The day started out like many of the days in the lives of Yifan and Eden. They both woke up respectively in their own rooms, got dressed, ate their breakfasts together without saying many words, and then each left to their own workplace.

 

He had a lot to do that day; an interview, several meetings, acting classes, and accent coaching lessons. Just as he told his director, he would not take up any acting project for a while since he was trying to step back and grow as an actor to take on more mature roles that portrays a mixed of emotions. However, that did not stop Angela from ushering him to many different meetings, where they all persuade him with tempting deals, which he would always decline.

 

As usual, he was sitting through an exceptionally boring meeting, where someone was talking nonstop and repeating again and again about how this movie would be a Hollywood hit. Yifan took five minutes to flip through the scripts and his instincts knew that the movie would flop badly, not that he would tell anyone. He is too nice to do that. He would just sit down and pretending to listen when in fact his mind was somewhere else.

 

The meeting got way too boring and so he decided to sneak out his mobile phone from the pocket and started browsing on the internet. He mindlessly scrolled through the internet and unexpectedly found a hashtag with his name on. It still surprises him of how he would dominate the most popular hashtags when he was not even active. #Wu Yifan’s secret surprise?# was the hashtag and he frowned at it.

 

‘What surprise do I have?’ he pondered and came to a conclusion that his fan clubs sometimes like to think up something that is utter ridiculous, before his phone vibrated and a text message came in.

 

“Fan Fan, you have to come back with your manager now.” It was his mother. He replied that he would come back once his meeting ended, by clearing out his acting class, since his mother was adamant that he come back soon.

 

It came to his surprise when his manager was rushing him to get on the car after the meeting so that he could go quickly. “What is happening?” he asked his manager, wondering what was going on.

 

“Bai Xue fainted at her work and fell off a flight of stairs,” his manager replied shortly.

 

~~~

 

“How is she?” Yifan asked his mother, who was waiting outside his room at the couple’s house, looking nervous and worried.

 

People have put Eden in his room, on his bed, after assuming that they both share the same room after a marriage. He wanted to protest but couldn’t because it was inappropriate. According to his mother, Eden was talking to her secretary about some plans as they were going up the stairs at her office building before she fainted and tumbled downwards from the stairs.

 

His bedroom door opened with a clip and Yifan saw a familiar face - Park Chanyeol. His face lit up as soon as he saw Yifan and gestured for the mother and son to come into the bedroom. Eden was asleep on her bed soundly; her face void of any emotions.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Chanyeol explained with a smile as he put away his stethoscope and pressure cuff into his little suitcase filled with medicine. “She has worryingly low blood pressure, and I think she is stressed so it got worse.”

 

“Any good news, Yeollie?” her mother spoke fondly, who had been waiting by the bed. The tall doctor smiled and shook his head.

 

“I don’t think so, not yet anyway. She is really too weak and quite unhealthy to get pregnant.”

 

Yifan felt like a rush of hot blood flashed across his face. He couldn’t believe the families are expecting something as important and serious as a baby from the two of them. “Mama…” he nudged his mother, when she also asked the same question.

 

Chanyeol chuckled lightly, “No, Ma’am. She really is too weak so even if she get pregnant now. It’s not the optimum,” he looked at the two women and smiled, “unless….” his eyes hovered towards Yifan in a playful glint, “they both take supplements.” He laughed embarrassedly and apologized Yifan quickly.

 

The two women laughed embarrassedly and nudged each other. “You’ll have to work harder, Fan Fan.” Her mother joked. Yifan smiled awkwardly and bowed polite as the two women left the room.

 

Chanyeol came up to him, “Eden is very weak right now. Here.” He handed over a piece of paper, filled with scribbled, hurried handwritings on it. “This is a short manual on how to take care of her. I’ll hand her over to you.” Yifan nodded.

 

~~~

 

Eden slept for an entire day and through to the next day. Yifan took her bed in the other room and let her sleep on his. Chanyeol told him that she was not unconscious. He gave her an injection that sedated her and put her into a deep sleep since she had not been sleeping, which she is notorious for. “Her blood pressure is also very low so you’ll need to make sure that she eats as soon as she wakes up.”

