"May I know your name, sir?" Zhang Heng took a new injection needle from a researcher and loaded it with the T-1 solution as he spoke.
"Drop the 'sir' part, please. You look like you're in your twenties yourself, and I'm only 23 this year." The young man wore a bitter grin and said, feeling somewhat scared as he looked at the needle in Zhang Heng's hand. "Name's Fang Hao, and umm, could you go easy with the needle a bit? I'm scared of needles."
Zhang Heng smiled and took a good look at the patient. It was clear that Fang Hao had looked rather handsome to begin with. If not for the toll dealt to him by chemotherapy and his own illness, he would have probably been the type that girls would flock to.
"Well then, are you ready, Fang Hao. I'm going in." Zhang Heng turned the needle upwards, expelling the bit of air in it.
"Okay sure, but could you at least not sound so wrong when you…" Fang Hao mumbled and before he finished, Zhang Heng had jabbed that needle into his arm at breakneck speeds.
"Oh, f**k!" Fang Hao then looked at the blue liquid being pushed into his vein with a rather terrified look. He was so frightened that he looked like he was about to jump and slug Zhang Heng across the face, wondering if Zhang Heng was actually jabbing a needle or throwing darts, judging from the way the needle was stuck into him.
Zhang Heng stuck it in quick and pulled it out just as quickly. It took only a blink of an eye for him to finish injecting all the liquid into Fang Hao's bloodstream.
"How many sessions does he have to go through with that drug of yours?" Li Jianguo asked in a rather exasperated manner when Zhang Heng was finished. All the interest and passion he felt when Zhang Heng first appeared had flown out of the window.
"Not sure just yet." Zhang Heng turned around and didn't mind the older man's attitude one bit, but he nonetheless answered courteously, "We'll probably be able to see the effects in under an hour."
Li Jianguo shivered for a bit, struggling to contain the urge to jump at Zhang Heng and berate him for his recklessness. You actually jabbed that thing of yours in the patient without even knowing how well it'd work?
It was all thanks to that scheming personality of his that he managed to somehow contain all that urge.
"Well then, since Zhang Heng is done…" Li Jianguo's face couldn't help but twitch somewhat, pausing for a while before continuing. "…is done with the treatment, let's just wait for the results at the banquet hall. I've thrown a banquet over there, and everyone present is welcome to participate." He waved dismissively and became the first one to head outside the room.
"Dude, is your drug really gonna work?" Fang Hao asked while looking frail and unwanted on the bed, while everyone looked like they just saw a charade played out as they walked out of the reception room. None of them bothered with Zhang Heng anymore.
Zhang Heng didn't mind at all. He went to sit at Fang Hao's side and joked, "Relax, dude. They call me 'One-shot Zhang'. Whatever tricky disease you have, cancer or something else, you'd only need one shot from me to get completely cured!"
"Oh sh**, I've heard of that One-shot Zhang! The ads on the electric poles, the ones that got stuck together with those wedding ads… wait, you're not telling me you're him right?" Fang Hao felt like he wanted to just die on the spot.
Everyone was gathered at the banquet hall and paid no heed to Zhang Heng, who was still in the reception room, and Zhang Heng liked the quiet. He was never the type of person who liked crowds and parties in the first place, and he just continued chatting with Fang Hao, who was of a similar age to him.
Zhang Heng learned from the conversation that Fang Hao's parents were both government servants. Despite having some connections here and there, they were nonetheless just regular folks, nowhere near the circles of the upper echelons of society.
Fang Hao was diagnosed with stomach cancer when he was 21. If he were to be said to have a vice, it would be his love for and near addiction to Chinese pickles. Such pickled foods were loaded with nitrites, which would undergo a chemical reaction with stomach acid to form nitrosamines, which were deemed to be carcinogenic. As such, Fang Hao's family, which had been living a normal, middle-class life, was rendered completely bankrupt.
Fang Hao felt like he was in a living hell for the past two years. His family had exhausted all of their savings just to treat his disease. Fang Hao's eyes watered when he told that part of his story, and he confessed thinking about suicide time and again, just to free his parents from a deadweight like him, but he was stopped by his family nonetheless.
He inherited his personality from his father, making him the sunny, outgoing type, but all that torture he went through from his illness for the past two years had worn that zest for life down. But one could still see a flicker of determination and fighting spirit in his eyes.
