Chapter 45

Heatstroke?

With her head down, Ji Xiaonian tried to remember what happened. She vaguely recalled Bai Yan sending her a text, asking her to remain where she was, and she proceeded to do so obediently.

However, she did not see him, albeit waiting for a long time. She was about to leave when she discovered Yu Shengjie amidst the crowd.

Curious, she wondered why Yu Shengjie was there?

Ji Xiaonian lifted her head and stared at the person next to her bed. Just when she was about to ask about the reason for his appearance on the farm, the cell phone next to her pillow rang out of the blue.

She reached it and immediately answered the call when she realized it was from Bai Yan.

Ji Xiaonian placed the phone next to her ear and before she could answer, the man’s emotionless low voice entered from the other end of the phone. The voice pierced through her eardrum like icicles.

“Ji Xiaonian, you shouldn’t do things merely according to your own will. Must you make me furious? Where are you? You’ll have to walk home if you don’t show up right now.”

That was right – Bai Yan’s chilly roars sounded from the other end of the phone.

Ji Xiaonian was stunned by the rage.

Was she being reckless? Did she infuriate him?

Did he have no idea that she suffered heatstroke and went to the hospital?

Ji Xiaonian felt suffocated. She tightened her grasp on the cell phone and tried to explain to the person on the other end of the phone. “It’s not true, Brother Yan, I…”

“Enough with the nonsense. I’ll give you three minutes, and if you still don’t show up in my car by then you’ll have to go home by yourself. How could you behave more and more reckless!”

In Bai Yan’s opinion, Ji Xiaonian was throwing a tantrum because he had brought Fang Miaoling along to their date.

He had spent the whole afternoon looking for her on the farm but she was nowhere in sight. He called her numerous times but they were either ignored or hung up. Bai Yan had never seen this little girl being so unreasonable.

For no reason, he felt a raging fire in his chest.

This was why he should not have backed down and treated her pleasantly. She immediately became bolder towards him as soon as he showed a slight chance of attitude.

“…”

Upon hearing Bai Yan’s howls coming from the other end of the phone, Ji Xiaonian who had wanted to explain herself felt something unpleasant caught in her throat.

She felt especially sorry for herself.

It was him who demanded her to wait for him and she did as told. As a result, she suffered from heatstroke and was rushed to the hospital by Yu Shengjie. It did not matter that he did not know the truth but he even wrongfully accused her.

Ji Xiaonian felt a heavy feeling in the chest as if she was forced to drink a bowl of poison.

Frustrated, she told the man on the phone through gritted teeth, “Just leave, I didn’t ask you to wait for me. Go ahead and leave with your younger sister, go as far as you can. You’re such a liar, I hate you.”

She yelled angrily and hung up the call before the other person could react.

Fear that he would call back and shout at her again before figuring out the truth, Ji Xiaonian turned off her phone.

He was the one at fault so how could he yell at her for no reason?

Why did he bring along his so-called sister to their date?

What did she mean to him, honestly?

Maybe she meant nothing!

Maybe his kindness towards her was only to fulfill the duty he promised her elder brother!

Did he think she was an idiot? He had trampled over her dignity, again and again.

Ji Xiaonian realized she had been treated like an idiot. She was naïve enough to believe that he truly liked her and agreed to go out with her, who knew this was the way it would turn out.

Feeling aggrieved, she hugged her knees close to her chest and started crying uncontrollably.

Yu Shengjie who was sitting next to her bed had heard the man’s heartless shouting.

Upon seeing the little girl howling with grief, he leaned forward and positioned his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t take it personally. It’s not worth crying your heart out for a man that doesn’t care about you,” he said in a low voice.

Tears welled up in Ji Xiaonian’s eyes when she raised her head. “I’m truly in love with him, and I thought he felt the same toward me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kissed me, but I was wrong, he didn’t care about me at all, if not he would not trash me like this.”

“He will never know how much pain I’ve suffered because of him. How could he treat me like this? How could he bully me like this? Sister Shengjie, what should I do to make him feel my love?”

She cried so much that she felt confused and disoriented that she allowed herself to fall into Yu Shengjie’s arms. She looked as pitiful as an abandoned young pet.

Without her realizing, she accidentally called this man her ‘sister’, just like she did when she was younger.

Yu Shengjie did not correct her either. He sighed and blamed himself as he held her.

…

On the other hand, Bai Yan was still at the farm.

Standing outside of the car, his grasp tightened around the phone and he absorbed what had just happened.

Not only did she throw a tantrum by not showing up, he never expected the girl to defend herself even though she was clearly in the wrong.

Besides, what was that attitude? She said that he had lied to her, how so?

His imagination was running wild when Fang Miaoling’s voice came from the car and interrupted his train of thought. “What’s the matter, Big Brother Bai? Does Xiaonian still not want to return with us?”

Her voice brought Bai Yan back to reality. He put his cell phone away and entered the car. Without replying to the girl, he ignited the car and drove away quickly.

He decided to forget about Ji Xiaonian.

If she was really so capable then she could go home by herself.

However, no one knew that on the way back, he was unable to calm down and felt horrible about leaving her out there all by herself.

He stopped his car by the roadside abruptly and turned around to say to Fang Miaoling, “There’s some office work that needs to be dealt with urgently. I’ll give you some money to hail a taxi!”

Carrying several baskets of strawberries in her hands, Fang Miaoling stared at Bai Yan embarrassedly. “But I have to carry all of these…”

Not giving her a chance to refuse, Bai Yan left the car and was already trying to hail a taxi.

Coincidentally, a taxi approached. He opened the door for Fang Miaoling and motioned for her to get out. “The driver will send you straight home.”

Reluctantly, Fang Miaoling got out of the car and entered the taxi with several baskets of strawberries. She wanted to speak to Bai Yan before leaving but as soon as he made sure she got into the taxi safely, he went back into his own car and left quickly without giving her a second glance.

After a long time, Fang Miaoling finally retrieved her gaze and motioned for the taxi driver to get back on the road.

On the way back to the farm, Bai Yan tried calling Ji Xiaonian through the phone again but the other person had already turned her phone off. He was truly worried but also furious about the little girl’s behavior.

He was going to teach her a mean lesson later.

One hand fixed on the steering wheel, his other hand was frantically searching for Ji Xiaonian’s location on the GPS.

When it showed the little girl’s location at the nearby hospital, Bai Yan hastily stepped down on the accelerator as an ominous intuition filled his mind.

Hospital? Why was she in the hospital?

Without thinking much, he made the next U-turn and headed straight to the hospital.

Coincidentally, by the time he arrived, he bumped into Yu Shengjie helping Ji Xiaonian get out of the hospital.

The three of them were at the hospital’s entrance at the same time. Simultaneously, they slowed down their pace and looked at one another uneasily.

The atmosphere was tense.