Chapter 1: IMAGE_REQUEST: A dramatic, cinematic close-up portrait of a tense face in a chaotic emergency room, sharp

The night rain in Kuala Lumpur came without warning, the downpour lashing against the glass curtain wall of the emergency department at Jingchen International Hospital in dense, cracking bursts. When Chen Siqi burst through the front doors, cradling the fever-hot Chen An'an, her heels were already soaked, and the chill crept up from the soles of her feet.

"Doctorend—please, please save my son." Her voice was taut, and rainwater mixed with cold sweat dripped from her temples onto An'an's patient gown.

The triage nurse looked up, saw the pale face of the child in Siqi's arms, and immediately sounded the alarm. Gurney wheels screeched across the floor in a rapid, friction-filled rush. Chen Siqi didn't let go. As she ran beside the gurney, she rattled off the child's history: "Chen An'an, four years old. Sudden high fever three hours after eating. Now there's uncontrolled gum bleeding and critically low platelets. This is the rare blood disorder he was diagnosed with in Penang; he survives on routine transfusions, but we've had no blood available this time."

In the emergency corridor, the monitors issued a chaotic symphony of beeps. Just before Chen Siqi was ushered into the resuscitation room, Lin Xiaowei gripped her wrist.

"Siqi, you just got off your night shift and rushed straight here. Don't rush in yet." Lin Xiaowei lowered her voice, worry etched in her eyes. "An'an is Rh-negative and carries a rare antigen. The blood bank is running on fumes—they said the whole hospital is out of a single spare unit. Even if the match succeeds, transport takes time."

Chen Siqi shook her head, her fingertips ice-cold. "I know. I've seen similar cases in Penang. His clotting function won't hold through the night. Xiaowei, I'll go in to handle the family consent and basic care. You direct the transfusion protocol. Watch his respiratory rate—if his oxygen saturation drops below ninety percent, intubate immediately. Don't hesitate."

Lin Xiaowei inhaled sharply and released her hand. "Understood. I trust you."

The resuscitation room door closed behind her, the heavy hydraulic seal cutting off the sound of the rain outside. Chen Siqi clicked on her penlight; the beam fell on An'an's tightly closed eyelids. She opened the child's chart, her fingers tracing the lines of cold, clinical data.

"An'an, Mommy's here." She whispered, tilting the pillow beneath his head to elevate it ten degrees.

The monitor suddenly shrieked, a long, sharp wail, as his blood pressure spiked and erratic. Doctors flocked around him, their movements brisk and precise. Chen Siqi adjusted the IV pump's rate with practiced ease, checking the vascular access lines. Her hands were steady, as if she had managed countless critical pediatric patients in a ward before. Only she knew that somewhere in the hollow of her chest, a voice was screaming: five years ago, she had been in the delivery room, clutching a phone, watching doctored infidelity photos pop up one after another, until the twins still forming in her womb were forced into a secret that belonged to her alone.

The rain suddenly stopped.

In the corridor outside the resuscitation room, footsteps were light, leather shoes tapping against the marble floor with restrained rhythm.

Chen Siqi turned and saw a man standing at the far end of the hallway.

He was tall, wearing a sharply tailored dark suit, his tie loosened by half a button, his cufflinks glinting cold in the light. He carried no umbrella; his shoulders were dry.

Chen Siqi recognized him.

Five years ago, at the Hu Group's annual gala, the man who had spoken not a word, yet left the entire boardroom in a strangled silence. The man who had stood at the second-floor picture window, watching her stumble out the Hu family gates with a hunched back.

Huo Jingchen.

His gaze fell on the open gap of the resuscitation room door, on the woman inside cradling the child, her head bent over an IV line. His foot stopped; the toe of his shoe pressed into the seam between floor tiles, and he did not move forward.

"Mr. Huo." Lin Xiaowei, who had reappeared at some point, let out a surprised breath at the sight of him. "Are you here for the new building inspection? This is the hardest-hit area. You shouldn't stand out here—the bloodstains will be everywhere."

Huo Jingchen said nothing. His view through the door gap found the child again. He was propped in Chen Siqi's arms, brow furrowed, lips cracked and dry, yet in the instant a drug dripped through the IV line, his brow relaxed a fraction.

