Chapter 41: Press-ganged

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Press-ganged

The next morning, Su Tong emerged from the bedroom, her whole body aching. She saw that guy, Yu Zhiming, humming a little tune as he arranged breakfast on the dining table.

This made Su Tong grit her teeth.

’I’ll settle the score with you after I’ve washed up...’

After freshening up, Su Tong came and sat at the dining table, discovering a rather impressive spread for breakfast.

There was soy milk, millet congee, lamb soup, tea-marbled eggs, fried dough sticks, steamed soup dumplings, and roujiamo.

There was also a sesame flatbread bigger than her face, with a plate of greasy, dark, stir-fried minced bits next to it.

Yu Zhiming noticed her gaze and explained, "That’s stir-fried lamb offal. It’s spicy and fragrant. You wrap it in this big flatbread, and it’s delicious!"

Su Tong picked up the flatbread, wrapped some of the lamb offal in it, and took a bite. It was, indeed, delicious.

She ended up eating two whole flatbreads, one tea-marbled egg, a fried dough stick, a bowl of hot lamb soup, and half a bowl of millet congee before she finally stopped.

She felt a little stuffed.

Su Tong put down her chopsticks and looked up to find that guy, Yu Zhiming, staring at her intently.

"Zhiming..."

Su Tong tried her best to sound serious and objective. "Last night was just a simple indulgence."

"For the next year, I need to focus completely on my doctoral dissertation. I don’t want to delay my graduation."

"Zhiming, do you understand what I mean?"

Yu Zhiming took a deep breath. "I understand. It was a one-time thing, nothing more."

"Don’t worry, I won’t pester you."

Su Tong forced a smile. "It’s best that you understand. I have to make sure my studies don’t get compromised."

She explained further, "Zhiming, you have no idea. At our medical school, the graduation delay rate for students in the combined Master’s-PhD program like me is as high as sixty or seventy percent."

"And another twenty to thirty percent of unlucky souls never get their degrees at all."

"The pressure I’m under is immense, I’m not kidding..."

Yu Zhiming reached out and took her hand. "I understand. You’re under a lot of academic pressure."

"I’m more than happy to be your personal stress-reliever."

Su Tong shot him a sultry glance.

"If you want to take advantage of me again, just say so. What’s all this about a ’stress-reliever’? Making yourself sound so pitiful."

After a brief pause, Su Tong suddenly chuckled. "Years from now, when you’re successful and famous in your field, I can point to your promotional photo and tell people..."

"That guy? I’ve slept with him. And he wasn’t half bad!"

Yu Zhiming didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. "You’re a girl! What’s there to brag about with something like that?"

Su Tong giggled. "Zhiming, did you know? In our first and second years, you were the universally acknowledged weirdo of our class."

"But later, it was like you blossomed. You became more and more charming, and your grades got better and better."

"One time, us girls were playing Truth or Dare, and a few of them revealed you were their... fantasy object."

Su Tong held up a hand to stop him. "Don’t even ask. I won’t tell you who they were even if you do."

"If I get the chance to see them again, I’ll tell them about my ’user experience’ with you."

"Don’t worry, I’ll shower you with praise. I’ll make those girls die of envy and jealousy."

Yu Zhiming just shook his head, speechless...

’You can’t mess with med school girls,’ he thought. ’When they decide to be shameless, no one can stop them.’

Su Tong’s train was at a little after three in the afternoon.

Yu Zhiming drove her to the train station. He had to carry her both into and out of the car.

This was because Su Tong’s body was too sore for her to walk properly.

At noon, Su Tong had used Yu Zhiming for another "stress-relief" session, and they didn’t even have time for lunch...

「By the time Yu Zhiming returned to the county town, it was nearly five in the afternoon.」

He didn’t go home, but instead ambled over to a restaurant in town called "Good Taste".

This had been arranged a few days ago.

A few close classmates and friends were getting together to celebrate Yu Zhiming’s move to Binhai Grand Hospital.

Yu Zhiming parked his car. Before he could even walk into the restaurant, he heard a fierce argument from inside.

He stepped into the lobby and saw the portly owner, Boss Chu, along with a chef in uniform, being shoved around by a group of seven or eight people.

A few waitresses in uniform were cowering to the side, too scared to intervene or defend their boss.

The sharp-eyed Boss Chu spotted Yu Zhiming immediately.

