"What's wrong with the pregnant patient in the VIP ward?"

The wheel of the surgical tool cart gave slight creaks as it was pushed along the third floor. Having been put on duty after the turnover, the nurse pushing had heard some of the doctors gushing about the VIP patient. She reckoned that the sickness must be either incurable or too abnormal that even their best doctors were stumped on what to do.

"Is it an incurable disease?"

The other nurse looked at her colleague and shook her head in a piteous manner. "No, nothing like that ba. She claims to be experiencing other ailments."

"Could it be pregnancy symptoms?"

"No. Delusions and paranoia."

The cart stopped in front of ward 63. "That severe?" she gasped.

"But those sound more like psychotic illnesses than a physical one."

The taller nurse shushed her quickly, gesturing for the female to stop talking. "Be careful of what you say!"

She continued in a lower volume. "That's the wife of LXT Company' president. Her husband had been staying in the hospital without going home, if he catches wind of rumours about his wife, all of us would be in trouble!"

"Okay, okay, got it. Big shot's wife, pretend I'm deaf. Understood." She pecked her head obediently.

The cart was manoeuvred inside quietly as to not disturb the resting patients. "But the patient is sure lucky to have such a loving and considerate husband despite her sickness." The woeful sigh was mixed with both sympathy and admiration.

***

Inside the VIP ward.

"Baobei oh, I made someone pregnant." Feng Mian lamented.

System 555: "I know, I heard just now. Congratulations on being a dad."

"You don't even comfort me a little."

System 555: "What's there to comfort? The one who's pregnant isn't you, it's your male friend over there.."

Feng Mian glanced at her unfortunate friend who had been passively flipping pages of random magazines for the past hour. His watery pupils moved as if they were taking in every sentence and paragraph of the article, but it actually took Hao Junli a full half an hour to realise that he was in fact holding a sports magazine.

Feng Mian threaded carefully. "Hao Junli, should we go home ba?"

Hao Junli skirted through the pages once more and stared blankly at the random page he opened which happened to have an image of a tan bodybuilder taking up an entire spread.

He opened his mouth to answer platonically. "Can't. I'm sick."

His stay-in-ward caretaker sighed sympathetically. "You're not sick, you're-"

She did not dare to finish the sentence after the venomous glare Hao Junli sent. Hao Junli was insisting that he had a mental problem instead of a physical one. "I'm dreaming, this is all a bad dream. Tomorrow I'll wake up at our house in Yannan Road and go watch the new Marvel movie."

"Ahh... this isn't-"

"Shhhhhhh. This is a quiet dream." Hao Junli closed his eyes to shut the world up and extended his index finger to indicate his unwillingness to be disturbed.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he started treatment by meditation. Illness in the mind must be treated through the mind. He muttered serenely, like an abbot estranged from worldly matters, "The world is only but a shell of what you imagine it to be. You think, therefore you are. I, Hao Junli, am a man. Undeniably, unquestionably, a man..."

"Hao Junli, I think we shou-"

"HUMMMMMMMMMMM~" Hao Junli meditated harder.

Feng Mian's shoulders slumped in resignation. This fella should need more time to come to terms with the fact that he's carrying a fetus.

"I'll cut you some fruits." Secretary Hong had brought a fruit basket on his way to the company and it was left untouched on the bedside stand. She figured that Hao Junli could use some alone time and left tacitly to wash the fruits.

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Hao Junli registered the sound of the door closing with a light thump. Not one minute after Feng Mian left, an unwelcomed visitor strode in unabashedly to his private ward.

Chun Hua swaggered inside, her hips jutting out of their proper axis to exert womanly dominance. Even the doctors and nurses would have to knock before entering the VIP ward, so Hao Junli had a cinch that the one who entered was not a hospital staff. One of his eyelids lifted to see who the uninvited guest was and after seeing that it was the Li Xiaocheng's side mistress that came in, he closed them back indifferently.

"You're disturbing my zen. Get out." His voice was apathetic.

With her Xiaocheng gege out of sight, Chun Hua rid of all the pretences and switched from the white lotus second female lead mode into the green tea bitch mode after her eyes swept up the room's vacant vicinity. This Wan Junli who wasn't worth taking a second glance at had somehow changed from a sparrow into a phoenix that flew up a branch when she wasn't looking. An annoying eyesore!

The smell of gunpowder filled the room. Chun Hua wasted no time and took the first shot that was filled with transparent jealousy. She slipped her Fendi purse on the ward's couch. "I heard that you're pregnant, and I'm here to offer my congratulations. Congrats." It was not the tone of someone sincerely wishing for other's joy.

Hao Junli scoffed through his nose. If that was congratulating, then Spiderman is a lizard!

