Marry by Relying on Favor: Chapter 76 - A Persistent High Fever
Chapter 76: A Persistent High Fever
After being ruthlessly rejected by He Qingchi, Qu Bixin never did get to experience Japanese culture and customs…
Don’t be fooled by the fact that she’d had surgery and found it inconvenient to go out—she still lived exquisitely in the hotel suite all day. Every morning she dressed up, even tidying her hair strand by strand. Her jet-black locks framed the delicate lines of her face, her lips painted with rouge lipstick. A small mirror in her pocket let her touch up her makeup at any time.
Compared to her, He Qingchi simply put on a smoky pink cheongsam-style nightdress, made do without makeup, and loosely pinned up her hair. When night fell, she would sit curled up on the sofa in the living room without even turning on a light, shoulders wrapped in a thin blanket, her pitch-black eyes fixed on the glowing movie screen.
Qu Bixin came out wearing a cherry-blossom pink yukata, carrying a fruit plate. With a glance at the screen, she couldn’t resist commenting: “The heroine Jess already died in a car accident with her son on the way to the pier. The whole film is just her trapped in an endless cycle of killing herself and her companions. The masked killer is Jess herself.”
He Qingchi had only just gotten through less than a third of this mind-bending film Triangle when Qu Bixin spoiled it for her. Her forehead ached in helplessness: “Shut your mouth.”
Qu Bixin smiled faintly and sat down: “What, you’re so timid you don’t even dare watch a crime flick? Did a ghost possess you or something? That’s a big leap.”
The living room was still unlit, only the faint glow of the TV illuminating the dark night.
When He Qingchi turned her head toward her, the black of her eyes looked almost frightening.
Seeing that, Qu Bixin finally turned on the floor lamp. Holding the fruit plate, she picked at cherry tomatoes with her fingertips.
He Qingchi kept watching. When a bloody scene came up, she forced herself not to look away, her lashes fluttering rapidly, her lips pressed tight until they paled.
Qu Bixin stayed with her until the end. By the time the movie finished, it was already ten at night. Then He Qingchi queued up another horror film, looking ready to pull an all-nighter.
Qu Bixin, lately careful not to stay up late for the sake of her eyes, yawned and stood: “You’re still watching? Don’t you dare crawl into my bed if you get scared tonight.”
He Qingchi ignored her, hugging a pillow to her chest.
The first step to overcoming fear is to face it head-on. She pushed herself until around three in the morning.
After three horror films full of gore, He Qingchi’s head was spinning. She wasn’t sure if it was from being underdressed or the heating in the suite being too low, but chills soaked through her body, and she even felt slightly nauseous.
At last, the movie ended. Fingers limp on her knees, she had no strength to start another.
Supporting herself on the sofa, she fumbled in the dark through Qu Bixin’s stash of medicines, hoping for painkillers.
Luckily, Qu Bixin was always well prepared. He Qingchi swallowed two tablets dry, as if already knowing she’d need them to survive the night.
She glanced sideways—the TV still froze on the heroine in a bloodstained white dress standing in the snow.
Even though He Qingchi had seen it countless times before, her heart still clenched tight. She forced herself to stand still, breathing deeply, staring straight at it for a full sixty seconds before walking over to turn it off.
After that, she went to shower. Hot water streamed down her pale skin, steam fogging the mirror until everything blurred. Slowly, the cold that had seeped into her bones lifted, warmth returning.
Pulling on a clean robe, she returned to the bedroom. She pushed open the door—
The curtains shut tight, no light seeping in.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She could still make out Qu Bixin sleeping soundly. She lifted the quilt’s edge and lay down, not too close, resting her forehead on the soft pillow, eyes closed.
Her mind was blank as she drifted off—no images from the films, no return of fear.
But in the latter half of the night, Qu Bixin stirred awake. Feeling stuffy under the quilt, she tried to push it aside, only for her limbs to brush against a soft, warm body.
Startled, she almost popped her newly operated eyes wide open. Switching on a light, she saw it was He Qingchi.
“I told you not to squeeze into my bed…”
She reached out to push her away, but He Qingchi lay curled up, unmoving beneath the blanket.
She didn’t wake, let alone respond.
Qu Bixin pulled back the covers—revealing black hair damp with sweat clinging to her pale neck, silk pajamas sticking wetly to her back.
That left Qu Bixin dumbfounded. She tried shaking her, but it was as if He Qingchi were stricken with a severe illness, completely unconscious. Touching her forehead, she felt the heat radiating.
She was burning up.
Realizing this, Qu Bixin quickly tucked her in, then scrambled for her phone.
