The Obligations of the Elderly - Chapter 12

People who never get a fever, once they do, it often comes on fiercely.

Qiu Xia’s fever was exactly like that.

An abnormally high fever! So hot you could feel it without a thermometer! When Gong Si reached out to check, he almost suspected the temperature could burn his hand!

Panicked and desperate, Gong Si didn’t hesitate to wake up Dong Chun. They started with physical cooling methods. The family didn’t have the habit of keeping ice, but luckily, this was Lengshui Town-the one thing they didn’t lack was cold water. Gong Si told Dong Chun to watch over his brother while he went to fetch two basins of water, wrung out a towel, and placed it on Qiu Xia’s forehead. Gong Si reminded Dong Chun to keep an eye on the temperature of the towel.

“As soon as it’s not cool, wring out a new one for your second brother, got it?”

Dong Chun nodded vigorously.

Then Gong Si wrung out another towel himself, took off Qiu Xia’s clothes, and wiped his body down.

At first, he hadn’t realized how serious things were. After all, the brothers had hardly ever been sick since childhood. He thought physical cooling would at least keep Qiu Xia’s temperature under control, but soon he realized that wasn’t the case-

Qiu Xia’s temperature kept rising!

“Big brother, is second brother going to get roasted?” Dong Chun’s hands couldn’t keep up with how fast the towel was heating up, and he started to cry.

But even as he cried, his hands kept wringing the towel with all his strength. The kid was an athlete, strong enough to tear the towel, and his hands were red from the cold.

Gong Si felt a pang of sympathy, but now wasn’t the time to worry about Dong Chun.

“Hold on a bit longer. I’m going to call an ambulance.” Realizing this was beyond what they could handle at home, Gong Si immediately went to find his phone.

He got through quickly, but the ambulance couldn’t come right away!

“Sorry, we only have one ambulance here. It was just sent to Shentan Town for an elderly patient with a stroke. It’ll be about three hours before it can get to you after it returns…”

Qiu Xia definitely couldn’t wait three hours!

Gong Si put down the phone, his mind in chaos, but he tried to think of what to do next.

His family didn’t have a car, and even if they did, he couldn’t drive-he wasn’t old enough for a license yet. The nearest neighbor was about three kilometers away, and they didn’t have a car either. Who had a car… Who could he ask for help…

His mind raced, but came up blank.

And just then, Ah Ji started crying again.

“Xi Liu, that jinx!” Gong Si cursed under his breath, and as he went next door to pick up Ah Ji, he suddenly stopped.

He grabbed his phone again and dialed Xi Liu’s number.

“You said your family has a car, right?” As soon as the call connected, Gong Si spoke up.

“Huh? Uh.” After a brief moment of confusion, Xi Liu replied.

“I need a favor.”

“Drive your family’s car over here, to my house. Qiu Xia is sick, high fever, needs to go to the hospital immediately. I can’t get an ambulance.” Gong Si explained his situation in one breath and waited for Xi Liu’s response.

“I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Xi Liu’s reply was concise.

But just that sentence made Gong Si’s tense heart relax a little.

He went next door, picked up Ah Ji and soothed him, then hurried back to his room. Seeing Dong Chun’s red hands, he said:

“We have to hold on for another half hour. Xi Liu will be here soon.”

“Okay.”

Dong Chun nodded hard.

Xi Liu arrived in twenty-five minutes-five minutes earlier than promised.

He showed up in pajamas, with a traditional robe over them. Five minutes before arriving, he’d already called Gong Si, so Gong Si had Ah Ji strapped to his back and a bag packed with whatever essentials he could think of, waiting at home for Xi Liu.

Xi Liu came in by himself, but he wasn’t alone-there were two others with him. They didn’t look like Xi Liu’s parents, so Gong Si didn’t dare greet them, but thanks to those two, along with Xi Liu and Gong Si, the four of them each grabbed a corner of the bedsheet and carefully lifted Qiu Xia from the bed, carrying him straight to the car.