"It's been quite a while since I last talked to anyone like that." Fang Hao looked at Zhang Heng with grateful eyes. "I'd need to thank you, even if your drug isn't gonna work. I could finally die in peace, after all, having made such a good friend while I'm still alive."
"Oh quit yammering about dying." Zhang Heng clapped Fang Hao's shoulder and lit up a cigarette. "Relax, dude. That stuff's definitely gonna work. You'd have a hard time dying even if you wanted to from here on out."
Fang Hao chuckled and didn't take any of it to heart. He glanced around, confirming that no one but the two of them in the room, before asking, "Zhang Heng, can I have one?"
Zhang Heng rolled his eyes and retorted, "You're in such a sh**ty state and yet you still wanna smoke?"
"Heh, I was considered a top-class smoker before I got sick, going through more than half a pack, if not a whole pack, every day. Kinda ironic, isn't it? I got stomach cancer instead of lung cancer."
Zhang Heng felt rather saddened somewhat seeing Fang Hao behaving in a devil-may-care manner. He hesitated for a bit before handing him a cigarette.
"Hehe, that's what I call a bro." Fang Hao took the cigarette over, before pointing it at Zhang Heng's 'Genuine Hong Kong ZORRO kerosene lighter', lighting it up and sucked on it hard, then throwing a puff feeling rather comfortable.
"Nice!"
However, he then frowned for a bit at that moment. "Wait… I'm feeling something here?"
"Feeling something?"
Blerrgghh. Fang Hao's expression took a sharp turn for the worse all of a sudden and began vomiting black blood in massive quantities. A putrid stench emanated from his vomit, and he was seen cradling his stomach on the bed rolling.
"Go**amnit! It hurts! I'm dying!"
What the hell? Why is this happening? Zhang Heng pinned Fang Hao down and asked the Dimensional Star system frantically.
"Relax, it's fine. That's just a reaction from his cells having completely fused with the T-1 Virus, and his immune system beginning to purge all the cancer cells." Yurianne appeared before his eyes and spoke calmly.
Why didn't any of this happen when I jabbed myself with the T-0? Zhang Heng asked further, feeling restless at the thought of something untoward would possibly happen.
"Dude, you're a normal guy! You're not sick or anything! Of course, you wouldn't be seeing any reaction like this with your case," Yurianne stood akimbo and answered with a dissatisfied tone.
Several medical personnel standing by outside the door heard the commotion at the moment and finally came inside. One of the young nurses pointed at Zhang Heng and berated him, "Look what you've done! The patient was already in such a dire state, and you still fed him that crap of yours!" She then saw the cigarettes on their hands and yelled even more angrily, "You're actually letting the patient smoke?? Are you trying to kill him??"
Zhang Heng was at fault in that case, so he didn't bother saying anything in defense. He simply held his arms high over his head, making it seem like he was surrendering himself.
That nurse shot Zhang Heng a furious glare nonetheless, although her soft features and melodic voice long threw any intimidation factor she had out of the window, making her look harmless. She ordered the others, "Get on with first aid. Xiaoli, fetch the ampoule!"
Just when the medical staff was still getting ready to push the bed to the emergency room frantically, Fang Hao slowly recovered and said, "Hold on!"
Everyone stopped what they were doing right there and then. Fang Hao leaped out of the bed right away and rubbed his stomach looking rather confused.
"What happened? How are you feeling?" the nurse asked right away.
"I'm feeling light." Fang Hao then said with a rather dumbfounded expression, "I-I feel better!"
"What!?" Everyone was stunned, wondering Fang Hao was burning all of his remaining flickers of life right there and then.
However, Fang Hao paid no heed to the medical staff and went on to jump about, running around the reception room for a bit with a very, very surprised look on his face. "I'm really feeling just fine! My stomach no longer hurts!"
That nurse seemed to have recalled something and went on to check her watch right away—10 minutes before an hour was up. She exclaimed in disbelief, "Isn't this working a little too well?"
"What's going on?" The people in the banquet hall all rushed into the room at that moment, having heard the commotion. Li Jianguo pushed his way through the crowd and quickly looked completely stunned when he found Zhang Heng all covered in blood.
He was about to fly into a rage, before one of the medical staff murmured into his ear, which caused his expression to change drastically, looking at Fang Hao with a rather astonished look on his face.
"President Li, ladies and gentlemen, hahaha!" Fang Hao waved at the crowd and said energetically, "Gosh, I'm feeling hungry now."