Reborn To Be The Imperial Consort [BL]-Chapter 174: Preening Black Dahlia — XV

"... Urk!" The unconscious man’s wheezing coughs startled away Namgung Jihye from bandaging him, if only for a moment. "Cough! Cough! Argh..."

Barely conscious as he was, she had watched him drift in and out of wakefulness for the past hours wherein she and the others tried to heal him.

Although all efforts appeared futile.

However, this time seemed different, and she had to grasp this opportunity.

"Stay awake! Stay awake!" Namgung Jihye heard herself exclaim, all but shaking the adrift man. "You must stay awake."

The man wheezed harder. Her desperation seemed to seize his feeble attention.

"I’m— I’m... Jihye." She stammered, neglecting to use her clan’s name for this introduction. "I mean no harm— we saved you! You were nearly swept away with the river." She looked away, heart strangely stuttering at the man’s battered features. "There... There isn’t much we were able to do. Tell me— who are you?"

Coughs hacked through the man’s lungs as he trembled, voice feeble and barely above a whisper. For a moment, as Namgung Jihye looked down at him, she saw a flash of bleeding red and started.

"... Doctor... Baek."

She froze hearing a familiar name. For a split second, she wondered if she had misheard the partly delirious man.

Carefully, under the dim lit tent, Namgung Jihye leaned forth, bringing her ears closer to the man’s struggling breath.

Did they happen to know of the same Doctor Baek?

"Doctor Baek?" She bit her lip, clenched fists trembling on the bedside. In hope, perhaps. "From the Divine Phoenix’s clinic?"

The man gasped, the sound wet and disconcerting, chest stuttering. His eyelids fluttered close.

"... Yes— him." Even through her rising alarm, Namgung Jihye could hear the man choking on his own blood as the bandages began soaking in red visible under the pale flames. "It must be... H-him alone."

With surprising strength, he gripped her hand, blood wet against her flesh. Then, he stiffly turned to look at her, eyes grim. "In the future, I shall fulfil your any one request, unconditionally."

Namgung Jihye flinched at another flash of crimson in his eyes and steadfastness of his voice.

"Very well."

And so, in the hours leading to day break, Namgung Jihye and her entourage hastened their journey back to Zhejiang.

Even as she rode her horse, leading the charge back, she could not help but look back over and over.

As if to make certain that the injured yet unsettling man in their care was brought safely.

To the dawn, the entourage rode as swift as the wind and ceaseless as the running waters.

With the first rays of sun declaring the daybreak of the new day, Namgung Jihye and her group barged into the clinic without so much as a knock.

The man in their care was breathing still. And that was what mattered best.

However, the moment her men carried him into the clinic, she could feel her blood freeze at the sight of him lying pale in the crimson coloured garb of his.

Their journey had been unforgiving to him, and the restraint of time made it so they couldn’t keep an eye on his condition.

Under such circumstances, the battered man was bleeding out too much.

It was senseless, the panic that seized her was alarming in its unfamiliarity. Swiftly, she all but kicked the clinic doors open.

It created a ruckus. It disgraced her name. But it roused Doctor Baek and drew him near.

This was not a matter of her pride. But the unknown man’s survival.

She looked back as her men carried him in, laying him on a bed without preamble. She could see his chest rise and fall imperceptibly, the pallor of his ordinary features, and bruised body.

As she stared at him, torn away from the world around her, Namgung Jihye felt perplexed.

Why did this man’s survival concern her so?

"What—"

Doctor Baek!

Her head snapped to the direction of his voice, expecting him half asleep.

Instead, the moment Doctor Baek laid eyes on the bleeding man, his eyes widened and colour drained from his face.

Before she could even blink, Doctor Baek was by the bed, hands trembling as he felt for the man’s pulse.

As she watched them, she could see the doctor’s shoulders shake with tension as a choked gasp escaped his lips.

...

Impossible. Li Xinyuan could feel his chest tight and palm wet with sweat as he held the limp wrist. This cannot be real.

On his knees by the man’s side, he swallowed the growing lump in his throat, each breath akin to inhaling a bed of nails.

This man was fatally wounded. He was bleeding profusely through the bandages, unconscious.

He was Liu Mingyun, disguised but himself undeniably. Li Xinyuan would know.

He would recognize him blind. He could recognize the familiar features of his betrothed through the borrowed face.

The surgeon’s body didn’t seem his own. His mind foreign and his head light as he laboured to patch the threadbare of Liu Mingyun’s body with weak hands.

Unsteady and disoriented.

Impossible. This should be impossible. There is no way that male lead of his world would be so close to death.

Liu Mingyun couldn’t. He shouldn’t.

Liu Mingyun couldn’t die.

Li Xinyuan’s fingers trembled, relief flooding him as the feeble thrum of life pulsed under his touch.

Immediately, he snapped into action, calling out for Hu Lijing to bring the other doctors.

As he carried his betrothed into the surgery room, he could feel Namgung Jihye’s eyes burning on his back.

And suddenly, apart from fear for Liu Mingyun’s life and his own anxieties, Li Xinyuan felt resentment.

A burning, undeserved resentment towards the female lead.

It is her fault. He thought, running. If she didn’t exist—

Li Xinyuan froze, a stranger in his own mind, and he hastened his strides. As if fleeing from the shadows chasing his heels.

What was he thinking?

The fault lay not in Namgung Jihye’s existence, but in his meddling of the story.

It lay in the world’s consciousness.

...

There was a wisdom in disallowing a doctor to treat their dear ones.

Oftentimes, doing so clouded their mind and dragged it away from rationality.

Li Xinyuan experienced it first hand.

Shaking and pale, the surgeon lumbered out of the sterile room supported by Hu Lijing’s reassuring presence.

Still quite not back to himself, Li Xinyuan dipped his head to stare down at his hands in an empty haze.

I operated on him. His mind mused, detached. He was bleeding out. How could he be so injured? His entire stomach was torn open.

Hu Lijing’s warm hands squeezed his upper arm, pulling him out of his spiralling mind.

"Everything will be well."

Li Xinyuan let out a guttural noise. Neither a grunt, nor a hum.

Strange. Why couldn’t he talk?

"Xinyuan." Hu Lijing tried again, voice firm. "He is fine. He is out of danger."

The blood. His pale face, almost lifeless. The feeble rise and fall of his chest.

"He appeared so—" he choked, startled by the hoarseness of his own voice.

God. What happened to my voice?

Hu Lijing exhaled through his nose. Li Xinyuan was getting lost in his own mind again and again.

Since the surgery ended half an hour prior.

Blood. Blood. The blasted open stomach. The brutalised viscera. Liu Mingyun’s pale face. His weak brea—

Hu Lijing seized Li Xinyuan’s clammy hand and gave it a tight squeeze.

"Come. I’ll help you clean. Then you can stay with him."