After Falling in Love with the Scum Alpha’s Beautiful Original Wife at First Sight - Chapter 1

Only a few days had passed since the New Year holiday ended, yet the area in front of the guidance desk in the first-floor lobby of Huai Kang City First People’s Hospital was already packed with people.

When Xu Qingzhi first walked in, she was startled by the sight.

Most of these people were elderly. Those who could speak and hear properly mostly spoke dialects from the counties surrounding Huai Kang City. The two young doctors seated behind the guidance desk had been at work for less than an hour, yet their faces were already full of exhaustion, their mouths dry from speaking.

It really wasn’t easy, Xu Qingzhi sighed inwardly.

She did not look for long. People came and went through the hospital lobby. Today, it was rare for her to be able to take leave from work, so she had to hurry and see the doctor.

The department Xu Qingzhi needed to visit was on the sixth floor. Five or six people were waiting for the elevator with her, including an elderly granny.

The granny was carrying a sickly-looking child on her back, and beside her hand was a woven bag stuffed full of things.

After the elevator doors opened, Xu Qingzhi saw that the granny was clearly struggling to carry the child, so she took the initiative to help, dragging the woven bag into the elevator for her.

The granny repeatedly thanked her in dialect. Xu Qingzhi, her voice hoarse, told her it was nothing, then asked which floor she was going to.

After hearing Xu Qingzhi’s voice, which sounded as if it had been scraped with sandpaper, the granny froze for a moment before hesitantly telling her that she was going to the inpatient department.

The inpatient department was above the tenth floor. Since Xu Qingzhi had already started helping, she helped to the end, accompanying the granny all the way to the tenth floor and helping her carry the woven bag into a hospital room.

When she walked out of the room, a middle-aged woman in hospital clothes happened to return from outside. The moment she saw the granny and the child, a smile immediately spread across her sallow face.

Xu Qingzhi silently closed the door and left. She still had to go back down to the sixth floor to see the doctor.

But when she returned to the elevator, she found that it had already gone up to an even higher floor. For some unknown reason, the elevator had stopped there and had not moved for a long time.

Xu Qingzhi frowned slightly and looked around. The layout of these inpatient floors was shaped like a square ring. In the corner symmetrical to where she was standing, there should be another elevator.

She walked in that direction. At the end of the corridor, a small window was half open, spilling golden sunlight along the way.

There was only one young girl standing against the wall in front of the elevator. She seemed to be waiting for it too.

She looked unusually sleepy. Her eyes were already almost impossible to keep open, yet every few seconds she would still force her eyelids up and glance at the numbers above the elevator. Seeing that the elevator had not yet reached this floor, she would close her eyes in relief and continue dozing.

Just as Xu Qingzhi walked over, the phone in her handbag rang.

Because of her work, she always kept her ringtone at the lowest volume. But in this quiet corridor, even the faint ringtone sounded especially clear.

The sleepy girl was so startled that she instantly stood up straight, then looked at Xu Qingzhi in confusion.

Xu Qingzhi gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I scared you.”

After saying that, without waiting for the girl to reply, she quickly pulled open the door to the emergency stairwell beside her and slipped inside.

The call was from Xu Qingzhi’s university roommate, Cui Can. When Xu Qingzhi saw the caller ID, she was somewhat surprised.

She answered the phone, and her hoarse voice traveled far down the empty stairwell.

“Hello.”

“Qingzhi? How did your voice become like that?” Cui Can was clearly stunned and began shouting on the other end of the phone.

“I caught a cold.”

“A cold can make your voice turn like that all at once?” Cui Can did not believe her at all.

A gust of wind came from some unknown place in the stairwell. Xu Qingzhi smoothed down the restless hem of her skirt and answered lightly, “I’ve had the cold for about a week. It was actually almost better before, but a few days ago, the school had its diagnostic exams, and I was assigned to invigilate in the laboratory building for two days. After that, my throat became like this.”

