The Devil Doctor's Spicy Love-Chapter 438: Walk away (3)

The years in London rolled one after the other until the last year of their college arrived in a breeze. Even so, there was only one man throughout the years whom Xie Zi Han fairly considered as his friend from the beginning to end.

As he entered his room one day as usual, he found that it was cloaked with darkness. He switched on the lights and saw Yang Cheng cooped up in his bed with his back facing him. Xie Zi Han stood before his bed in silence. Then dropped his bag stuffed with heavy medical textbooks right on his sleeping head.

"Breathe! Breathe! Cannot breathe!"

Xie Zi Han calmly lifted his bag while Yang Cheng woke up with a red, puffed face. He said breathlessly. "You want to kill me or something? I thought we were best friends!"

"What are you brooding over?"

"Is this your way of expressing your concern for me?"

Xie Zi Han lifted his bag for another onslaught when he raised the white flag of defeat. "Fine, fine! Keep those textbooks away from me! I feel nauseous just by looking at them ugh..."

"What are you brooding over?"

Yang Cheng leaned back against the wall and looked at him. "What are your plans after the residency is completed?"

"Return to China."

"And?"

"Start my own practice."

He smiled. "It’s an open secret that almost all the hospitals in China are run by my family directly or indirectly. You will see Yang’s name everywhere."

"I know."

"I can land you a job in whichever hospital you want. Your postgrad scores are top-notch and your residency is stellar. You will get into any prestigious hospital you want. I can oil the way for you~"

"Thank you, but no. I want to set up my own practice."

"You don’t want to work in a hospital?"

Xie Zi Han said, "...I want to treat patients."

"I know."

"Hospitals feel like a business."

Yang Cheng smiled. "No kidding. I cannot count the times you butted heads with the hospital’s management during your residency. The top brass don’t look out for a patient’s interests. Not even the doctors and nurses. Not completely. You will be surprised to see that of all places, hospitals are the least philanthropic~"

"Which is why I am not interested in politics and the unnecessary rules that chokes the doctors. They come in my way. I will set up my own practice where I am not bound by a hospital’s senseless management procedures."

"You want freedom of action."

"Yes."

Yang Cheng stared at him in silence for a long moment.

"Zi."

"Yes," he replied with his usual expression - which was none.

Yang Cheng leaned forward, still holding his gaze.

"You know that I have barely made it through graduation and residency - only because you were by my side. I swimmed through the suffocating years thanks to you beating up the knowledge into my head."

"Yes."

"But even if I will be an average doctor, my position in the hospital will be far from average. The Yangs control everything. So you might have to face bullshit with the management and politics, but I won’t. I will never have to because nobody will dare to cross the line against me on the board. Which translates to saying that I will have the ultimate power in a hospital’s way of working. Well technically, it’s still my grandfather, but he will step back. It’s time now."

"Good for you."

"Not good for me. Good for you."

He paused. "You want me to join one of your hospitals because you will be there too and so I won’t have to face the bullshit?"

Yang Cheng got out of his bed and stood up, facing him.

"I am saying that you won’t have to face the bullshit if you will be in my place - as Yang Cheng."

"I don’t follow."

"I want us to switch identities."

Xie Zi Han held his stare, long and hard.

"And before you say anything, no, I am not drunk or have hit my head somewhere. I am saying this with every fucking last ounce of seriousness."

"I can see that. I know when you are serious and when you are fooling around."

"So is that a yes?"

"Though I heard what you are asking, I don’t think you really understand-"

"I understand everything, Zi. I want you to become Yang Cheng and I will be Xie Zi Han."

"I always told you not to watch too many movies."

"But I want this to work out in reality." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"If you think I will agree to something as stupid as plastic surgery, then I will punch the lights out of you."

He laughed heartily. "Of course not. As much as you are handsome, I love my face, okay? We will look as we are."

"And somehow your grandfather won’t know?"

He smiled again. "How many times have I visited China in these years?"

"None."

"How many times has my Grandpa visited London?"

"None."

"Correct. Because he is ashamed of me. He didn’t expect his grandson to become an average doctor with average merits. The Yang family always wants everything to be grand and perfect. I am that blot on perfection, which is why he never bothered to meet me in all these years. He hates me. And he is old now. He is starting to forget things. So how likely is it that he will figure out what I am really supposed to look like?"

Xie Zi Han stayed quiet.

"There is my Grandpa’s faithful butler but I will make him retire and send him away for good. No probs. All the other staff in the Yang family are new. No way in hell will they recognize the difference."

He scratched his chin. "The only problem is Jiang Weizhe, the only friend I had there. But he is the Mafia King. I cannot do anything about him. It’s true that we haven’t really talked much in these years, but he will know. He will know the moment he sees you. And he will kill you because he will assume you killed me. It will be a waste of breath to keep the switch from him. And you...You don’t have any family or friends back there. Nobody is gonna miss you or realize that Xie Zi Han is not Xie Zi Han."