"I thank miss Huang Chun for coming all the way here send me wishes. I'll be sure to tell my Xiaocheng that you wish us well." Hao Junli's smile was as fake as his gender.

Chun Hua's scowl indented a few centimetres deeper. "Xiaocheng gege is kind and it has to be because of your baby that he feels responsible to keep you company. But for the sake of us both being women, I feel obliged to tell you."

Chun Hua's chest puffed out slightly. "Xiaocheng gege has been in love with me and I also came back to this city for his sake!"

"My baby is also Xiaocheng's baby. It takes two to tango." Hao Junli's ears nearly rotted from all that Xiaocheng gege this, Xiaocheng gege that. His mood got even worse when this Chun Hua unintentionally jabbed at his sore point of being a woman.

The mistress's teeth clenched as the image of Li Xiaocheng rolling in bed with another woman came to mind. She harrumphed. "Miss Wan should not use your pregnancy to tie him down. Xiaocheng gege has made me a promise to divorce you and be with me. If you really do love him, let him go be with the one he loves."

"Okay."

"-It is not good to cling to a-" Wait, what?

Chun Hua stopped in the midst of trying to sell her concept of true love and sacrifice, her mouth still parted.

Did she mishear? Okay? That's it? It was that easy?

"What'd you say?" Her face showed some disbelief.

Hao Junli still had time to be leisure. "I was inspired by miss Huang Chun's philosophy of letting a person go to be with the one he loves. I find this kind of thinking admirable and hard to come by. When Li Xiaocheng gets back, as long as he says the word, I'll agree to a divorce and let him marry you."

Like hell Feng Mian would.

Chun Hua felt that the script had deviated somewhat but couldn't foster enough courage to take back her words. Seeing that her rival was so implausibly agreeable, she spoke out directly. "Then miss Wan should consider an abortion. In the long run, it's not good for you to raise a child on your own and there are many things to consider."

This was wanting a mile after being given an inch. Just because Hao Junli did not want to trade blows with a second-tier cannon fodder, doesn't mean he was willing to be walked all over. This sort of provocation was the most irritating.

"Oh? Miss Chun Hua sounds like you have experience in raising a child by yourself?"

The insinuation was that Chun Hua was a single mother with experience of child-rearing.

Chun Hua ditched the gun and grabbed a canon after being incited. "Bitch! You slept with him once and were lucky enough to get pregnant! You think you're invincible just because Xiaocheng shows momentary interest in you? Pei! Any wh*re could get pregnant from one night stands!"

The insult rolled off Junli like water through rock. "If it's so easy, then why don't you try getting pregnant?"

Chun Hua was about to foam from the mouth of anger. Hao Junli could tell and even felt schadenfreude at her expense.

He egged on and spoke baitingly as if reeling the fish to shore. "Do you know why Li Xiaocheng let me have his baby?"

"Humph, don't think I'm an idiot. He didn't let you, you just landed the opportunity by circumstance."

Hao Junli ignored the goad and said instead, "It's because I'm pretty."

"What?" The mistress was taken back. What did Wan Junli being pretty have anything to do with it?

"He let me keep it because I'm pretty."

Hao Junli looked at her up and down, slowly and deliberately. "Even if he could take his pick to choose the mother of his baby from, he wouldn't choose you. You're just too ugly."

The fish was caught and given ten slaps before being thrown back into the water.

Chun Hua trudged, her hips no longer swaying, and pounced directly on top of Hao Junli. The next second, his fine locks were held harshly in Chun Hua's vice grip.

Hao Junli's face contorted as he felt a patch of his scalp about to turn bold. Chun Hua's hands looked thin but her strength was not frail. He just hadn't expected her to change strategy from psychological retorts into physical assault at the very next moment.

Chun Hua tugged the strands upright as hard as she could, her manicures digging into Hao Junli's hair like it was free real estate.

"Screw you! You're the ugly toad! Your entire generation is ugly!" She increased the strength of pulling. "And what Huang Chun, Huang Chun?! This grandma's name is Chun Hua! Bitch!"

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and this cheap bitch had just called her ugly. She couldn't be more scorned. Hao Junli was not a gentleman that wouldn't raise a hand against a woman when the other side started it first, but before his hands could move to clatch onto Chun Hua's, Feng Mian came back.

Chun Hua thought that her Xiaocheng gege would definitely take her side and was about to open her mouth to lodge a complaint against the unscrupulous wife. The result was, before she could utter the first syllable, her head was whipped backwards by the person who just came in.

Chun Hua screeched.

The two-person tug of hair expanded to become a three-person tug of hair. Feng Mian held onto the mistress's curled locks without letting go.

The housemate of Hao Junli was without a doubt biased.

Feng Mian fumed, "Huang Chun you unrepentant parasitic grasshopper! How dare touch this grandma's boss!"