It was still an hour until dawn. She rushed to the living room for a thermometer, boiled water, barely sparing a thought for her own eyes.
When she returned, she knelt by the bed and slipped the thermometer under the woman’s arm. Her clothes were drenched; leaving them on would only make her colder. So Qu Bixin stripped off the soaked robe without hesitation.
She bundled her tightly in blankets, no air allowed in.
hen she dug out a long-sleeved pajama set and wrestled her into it. Breathless, she muttered under her breath: “Pretty curvy… Wen Shuchen’s got it good.”
Still, He Qingchi’s skin was burning. Pulling out the thermometer, she saw it nearly at 40 degrees.
Qu Bixin felt tricked—as if she’d dragged this woman abroad to accompany her, only to end up playing nursemaid.
It wasn’t until around five in the morning, when dawn light crept through the window, that He Qingchi finally stirred a little. Her head was pounding, her whole body aching like it might fall apart.
Qu Bixin had just finished taking her temperature a second time, changed her into clean pajamas, and only then did the fever finally start to break.
“Hey? Are you still awake?”
Qu Bixin saw He Qingchi’s long lashes half-lowered and leaned closer to ask.
He Qingchi’s body was burning hot, but her fingertips were icy cold and limp, too weak to lift.
It felt like she’d had a nightmare in the second half of the night—blurred fragments she couldn’t quite recall, but that same familiar fear kept spreading inside her chest.
When Qu Bixin drew near, she heard her pale lips part faintly: “An old problem.”
“You don’t mean you get a high fever every time you watch horror movies, do you?”
He Qingchi didn’t have the strength to say much. Her throat was parched and hoarse.
Qu Bixin asked again: “Should I call an ambulance? What if you end up dying sick in a foreign country…”
“Give me a painkiller. It’ll pass on its own.” He Qingchi cut her off, her white-knuckled fingers clutching the quilt tighter to wrap her shoulders. Her black hair was messy and half-damp, revealing just the delicate outline of half her face.
She looked drained of color, the corners of her eyes still stained with a trace of moisture.
Hearing her breath grow more even, Qu Bixin hesitated, then compromised: “Are you sure painkillers even work? Fine—I’ll give you one. But if your fever keeps climbing, I am calling an ambulance.”
He Qingchi didn’t answer. Hours of high fever had already wrung her dry.
Qu Bixin fed her the pill with some boiled warm water, muttering: “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? I asked you to keep me company, and you conveniently fall sick. How am I supposed to explain this to your family?”
“Don’t tell my dad.” He Qingchi’s low voice came, eyes shut, but her mind still clear.
Qu Bixin, clothes disheveled, sat on the bed’s edge, deliberately keeping her talking so she wouldn’t slip into a dangerous sleep: “So this thing where you spike a fever every time you watch horror movies—when did it start?”
The bitterness of the pill lingered on He Qingchi’s tongue. Her breathing hitched for two seconds before her dark eyes opened, staring dazedly at the curtain’s shadow. Her voice was weary: “Six? Or seven? I can’t remember… When I was little, people thought I’d lost my soul from fright, and that’s why I burned up at night. But later it just kept happening. I guess it’s some kind of childhood trauma.”
Qu Bixin tilted her chin slightly, ready to comment: “People like you who bottle everything up are always a little twisted inside. Me, I’ve never had that problem.”
Since childhood, Qu Bixin had been He Qingchi’s opposite—snatching pretty dresses, dolls, candies. If she didn’t get them, she’d cry or play the pitiful act; if she got mad, she’d roll up her sleeves and lead her little gang to fight. She always put herself first.
But He Qingchi was different. If she disliked someone, she simply distanced herself quietly, carrying a cool aloofness that made her hard to approach, yet left others no excuse to openly fall out with her.
To Qu Bixin, people like that were always hiding baskets of secrets inside. It would be stranger if they didn’t grow up psychologically warped.
After a long silence, He Qingchi finally murmured: “You’re the twisted one.”
Qu Bixin gave a cold laugh: “If I were twisted, I’d have groped you when I changed your clothes earlier.”
He Qingchi raised her head to glance at her, then let her eyes flutter shut again.
After a moment, Qu Bixin asked quietly: “Am I too flat-chested? Is that why Shen Fu was so cold with me?”
He Qingchi couldn’t help opening her eyes again, looking at her: “You really want to know?”
On the surface Qu Bixin acted carefree, but her words never strayed far from Shen Fu’s name.
Deep down, she still couldn’t let go, yet her pride refused to admit it.
He Qingchi’s pale hand slipped from beneath the quilt, curling her fingers at her: “Give me your phone.”
