Chapter 155: Ch 155: Predicament and Umbrella

Jingxue’s frown deepened at the man’s words.

"What about the children?"

He stood in a single motion, leaving the soft grass where he had been sitting, and turned fully toward the small cluster of villagers. Worry had stripped some of the usual distance from his face; what remained was colder and more focused.

The men exchanged another look. Grimness passed between them like a shared weight.

"We apologize for not saying this sooner, boss." The man spoke, his voice heavy. "Three days ago, some of the children in the village started saying their throats hurt. We.. initially ignored it. It happens. Sore throats come and go with the weather, with dust, with the change of season. We thought it was the usual.. but....."

He trailed off, anxiety pulling his gaze back to Jingxue as if permission were required to finish.

"But?" Jingxue stepped closer. The cold around him tightened. Several of the men visibly flinched under it.

"B-but—" Another voice picked up the thread. "Just this morning the children started running bad fevers. They kept crying. They said their throats hurt so much they didn’t even want to swallow. Not water. Not food. Not even their own saliva—nothing."

The field’s ordinary noise seemed to thin around the report. Heat, tools, the distant shuffle of guests at work—none of it quite covered the silence that followed.

Jingxue held their eyes for a long moment, then let out a slow breath.

"Why didn’t you tell me? Or the village chief?"

The sharpness in the question was not theatrical. It was the sound of someone calculating how much time had already been lost.

"W-well....." Another man answered, smaller now. "We didn’t want to spend a hefty amount of points just to go to the hospital."

In the hush that had settled over the group, the confession carried farther than a shout. Everyone close enough heard it cleanly: fear of cost ranked above fear of fever until the morning had forced the ranking to collapse.

Jingxue sighed again. This is the problem with living somewhere remote, he thought, a brief, private envy of city convenience rising and dying in the same breath. Hospitals on demand. Specialists without a points ledger standing between a child and care. He shook the comparison off. Envying a different map would not cool a single forehead.

No use comparing, I need to solve this.

He looked at the anxious faces in front of him and started turning options over without finding a clean one yet.

Then a voice carried from the field—soft, steady, and clearly aimed at them.

"What seems to be the problem, sir?"

Su Wanyan still stood where she had been, body angled to keep the worst of the light off Mo Xingxue, feet planted as if the shade itself were part of a post she would not abandon. She had heard every word. Enhanced hearing had proven itself useful once again. Even so, she asked. Better to receive the account from their mouths than to reveal how much distance her senses could cross.

Jingxue’s attention shifted. For a second his expression softened—memory supplying a line from the profile PD Xu Cui had given him.

A respected pediatrician, prestigious enough that the title carried weight even outside the cities. Her primary work sat close to anything related to the heart, but the record did not stop there: contributions across departments, and two conditions in infants that textbooks had once filed under incurable until her name appeared beside the treatment.

If anyone on this production could look at feverish children and sore throats and offer more than panic, it was likely her. Even partial insight would be more than the village currently held.

The softness hardened again under a practical doubt.

Will she even help us?

Guests had no obligation to spend their skill on local crises. Points and tasks and cameras framed their days; a cluster of sick village children did not automatically appear on that list. He did not know her well enough to assume charity.

Su Wanyan waited, harmless smile in place, while his silence stretched. When it became clear the indifferent man was still turning something inward, she glanced toward the villagers instead—a quiet, open invitation for someone to explain.

They met her eyes.

One snorted. Another rolled his gaze away as if she had offered insult rather than a question.

Su Wanyan blinked, caught off balance. The cold shoulder had no handle she could find. She had not spoken to these men before. She ran the previous day through her mind in a quick, private inventory: Gu Chengze, the clearing, the fists she would not apologize for. Nothing connected that fight to a group of villagers she had never met. No shared argument. No borrowed tool left broken. No reason that held.

Am I hated for nothing at all?

The thought landed heavier than she wanted to admit. She fought the urge to sigh out loud and kept the smile from fully collapsing, while the real cause of their hostility sat well outside her reconstruction of events.

