Jingwei felt himself slowly growing weaker, but he refused to die this pathetically! He kicked Shang Jing in the knees but that did nothing. Shang Jing's hold didn't even waver.

So he aimed right between his legs, the vital spot for any man. Unfortunately for him, Shang Jing only stumbled slightly, instead of howling in pain and dropping Jingwei on the floor. If Jingwei was more rational, he would remember that Shang Jing told him that he didn't feel pain like normal people did!

'Fuck.' Jingwei thought miserably to himself, the lack of oxygen making him woozy. 'Guess I'm really going to die like this!'

"Young Master Wu! Drop him!" A voice interrupted them. Shang Jing shot the owner of the voice with a deadly glare, expecting it to be the police, but it turned out to be Zi Long, with his arm outstretched, gesturing at Shang Jing.

Zi Long had sensed that something wasn't quite right when he saw Young Master Wu's classmates stream out from the class to the corridor in panicked craze. It wasn't lunch time, and there were no fire alarm announcements, so he decided to just check in.

As he approached the corridor, he had heard screaming and crying, along with exclamations like 'Shang Jing getting arrested' and 'Shang Jing is killing Jingwei' so he immediately ran to stop his wayward charge.

"Zi Long! This bastard betrayed me!" Shang Jing screamed, stomping his feet. "Are you on his side too? Are you also a traitor?"

Zi Long internally panicked. Just great! Young Master was in one of his unstable mood swings, possibly triggered by the upsetting news, and he couldn't feed him his meds now in front of all these people. The Wu family wanted - no, needed people to believe their heir was perfectly healthy.

Zi Long had to soothe his emotions before they went even more haywire.

"You need him alive. If you kill him now, you're definitely not getting away with it." Zi Long pointed out gently, making Shang Jing realise that he still had a crowd of traumatised classmates staring in his direction, along with his 60-year-old organic chemistry teacher who looked like he was going to have a heart attack.

"I can't let him go!" Shang Jing declared, shaking his head angrily, like a dog with a bone.

"Then keep him alive, but as a hostage," Zi Long said. "If he's dead, so are we. Old Master Sun would never stop hunting us down if we killed his youngest son. Stop strangling him."

After an incredibly long second, his words seemed to finally have struck a chord in Shang Jing's mind and he let go of Jingwei's throat. Jingwei fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, desperately wheezing for breath. His throat was painfully sore, and his limbs felt like jelly, but he'd be damned if he didn't try to escape.

He staggered away with raggled heaving breaths, his legs as shaky as a newborn foal. In front of him, he could make out the blurry figures of police officers in front of him.

Before he could get them to shoot Shang Jing, he felt a sharp blow land on his head. He fell back on the ground with a painful slam, ringing in his ears.

There were more screams, but they were growing steadily muffled. Good… Jingwei mused… he felt so tired…

Everything went black.

====

"I'll be leaving him in your capable hands"

"So what about the prognosis?"

"Keep him here for as long as possible…"

"We will contact you if there are any changes…"

"Check for any brain damage…"

When Jingwei came to, it was to the gentle beeping of the heart monitor. He blinked, feeling as though his mouth had been replaced with a cotton ball. After blinking the blurriness from his eyes, he realised he was staring at the plain white ceiling of a hospital room.

Oh god. What happened to Shang Jing? Did they actually manage to arrest him?

The last thing he remembered was Shang Jing's hands around his neck, choking the life out of him. He shuddered, trying to banish the feeling of a phantom hand around his neck. At least now he was safe. Possibly. Shang Jing wouldn't send someone to kill him in a hospital, would he?

Beside him, the heart monitor began to beat faster. Jingwei curled into a ball, willing himself to calm down.

'Don't panic… don't panic…' he instructed himself, voice hoarse with disuse. Even speaking hurt, so he decided to just give himself a mental pep-talk instead.

'Let's try and get more information first. I can always panic later. If Shang Jing is here, I'll jump out the window.'

Jingwei firstly began to take stock of his own body's injuries. For a start, he was surprised to see an IV drip attached to one of his hands - clearly he must have been seriously ill! He had never gotten one of these before.

Jingwei then felt around his neck area and winced; even a gentle press of his fingers hurt.

He tried to turn around the room to get more information, but all he got was a dull pain that radiated from the back of his head to his entire body.

Ouch. He gently touched the source of that throbbing ache, and he felt the softness of a hospital bandage. Thankfully, there wasn't any blood on his fingers.

So his body and voice were temporarily wrecked.

He sat up slowly, leaning his back against his pillows. His body was lethargic with pain, but Jingwei's mind desperately wanted answers to his questions. But it seemed that they were doomed to be unanswered, for he found himself depressingly alone in that large hospital room.

Normally, visitors would at least leave gifts wishing for a fast recovery. That was what movies and dramas showed, but Jingwei's bedside table was depressingly empty, without even a jug of water and a cup for him to drink from.

Did his family not even bother to visit? Jingwei felt a pang of sadness at the thought. He nearly died! Why wasn't his family bothered about this? What about his classmates and friends?

He wasn't going to think about Shang Jing, because thinking about him was more painful than his crushed throat and scrambled skull put together.

Instead, Jingwei decided to call for a nurse with the on-call button. Surely there had to be one that would respond!

"Hi Sir! You are awake! Do you require a drink of water?"

Jingwei blinked in shock. Why was the nurse speaking English?

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