Ехtrа Chaptеr 4
Аfter returning frоm Countrу N аnd аrriving аt thе Wоrld Airlines building, thеn dealing with various leftovеr tаsks, the twо of thеm finаllу rеturned hоmе аs dауlight brokе.
The weаthеr had bеen consistеntly plеasant lаtеlу, with thе sun shоwing its fасe eаrlу, shining on thе роmegrаnatе trеe in the уаrd that hаd just begun to beаr fruit, and even thе аutumn brеezе felt warm.
Fu Mingуu didn’t рlаn to slеер thе еntirе daу, sо he оnly drеw a thin gauzе curtаin аnd lеanеd hаlfwау against the hеadboard to cаtch up on rеst.
When Ruan Siхian саme оut of the shower, she wasn’t sure if Fu Mingyu was asleep.
His sleeping face was always peaceful, and even his breathing was shallow.
Ruan Sixian sat on the edge of the bed and asked softly, “Are you asleep?”
There was no response.
She slowly moved closer, wanting to lean against Fu Mingyu’s chest but afraid of waking him.
As she was half-bent over, wrestling with her thoughts, Fu Mingyu suddenly curved the corner of his mouth and reached out to pull her into his chest.
His eyes were closed, and his voice was very soft.
“Still not sleeping?”
“I don’t want to sleep.” Ruan Sixian kept her eyes open, staring at the dappled sunlight on the floor, with the sound of Fu Mingyu’s heartbeat very real in her ears. “I can’t sleep during the day.”
Fu Mingyu didn’t say anything more, and Ruan Sixian quietly leaned against his chest, listening as his breathing gradually became steadier.
Ruan Sixian looked up, her fingers tracing his chin.
“Are you asleep?”
This time, Fu Mingyu didn’t respond.
After the earthquake that occurred yesterday afternoon, he, Bai Yang, and others were immediately taken to the embassy and didn’t close their eyes until they boarded the flight in the early hours of the morning.
When they returned home in the morning, Aunt Zhang had prepared breakfast, but Fu Mingyu went straight to the room after showering.
Ruan Sixian knew he was exhausted and didn’t make another sound.
As the autumn sunlight gradually shifted from the window to the bed, she also fell asleep.
With the feeling of a false alarm, Ruan Sixian slept particularly deeply that morning.
At noon, Aunt Zhang came to wake them up for lunch, and both of them were feeling lazy.
Aunt Zhang was trimming the branches and leaves of the daily flowers nearby. Seeing that the two of them weren’t talking while eating, she chattered, “Mr. Fu, it’s a good thing you’re fine this time. You have no idea how scared your wife was.”
As Fu Mingyu looked over, Ruan Sixian suddenly paused while drinking her soup.
Under his probing gaze, Ruan Sixian lifted her chin and stiffly said, “I wasn’t, was I…?”
“How could you not be?” Aunt Zhang pointed at her own face with a pink rose branch. “When she saw the news, she cried her eyes out, rushed out without even changing her clothes, and I had to chase her to the door with a coat to put on her.”
The sound of the spoon stirring in the bowl suddenly became very grating.
Ruan Sixian forced a smile and, before Fu Mingyu could speak, began to save face. “The news was just too frightening.”
“Exactly,” Aunt Zhang added. “Your wife kept crying all the way, saying what would she do if something happened to you there.”
Ruan Sixian: “…”
Fu Mingyu stopped what he was doing and stared straight at Ruan Sixian, his eyes deep and intense.
Afraid he might say something that would embarrass her, Ruan Sixian preemptively changed the subject: “What are we doing this afternoon?”
Fu Mingyu lowered his eyes, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
“Staying home with my wife.”
After lunch, Aunt Zhang left on time, leaving only Fu Mingyu and Ruan Sixian in the house.
This afternoon seemed just like yesterday—the sunlight warmed the carpet, the freshly arranged flowers emitted a faint fragrance, and even the TV programs were replaying yesterday’s shows.But for Ruan Sixian, these twenty-four hours felt like a dream.
She dared not recall her state at that time—her mind exploding like a bomb, a sudden blast, her entire body burning hot, then rapidly cooling, her thoughts blank, her body trembling with cold again.
She didn’t even know how she had made it to the World Airlines building, and if Aunt Zhang hadn’t mentioned it, she wouldn’t have remembered that she had cried.
Even this night, which should have been spent in slumber, she had traversed the vast Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, crossed the snow-capped Mount Everest, and drifted endlessly above the boundless clouds.
This night couldn’t be described as thrilling, yet it was etched more deeply in her heart, making Ruan Sixian clearly realize just how important Fu Mingyu was to her.
Fortunately, when she awoke at noon, everything had returned to its starting point.
