum for breakfast. “He seems to be very happy no matter what he eats.”

Ming Lu thought about it carefully and found that it was indeed true. “Perhaps it’s because the young master just really likes to eat.”

Due to his illness and medication, Luo Chi actually had a hard time eating much these days.

Ming Lu had the kitchen prepare snacks and small meals at all times for him to eat in small, frequent portions, and the diet was kept as light as possible. Although most of the time he would inevitably vomit due to severe headaches, Luo Chi still looked forward to meals with great enthusiasm every day.

Ming Weiting seemed to feel good about this sentence. He chuckled softly and added “likes to eat” to the information column of his groupie notes.

A conclusion reached by two people discussing is always more thorough than one person working in isolation.

Ming Weiting showed the other content to Ming Lu and revised it according to his suggestions. He spent over an hour perfecting these notes, then handed the computer to Ming Lu to keep safe, leaned back against the chair, and closed his eyes to rest for a bit.

Ming Lu said in a low voice beside him, “Master, it will still be a while before the surgery is over.”

Ming Weiting nodded.

These past few days, whenever he was free, he would find something related to being a groupie to do. Now, even the identity documents and passport for “Ming Chi” have been properly handled.

The Ming family has always been on the high seas. The high seas do not belong to any sovereign territory. People who join the Ming family also become stateless. As long as they have a passport, they can go wherever they want.

If in the future they wanted to settle down somewhere for a long time, and the young master of the Ming family picked a place he liked, that could be changed too. Everything could be decided at will when the time came.

He couldn’t find anything else to do, so he could only speak. “Uncle Lu.”

Ming Lu sat down beside him. “Master, we can talk at a time like this.”

“Talking makes one feel better,” Ming Lu said. “Time won’t pass so slowly either.”

Ming Weiting nodded. “We talked a lot last night.”

Last night, although Luo Chi didn’t sleep late, they started talking very early, when the new moon had just climbed into the deep blue sky.

Luo Chi didn’t talk about himself anymore. They talked about life at sea, about whether it would be lonely to live on a ship and an island for a lifetime, and also about what Mr. Shadow was like as a child.

He had never met a better listener than Luo Chi—being watched so intently by those eyes, the light in them constantly changing with what you were saying, even the most inarticulate person would involuntarily want to say more.

“I told him my life was monotonous,” Ming Weiting said, then suddenly let out a short, soft laugh. “He suddenly started reciting ‘I hunt chickens; men hunt me’.”

Ming Lu was a little curious and asked, “What is that?”

“It’s from a children’s book. I happened to say a line from it.”

Ming Weiting explained, “Then we searched for the book online together. He said he wanted me to read it to him. I knew it was because he really didn’t have the strength to chat with me anymore.”

So Ming Weiting sat by the bed and read that book.

He rarely read fairy tales and didn’t understand the narrative techniques of stories. He didn’t understand why there would be a planet with only one little boy, or why this boy would wander around because of a rose.

But the part where the boy met the fox was indeed very appealing to him. This was the part Luo Chi had suddenly recited, “My life is monotonous. I hunt chickens; men hunt me.”

The fox invites the boy to tame it. They patiently become friends over time, getting closer, and closer each day.

Then, at the moment the boy leaves, the fox loses a friend and gains the color of the wheat.

Luo Chi had consumed too much energy during the physical examination and pre-operative preparations. There was almost no color in his face. He lay on the bed with a nasal cannula, one hand held by him.

He saw the quiet rise and fall of Luo Chi’s chest and thought he was already asleep, so he finished reading that part of the story by himself.

Then he started reading about the fox and the boy’s first meeting. When he got to “Once you have tamed me,” Luo Chi suddenly interrupted him, “Mr. Shadow.”

Ming Weiting stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“I remembered,” Luo Chi said. “I don’t really like this story. We can switch to another one.”

“Okay,” Ming Weiting closed the page and typed “bedtime story” into the search bar. The hospital’s internet was not very good. Before the page loaded, Ming Weiting asked him softly, “Why don’t you like it?”

Luo Chi thought for a moment. “Our personalities don’t match.”

Luo Chi remembered this story because Auntie Ren had read it to him. But when Auntie Ren read it to him, Luo Chi found that his own thoughts were different from the story’s.

Of course, the story wasn’t wrong. Everyone has their own choices and attitudes, and one certainly can’t judge it out of its context. It was a very good story; it was just that their personalities didn’t match.

…

He thought, if he met a fox, he wouldn’t go and tame it.

They wouldn’t tame each other, but they would be friends, be family, live together. There would be no moment of separation, nor would it just leave the fox with the color of the wheat.

He would roll around in the wheat fields with the fox.

Luo Chi finished saying these words softly. Lying in his palm, he opened his eyes. “Mr. Shadow.”

Mr. Shadow was right by the bed.

One of Ming Weiting’s hands was under Luo Chi’s head and neck. The other hand came up and gently touched Luo Chi’s eyelashes.

Ming Weiting looked into Luo Chi’s eyes. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, only felt that it seemed impossible to tolerate doing nothing, saying nothing, and just letting time slip away so quietly.

“I would like to have this honor,” he finally said to Luo Chi. “I want to roll around in the wheat fields with you.”