Qu Bixin was slow-witted at that moment. She unlocked the screen and handed it over without thinking.
Her face was still bloodless, the phone’s glow shining on her features. Two minutes later, she returned it, curling back into the covers, voice faint and groggy: “I’ll sleep for a bit. You wait outside for the reply.”
“Re… reply?” Qu Bixin froze in confusion.
She lowered her head, and despite her unhealed eyes, she nearly popped them wide open, letting out a doll-like screech: “He Qingchi!!!”
On the messaging screen, He Qingchi had pulled up Shen Fu’s contact and briskly sent: [If I got implants and went from an A-cup to big breasts, would you still be cold to me?]
After the divorce, Qu Bixin had wiped all of Shen Fu’s contacts, but before leaving the country, after she’d pranked Shen Tingji, Shen Fu had used a new number to text her.
She’d been too angry to reply, but for some reason hadn’t deleted it either.
Now, it gave He Qingchi the perfect opening.
The message had gone through. Too late to retract.
Qu Bixin felt like screaming on the spot. She glared furiously at the woman curled under the quilt, already asleep, too sick to fight. She reached out halfway, wanting to drag her up and tear into her—but then thought of how much worse her condition might get, which would only leave her playing nurse again later.
“Fine! Once your fever breaks, we’re settling this!”
Grinding her teeth, she spat the words out, storming off with the phone.
The bedroom door slammed open, then closed softly.
With the annoyance gone, the room grew quiet again.
He Qingchi shut her eyes. Instantly, the nightmare returned—glass shattering into countless sharp shards rushing at her, slicing through her rigid body with searing pain.
She broke into a cold sweat, almost tasting the metallic tang of blood in the air, nausea rising.
Even asleep, it wouldn’t let her go.
She didn’t know how long she drifted, until faintly, she felt Qu Bixin return with medicine. A different taste on her tongue this time—maybe fever reducers. Some water at her lips. The door clicked shut again.
And once more, her world sank into endless darkness, her mind echoing with that mechanical, icy voice: “Run—run forward, run!”
In the end, He Qingchi endured a pain with no visible wound, a single tear sliding from the corner of her eye into her black hair, quickly soaked away by the pillow.
All day long, Qu Bixin had run back and forth just to feed her medicine at least five times.
She’d see He Qingchi’s fever subside, only for the next temperature check to show it had spiked again. Medicine made no difference. She even began to suspect she’d bought counterfeit pills.
By nightfall, Qu Bixin’s eyes were sore and dry. She dozed off on the living room sofa without realizing it.
When she woke again, it was already deep into the night. Picking up her phone, she saw the screen display: [11:50 PM]
“Crap, I overslept!”
She jumped up, grabbed the thermometer from the table, and hurried into the bedroom.
Three hours late with the check, Qu Bixin reached the bedside only to find He Qingchi completely unresponsive. Her delicate face had lost all color, her lashes didn’t even twitch.
With trembling hands, she felt for breath at her nose. It was so faint, she almost couldn’t detect it.
“Damn it—her fever went down to 37-35 in the day! If I’d known, I’d have called an ambulance. Could this old condition of hers actually kill her?”
Suddenly, Qu Bixin had no idea what kind of constitution He Qingchi had. Such a minor illness, yet she could burn with fever the entire day—even after medicine, it came back. If she actually died under her watch, that would be too horrific to imagine.
No longer daring to rely on just medicine, Qu Bixin bundled her tightly in the quilt. Whether He Qingchi could hear or not in her fevered haze, she said aloud: “I don’t even know how to call an ambulance in Japan. Hold on—I’ll go downstairs and have the hotel arrange a car.”
Blurting it all out in one breath, Qu Bixin dashed out in her robe, not even bothering to change clothes, hotel keycard in hand.
The moment the card was pulled from the slot, the entire suite plunged into deeper darkness…
She pressed the elevator button in the lobby. Living in the top-floor suite meant even the descent took time.
She tilted her head back to stare at the jumping numbers. The dryness in her eyes returned, and she didn’t dare rub them. Everything she looked at blurred as if through mist. At the 28th floor, the elevator suddenly stopped.
At the 28th floor, the elevator suddenly stopped. The doors slid open slowly, and in stepped a tall man in a deep gray suit.
Qu Bixin froze, lips blurting out: “President Wen?”
She never expected to run into Wen Shuchen himself at this Japanese hotel. Delighted and shocked, she grabbed his arm: “Are you here for He Qingchi? She’s dying!”
At her “President Wen,” his dark eyes narrowed, studying her closely.
