His chest rose and fell with steady, mechanical regularity. He was breathing and alive.
But unconscious. Unaware. Somewhere between life and death, fighting battles she couldn't help him with. How she wished she could replace him! How she wished she were the one lying there.
Zhou Yuxi walked into the room slowly, her footsteps silent on the linoleum floor. She approached the bed with the caution of someone approaching something precious and fragile, something that might shatter if handled too roughly.
She stood beside the bed, looking down at him.
And she felt... nothing.
Or rather, she felt everything, so much that it had compressed into a singularity of emotion so dense that it couldn't escape, couldn't express itself, could only exist as this terrible stillness.
Her face remained blank. No tears. No visible reaction. Just those cold, empty eyes watching his chest rise and fall with the steady rhythm of unconscious breathing.
Rise.
Fall.
Rise.
Fall.