At the same moment, Chen Ningning came running from the waiting-area benches, a half-eaten biscuit clutched in her hand. Seeing her brother being wheeled inside, tears swirled in her eyes, though she dared not let them fall. She looked up and saw the man standing at the end of the corridor.

Ningning tiptoed, raising the biscuit high, and called out to him. "Uncle, I'm hungry. Brother's been in there a long time, and Mommy won't let me run in. Please tell Mommy that An'an is about to vomit, and she needs to change his position!"

Huo Jingchen looked down.

The girl looked up at him, her fringe damp with sweat, plastered to her forehead. That face, with its curved eyebrows and eyes, and the faint, tiny mole on the tip of her nose.

His throat tightened.

In his childhood memory, the photograph Shen Manli had buried in the bottom of an attic chest—the one he had secretly sketched a hundred times—the girl in it had the same curved eyes, the same tip of the nose.

He walked over, his voice low and hoarse. "What is your name?"

"Ningning." The girl bit into her biscuit, her answer muffled and slurred. "My name is Chen Ningning, and his is Chen An'an. We're twins. Brother's being saved in there, and Mama's crying. Uncle, do you know my mama? When she looks at you, there's blood in her eyes."

Huo Jingchen's fingers clenched around his cufflinks.

"Your mother…" He glanced toward the resuscitation room, his voice tight. "How old is she this year?"

Ningning tilted her head and thought for a moment. "Mama's twenty-nine. She said she turned a year older after the last Spring Festival, so now she's twenty-nine. Uncle, why are you asking that? Did you come looking for my mama? She owes you a lot of things. She doesn't dare look you in the eye."

Huo Jingchen didn't answer. He turned and walked into the deep shadow at the far end of the corridor.

Inside the resuscitation room, Chen Siqi listened as the rain outside began to fall again. She lowered her gaze and saw An'an's fingers clutching the hem of her overcoat so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

"Mama, An'an doesn't want to sleep." The child's voice was barely a whisper, as small as a mosquito's buzz. "An'an's scared you'll leave like Papa did and never come back."

Chen Siqi's tears struck the patient's chart, soaking into a small, dark stain.

She didn't wipe them away.

She simply pulled the child closer, tightening her fingers around him, as if she could gather up, one by one, the truths that the rain had scattered, the truths buried five years ago, and press them back into shape.

Lin Xiaowei cut through the curtain of rain at a brisk walk, her heels striking the pooled water with sharp,清脆 clicks. A thick stack of medical records was clutched in her hand; rainwater trailed from the ends of her hair and dripped onto the shoulders of her white coat, blooming dark circles on the grey fabric. When she pushed open the door to the resuscitation room, the motion-sensor light above it snapped on, and the harsh white glare made Chen Siqi squint.

"The blood bank just called." Lin Xiaowei dropped the files onto the stainless-steel trolley; the metallic clatter echoed in the cramped space. "Hospital-wide stock is zero. Your son has Rh-negative d blood. That phenotype occurs in only three in ten thousand of the Malaysian population. They've mobilized inventory from every satellite hospital, but the earliest delivery won't arrive until past midnight tomorrow."

Chen Siqi's fingers, still curled around An'an's wrist, went rigid. The boy's breathing was growing shallower by the second, and his lips had taken on a terrible, blue-grey cast. As a pediatric nurse, she knew exactly what Rh-negative d blood meant. It meant the child wasn't simply bleeding — his own immune system was devouring him. The antibodies were attacking healthy red blood cells, and once a hemolytic reaction set in, even a transfusion couldn't hold the line.

"Xiaowei," Chen Siqi's voice was level, almost cold. "Do we have any other options?"

Lin Xiaowei bit her lower lip, her eyes darting. "Bone marrow matching. Or… a direct-relative match. Your father's still in Penang, right? Even flying out now, he'd need at least four hours. By the time the bloodwork results come back, the boy probably won't last that long."

Chen Siqi said nothing. She bent down and pulled An'an's blanket up a little higher, covering the small legs that had begun to twitch. His fingers were still gripping the hem of her coat, with a grip strength that was astonishing for a child his size, her nails digging through the cotton into her skin.