She did not know that Lin Xuanyu’s public tantrum and the assistant director’s messy chase through the lanes—shoving, shouting, treating the village like scenery that could be pushed aside—had already traveled from mouth to mouth. She did not know that "outsider" had, overnight, become a single stained category. Arrogant, careless, and not worth answering. Gu Chengze’s bruises were irrelevant to that ledger.

However, with no explanation available, Su Wanyan simply absorbed the villagers’ coldness and let it sit heavy in her chest. The smile she had offered them stayed in place out of habit more than conviction. She did not know what she had done. She only knew the weight of being dismissed by people she had never met.

Jingxue, a few paces away, finally closed the loop of his own hesitation.

Face-thickening was a skill like any other. If the children were feverish and refusing to swallow, pride was a luxury the morning could not afford. He drew a breath and used her name the way someone did when the formal distance had already been judged less useful than results.

"Su Wanyan." The call cut cleanly across the short stretch of ground between them.

She snapped out of the downcast drift at once. When she turned, her eyes still held the leftover shine of someone who had been quietly absorbing rejection. "Yes, sir?" Loud enough to carry. Steady enough not to sound broken.

"Come here for a sec." The order landed with a familiar cadence—short, certain, the kind of directive that expected movement rather than debate. For a flicker of a second it reminded her of someone else entirely. She filed the resemblance without examining it. She had already walked that comparison once today; the field did not need a second pass.

She nodded, then looked down.

Mo Xingxue was still at the seed line, the picture of diligent work if one did not notice how carefully she was not looking up.

"I’ll be back, Xuexue." Su Wanyan’s voice gentled. She rested a hand on the crown of Mo Xingxue’s head and patted once, the gesture automatic.

Mo Xingxue swatted the hand away with theatrical precision, then tipped her face up. The mock annoyance she had prepared dissolved on contact into something far less convincing—coquettish around the edges, fond underneath the scold.

"Don’t mess up my hair."

The warning lasted only a beat. The pointed look softened into a tender smile. "He’s waiting for you. Go ahead."

Su Wanyan nodded. Compliance, however, had never fully cured her of one last liberty. Before she stepped away she ruffled the same dark strands she had just been told to leave alone.

"Ah—! I told you not to mess it up." Mo Xingxue’s startled cry carried; the pout that followed was pure and unguarded.

Su Wanyan only answered with a playful smile and, already turning, scanned the nearest crew until her gaze found a staff member standing slightly apart. She offered him a gentle smile. The man looked left, then right, confirmed that no one else was being addressed, and pointed at his own chest in silent question.

She nodded.

When she reached him she set both hands on his shoulders. The smile she wore then was still gentle. It was also, somehow, not entirely negotiable.

"I have a favor to ask, sir."

Something in the combination made the staff member’s answering smile go stiff with nerves. "W-what is it, Teacher Su?"

She did not explain from where they stood. She simply guided him a short distance onto the worked ground and positioned him carefully in front of Mo Xingxue—back to the omega, body aligned to cut the light the way Su Wanyan’s own had been doing minutes earlier. The man glanced over his shoulder with a raised brow, still lost.

Su Wanyan tilted her head, the picture of reasonable request.

"The favor is: can you please be our Xuexue’s umbrella for a bit?"

Understanding arrived late and unwelcome. He closed his eyes briefly, dipped his head, smiled with a resigned look, and accepted the second job the morning had assigned him without a formal interview. I didn’t know I was on double duty today, he thought, and opened his eyes again to the only answer that would end the conversation cleanly.

"No problem at all, Teacher Su." The corner of his mouth twitched as he said it.

Su Wanyan saw the unwillingness and elected, with great deliberation, to ignore his reaction. She patted his shoulders once more and offered a mock salute. "Thanks, soldier."

An awkward laugh escaped him. Behind his newly appointed post, Mo Xingxue fixed Su Wanyan with a pointed look that needed no translation. Su Wanyan laughed it off, waved the pair a brief goodbye, and started toward Jingxue at last.

I should give that man a reward for the favor, she thought as she walked—already filing the debt beside the more urgent matter waiting in the indifferent man’s circle, and the feverish children whose names she did not yet know.

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Was occupied with something, y’all. I’m sorry for the inconvenience (I already experienced this shi last year, but college really do suck).