Chapter Ninety-Four: Helping Her Set Things Straight

Even the fastest flight from B City to Italy took fourteen hours, with a layover in Munich along the way.

Fu Yiqing had been worried that Shu Ran would not be able to endure the journey, so he had prepared a travel pillow and a whole assortment of other lifesaving essentials for the trip. But even with all those conveniences, there was no escaping the weariness of such a long flight.

The plane landed at Florence Airport.

When they had boarded in B City, the sky there had still been bright. Because of the time difference, Florence was also still bathed in daylight when they arrived. Shu Ran was still wearing a padded coat as she stepped off the plane, and compared with the people around her in light long-sleeved outerwear, she immediately felt like an odd one out.

Shu Ran and Fu Yiqing went to the hotel first to check in and put their things away. Fu Yiqing went downstairs to take a look around and get his bearings, then came back up, intending to take Shu Ran out for something to eat before returning to the room to rest.

"Shu Ran?"

Fu Yiqing called her name three times outside her door before someone finally opened it.

The moment the door opened, he saw Shu Ran listlessly turning her wheelchair, then lifting her right leg and darting back to the bed. Her whole body dropped onto the mattress as if she had fallen from the sky; the soft bed bounced her once, and then she lay there motionless in its embrace.

Fu Yiqing frowned and sat down beside her bed to look at her. "You don't even check who it is before throwing yourself down like that. Aren't you afraid something will happen? What if it had been someone else?"

"You called my name. Who else would it be?" Shu Ran's voice was thick with sleep, and beneath her irritation there was even a trace of coquettishness.

Fu Yiqing had no answer for that. He could only shake his head and pat her left arm lightly. "Get up. I'm taking you downstairs to eat."

"I want to sleep..." Her voice stretched out, the end of it fading slowly away.

"You haven't eaten yet. I'll take you downstairs, and we can look around the neighborhood while we're at it," Fu Yiqing reminded her with some helplessness.

Shu Ran was truly exhausted. Though she very much wanted to go out and have a look, her body would not allow it.

"I don't want to look, and I don't want to eat."

Seeing that she really was worn out, Fu Yiqing gave up pressing her.

In a daze, Shu Ran heard the door close behind him, and then her entire world sank into the silence of night.

No one knew how long had passed before a gentle voice sounded by her ear. "Time to get up and eat."

Shu Ran's morning grumpiness surged instantly. "I don't want to go downstairs."

Fu Yiqing said, "You've already rested for three hours. I brought the food up for you."

Defeated by Fu Yiqing's persistence, Shu Ran turned over on the bed with reluctant lingering, her face practically spelling out that she did not want to wake up. Moving in slow motion, she rubbed her sleepy eyes and pushed herself up, and Fu Yiqing lent a hand to pull her upright.

"What are we having?" Shu Ran yawned. "Spaghetti?"

She was only joking, but when she looked more closely, she saw that there really was only a small portion of pasta on the plate, topped with a sauce of red and gold, with green leaves arranged around it as garnish.

Stunned for half a second, Shu Ran blurted out in surprise, "It really is spaghetti?"

Fu Yiqing raised an eyebrow. "You don't like spaghetti?"

Shu Ran said, "No, it's not that. I just thought that since we've come to Italy, spaghetti would naturally be the first thing to come to mind."

She took the plate, twirled a small bite with her fork, and put it in her mouth, chewing vaguely. "Did you eat yet?"

"I did."

Shu Ran kept her eyes on the plate and then asked, "We both sat on the plane for fourteen hours. Why am I this sleepy, while you can still hold out so long?"

Fu Yiqing said, "Maybe... because I work out often?"

Shu Ran immediately rejected that. "Impossible. Your workouts aren't as intense as my training. Sure, athletes like us are always dealing with injuries, but our physical conditioning is still pretty good."

Fu Yiqing was left speechless and could only sit quietly, watching her eat.

Shu Ran took one bite after another until only the last mouthful remained.

Then she asked again, "So who exactly did we come here to see?" She finished the last bite, handed the plate to him, and asked, "Do you know now?"

Fu Yiqing was about to answer when his phone suddenly rang.

He met her gaze and spoke faster. "I need to take this."

He opened the floor-to-ceiling window and stepped outside before answering.

Shu Ran had wanted to go back to sleep, but after eating her fill and lying there, all she felt was that the food could not quite make it smoothly down her throat into her stomach. She rubbed her belly and took out her phone to pass the time and help herself digest.

Everyone in the Winter Olympics Champions Squad group chat was taking advantage of the break to talk.

The name Winter Olympics Champions Squad had been made up by Wu Xincheng.

Back when the group name was changed, Shu Ran had felt a little guilty.

Clearly, the carefree Wu Xincheng thought the name was motivational and felt quite pleased with herself.

Chen Lecheng had even joked about it, saying, "There are only five people in this chat, representing three disciplines. Shu Ran is the only one in women's singles, you two are pairs, and men's singles has two people. So what, do you want me to turn against Zhu Hongzhe?"

Zhu Hongzhe replied, "Sorry, the championship has already been decided."

And then the two of them started going at each other again.

More often than not, Shu Ran admired Zhu Hongzhe. He had the courage to say whatever he wanted, and when he did, people did not find him arrogant; instead, they thought he was funny.

