The Buddhist beads on her wrist had gone from a clear foreign presence to a background existence blending into her breathing, and now—like an invisible, burning brand.
Yan Hanxie's hoarse, broken apology and that sentence, "Wear them. Maybe they're more useful with you than with me," were like two burning coals thrown into the pool of dead water in Zong Yi's heart that had tried to freeze over.
She did not take them off again.
Whether bathing, sleeping, or attending those business occasions filled with clinking glasses and undercurrents.
The dark brown sandalwood beads rested against her pale wrist bone, becoming a detail that did not fit with her cold professional suits, yet one that no one dared to question.
Occasionally someone's gaze lingered there. She remained calm and natural, as if it were simply an extension of her body.
The tug-of-war over the 'Spark Project' entered its most brutal stage.
Competitors spared no cost to poach core technical personnel, trying to cut the firewood from under the pot.
Internally, because of continuous pressure and an uncertain future, fatigue and wavering emotions began to grow.
Zong Yi was like a piece of refined iron repeatedly hammered in the forge. On the outside she became colder and sharper, yet inside she was stretched so tight it hummed under the burden.
She slept less and less. Sometimes she relied only on concentrated coffee and willpower to last more than thirty consecutive hours.
The dark circles beneath her eyes could not be concealed even with the thickest concealer. She had grown extremely thin, and the suits that once fit her now hung loosely, leaving an empty swaying feeling.
Only when she drove alone late at night, or dozed briefly in the office at dawn, would she unconsciously rub the Buddhist beads on her left wrist again and again with the thumb of her right hand.
The rough wooden texture scraped against her fingertip, bringing a strange sense of stability that was almost self-abusive.
As if that cold touch and faint pain could temporarily anchor the nerves that were about to be torn apart by the storm.
Yan Hanxie did not contact her again.
The southern number fell completely silent, as if it had never rung.
Zong Yi also did not try to touch that number again.
Between them lay thousands of kilometers of distance, an unhealed serious illness, and a war still ongoing with an uncertain ending.
That late-night phone call and the two brief text messages were like stones thrown into the deep sea, their echoes quickly swallowed by darkness.
Until the eighty-ninth day after Yan Hanxie left.
It was an unusually oppressive afternoon. Dark clouds hung low, and the air was so thick it seemed possible to wring water from it.
Zong Yi was in the conference room, holding a tense closed-door meeting with the legal and risk-control teams, discussing strategies to respond to the opponent's latest round of patent litigation.
The atmosphere at the conference table was more oppressive than the sky outside.
Her private phone suddenly vibrated in her pocket.
Not the work phone.
She had intended to silence it, but when her fingertip touched the screen she caught a glimpse of the caller ID—it was her mother.
Her heart jumped inexplicably.
Her mother rarely called her directly during work hours.
She raised her hand to signal a pause in the meeting, stood up, walked to the corner window of the conference room, and answered.
"Mom?"
"Little Yi," her mother's voice came through the receiver, carrying an anxiety she tried to suppress but that still held an obvious choking sob, "Your father… your father suddenly fainted while exercising in the park! He's in the emergency room now. The doctor said it's an acute heart attack, the situation is very dangerous…"
The words that followed, Zong Yi could no longer hear clearly.
A buzzing sound filled her ears, as if something had exploded in her mind.
The dark clouds outside the window suddenly pressed down, and her vision went black for a moment.
She grabbed the cold window frame to barely steady herself.
"Which hospital? I'll come back immediately." Her voice was unexpectedly calm, even somewhat hollow.
She wrote down the hospital name and floor, then hung up.
She turned around, facing the room full of puzzled gazes.
The bright lights in the conference room stabbed painfully into her eyes.
"There's an emergency at home. I need to leave immediately." She spoke. Her voice was steady, but carried an unquestionable, almost mechanical coldness. "The meeting is postponed. For the follow-up response plan, prepare the third contingency we just discussed. Lawyer Li will take the lead. I want to see the detailed report by ten o'clock tomorrow morning."
No explanation. No extra words.
She picked up the coat from the back of her chair and the car keys on the table, then turned and walked out.
Her steps were steady, even faster than usual.
Corridor. Elevator. Parking garage.
She moved like a robot programmed with precise instructions, completing every action exactly.
Only after she sat in the driver's seat, closed the car door, and shut out all the noise and stares did her fingers gripping the steering wheel begin to tremble uncontrollably.
Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, hitting her ribs until they hurt. Her throat tightened, almost unable to breathe.
Father… acute heart attack… emergency room…
She suddenly started the car. The engine let out a low roar. The vehicle shot out of the garage like an arrow released from a bow, merging into the crowded afternoon traffic.
The sky could no longer hold back. Large raindrops began crashing down, quickly forming a violent curtain of rain.