Then came the smooth trip to the hospital.

They returned to Threshing Ground, the town center they’d left just that afternoon. Xi Liu had called ahead, so when they arrived, a doctor and two nurses were already waiting at the entrance with a stretcher. They transferred Qiu Xia from the car to the stretcher and rushed him into the emergency room.
Only then did Gong Si breathe a sigh of relief.

Some liquid slid down from his forehead into his eyes. Gong Si wiped it away, only to realize he was already drenched in sweat!

He took Ah Ji’s drool cloth to wipe his sweat, then handed another one to Dong Chun beside him for his runny nose. Gong Si let out a long sigh, closed his eyes to rest for a minute, and when he opened them again, he turned in the direction of Xi Liu and said to him:

“You… are dressed like an old man!”

Xi Liu, who was prepared to be thanked: …

But just as he was about to retort, Gong Si spoke again.

A pair of dark eyes looked straight at Xi Liu, and Gong Si said to him, “Thank you.”

Just two simple words, natural in tone and ordinary in phrasing, sounding rather light, but Xi Liu still heard the sincere gratitude hidden within.

“You’re welcome.” Heaven knows he hadn’t planned to accept Gong Si’s thanks so readily-he was going to ask for another chance to eat stewed fish! Who would have thought…

Xi Liu stood up, then sat down next to Gong Si.

“How long do you think a fever like Qiu Xia’s will take to go away?” Gong Si asked him.

“I’m not a doctor, how would I know?” said Xi Liu.

“But aren’t you always sick? You even noticed when Qiu Xia was about to fall ill…”

“That’s different, okay~”

The two of them chatted idly, here and there.

At night, aside from them, there was only one other group in the clinic. The clinic had two emergency rooms: one with them at the door, and the other with a crowd outside it.

Most likely, that was the old man with a cerebral infarction brought in earlier by ambulance.

Compared to the lively crowd on the other side, their side seemed even lonelier.

In the end, it was actually the other emergency room’s door that opened first. The doctor came out, and all the patients’ families surged forward.

Seeing this, Gong Si became a bit anxious: They had come in even earlier than the others. The others had a stroke, while theirs was just a fever-so how come the others were out first…

Fortunately, the door to their emergency room soon opened as well.

A masked doctor came out. Seeing Gong Si’s group approaching, he took off his mask, revealing a face that looked somewhat familiar to Gong Si.

Huh?

He was…

The middle-aged man who had given Qiu Xia a note this afternoon?!

Didn’t Qiu Xia say he was a teacher?

Gong Si felt something wasn’t quite right.

“So you brought him in after all.” The middle-aged man started, then added, “Fortunately, you brought him in in time. Otherwise, he might have burned himself silly.”

Gong Si’s heart leapt.

“W-was the fever that serious? It’s all my fault-their health is usually so good that we don’t even have a thermometer or any emergency medicine at home…” Gong Si fell into self-blame.

“Even if you had those things, it wouldn’t have helped. Emergency medicine doesn’t always work, and the thermometer might have exploded. This isn’t an ordinary fever-medicine won’t help,” the man said.

“Huh?” Gong Si was stunned.

“It’s an Awakening,” the middle-aged man said bluntly, wasting no words.

“And it’s not a natural Awakening-it’s a burst Awakening after long-term suppression. This kind of Awakening can kill,” he said seriously. “When I ran into him at the supermarket this afternoon, I already sensed the air pressure around him was unstable. Out of habit as a doctor, I wanted to give him my number and have him checked, but he refused. Then you showed up.”

Recalling the events of the afternoon, Gong Si looked ashamed. He wanted to apologize, but the man waved it off: “It’s not your fault. You’re an ordinary person; it’s normal not to notice. Besides, he was clearly suppressing it intentionally.”

“Then… you are…” Gong Si looked at him.

“I’m also a User.” The man nodded to confirm his identity, then took a syringe from his chest pocket. Right before Gong Si, Dong Chun, and Xi Liu, the syringe transformed into a woman-a woman in a nurse’s uniform.

