Chapter 240: Back To That Key Moment ⑧

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Chapter 240: Back To That Key Moment ⑧

Leo knew he was dreaming. His consciousness drifted down the corridor, rounded a corner, and suddenly came upon a familiar figure—his father, Yonis!

His father stood ramrod straight outside the emergency room, staring so intently at the doors that he seemed to want to bore straight through them.

Leo hurried over and called softly, “Father.”

Yonis showed no reaction. He simply stood there, motionless, his gaze fixed on the emergency-room doors.

Leo reached out, only for his hand to pass straight through Yonis’s body.

“Father…” Leo looked at Yonis’s stern face, bitterness welling in his chest. Eighteen years of rarely seeing one another had left father and son estranged. Even by the time Yonis died, Leo had never truly sat down and talked with him.

The father in this dream seemed younger and more imposing than the man Leo remembered.

Leo looked around and realized he was in a hospital. Many familiar faces surrounded him: his teacher Monroe, Ta’s strongest fighter; Mitchell, the Rank-A Dark Sentinel whose reputation matched his father’s; Lucien, the Guide who had always taken good care of him; and several of Yonis’s trusted subordinates… Dozens of people in all, each apparently waiting for something with mounting anxiety.

Leo’s heart gave a violent thump. He abruptly turned back toward the tightly closed emergency-room doors.

Could it be… Could it really be…

With growing unease, he passed through the emergency-room doors. Several doctors were working frantically inside. Leo’s gaze moved past them and landed on the operating table. A blood-soaked young man lay there, face deathly pale, eyes half-open, lashes trembling. Sweat beaded across his forehead, and his consciousness was clearly fading in and out.

Although Leo had never met him, he recognized the young man at once. It was his papa—Shang Ke. If he was right, this was the place where his papa had died all those years ago.

What Leo could not understand was why he would dream about this scene. Everything around him felt far too real to be something his imagination had simply invented.

“Cardiac arrest! Prepare to defibrillate!” The doctor’s urgent shout broke through Leo’s thoughts.

Watching the doctors fight desperately to save him, Leo felt grief tighten around his heart, because he already knew the ending. His papa had ultimately failed to survive. He had died helplessly on this cold operating table, leaving Leo’s father with a lifetime of regret and pain.

“Heartbeat restored. Good—continue the operation.”

Barely a moment later, the monitors sounded another alarm. His papa’s heart stopped again.

“Quick, defibrillator!”

“Heartbeat restored.”

Leo clenched his fists and stared unblinkingly at the operation. Again and again, he watched his papa struggle back from the brink of death, that fierce will to live painful to witness. Even knowing how it ended, Leo desperately wished he could be saved.

“The wound is hemorrhaging! Prepare to stop the bleeding!”

“Wait—the monitor is detecting another life-sign!”

“What?”

“He’s pregnant!”

Every doctor in the room froze, their hands stopping at once.

“The embryo has shifted. We need to take protective measures immediately.”

Once the pregnancy was confirmed, the attending physician made an immediate decision. “I’ll stabilize the embryo. You control the patient’s bleeding.”

With their orders clear, the medical team launched into another round of emergency treatment.

“Mr. Shang, you’re pregnant. Please, you have to hold on!” the attending physician urged. “The baby is fragile and still needs your body to sustain it, so whatever you do, don’t give up.”

Leo could not help moving closer to the operating table. He saw his papa’s lashes flutter several times, as though he were responding to the doctor’s words.

“Don’t use a hemostatic agent. It could harm the embryo,” the attending physician warned.

“But he’s losing too much blood. If we don’t use one…”

The attending physician gritted his teeth. “Give me three minutes!”

“What do you mean, three minutes?” Leo shouted furiously. “Stop his bleeding now!”

But no one could hear him.

Blood kept pouring from his papa’s wound, staining the operating table crimson in moments.

“Stop the bleeding! Can’t you hear me? Stop his bleeding!” Leo screamed frantically beside them.

The vivid red blood burned into his eyes. No matter how much he shouted, the doctors did not change their decision to protect the embryo first.

“Papa, hold on. Please, you have to hold on!” Leo had already forgotten that this was supposed to be a dream. Half-kneeling beside the operating table, he kept pleading with his papa to endure.

As though sensing something, Shang Ke slowly opened his eyes and looked toward where Leo stood. A few faint sparks of light seemed to flicker in his unfocused pupils.

“Papa, can you see me? I’m Leo. Your son, Leo.”

Just as Leo spoke, he heard the doctor say, “All right. We can use the hemostatic agent now.”

The words had barely fallen when Leo saw his papa’s eyes slowly close again. Terror surged through him. “Papa, no!”

Don’t make Father suffer the pain of losing someone he loves again.

“The patient has lost too much blood. His condition is critical!”

“Cardiac arrest again.”

“Blood pressure is dropping rapidly.”