The wipers swung frantically, yet the road ahead was still hard to see.
Traffic crawled like a snail. Harsh horns and flashing red taillights wove together into a chaotic sea of light and shadow.
Anxiety wrapped around her heart like a cold poisonous snake, tightening more and more.
She stared fixedly at the blurred road ahead, her nails digging deeply into the leather of the steering wheel.
When the car finally struggled past a congested intersection, the Buddhist beads on her wrist suddenly swung up as she sharply turned the wheel. Several beads knocked lightly against her wrist bone, sending a clear dull pain.
That pain was like lightning suddenly splitting open the chaos in her mind.
Almost without thinking, she freed one hand and reached for the private phone plugged into the charging cable beside the center console.
Her gaze remained locked on the road ahead, but her fingers moved quickly across the screen from memory and instinct.
She did not make a call. Instead she directly opened the chat window of that instant messaging app connected to the southern number, which she had almost never used.
The last conversation remained more than two months ago, when she had sent a 'Spark' briefing and the other side had replied:
[Very good.]
Her fingertips turned pale with force. In the shaking car and the violent rain, she trembled as she typed a few words:
[My dad heart attack. Emergency.]
Send.
There was no greeting, no context, no emotional description. Like a cold and cruel critical illness notice.
After sending it, she did not even have time to check whether it had been delivered before throwing the phone onto the passenger seat and gripping the steering wheel tightly again, rushing toward the next intersection.
Rain pounded wildly against the car. Thunder rolled deep within the clouds.
The air inside the car was hot and damp, mixed with the smell of her own cold sweat.
She did not know why she had sent that message.
Was it a subconscious plea for help?
A grasp at some illusory straw in the chaos?
Or… some instinct she herself could not understand, surfacing at her most vulnerable moment?
She only knew that at that instant just now, when she was about to be swallowed by overwhelming panic and helplessness, the image that flashed in her mind—besides her parents' anxious faces and the cold hospital corridor—was also… another pale and exhausted face, and the cold beads on her wrist.
The car struggled forward through the heavy rain and congestion.
Every minute and second felt like an entire century.
After who knew how long—perhaps only a few minutes, perhaps half an hour—
The phone she had thrown onto the passenger seat suddenly lit up, casting a faint blue glow that was striking in the dark shaking car.
Not a call.
It was a reply notification from that instant messaging app.
Zong Yi's heartbeat nearly stopped at that moment.
She slammed on the brakes. The car screeched against the wet road surface, barely stopping in the traffic.
Cars behind her honked angrily.
She ignored them, grabbing the phone in one motion.
On the screen there were only two words, from the account she had just sent the broken message to:
[Address.]
Simple and direct.
No comfort, no questions, not even punctuation.
Zong Yi's fingertips trembled so badly she could barely hold the phone. She quickly sent the hospital name and floor.
Message delivered.
Almost the instant it was delivered, a third message appeared on the screen:
[Don't panic. I'll arrange it. Focus on driving. Be careful.]
This time there were a few more words. The tone was still commanding, yet it carried a strange, convincing steadiness.
Immediately after that, her phone began vibrating repeatedly. Not messages—calls.
One after another, from different numbers she recognized or did not fully recognize.
The first was the chief physician of the cardiology department at the central hospital in her mother's city. His voice was steady and efficient:
"Miss Zong, correct? I've just received notice from higher authorities. We already understand your father's condition. The hospital's best specialist team is being assembled to take over. The emergency room is ready. Come directly to the 8th floor of Building 3. Someone will meet you."
The second was the property manager of the residential community where her family lived. His tone was respectful and efficient:
"Miss Zong, we have already sent staff to accompany your mother to the hospital. The vehicle and route have been arranged to ensure the fastest arrival."
The third call, the fourth call… there were people from the medical system, people coordinating traffic, and even a local business figure she had once briefly met at a high-end financial forum, rumored to have a powerful background, who politely said, "If you need anything, contact me anytime."
Every call precisely resolved one link she had no time to take care of at that moment, weaving into a dense and reliable net, spreading out a road between her and her father on the verge of death—a road that was still full of danger, but at least no longer isolated and helpless.
And all of this came from the message she had sent in panic, that abrupt and contextless line of text, and the other party's extremely concise [Address] and [I'll arrange it].
The torrential rain continued. The traffic remained slow.
But the hand with which Zong Yi gripped the steering wheel was no longer trembling uncontrollably as before.
She took a deep breath, restarted the car, and according to the optimal route given over the phone, drove steadily and firmly toward the hospital through the curtain of rain.
The Buddhist beads on her wrist swayed gently with the movement of the car, resting against her pulse.
This time, she clearly felt that beneath the cold wooden surface, there seemed to be an extremely faint, constant warmth that belonged to life itself.
—
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