Ruan Sixian leaned against Fu Mingyu, staring blankly at the television.
But his phone kept ringing incessantly.
Twenty-four hours after the incident, people were still sending messages one after another, asking about his condition.
Nowadays, Fu Mingyu had become a bit more humane in his interactions with others. Even though many in his message list weren’t close acquaintances, he still replied to each one.
After finishing his replies, he leaned over to pick up the cigarette box on the table.
Ruan Sixian watched his hand, her gaze following his movements to his face.
The moment the lighter flickered, his profile became clearer in the shimmering flame.
The way he lit a cigarette was actually quite captivating to Ruan Sixian. Though he didn’t smoke often, she would always subtly watch the entire process.
But today, Ruan Sixian stared at him unblinkingly until the white smoke blurred her vision. Only then did she suddenly snap back to reality and reach out to pluck the cigarette from his lips.
Fu Mingyu tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”
Ruan Sixian pressed the cigarette into the glass ashtray filled with coffee grounds and whispered, “Don’t smoke anymore.”
Fu Mingyu casually hummed in acknowledgment, thinking Ruan Sixian was just uncomfortable with the smell of smoke in the afternoon.
“Don’t smoke for the next two years.” Ruan Sixian waved away the lingering smoke, lowered her head to pick at her nails, and mumbled so quickly her words were almost indistinct. “Let’s have a child.”
“Hmm?”
Fu Mingyu genuinely hadn’t heard clearly. He leaned closer to her, his ear near her face, but his eyes remained fixed on the television. “What did you say?”
But Ruan Sixian thought he was pretending not to hear. Seeing him strike this pose, she felt he was hinting at something.
No, it was more like an outright suggestion.
After steeling herself for a moment, Ruan Sixian raised her arms to wrap them around Fu Mingyu’s neck, leaned in, and kissed his earlobe.
Fu Mingyu thought she was still shaken from the earlier events, so he just smiled, wrapped his arms around her waist, and said, “Let’s go out for dinner tonight, to that place—”
“I said,” Ruan Sixian interrupted him, cupping his face to make him look at her. “Let’s have a child.”
The autumn breeze gradually warmed in the afternoon, and the sweet fragrance of osmanthus it carried inexplicably took on a somewhat ambiguous scent.
Ruan Sixian watched Fu Mingyu nervously, only to see his expression shift layer by layer. In the end, he said nothing, simply picked her up and headed upstairs.
Ruan Sixian: “???”
The afternoon quietly slipped away. The setting sun melted into gold, and the autumn wind suddenly rose, blowing off fallen leaves while the branches, unable to bear the weight, dropped pomegranates onto the grass in the courtyard.Ruan Sixian lay in bed, watching through a crack in the curtains as a pomegranate fell to the ground, somehow reminded of Lin Daiyu burying fallen flowers.
She felt like that pomegranate, while Fu Mingyu was the heartless autumn wind.
Once they decided to have a child, freed from external constraints, Ruan Sixian saw another side of Fu Mingyu she hadn’t known before—his stamina and enthusiasm reached entirely new levels.
She couldn’t understand how a thirty-two-year-old man could still be so energetic after barely closing his eyes all day.
After experiencing this repeatedly, she even began to suspect that he was only truly interested in the process of making a baby.
Before she even got pregnant, Ruan Sixian started feeling resentful.
One night after they were done, Ruan Sixian lay exhausted, staring at the ceiling and saying, “I’m the one who has to carry the baby for ten months, while you just get to enjoy yourself and still end up with a child. How is that fair?!”
“Hmm?” Fu Mingyu sounded puzzled. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”
Ruan Sixian: “…”
She touched her face and steered the conversation back. “I might have to go through surgery, maybe even risk my life. When you think about it, I’m really getting the short end of the stick.”
Her tone wasn’t particularly serious—she was mainly criticizing Fu Mingyu’s behavior in bed—but he took her words to heart and thought them over carefully.
“If you’re worried about these things, maybe we shouldn’t have a child after all?”
“Huh?” Ruan Sixian was at a loss for words. “I…”
Fu Mingyu looked at her earnestly. “I can’t bear to put you through that.”
“Well… it’s not that unbearable.” Ruan Sixian turned over, propping herself up on her elbow and looking down at Fu Mingyu. She tapped his chin with her fingertip. “I was just saying it, it’s not like I really don’t want to have a child.”
Over the next few months, the couple made many efforts beyond the essential process of trying to conceive.
During the preparation stage, they optimized their lifestyle habits as much as possible, and Ruan Sixian underwent regular check-ups with her doctor. Yet, the baby still didn’t come.
Before they knew it, it was Spring Festival again.
This year, Jiangcheng experienced its coldest temperatures in a decade. Ruan Sixian didn’t wear skirts for the sake of looking pretty—keeping warm was her top priority.