The scene before Leo gradually blurred. He felt his consciousness being dragged backward by an unseen force, pulling him farther and farther away from his papa against his will.

“Papa!”

Leo’s eyes flew open, already brimming with tears.

Had everything in that dream truly happened? His papa had fought so desperately to survive, only to lose his chance at rescue because of Leo.

Of the two people closest to him, one had died because of him, while the other had died alone. Just how much had Leo missed?

Tears spilled uncontrollably from his eyes. Leo covered his face, overwhelmed by grief.

He had no idea how long he cried before something suddenly felt wrong. He raised his hands and, through his tear-blurred vision, saw ten small, soft fingers. These were definitely not the hands of an adult.

Leo’s heart lurched. He sat up abruptly and discovered, to his shock, that he had become a very young child. More astonishingly, the room around him was the small building where he had lived more than ten years ago.

Leo scrambled out of bed and stumbled to the mirror. Reflected back at him was his appearance from when he had been only two or three years old.

While he stood there in a daze, the door suddenly opened. Cassie, the Guide who had cared for him in childhood, entered the room and said joyfully, “Leo, I have wonderful news. Your papa has woken up.”

Papa had woken up? Whose papa? Leo stared blankly at Cassie, his thoughts in complete disarray.

“Come on. I’ll take you to see him.” Cassie picked Leo up and carried him toward the door. “This is wonderful. Your papa was unconscious for almost three years, and now he’s finally awake.”

Listening to Cassie chatter, Leo gradually pieced things together. His papa had not died—he had fallen into a coma. And for some inexplicable reason, Leo himself had been reborn from eighteen years old back into his two-year-old body?

Was he still dreaming?

Still completely bewildered, Leo let Cassie carry him all the way to the hospital. As the ward drew closer, his heartbeat began to quicken.

When the door opened, the first thing he saw was sunlight streaming in through the window, warm and bright, filling his vision.

“What would you like to eat? I’ll have someone bring it over.” A familiar voice reached Leo’s ears.

Leo held his breath and slowly turned his head. Then he saw a scene he would never forget.

His papa lounged against the headboard, a faint smile at the corners of his lips, soft hair falling casually along his cheek. There was a quiet serenity about him that made one instinctively relax. His father sat beside the bed, holding Shang Ke’s hand and gazing deeply at him. Their heads were close together, and when their eyes met, the affection between them seemed to bloom like flower petals in the sunlight.

The sight nearly brought Leo to tears.

They were his father and his papa—alive. Both of them alive.

“Leo.” Yonis beckoned to him. “Come here.”

His tone was as commanding as Leo remembered, but there was less coldness in it now and far more feeling.

Leo walked to the bedside, his gaze shifting back and forth between the two men. Even now, he could hardly believe it.

“Keke, this is our child, Leo,” Yonis said, introducing him to Shang Ke.

Shang Ke looked at the little boy with complicated emotions. He had never imagined that he would one day give birth to a child, much less open his eyes to discover that the child was already over two years old. Leo was handsome, with features very similar to Yonis’s, though he had inherited Shang Ke’s blue eyes.

“Hello, Leo.” Shang Ke held out a hand, his gaze warm as he looked into the boy’s eyes.

Leo hesitantly wrapped his hand around Shang Ke’s finger. The warmth of his skin and the solid touch beneath his fingertips finally convinced him that this was real.

Leo did not know how it had happened, but he seemed to have truly returned to sixteen years in the past. Except this version of the past was different from the one he remembered. His papa had not died—he had only been unconscious for three years.

Could that earlier experience have been more than a dream? Had Leo somehow traveled back to the year his papa died and changed history?

“Why are you standing there like an idiot? What happened to that clever little brain of yours?” Yonis’s faintly disdainful voice snapped Leo back to his senses.

Leo knew perfectly well that his father loved him. He simply had no appreciation for the man’s way of expressing it.

Leo shot his father an equally disdainful look.

Shang Ke smiled, then turned to Yonis. “Once I’ve recovered, can we bring Leo home?”

Yonis had already told him that the child had been placed in the Guide Association’s care because their psychic powers conflicted.

Yonis replied, “If we want to regain guardianship, we first have to submit an application to the Association. Then you’ll need to pass the required testing. They won’t approve it until they’re certain it’s safe.”

“Then I’ll do everything I can.” Shang Ke looked at Leo and asked, “What about you, Leo? Would you like to live with us?”

Of course I would!

Leo had just opened his mouth when Yonis answered for him. “He’s a little brat. What opinion could he possibly have?”

Leo endured. He really should not be too harsh on an old pile of ashes who had once fit inside an urn.

Shang Ke gave Yonis a disapproving look. Was this how he usually treated his child? At this rate, he could raise a lifelong grudge in minutes.

“Leo, you may still feel unfamiliar with me now, but I believe that one day we’ll become the best of friends and the closest of father and son.”

Leo looked at his papa’s bright smile and silently answered in his heart: Yes. I believe that too.

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