"Siqi." Lin Xiaowei let out a breath that cracked into a sob. "I know you don't want anything more to do with the Huo family. But this is An'an's life. You have to make a decision. Call, or watch him…"

The phone in Chen Siqi's pocket vibrated.

It was a message from Huo Jingchen's assistant. She had deliberately kept only the assistant's number in her contacts, filed under "Corporate Affairs."

The screen lit up, cold light washing over her face.

"Mr. Jing is asking whether you'd like the group's helicopter dispatched?"

Chen Siqi stared at the line of text, her fingertips ice-cold. Kuala Lumpur's thunderstorm had just rolled through; visibility on the runway was near zero. Taking a helicopter up in this weather was suicide. But An'an's color was fading fast, and the numbers on the monitor were spiking erratically, the piercing alarm cutting through the taut, deadly silence of the resuscitation room.

She pressed the voice button.

"Send the helicopter," she said into the microphone, her tone flat. "But I have one condition. Pull every usable unit of Rh-negative blood at the bank — doesn't matter where it's sourced from. I want the crossmatch report on my phone before the blood arrives."

She ended the call and looked up at Lin Xiaowei. Lin Xiaowei stared at her, stunned, opened her mouth as if to say something, and in the end simply nodded, turned, and bolted out the door to make the calls.

Chen Siqi lowered her head again. An'an's breathing was growing fainter. His fingers uncurled from the hem of her coat and fell, limp. She reached down and caught his slipping face in her palm; her hand met skin that burned hot.

"An'an," she murmured. "Mama's here."

The child did not answer.

Outside the door, the rain turned ferocious again. Water hammered the glass in a dense, relentless drumming, as though countless hands were pounding on the door. Chen Siqi sat on the narrow edge of the metal bed, watching the line on the monitor flatten inch by inch, and somewhere inside her, a corner was quietly crumbling.

Five years ago, she had sat in much the same position. Not in a hospital, but in the old Huo family residence, watching that man print out the forged photos of his affair one by one and drop them at her feet. She had been carrying two children then. He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor, looking down at the wretched shape of her retreating back.

"Leave," he had said. "The Huo family doesn't need a wife who's broken her vows."

She left.

She went back to Penang alone and raised An'an and Ningning by herself.

Now An'an was dying.

And the one man who could save her was standing at the far end of the corridor, looking at her daughter, asking how old she was this year.

Back in the corridor, Ningning was still clutching that cracker in her little fist. She ran back into the ward and found her mother perched on the bed's edge, eyes rimmed red, while her brother lay in the bed, his face white as paper.

Ningning didn't cry. She padded over, reached up with her chubby hand, and pressed her palm gently against her mother's cheek.

"Mama, the cracker doesn't taste like anything anymore," Ningning said, her voice sweet and round, innocent as only a small child's can be. "But I'm not hungry inside. Is Brother-Brother hungry? Can you feed him something?"

Chen Siqi reached out and stroked the soft top of her daughter's head, but her own fingertips were trembling.

"Ningning," she said, her voice scraped raw. "Your brother is losing blood. Mama is trying to figure something out."

"Then you'd better be quick." Ningning looked at her with grave, unblinking seriousness. "Uncle said he'd help Mama. But the way he looked at me—it was weird. He said he thought he'd seen me somewhere before. Mama, is he my grandpa?"

Chen Siqi froze.

Grandpa.

The man in the dark suit, standing at the far end of the corridor, was An'an and Ningning's grandfather.

He had just asked how old her daughter was.

And Ningning—that innocent four-year-old—was tilting her head back, gazing up at her mother with eyes that looked just like the ones in Huo Jingchen's childhood photographs, wide and blameless.

Chen Siqi lowered her gaze to An'an's blue-purple fingers, then looked up again at Ningning's face. It was a face she barely recognized, yet it carried the unmistakable blood of the Huo family.

Thunder rolled beyond the window. Lightning tore a white seam across the night sky, and a flash of pale, harsh light briefly illuminated a corner of the resuscitation room.