Seeing no messages on WeChat, Shu Ran switched to Weibo.

The moment she opened it, she was startled by the sea of red notifications. Ever since her follower count had surpassed one million, her private messages, comments, and reposts had always been red with activity, but clearly this was a different level altogether.

This was closely tied to the fact that she kept going trending whenever she appeared online.

With that thought, Shu Ran opened the trending list.

Sure enough, her name was there.

When she clicked into the hottest post, everything became clear.

It was that kind fan who had helped push her wheelchair at the airport.

"Today was a very special day for me. I ran into my idol, @ShuRanIce, at the airport. She is incredibly nice. At first I even helped push her wheelchair and asked her coach for her autograph. Only later did I realize my idol had been right beside me all along. But she was super nice about it. She wasn't angry at all that I hadn't recognized her; instead, she signed for me. I asked her how she'd been lately, and she said the food had been great, haha. I even watched her go through security with my own eyes. I'm going to love her forever!"

Because "TouchedByFlowersLongingForRan" had not posted a photo, the comments were full of people suspecting publicity hype. What fan would fail to recognize their own idol?

No matter how "TouchedByFlowersLongingForRan" explained herself in the comments, no one believed her. In the end, she even posted the autograph Shu Ran had given her. But since no one had ever seen Shu Ran's signature before, netizens began to suspect that the picture had been written by "TouchedByFlowersLongingForRan" herself.

At last Shu Ran understood why so many people had been tagging her. So they were here to expose a fake?

Seeing how pitiful and helpless the little fan looked, Shu Ran let out a long sigh and began typing.

"@ShuRanIce: It's not publicity. It really was an accident. She saw that it was difficult for me to push the wheelchair alone and took pity on me, so she came over to help. My coach came over after getting the boarding pass, and she only recognized Coach Fu. Right in front of me, she asked him for my autograph. I was a little confused at the time. Thinking about it now, could it be that the difference between me with and without makeup is really that big? Or maybe... the only reason my fans like me is because my coach is handsome?"

As soon as Shu Ran posted, her hungry fans came swarming in.

"Jealous! You hadn't posted in so long, but the moment you saw a pretty girl being bullied by netizens, you jumped in to clear things up for her. I'm mad now. Shu Ran has to cheer me up before I'll forgive her."

"So I really was discovered? I do follow Shu Ran because her coach is so handsome. Ranran, could you maybe nudge Coach Fu to post more often? He updates less than foreign celebrities on Weibo."

"Shu Ran is way too nice. She even helps someone clear things up."

"Someone get all the celebrities in here. Shu Ran's fan didn't even recognize her, and she didn't get angry at all. No more words, I'm a fan now."

"I saw her before; Shu Ran doesn't look that different with and without makeup. Maybe she disguised herself too well, so she wasn't recognized. But now it's on the trending list, and the whole country knows Shu Ran has gone abroad."

"I laughed so hard. The eyes have spoken. Definitely a hater."

Shu Ran was amused by the netizens' comments, and before she knew it, half the time had slipped by. She did not even notice when Fu Yiqing came back into the room.

"What are you looking at?"

Shu Ran glanced up and, taking the chance, held her phone out to him. "I had planned to keep a low profile and not be noticed, but now everyone knows. That should be fine, right?"

"It's fine."

Fu Yiqing's long fingers swiped lazily across the screen a few times before he returned the phone to her.

Seeing that Shu Ran was still about to keep scrolling through Weibo, Fu Yiqing said, "Didn't you want to know who we're meeting tomorrow?"

Shu Ran looked up. "Was that person the one who called just now?"

He shook his head. "But whether we can see him tomorrow has everything to do with that call." Fu Yiqing paused, then lowered his gaze to Shu Ran's leg. "Tomorrow we're going to see a doctor."

Shu Ran froze for a moment before she finally understood why Fu Yiqing had insisted that she make this trip to Italy in person.

"Is this a doctor who's hard to get hold of?"

"He's Rolin's attending physician."

"Rolin's... attending physician." Shu Ran seemed to repeat his words to herself in a murmur.

Since Shu Ran was not able to move around easily at the moment, the two of them shared one room.

After a casual bit of tidying, they lay in their separate beds, each lost in different thoughts.

Shu Ran had been sleepy before dinner, but whether it was because she was worrying about tomorrow's meeting or because that nap had restored her energy, she was no longer sleepy now.

The room was very quiet, with only a faint glow by Fu Yiqing's bed, but it was enough to dispel the darkness within the room.

That light was there to keep Shu Ran from tripping if she got up in the middle of the night, but Fu Yiqing did not want the dimness to disturb her sleep, so he had only turned on the bedside lamp by his own bed.

Because the room was so quiet, the sound of Shu Ran tossing and turning became especially noticeable.

"Still not asleep?"

Shu Ran startled. "You're not asleep either?"

When he answered with a quiet "Mm," Shu Ran was surprised all over again. "You really do have endless energy."

Fu Yiqing gave a soft laugh. "Do you know who was on the phone with me just now?"

The sudden seriousness of the question caught Shu Ran off guard. She was silent for a long moment before answering, "Who was it?"

"Quentin."