When Jin Liwei left the room, he made his way down the corridor toward the attending physician.
Gu Shao, his personal assistant, fell into step beside him, tablet already in hand.
The doctor confirmed it without hesitation. Amnesia, likely triggered by the trauma of the incident and the prolonged coma. Rest was the primary recommendation. Stress was to be avoided.
Jin Liwei listened with his hands in his pockets, expression giving nothing away.
"So she wasn't lying," he said, more to himself than anyone.
"It would appear not," Gu Shao replied, in that perfectly neutral tone that somehow always managed to say more than the words themselves.
Jin Liwei gave him a brief sideways look. Gu Shao looked back, expression completely unchanged.
"The coma," Jin Liwei said, turning back to the doctor. "Three months is a long time for something as straightforward as a drowning incident. She wasn't under long. There were no serious injuries." He paused. "What was the actual cause?"
The doctor's expression shifted slightly. "That's something we've found difficult to explain, Mr. Jin. The case was more complicated than it appeared on the surface. A brief drowning incident of that nature shouldn't have resulted in a coma of that duration."
Jin Liwei studied him for a moment. "And you found nothing else? Nothing that shouldn't have been there?"
The doctor paused. "Nothing conclusive."
"But."
A beat of silence. "It was a complicated case," the doctor said carefully. "One we couldn't fully explain."
Jin Liwei held his gaze for a moment longer, then looked away. "I see."
Gu Shao waited.
"Shall I arrange for an independent review?" he asked.
"Yes." Jin Liwei was already walking. "And look into the incident itself. Who was there that night."
Gu Shao made a note and followed without another word.
.....
Three days later, Xie Ming was discharged from the hospital.
The doctors had run every test available to them. Aside from general weakness and the persistent memory loss, they found nothing abnormal. She was, by every measurable standard, perfectly fine.
She did not feel perfectly fine. But she kept that to herself.
Those three days had not been wasted. She had turned to the only source of information available to her.
Yu Mei.
"Tell me about this world," she had said on the first morning.
Yu Mei had blinked. "All of it?"
"Start somewhere."
Knowing she had amnesia and worried she might not remember even the most basic things, Yu Mei had taken it upon herself to explain everything. Like talking to a curious child discovering the world for the first time, she went through it all.
Wall clocks. Mobile phones. Money. Food. Transportation. One thing at a time, from the very beginning.
The bathroom had taken the longest.
"Everyone has one?" Xie Ming had asked, standing in the doorway and staring at it.
"A bathroom? Yes, Madam. Most homes have several."
"Several," she repeated.
"Yes."
"And this..." She gestured carefully at the toilet.
"Yes," Yu Mei said quickly. "Exactly that."
She stood there a moment longer, then walked back to the bed and sat down in silence.
Yu Mei waited.
"As far as I remember," she said finally, a faint glint of genuine amazement in her eyes, "even royalty only had pot chambers."
Yu Mei stared at her. Then decided this was simply another symptom of the amnesia and moved on.
Between the explanations, the fuller picture of Xie Ming's life came through slowly, pieced together from what Yu Mei shared and the fragments she could gather herself.
She had married Jin Liwei in fulfillment of her grandfather's dying wish. Neither of them had been in love.
Jin Liwei had agreed to the union because his grandfather had made it a condition for handing over the company. They had shared a home ever since, living like strangers, sleeping in separate rooms.
Her mother had died when she was young. Her father, Xie Rong, had wasted little time after that, bringing his mistress Rouxi into the family home along with a daughter he had secretly fathered, Xie Xinyi, only a few months younger than herself.
After her mother's passing, he had transferred the entire family inheritance to himself. The estate, everything. A man who had likely married her mother for money from the very beginning.
Xie Ming had left home at fifteen. Seven years abroad, alone. When she finally came back, her maternal grandfather was already dying. The one person who had truly loved her, who had arranged her marriage out of nothing more than the fear of leaving her unprotected in the world.
She sat with that quietly.
She had spent her past life believing she had suffered greatly. And she had. But Zhao Ming had always had her father's love to hold onto, even through everything.
Xie Ming had never had that.
The parties, the scandals, the fighting. It all made a different kind of sense now. It was her way to rebel against the world, showing her dissatisfaction with everyone who had hurt her.
.....
The morning of her discharge, Xie Ming stood at the hospital entrance beside Yu Mei and looked at the thing waiting for them in front of the exit gate.
Enormous. Metal. Four wheels. No horses anywhere in sight. It looked like a giant wild animal crouching on the road.
"What," she asked carefully, "is that?"
"That's a car, Madam. It's how we travel. You sit inside, and it takes you where you need to go."
"It moves by itself?"
"The driver drives it."
"Without horses."
"Without horses."
She looked at it a moment longer. Then, trying not to look like someone who knew absolutely nothing, walked toward it and got in.
The interior was immaculate. Spacious, quietly luxurious. She ran her fingers lightly along the seat.
Then the car moved.
"Ah—" She seized Yu Mei's arm with both hands, composure gone instantly. "It's moving—"
"Yes, Madam, that's what cars do—"
"It's going very fast—"
"We have not yet left the hospital car park. We're going very slowly, Madam."
"I can feel the speed—"
"Madam." The driver's voice came from the front, very carefully. "I am going at walking pace."
"It does not feel like walking pace," she said, gripping the seat in front of her. "Why does no one warn people about this?"
"What if this thing hits someone? At this speed, you could kill anyone. Get me out. Take me out. Where are you even taking me?"
She looked out at the world moving past the window, genuinely baffled. How was it moving without horses?
"Please relax, Madam," Yu Mei said, patting her hand. "It won't hurt anyone. The driver will be careful."
"Just close your eyes and sleep. When you wake up we'll already be home."
"No." She straightened. "I won't sleep. What if you take me somewhere else entirely?"
Yu Mei opened her mouth. Then closed it. There was truly nothing useful she could say to that.
Xie Ming sat rigidly upright, grip firm, eyes fixed straight ahead with the expression of someone who had survived an imperial palace and was not going to be defeated by a metal box on wheels.
She looked as if she were going into a battle.
Slowly, as the car found its pace, her grip loosened. She turned toward the window.
And forgot, for a moment, to be afraid.
The city moved past like nothing she had ever imagined. Towers of glass catching the light. Roads filled with these strange horseless carriages moving in orderly lines.
People everywhere, dressed in ways she had never imagined, moving freely like they had somewhere important to be.
Women, she noticed. Walking alone. Working. Dressed however they pleased, some even showing skin which in her world would have been considered bold and improper.
And yet here, no one looked twice. No one stopped them or told them where to go or how to be. She realized slowly what she was looking at.
The women of this world didn't need a man's validation to know their worth. They didn't need anyone's permission to live.
"Wow," she murmured.
Yu Mei glanced at her. "Madam?"
"Nothing." She kept her eyes on the glass. "It's just different."
She had thought she had died miserably. Who would have thought she would get a new chance at life, and in a world like this, of all places?
For the first time since waking up in a stranger's body, something stirred quietly in her chest.
Her will to live, which had been fading for so long, felt different now. She wanted to stay. She wanted to live on her own terms, in a life where she could also be happy.
For the first time, she wanted to be selfish. Selfish enough to live her life.