“I am his Vessel. I’ve already given him a special Suppressant injection. In cases like this, you have to suppress it, but Suppressants generated by a Vessel are much safer and gentler,” the woman explained with a cheerful smile.

“This… ah… thank you,” Gong Si could only stammer his gratitude in the end.

Dong Chun was completely dumbfounded. Having grown up in a rural place like Lengshui Town, he had never seen a Vessel and a User before!
“Does your family have any Users?” The middle-aged man, amused by the brothers’ naive expressions, asked Gong Si.

“No Users. My parents are both Vessels. My dad is a kitchen knife, my mom seems to be a dagger…” Gong Si scratched his head and whispered, “They’re just really ordinary ones…”

The middle-aged man nodded. “That’s the reason.”

“Your family carries the genes for both Vessels and Users. As long as you haven’t reached the age, you and your brother both have the possibility of Awakening.”

“But you said Qiu Xia is a User, and my parents are both Vessels…” Gong Si thought for a moment and asked another question.

“Although Vessel and Vessel pairings are more likely to produce Vessels, since Vessels need Users to wield them, the union of the two can unexpectedly give birth to high-level Users.” The middle-aged man said, then offered a simple explanation: “Just think of it as him sensing too much Vessel aura deep in his genes. In this situation, from the moment he is just a fertilized egg, he has to process two streams of Vessel aura at once, so the resulting User often has quite good abilities.”

“Your brother is definitely a high-level User, maybe even reaching the level of a Dominator.”

Gong Si: …

Gong Si heard but didn’t understand.

“I don’t understand, but we don’t really need to. We’ll just be ordinary people in the future.” Gong Si didn’t speak, but Dong Chun quietly spoke up below.

When the woman transformed from Vessel form to human shape, she was surprised for a moment, but quickly returned to her usual demeanor.

Hearing Dong Chun say this, the man glanced at him, then at his own Vessel. The woman understood, nodded, bent down and said to Dong Chun, “Little one, were you working hard to take care of your brother just now? I see your hands are so red, you might have frostbite. How about I put some ointment on for you?”

Dong Chun looked at Gong Si, and Gong Si nodded. Only then did he obediently follow the woman away.

Then the middle-aged man spoke to Gong Si again: “You really resemble a User.”

Gong Si was taken aback, instinctively refuting, “I’m already over eighteen. Since I didn’t Awaken before, I won’t Awaken in the future. I’m just an ordinary person…”

The man shook his head. “I mean your behavior is like a User.”

“The way you interact with your brothers is like a User.”

“Deep down, you don’t like Vessels and Users, do you? Even though you haven’t said it, and we’ve only just met, I can already tell from your brothers’ words and actions.”

“What that child just said is a typical result of your influence. He said that because, in daily life, you show indifference or even dislike toward Vessels and Users, right?”

“And then there’s the child still lying in the hospital room.”

“Why does he suppress his User instincts to the point of ending up like this? Isn’t that the best evidence of your dislike, even aversion, toward Vessels and Users?”

“He’s afraid you’ll dislike him. He’s afraid of becoming someone who disappoints you, so he quietly suppresses himself, always suppressing.”

“No one seems to have told you this before, but now I have to say it.”

“You brothers are very close, aren’t you? They listen to you.”

“In this situation, even if it’s unconscious, you are their User, and they are your Vessels.”

“They shape themselves according to your wishes. They don’t want to do things you dislike. The way they are now, isn’t it you, as their User, who should reflect the most?”

“Sorry, I’m a User, so I unconsciously used this analogy. People always say Users determine the lives of Vessels, decide everything about them. But precisely because of this, Users must take responsibility for Vessels. Every move, every word must consider the needs of the Vessel. I think that’s the real way Users and Vessels should interact.

I don’t know why you dislike Users and Vessels, but for the sake of your brothers, please try to change your attitude.”

After finishing, the middle-aged man looked at Gong Si again, then turned and left after a moment.

Gong Si was left standing there, stunned.