He suddenly used all his might to break free from the crowd and, with an agility that belied his size, hid behind Yu Zhiming.

"Stop! Hear me out!"

Chu the Fatty boomed, his voice resonating from his diaphragm, halting the few people who were chasing him.

He said breathlessly, "Arguing like this won’t solve anything."

"This man here, you recognize him, don’t you?"

Chu the Fatty grabbed Yu Zhiming’s arm and continued, "He’s the famous young doctor from the county hospital, Yu Zhiming."

"Even if you haven’t met him in person, you must have heard of him, right? How about we let Dr. Yu mediate this matter?"

Yu Zhiming, who had just been roped into this, was not pleased.

Without waiting for the other group to respond, he refused with a stern face, "No, thanks. No need to have me mediate."

"If it’s a big deal, I can’t handle it."

"If it’s a small deal, you don’t need me to handle it."

Yu Zhiming tried to shake off Chu the Fatty’s hand, but even after two attempts, he couldn’t get free.

With a pained expression, Chu the Fatty held on for dear life. "Dr. Yu, you have to get involved in this."

"They’re saying someone has food poisoning, and they even brought the person here to my restaurant! You can’t just stand by and do nothing, can you?"

’Someone has food poisoning?’

Yu Zhiming was dragged by Chu the Fatty to a dining table, where he saw a pretty girl of seventeen or eighteen sitting with an IV drip in her arm.

Yu Zhiming noticed the girl was slumped limply in her chair, her eyes unfocused and vacant.

Even without a hands-on examination, he could tell her breathing was rapid and her heart rate was around 120 beats per minute.

Yu Zhiming took a step forward, grasped the girl’s hand, and asked her to squeeze back.

As a result, the girl’s fingers only twitched; she had no strength to grip his hand at all.

’Weakness in all four limbs, unfocused eyes... but luckily, she’s still conscious and responsive.’

"What happened?" Yu Zhiming asked loudly.

A young man in his twenties with a crew cut came over and explained, "Dr. Yu, my sister had lunch here with a few friends around noon today."

"Shortly after she got home this afternoon, she started feeling nauseous and began vomiting."

"The doctor at the clinic said it was food poisoning and had her vomit and get her stomach pumped."

"We brought my sister here to demand justice, but this damned fatty refuses to admit anything."

Chu the Fatty cried foul, "It’s really not my restaurant’s fault! If it were truly food poisoning, why is your sister the only one who got sick out of a table of five?"

"I’ve been running this restaurant for five years, and we’ve never had a single case of food poisoning!"

The crew-cut young man retorted angrily, "My sister has a habit of posting photos to her social media. She was fine at noon. After eating here, she didn’t eat or drink anything else."

"Shortly after getting home, she started throwing up. If it’s not your restaurant’s fault, then whose is it?"

"Stop arguing for a minute."

Yu Zhiming suddenly shouted, cutting off the young man. With a grave expression, he said, "Judging by your sister’s current condition, her symptoms haven’t improved. In fact, they’ve gotten worse."

"The most important thing right now is to get her to a hospital, not to argue about who’s to blame here."

The moment he said this, a panicked look appeared on the young man’s face. "Dr. Yu, my sister... is she...?"

Yu Zhiming cut him off with a wave of his hand. "No more talk. Just get your sister to the hospital first."

After a pause, he added, "Let me see the pictures your sister took."

"It could be food incompatibility, an allergy, or maybe your sister’s constitution reacted badly to a certain food..."

Amid the chaos, the crew-cut young man put the girl on his back and ran out of the restaurant, accompanied by three or four others.

Two or three people stayed behind, and one of them, a girl, handed a pink phone to Yu Zhiming.

Yu Zhiming took the phone and saw that the photo album was already open on the screen...

He scrolled through the photos one by one, seeing various selfies of five girls of about the same age in a private room.

The food on the table was also a main subject of the photos.

There were six dishes and a soup in total—chicken, fish, a stir-fry of seasonal vegetables—all common dishes.

At first, Yu Zhiming didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

He kept scrolling and saw that the girls had moved to a different location that looked like a park, where they took more selfies.

He scrolled on and on, until suddenly, one selfie caught his full attention.

In this photo, the girl had a freshly broken tree branch in her mouth.

Yu Zhiming recognized the slender leaves on the branch.

Oleander.

The sap of which contains a deadly poison...