As her hopes for a child were repeatedly dashed, her emotions grew more sensitive.
In the month leading up to New Year’s Eve, she counted the days every day. When her period was due, she paid close attention to any changes in her body.
Shortly after midnight, when her period still hadn’t arrived, she immediately got out of bed, grabbed a pregnancy test, and went into the bathroom.
But the result was the same as in previous months.
She sighed, trudged back to the room, and buried her head under the covers.
“What’s wrong?” Fu Mingyu woke up to her movements. He turned on the floor lamp by the window and leaned in close to her ear, half-propped up on one elbow. “Did you have a nightmare?”
“No.” Ruan Sixian clutched the blanket tightly, turning her back to Fu Mingyu so he wouldn’t see the fear on her face. “Do you think… it’s because I’ve been exposed to high-altitude radiation over the years?”
A pilot’s working environment naturally involves issues like hypoxia, dryness, and noise, along with long-term exposure to high-altitude radiation and electromagnetic fields.Although the company maintains personal annual radiation exposure records for flight crew members, and Ruan Sixian regularly checks hers—her annual exposure never exceeding 1 millisievert—and she consciously avoids rapid gradient climbs or lateral course changes during flights to optimize her flying style and reduce radiation exposure, she had never paid much attention to this issue before. But when she struggled to conceive, the matter began to loom large in her mind.
"You know, most of the male colleagues at the company end up having daughters because of these effects. Who knows if it might make women infertile?"
Backlit, Fu Mingyu couldn’t see Ruan Sixian’s expression clearly, but he could sense her emotions from her voice.
"Don’t worry," Fu Mingyu said, taking her hand resting on her abdomen. "It’s only been a few months. Don’t rush. Some of my friends tried for a year or two before conceiving, and their children are perfectly healthy."
Ruan Sixian closed her eyes, forcing down the unsettling thoughts in her heart. "It will come, right?"
"Mhm," Fu Mingyu lay back down, resting his chin on the top of her head and whispering softly with his eyes closed, "It will definitely come. I’ve even thought of a name for our child."
"You’ve already thought of a name without even knowing if it’s a boy or a girl?"
"Mhm, it works for either."
"What is it? Let me see if it sounds nice."
"Fu Guangzhi."
A three-second silence hung in the darkness before Ruan Sixian suddenly sat up and hit him with a pillow.
"Fu Mingyu, are you insane?!!"
After that night, the hope in Ruan Sixian’s heart began to sprout anew.
But she no longer kept herself in a constant state of caution. She went about her life as usual, even spending a few days soaking in the sea during her vacation.
The following spring, as everything came back to life, the cherry tree in the yard bloomed. When the wind blew, pale pink petals drifted down, covering the ground in a colorful carpet.
Later, the flowers faded and bore fruit, but Fu Mingyu’s child still hadn’t arrived. Instead, they had to face the departure of another life.
Doudou was brought home by Fu Mingyu when he was twenty-four, already a full-grown dog.
After all these years, it had reached the end of its life.
When Ruan Sixian visited Lakeview Mansion again, there was no need to lock Doudou away anymore, as it no longer had the energy to jump on her. It spent its days curled up in its bed, and the dog food in its bowl dwindled day by day.
Naturally, Fu Mingyu couldn’t let Doudou’s condition interfere with his work, but he and Ruan Sixian frequently stayed overnight at Lakeview Mansion during this time.
"Sigh…" Ruan Sixian crouched in front of Doudou, who was sleeping in its bed, and for the first time reached out to stroke its head. "If it weren’t for me, it could have lived with you all along."
"What’s been up with you lately?" Fu Mingyu gently touched her chin. "Has Lin Daiyu possessed you? You’ve been so sentimental."
Ruan Sixian simply felt a bit sorry for Fu Mingyu. She leaned her head against his shoulder and murmured softly, "I know you’re sad."
The day Doudou passed was a bright, sunny day. Fu Mingyu personally watched as the veterinarian administered the euthanasia injection.
Ruan Sixian received Fu Mingyu’s call while at the hospital. By the time she arrived at Lakeview Mansion, Doudou’s breathing had grown so faint it was almost imperceptible.
Fu Mingyu held its paw, then placed his hand on its chest, feeling its heart beat for the last time.
Only when Fu Mingyu withdrew his hand did Ruan Sixian hear him sigh.She had never seen Fu Mingyu like this before—the sorrow in his eyes was so thick it seemed impossible to dissolve, yet he had no choice but to accept this helpless reality.
A sudden pang of heartache struck Ruan Sixian, and she wrapped her arms around him from behind.
"Husband, don't be sad anymore. Our baby is here to keep you company."
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