Return of the Antagonistic Lady Boss

After class, Qian, who had just loudly announced that she was married, stomped all over the shattered little hearts of countless boys as she held her head high and strode out of the classroom, afraid that if she walked any slower people would see that she’d actually been standing in workwear for that long.

She had to find the teacher and ask where exactly that patient the teacher said you could tell had a problem at a glance was.

"Senior!"

Luo Xiaoya ran after her and bowed deeply to Qian.

"Senior, I’m sorry, about my boyfriend, for causing you trouble!"

"It’s fine." Qian pushed up her glasses. "This isn’t congenital. Has he ever had some kind of external trauma, like a craniocerebral injury?"

"Huh, Senior, you’re amazing..." Luo Xiaoya stared at Qian in shock. This was her first time seeing someone recognize a brain injury just from one look at her boyfriend.

Qian tugged at the corner of her mouth. This was the intuition that came from clinical experience.

Just as Qian was about to turn around, a classmate happened to brush past Luo Xiaoya, and the strap of their bag accidentally hooked onto Luo Xiaoya’s glasses.

"Ah! I’m sorry!" The classmate who’d knocked off her glasses hurriedly bent down to pick them up for Luo Xiaoya, and Qian’s eyes instantly went wide.

Oh, come on!

No wonder she thought Luo Xiaoya looked familiar—this girl in the future is...!!!

The reason she didn’t recognize her at first glance was that this girl was way too thin right now—yeah, 120 jin is pretty heavy, but compared to the 150 later on, this was definitely thin to the point of being unrecognizable!

Plus, in the future this one had laser eye surgery and stopped wearing glasses, so Qian didn’t recognize her right away.

Thinking of that future plump, steamed-bun-like female author with depression, Qian pushed up her glasses.

In the previous life, when she came to see Qian as a patient, she never said she had also studied psychology. She only said she’d gone to university for a year but dropped out because she’d been traumatized by campus bullying. Later, after her lover died, and because she was too perfectionistic and had a histrionic personality, she eventually developed depression and jumped off a building over just a few negative comments from readers.

What a karmic entanglement!

"Then I’ll get going, Senior!" Luo Xiaoya bowed to Qian again.

"Stop!"

"What is it, Senior?"

"Let’s go find somewhere to sit for a bit. I’ll buy you milk tea and we’ll talk about your boyfriend."

"Huh? But..." The Senior who’d been acting all cool just now suddenly inviting her out—Luo Xiaoya was utterly confused.

"What can I say, I’m your reader. Digging a pit and then jumping off a building without filling it is really irresponsible to your readers..." Qian muttered.

"What did you say?"

"I said, do you mind milk tea? My friend’s milk tea shop is right by the campus gate..."

Ten minutes later, at the milk tea shop run by Shi Touyu, Qian had no trouble at all getting a clear picture of Luo Xiaoya’s situation.

"You’re saying that after your parents divorced and remarried, nobody took care of you, and it’s your boyfriend who’s been working to support you through school?"

This, Qian had not known in her previous life.

In the previous life, Luo Xiaoya hadn’t managed to get an appointment with her and had gone to another psychologist instead, but that doctor wasn’t very competent, and they didn’t manage to save her—she jumped anyway. Qian hadn’t originally read web novels; she only picked up her book after hearing that a patient she’d narrowly missed had jumped, and then she ended up really liking this particular story and was impressed by this author who always wrote sweet romances.

"Yes... His grades were actually very good. We’re childhood sweethearts. To pay for my schooling he went to work in a factory, and then his head got hit by something, and he became like this."

"His family didn’t object to him working to support you?"

"He doesn’t really have any family left, just a bedridden grandma. The two of us have spent New Year together for several years now. What I remember most is last New Year’s. I used the money from my summer job to buy some New Year’s goods to bring to my dad, but my stepmother threw me out. I only had a few yuan on me, and when I got back it was him who held me. We made vegetarian dumplings together..."

Luo Xiaoya herself didn’t know why she was telling all this to a stranger. Qian seemed to have some kind of magic—being around her made you want to pour your heart out without even realizing it.

In reality, Qian was using a bit of professional technique in the conversation, guiding her to talk as a way of releasing pressure. To keep secrets from Qian, you’d need someone with Yu Minglang’s level of treatment resistance.

"It’s okay, keep going." Qian hadn’t expected that a future author who could write such sweet stories would have such a miserable past.

"Senior, he never left me when I was struggling. Now that he’s sick, I can’t abandon him either..."

Only feelings forged in hardship can have such indestructible strength. A college student would stick with a migrant worker whose mental state is unstable, all because she can’t forget that bowl of vegetarian dumplings they made together.

If it were someone else, Qian would definitely say that when you’re young you don’t really understand love, that maybe it’s just gratitude.

But with this one, Qian stayed silent.

She knew that this future author, because of her husband’s death, wouldn’t be able to move on for many years. This kind of feeling was no longer just "love" in the simple sense. It was the hardship they had gone through together; losing the person who’d shared those struggles made it feel like a whole segment of her life was missing, incomplete.

"How long has he been injured?"

"Two months... Senior, he really wasn’t like this before. The stitches on his head have already healed, so why is he so impulsive now? He often can’t stop himself from hurting other people, and he doesn’t even spare himself. There are so many bite marks on his own arms—I’m really worried about him..."

That’s why she chose this major in the first place—hoping she could help her boyfriend return to normal, even giving up the Chinese department she actually liked.

"Two months... that’s still within the window. After a brain nerve injury, neurological deficits are hard to recover from on their own. You absolutely have to cooperate with medication, and you must treat it as quickly as possible. If too much time passes, the nerves will degenerate and even necrose."

This kind of psychological issue caused by external force was beyond Qian’s ability to treat. In cases like this, patients simply couldn’t cooperate with purely psychological treatment.

"But... we..."

"No money, right?"

The other girl lowered her head.

They really didn’t have any money, and the doctor had been vague, saying that even with medication it might not help, that this was something time could heal on its own, so they hadn’t bought any.

Qian thought it over. The treatment wouldn’t cost much; ten or twenty thousand yuan would be enough.

But that ten or twenty thousand was enough to kill someone.

There’s a certain kind of person who has no rural cooperative medical insurance, no urban health insurance, no formal employer, nothing at all. For them, any illness is potentially fatal.

"There’s twenty thousand yuan on this card. Take it and get him treated. If you feel bad about it, write me an IOU. You can pay it back in installments in the future. Interest will be calculated according to bank loan rates. Neither of us will take advantage of the other."

"I can’t take your money, we don’t even know each other—" Luo Xiaoya was utterly stunned.

For Qian, this amount wasn’t even enough to buy a handbag, but for an ordinary person it could save a life.

"To be blunt, this is his only chance at treatment. I can’t guarantee how much he’ll recover even with it, but at least he won’t end up in a situation where one day he loses control, hits you, and then kills himself. I also want to see how that story ends. Leaving a book unfinished is really too cruel to the readers."

"What story?"

"Ahem, nothing. When you go back, don’t let him eat fast food or fried stuff; that’ll make his condition worse. Try to get him to eat more fish—it’ll help his recovery."

Money never really disappears; it just stays with you in another form. Using this little bit of money to buy herself the ending she wanted to see was worth it.