 

But, Eden slept for a very long time that it had started to make him worry. He kept going in and out of his room to check whether she was still breathing. Her chest rose and fell very very gently that he had to focus carefully to make sure she had not stopped breathing. He spent most of his time on the recliner in his room, which looked over the garden through a large glass window, reading a book on distant galaxies. .After sleeping for more than 30 hours, Eden woke up, bolting up from bed as she sat up, gasping.

 

“Eden. Eden,” he rushed to her side to make sure she had not gotten up and ran off. She was breathing heavily and looked around. Her face was confused and then she saw him.

 

“Kris Wu…” she whispered, “what happened? Ouch~” she whimpered in pain as she clutched her left arm.

 

Yifan checked on her arm, “You fell down a flight of stairs.” Her eyes widened in shock. “So, people took you here and you’ve been sleeping for a long time.”

 

“How long?”

 

“30 hours.”

 

She gasped and scrambled to get up from the bed but fell back on her bed again, whimpering in pain. “Eden,” he spoke soothingly, “you can’t do that. You’re running a high fever. Relax for a while. Your mother said the assistant director is going to cover for you.”

 

“You knew I was going to do that, didn’t you?”

 

“You can be a bit predictable.” She smiled at his words and said nothing. She silently sat on his bed and looked around at his room.

 

Yifan told her to wait while he headed downstairs to get the soup that the housekeeper aunty had made. “Drink up,” he instructed her, “Chanyeol said you need to eat.” He handed her a spoon after he unfolded his breakfast table on his bed and placed the tray of soup on.

 

“He came?” She took a spoonful of soup and queried.

 

“He was the one who looked over you after you got out from hospital.”

 

Her eyes widened, “I was in the hospital?”

 

“Only for a couple of hours,” he told her, “They let you go immediately. I was not there. Chanyeol told me.”

 

Eden nodded and didn’t say anything afterwards as she concentrated on eating the soup. Her face would wince a couple of times when her arm hurt but other than that she didn’t say anything. After that, she took the medicine that Chanyeol had left for her and sat quietly on his bed, leaning on the headboard, after getting into a small exchange of words that she should go back to her room while he insisted that she stay in his room.

 

Yifan also found out that Eden couldn’t stay still. She looked around his room constantly and saw his bookshelf. She tried to sit still but after 10 minutes, she complained that the silence was killing her so she asked him to give her a book recommendation. He took out a book from one of his favourite authors and handed it to her.

 

Sick Eden is very different from healthy Eden. She now resembled a child as she sat on his bed, her legs stretched out, as she read her book in silence. She didn’t interrupt him from his work and she didn’t let him interrupt her own. It was quite strange to see her be this silent and still. It also felt strange to not have this small lady walking around the house muttering instructions into her phone or typing away into her mobile phone or typing up whatever she needed to type on her laptop.