Cui Can had some impression of it. The laboratory building at Xu Qingzhi’s school seemed to have been newly built. It had no air conditioning and no heating. In this February weather, that lab building was probably as cold as an ice cellar. It would have been stranger if Xu Qingzhi had not caught a cold.

She advised unhappily, “You’re already this sick. No matter how many things there are at school or how busy you are, don’t drag it out. Hurry up and go to the hospital.”

Xu Qingzhi gave a hum of acknowledgement. “I’m at the hospital now. I don’t have classes today, so I took leave.”

“That’s good.” Cui Can finally felt a little relieved. She felt as if she were an old mother worrying over everything.

As soon as she finished speaking, she remembered the original purpose of this call and hurriedly asked, testing the waters, “Then, um… that person at your home, she didn’t go with you to the hospital?”

“She?” Xu Qingzhi was stunned for a moment before she realized who Cui Can was referring to.

“Shen Baiyi went on a business trip two weeks ago.”

“She went on a business trip two weeks ago?” This surprised Cui Can a little. She quickly asked, “Then when is she coming back?”

Xu Qingzhi said casually, “I don’t know. She never told me.”

Never told me, and did not tell me—these should actually count as two different ways of putting it.

Cui Can thought of the figure she had seen outside a bar last night, one who looked very much like Shen Baiyi, and became uncertain again. She suddenly regretted making this call so hastily.

So she could only swallow back what she had originally wanted to say and change it to something else.

“You and Shen Baiyi… how did your life together become like this? I’ve never seen a couple like you two. You haven’t even been married that long, yet if someone asks where the other person is, what she’s doing, or who she’s with, you know nothing.”

Xu Qingzhi’s brows and eyes were reflected on the tiled wall opposite her. Her eyes were very beautiful, but it seemed someone had once commented that her eyes were pitch-black, giving her an air of keeping everyone a thousand miles away no matter who she looked at.

Cui Can was still rambling on. “Qingzhi, you were the first one in our dorm to get married. To be honest, back then, we all thought you were the least likely among us to settle. I didn’t expect that after graduation, you would be the first to step into a cage…”

She said with deep sorrow, “After getting married, have you ever truly been happy?”

“Qingzhi,” Cui Can said, “a marriage without feelings can’t last. What I mean is, it’s not only when one party commits a matter-of-principle mistake like cheating that you can choose to end a marriage. Without feelings, when two people live under the same roof and look at each other’s faces every day, doesn’t that feel painful too—”

Xu Qingzhi interrupted her. “Cui Can, did you call me because you found out something?”

—I saw Shen Baiyi outside the bar, pulling and hugging someone else.

Stop!

She absolutely could not say that out loud!

Cui Can slapped her own mouth from afar. She choked for a moment, then gave two dry laughs. “That… no, nothing.”

In fact, last night, while Cui Can was on her way home after working overtime, she had unintentionally seen a somewhat familiar-looking figure standing outside a bar while waiting at an intersection for the traffic light.

That person had her arms around another person beside her, their posture unusually intimate.

Cui Can had worked all day and only wanted to get home as soon as possible. She had merely glanced over casually before looking away, and had not immediately connected that figure with anyone she knew.

It was only after she returned home that she remembered that the woman looked a little like Xu Qingzhi’s Alpha.

But by then, she had already arrived home, so naturally she had missed the chance to confirm that person’s identity in person.

All night, Cui Can had been torn between two thoughts: “Was that person really Shen Baiyi?” and “Could I have mistaken her for someone else?”

This morning, Cui Can really could not hold back anymore, so she called Xu Qingzhi. She had not expected Xu Qingzhi to say that Shen Baiyi was on a business trip.

In the end, Cui Can did not have any solid evidence. She could advise Xu Qingzhi to end this marriage from the angle that both sides had no feelings for each other, but she could not make baseless claims that Shen Baiyi was out fooling around.

So Cui Can could only say resentfully, “It’s nothing, Qingzhi. I just suddenly wanted to call you. Go see the doctor as soon as possible, and make sure you take good care of yourself. Otherwise, your grandmother will definitely worry about you.”