But when she said He Qingchi was near death, his refined, handsome features shifted dramatically.
A second ago he’d been cool and detached, but his sudden change of demeanor made Qu Bixin cling to him as if he were a lifeline. Even when the elevator reached the ground floor, she didn’t step out—instead, she pressed the button for the top floor again, hurriedly explaining: “Her fever won’t break. I gave her fever medicine, cold medicine, even painkillers—nothing worked…”
“What nonsense have you been feeding her?” His voice carried a sharp edge of reprimand.
Qu Bixin looked aggrieved. But this man was the most prominent figure in Jiangcheng high society, nearly having acquired her family’s company—how could she dare talk back? She swallowed her frustration and said, “President Wen, your woman’s been burning with fever and I’ve been caring for her all day, okay? And it was she who asked for painkillers. How was I supposed to know she’d get worse at night?”
Now wasn’t the time to argue blame. His thin lips pressed together, and he said no more.
Qu Bixin had no time to admire his noble, composed bearing. Her own eyes burned unbearably dry, her fingertips hovering over them but not daring to rub.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. She led him inside.
Sliding the keycard in, the suite lights flickered on one by one.
In the master bedroom, He Qingchi lay quietly in the center of the bed. Illness had stripped away her usual aloofness—her face was as pale as the quilt itself. Her black hair, damp with sweat and half-dried, clung to her forehead and neck.
Qu Bixin’s steps lagged behind the man’s.
She noticed that the moment President Wen saw He Qingchi, his expression softened—so unlike the severity in the elevator. His gaze grew gentle despite himself.
“I really didn’t mean to make her fever this bad… Sure, I’ve had my spats with He Qingchi, but I wouldn’t go so far as to harm her life,” Qu Bixin defended herself, standing at the foot of the bed.
She’d always been blunt, never able to stomach even the smallest grievance.
She refused to silently shoulder such a crime.
The man said nothing, only lowered his head, long fingers brushing back the damp strands from her forehead. Then his palm pressed against her skin, gauging her temperature.
Perhaps it was the unfamiliar male touch that stirred He Qingchi from her fevered haze. Her eyes cracked open, vision blurred, and through the haze she seemed to glimpse Wen Shuchen, though she wasn’t sure.
He said nothing, but his grip suddenly tightened around her icy wrist, feeling the rapid, weak pulse beneath.
Days of pent-up emotion surged up in her, tangled with fever and delirium until nightmare and reality overlapped. She couldn’t tell what was real. Her fingers groped instinctively at his arm, but through the thin fabric of his shirt, the effort was futile.
“Wen Shuchen…” Her pale lips released the name in a soft, unconscious murmur.
The man froze like a statue by her bedside. He wasn’t unmoved, but something complicated flickered in his eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse, stripped of its usual clarity: “You’re seriously ill. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Yes, yes, the hospital’s what matters!”
Qu Bixin butted in, adding: “Whatever husband-and-wife talk you two need to have, save it for the hospital room—otherwise, you’ll be saying it in the morgue.”
The man slipped off his suit jacket to drape over He Qingchi.
Qu Bixin fished out a soft cotton blanket: “Use this, wrap her up completely against the wind.”
Having whispered Wen Shuchen’s name, He Qingchi fell back into fevered unconsciousness.
She allowed herself to be bundled tightly in the thin blanket, only her pale face left visible, breath shallow.
As Qu Bixin watched him carry her out, she grabbed her own bag and coat and followed.
This time, the elevator took them straight to the underground parking. Before getting in, Qu Bixin noticed him settling He Qingchi in the back seat. Standing outside, she pointed at the driver’s seat: “President Wen, you drive. I just had eye surgery—I can barely see the road.”
She could hardly even make out Wen Shuchen’s face, it was all a blur like severe nearsightedness—let alone drive at night.
“......”
The air hung still for a second before he moved.
Qu Bixin climbed into the back, carefully holding He Qingchi in her arms. When the car started moving, she gradually settled down. Ten minutes later, the silence weighed too heavy.
She looked at the man in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead, and tried to break it: “President Wen, what brings you to Japan this time?”
“Business.”
Just one word, simple as could be—clearly no desire for small talk.
Qu Bixin realized he was much harder to deal with than last time. Back then he’d still kept up a gentleman’s manners; now he was like a walking iceberg, every word clipped and measured, no trace of warmth.
Maybe he still blamed her for failing to take care of He Qingchi’s fever. Qu Bixin held back her temper for now. After a pause, she heard his voice again from the front: “When we get to the hospital, you take a taxi back to the hotel. From here on, I’ll take care of He Qingchi.”
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