 

~~~

 

Taking care of sick Eden was easy. All Yifan was required to do was to give her food on time and made sure she took her medication. It felt similar to taking care of a child because he was providing everything but Eden was easier to take care because she would not refuse the medicine even though she had to take quite a lot of pills.

 

“Chanyeol, who is Jeff?” Yifan asked one day after helping Chanyeol walk back to his car by carrying his huge bag of medical stuff he brought. Chanyeol didn’t need his help but Yifan insisted since he had a question to ask.

 

Chanyeol stared at him, long and hard, before looking away, “why do you ask?”

 

“Eden sleeptalks. She kept mumbling that name when I walked in the room to check on her temperature just as you said,” Yifan explained shortly.

 

Chanyeol heaved a sigh, “I think it’s the best if you ask her. I would have told you but I don’t want to become a third party between the two of you. I hate doing the tattle tale.” Chanyeol smiled and shrugged afterwards, “I’m sorry but I can tell you that he is quite important. He’s probably the reason she turned into this.”

 

Yifan nodded and said farewell to the tall doctor before turning back to the main house.

 

Eden was sitting on the bed in his room. She had made herself comfortable in his room. It has only been a few days but his room had started to have traces that another person, not that he minded. She was sick. She was on his bed, leaning back on the pile of pillows to read a book, which she called a ‘leisure read’. The title read, “War And Peace.” He could not comprehend her definition of leisure read but he did not want to.

 

Yifan took his usual place near the huge window, “Eden.” He called her name carefully as he wanted to ask her the burning question. The way she mumbled that name in such sadness while she was sleeping was curiosity rising enough. “Who is Jeff?”

 

He could swear that Eden froze for a little before looking up at him, in panic, then her expression changed into suspicion, “Have you been spying on me, Kris Wu?” He wanted to laugh at how suspicious she sounded.

 

“You were mumbling that name in your sleep and you sounded very sad. It didn’t happen just once so I got curious. Don’t worry. I stick to our contract. We respect each other’s privacy.”

 

Eden fell silent. She pursed her lips and stared at a page on the book she was reading. The room was silent and Yifan took that as a cue that she didn’t want to comment on it. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, Eden. It’s fin-”

 

“Jeff Yan,” Eden took a deep breath, “is my ex-boyfriend.”

 

It was Yifan’s turn to freeze. He didn’t know that he was touching a heavy topic like that. He just thought it was some kind of board member executive name but now that she started, he couldn’t back out now.

 

“We…” she stalled, “went out back when I was in university for quite some time. He was the only serious relationship I had.”

 

“What happened?” Yifan asked, wondering how it ended.

 

“We broke up after university ended. Family problems,” she spoke as a matter of factly. “I guess I was still affected by him,” she chuckled lightly.

 

“Oh…” Yifan exclaimed, feeling bad that he had tried to dig up an old wound of her, “anyway, I was just curious. Nothing much.” Eden smiled and nodded before she returned back to her book.

 

~~~

 

“She just said he’s her ex-boyfriend?” Chanyeol spoke casually as he placed an X-ray film onto the negative viewer. He shook his head, “Unbelievable, that girl is.”

 

“Why?” Yifan asked as he sat on the empty patient bed in front of Chanyeol. It was late at night and Chanyeol personally called Yifan to pick up medicine for Eden as well as to explain something more about her slight bone fracture as she fell from the stairs.

 

“Jeff was not just her ex-boyfriend. He was her one and only boyfriend.”

 

“What?”

 

“Okay, erm,” Chanyeol looked at Yifan in shock, remembering how he spoke wrongly, “he was the only boyfriend she had before you.”

 

“How can it be?”

 

“Zhou Ye is stubborn. Very stubborn,” Chanyeol spoke nonchalantly as he studied an image, “that’s why Jeff’s mother didn’t like her. She thinks Zhou Ye is very demanding and bossy.”

 

Yifan sat down and listened, curious to hear what was up next.

 

“Jeff’s mother thought she would take over their family business if they ended up together so she disliked Zhou Ye, a lot. And, at the end of uni, she told Jeff to break up with Zhou Ye.”

 

“And they did?”

 

“Yeah,” he nodded, his eyes not breaking away from the image, “Zhou Ye is never the someone to ask a man to stay because he wanted to. She took it calmly after asking the reason of breaking off and the bastard said it’s because his family couldn’t accept her. She agreed like a cool bastard like she is,” Chanyeol laughed.

 

“That’s it?”

 

“What happened afterwards broke her, actually.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Jeff got together with her really good friend, whom she considered to be like her sister.”

 

Yifan was shocked. He knew how hard breakups can be like but this was quite unimaginable and he understands how hurtful it must be for someone who is quite egotistical like Eden Zhou. He swallowed, “And then?”

 

“Eden is not like this before, you know,” Chanyeol continued, “she’s very lively, talkative, chatty and very curious about everything. She is also extremely caring and nice too.. She also was snarky but not in a dark way like this, it was playful. That breakup changed everything. She’s never the same again.” He opened his drawer and pulled out a note pad and started writing.

 

Yifan sat there, quietly, trying to imagine the Eden that Chanyeol described. Strange enough, he couldn’t imagine it. Bright, talkative, smiley Eden is out of his imagination.

 

“Here,” Chanyeol gave him the piece of paper that he had been writing on with a bright smile, “this is for the wounds that you can see and heal for her.”

~~~

[Author's monologue:] Crying because I write this so carefully and the readership of this fic is way behind something I wrote a few days ago, which is a light genre. Crying. 

Why are people like this. 

Please give more love to Yifan and Eden. lol.