"We can only do it at night," said Jolie and Qie Xieling would have preferred it if he could leave now but he could only wait.

***

As the evening sun cast long shadows across the hospital corridors, he prepared for his daring escape. He grabbed a white lab coat from a nearby closet and draped it over his shoulders, hoping to blend in with the medical staff. Jolie had somehow managed to mess with the guards during shift change so by the time the evening guards arrived he had already left his room.

With each step, he tried to mimic the hurried shuffle of doctors and nurses. Seeing one of the guards walking towards his direction he ducked into the group of doctors and pulled up his face mask and blended in.

The guard’s sharp gaze scanned the corridor as though he sensed something. Qie Xieling’s heart skipped a beat, fearing that his disguise would be discovered. The guard took a step closer, his senses tingling with the presence of something amiss. This was after all his job that he was trained for.

Qie Xieling knew he had to act quickly. Without hesitation, he followed the group of doctors, his heart pounding in his chest. Their hurried pace led him through a maze of hallways until he found himself in the maternity ward.

He found out they were graduate doctors doing their residency and he had somehow managed to blend in perfectly. As he entered the ward, the sight that unfolded before him left him frozen in shock.

A woman lay on a hospital bed, her face twisted in pain. The room buzzed with the sound of medical equipment, and the air was thick with anticipation. His eyes widened as he witnessed the raw power and vulnerability intertwined in the woman’s struggle. The sight of blood, the cries of pain, and the overwhelming intensity of the moment struck him to his core.

For a moment, time stood still as he realised the magnitude of what women endured during childbirth. He felt an indescribable mix of awe, horror, and empathy wash over him, forever altering his perception of the world.

Qie Xieling managed to escape the horrors of the maternity ward of the hospital but he was thoroughly traumatised. He was really starting to regret escaping.

As he rushed through the corridor he found himself face to face with two towering men, their stern expressions mirrored by their bulging biceps.

But then, a stroke of genius struck him. He quickly ducked into a nearby janitor’s closet, his heart pounding with anticipation. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a trolley filled with cleaning supplies, including a mop and bucket.

With a grin, Qie Xieling donned the janitor’s uniform and grabbed the mop, pretending to be engrossed in his cleaning duties. He shuffled past the guards, swaying the mop back and forth with exaggerated enthusiasm.

The guards exchanged perplexed glances, clearly unsure whether to stop him or not. If only they knew that that was their boss’s wife they would have knocked him out and brought him straight back to their boss tied with a red bow.

He finally ran out and e-hailed a ride on the app before rushing in like Cinderella running into her carriage at the strike of midnight.

Meanwhile, back in the hospital room, Luo Muchen arrived to visit his sweetheart, his heart filled with excitement. He had been busy all day and except for the few text messages they had exchanged between them he hadn’t seen him all day.

But to his shock, he found an empty room, devoid of any trace of Qie Xieling’s presence. He checked the bathroom but there was no one there.

Panic washed over him as he fumbled for his phone, his trembling fingers dialling Qie Xieling’s number. However, to his dismay, the call failed to connect. Unbeknownst to him, Qie Xieling’s phone had met a tragic fate, crushed under the wheels of a passing car when he got out of the e-hailed taxi.

At this point, he was really starting to think he had an illness. His cell phones kept getting run over under the wheels of cars.

Qie Xieling, now free from the confines of the hospital, chuckled to himself as he made his way up into Luo Muchen’s building where his condo was.

He couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph having outsmarted all those guards in the hospital. It was quite intriguing and thrilling.

For a moment he felt like he was in the MI6 doing spy things. The front desk security immediately recognised him and greeted him politely, "Good evening sir."

Qie Xieling, "..."

It looked like they were expecting him to be here. They didn’t even ask him which floor he was going to.

"Don’t you need to ask me who I am here to see?" he asked and the man replied,

"No sir, you may use the private elevator on the other side."

Qie Xieling, "..."

While he was walking away with a confused expression. He could swear he heard the words "Muchen’s wife" as the elevator doors opened.

When he reached the condo he let himself in with his fingerprint but to his disappointment Luo Muchen was not there.

With a groan, he collapsed on the couch face down. After a while, he gets up and decides to surprise Luo Muchen when he gets home. He decided to make something for Luo Muchen but when he opened the fridge he soon recalled that he wasn’t good at cooking. Thinking he could make something simple he turned on Luo Muchen’s home computer and started typing in searches in the search bar.

He typed "easy meal to make for my boyfriend" but what popped up first was so complicated.

"No... too difficult," he said before biting his lower lip.

He then typed "Easy meal to make for my boyfriend when I can’t cook" and there fifty fifty-something meals but Qie Xieling felt so stressed that he was literally sweating.

"Ugh, fuck," he swore before typing in "easy sandwiches". Having found something he wouldn’t be able to mess up he got up and took a shower. After wearing his boyfriend’s clothes he put on an apron and started making a boiled eggs sandwich.

By the time he was done, the kitchen was a mess and he had almost cut himself three times. While peeling the boiled eggs he realised half of the egg white would stick to the egg shells. It was really bad but he was pretty proud of his work when he was done.