Luo Chi’s eyes curved, and he mimicked Mr. Ming’s serious tone, “I would also like to have this honor.”

“I want to roll around too,” Luo Chi closed his eyes and buried his face in his palm. “The wheat is useful to me.”

Luo Chi said softly, “Mr. Shadow, I want to eat wheat bread after the surgery.”

…

The sound of hurried footsteps broke the silence of the corridor. Ming Lu stood up abruptly and met Xun Zhen who was running over.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Xun Zhen knew what they were most concerned about and started with the most important thing. “Blood transfusion from the blood bank. The amount of blood used was more than we expected, but it’s completely under control and within the contingency plan.”

Luo Chi’s body had been too severely damaged. The reason they didn’t operate immediately was to adjust his physical condition to a state that could support the surgery. Otherwise, with Luo Chi’s condition at that time, he might not have even survived the operating table.

But if one considered not just the chance of survival, but also the quality of life, this kind of physical conditioning could not be dragged on for too long.

The longer the brain tissue was compressed, the worse the long-term prognosis. To allow Luo Chi to recover to the best possible state, a choice had to be made between the two.

Even with numerous pre-operative physical examinations, it was difficult to completely predict Luo Chi’s physical condition after the craniotomy. The blood loss was more than they had calculated, but the blood bank was already well-prepared.

Ming Lu knew the priorities. He just nodded and quickly stepped back, leaving the passageway for the nurses and doctors who were rushing in and out.

Ming Lu returned to the side of the long bench. He bent down and, just like five years ago when the previous master of the Ming family had encountered a shipwreck, he placed his hand on Ming Weiting’s shoulder.

“Master,” Ming Lu said, “it’s alright. Xun Zhen found the best doctors.”

Ming Weiting nodded and said in a low voice, “I know.”

Ming Lu felt his shoulders and back were stiff. At this moment, Ming Lu suddenly realized something. He remembered the mother that the master probably had almost no impression of—the previous master’s wife had passed away too early, so Ming Weiting didn’t know much about the past.

…It was a rather chaotic conflict on the high seas.

The previous Mr. Ming had almost stumbled off the ship, holding his wife who was covered in blood and unconscious. He waded through the water and jumped ashore, clutching Ming Lu’s arm tightly. “She’ll be fine… She’ll be fine.”

…

Ming Weiting sat motionless. He seemed to still be expressionless, his demeanor calm, but his gaze remained fixed on the door of the operating room.

“He will be fine.”

Ming Weiting said, “Uncle Lu, I promised him I would make him wheat bread.”

“He can forget everything, not remember me at all, it’s okay,” Ming Weiting said. “No need to read letters, no need to look for clues. I will go after him.”

Ming Lu didn’t say anything, just pressed his shoulder firmly.

They waited outside the door. The emergency rescue from the surgical plan unfolded before their eyes, but it was not as chaotic as in Ming Lu’s memory.

Everything was prepared for in the most thorough manner, and the most urgent situations had the most detailed contingency plans.

The duration of a craniotomy is usually quite long, not to mention that the goal was to remove a tumor in a particularly complex location within the brain.

Xun Zhen had been nailed outside the operating room the whole time. He discussed with the doctors who came out for rotation for a long time, then came to explain to Ming Lu that the patient’s physical condition was both worse and better than they had expected.

Worse because the patient had been misused with too many drugs before, and his body had developed a resistance to anesthesia. The anesthetic effect wore off midway, leading to untimely pain suppression and more blood loss than expected. Better because the patient’s body had indeed been conditioned to the best possible state it could currently reach, and his own will to live was also quite strong.

The surgery continued for another four hours after that. The blood bank sent in blood twice more. The sharp sound of instruments could be heard continuously when the door opened, and blurry figures could be seen moving quickly through the glass door.

Four hours later, the surgery ended. The sun outside the window happened to be at its brightest, and the sunlight streaming in through the window was so dazzling it made one’s vision go white.

As soon as the red “In Surgery” light went out, Ming Weiting stood up.

He had been sitting on the bench for too long. He paused in place for a few seconds to make sure he had regained control of his body, then quickly walked to the door.

The doctor who came out still didn’t dare to relax completely, but his expression already showed a faint sign of relief. The chief surgeon nodded to Xun Zhen and quickly came over to explain to Ming Lu.

The surgery was very successful. All situations that arose had detailed contingency plans, and everything was handled in a timely manner. The patient’s vital signs did not fluctuate violently throughout the entire process. As long as his condition remained stable tonight without any complications, he could be transferred back to the ward for recovery soon.

Ming Lu took note of the doctor’s instructions and quickly went over to explain to Ming Weiting, but stopped as he got closer.

The surgical bed was being pushed all the way to the intensive care unit. The anesthesiologist needed to let the patient resume spontaneous breathing. The person on the bed was briefly awakened. His eyelashes fluttered with difficulty a few times, and he finally opened his eyes slightly, his dazed gaze slowly sweeping across the crowd with effort.

Ming Weiting’s steps did not pause. He just followed the hospital bed, accompanying him towards the ICU.

Those eyes saw him, but did not show a more familiar or clearer expression.

But they just blinked lightly, then very slowly, bit by bit, curved into a smile.