“Ren Yi! Ren Yi!”
Yan Jue and another firefighter carried Ren Yi onto the aerial platform. Yan Jue fitted his own SCBA mask over Ren Yi’s nose and mouth.
Ren Yi’s eyelids kept drooping. He desperately pushed the mask away, a hoarse moan escaping his throat. Forcing himself to cling to the last thread of consciousness, he weakly grabbed Yan Jue’s sleeve.
“Sun Dingyi… Sun… Dingyi…”
Looking at Ren Yi’s soot-covered, battered face, Yan Jue felt wave after wave of heartache.
“Don’t talk anymore.”
“Sun… Dingyi…” Tears streamed down Ren Yi’s cheeks.
Yan Jue gently stroked his hair. His lips moved, but he couldn’t find the words. His eyes were already bloodshot, his heart aching unbearably.
Two firefighters carried the critically injured father onto the platform as well. The platform moved away from the connecting passage and the fireground as quickly as possible, descending toward the ground.
The murky, bitterly cold air filled Ren Yi’s lungs. Along with it came the sound of people weeping in grief at the scene. The wind, heavy with the stench of charred coal, and the sky choked with haze pressed down on everyone, making it difficult to breathe.
Ren Yi struggled to sit up, but someone pushed him back onto the stretcher. He let out a low growl, seized by an overwhelming rage, though he didn’t even know whom he was angry at.
Suddenly, a warm, strong hand clasped his.
Ren Yi froze. Through his blurred vision, he saw Gong Yingxian’s pale, anxious face. He opened his mouth, and all the grievances and pain he had been forcing himself to endure burst forth at once. Tears poured from his eyes as he pleaded incoherently, “Where’s Sun Dingyi? Save him… Yingxian… go…”
Gong Yingxian’s heart twisted with anguish. How could he tell Ren Yi the cruel truth? All he could do was hold Ren Yi’s hand tightly—a hand he never wanted to let go of for the rest of his life.
“Make way! Don’t crowd around the injured!” The paramedic pushed Gong Yingxian and Yan Jue aside and fitted Ren Yi with a breathing mask. But Ren Yi suddenly began struggling violently, silently roaring like a trapped beast.
The paramedic had no choice but to administer a sedative.
Ren Yi stared helplessly at the low, gloomy sky above him, which looked as if the world were coming to an end, before sinking into darkness.
Ren Yi had suffered multiple severe thermal burns and inhaled toxic fumes. He remained unconscious in the hospital for nearly three days before finally waking up.
Gong Yingxian and Qu Yangbo had been keeping watch at his bedside. When Ren Yi regained consciousness, both men’s faces were tense, their brows deeply furrowed. They were worried not only about his physical condition, but also about his emotional state.
Ren Yi opened his eyes and stared blankly at the snow-white ceiling for a long time before his mind gradually began to clear. He knew this place well. He had been in and out of this hospital countless times over the years—Hongwu Hospital.
His gaze shifted downward to the two men sitting on either side of his bed. The grief on their faces and the stiffness of their bodies left him confused. Why were they looking at him as if they were bracing for a disaster?
He was still alive, wasn’t he?
Yes, he was alive. But his brother, who had fallen from a height of more than twenty meters…
Clinging to one last sliver of hope, he asked Qu Yangbo in a trembling voice, “Sun Dingyi…”
Qu Yangbo’s eyes reddened, and he looked as though he would burst into tears at any moment.
Ren Yi let out a long breath. His body felt hollow, as if everything inside him had disappeared.
Gong Yingxian desperately wanted to comfort him, but he had no idea what to say. Words felt too meager, too frivolous in a moment like this. All he could do was take Ren Yi’s hand and hold it tightly.
“Every time… every time we go out on a mission…” Ren Yi’s heart continued to ache. His grief and self-blame could gnaw a person to pieces. “I swear that I’ll bring every single one of them back safely.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Qu Yangbo choked out. “Ren Yi, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m the station captain. I was the one who led them in there.” Tears filled Ren Yi’s eyes. “If even one of them doesn’t come back, it’s my fault. How am I supposed to… how am I supposed to face his parents? He was their only son… and his girlfriend… How am I supposed to…”
Gong Yingxian took a deep breath and struggled to speak.
“In the face of life and death, Squad Leader Sun saved a three-year-old child. His family will understand why he made that choice. Ren Yi, this isn’t your fault. This is a crime.”
Ren Yi slowly turned his head and stared at Gong Yingxian, his voice trembling.
“It was… arson.”
“It was arson,” Gong Yingxian replied coldly. “We’ve already found evidence at the scene.”
Ren Yi clenched his fists. “Was it Purple Flame? Was it Purple Flame?!”
“We can’t confirm that yet, but it’s very likely.” Gong Yingxian closed his eyes wearily. “Ren Yi, trust me. I’ll catch the culprit, no matter what.”
Ren Yi pounded the bed with his fists, his chest overflowing with hatred.
Qu Yangbo pressed down on Ren Yi’s shoulder and said hoarsely, “Ren Yi, calm down. You’re seriously injured too. No matter how much you blame yourself, remember this: the entire station still has a whole group of people depending on you and counting on you. Sun Dingyi is also waiting for you to avenge him.”
Ren Yi bit his lower lip, tears streaming down his face.
“I still have to go back to the station and take care of things. Focus on getting better and come back soon.” Qu Yangbo wiped away his tears and left with his head bowed.
As soon as the hospital room door closed, Gong Yingxian immediately pulled Ren Yi into a tight embrace.
“Ren Yi, I’m here. I’m here.”
Seeing Ren Yi consumed by remorse and guilt, Gong Yingxian felt as if his heart were being torn apart. The Ren Yi he knew had always been as warm and radiant as the sun, capable of brightening everyone around him. He had never seen him suffer so much, never seen him so broken and vulnerable.
Ren Yi clung tightly to Gong Yingxian as though he were a lifeline. He buried his face against Gong Yingxian’s warm, broad chest and began to sob, the sound muffled and heavy.
Ren Yi later learned that the shopping mall fire had killed four people and injured more than thirty. The direct economic losses amounted to seventy million yuan.
The father and son they had rescued at the end had been among them. The father’s injuries were too severe, and he died in the hospital. The child’s mother had passed away from illness just a few months earlier. That was why the father often took the boy to his workplace. In a single night, a three-year-old child had lost both parents.
During Ren Yi’s hospital stay, firefighters and leaders from the station came to visit him one after another, but he remained listless and withdrawn.
Gong Yingxian spent his days investigating the case and rushed to the hospital whenever he had a spare moment. He practically lived there at night. The two didn’t talk much. Most of the time, Gong Yingxian simply sat with Ren Yi in silence.
After a week in the hospital, Ren Yi insisted on being discharged. No one could talk him out of it.
After leaving the hospital, Ren Yi still couldn’t bring himself to visit Sun Dingyi’s parents. The organization had already offered them condolences and compensation, and the funeral was scheduled for the following Monday—the very day Sun Dingyi had joined the station seven years earlier.
The atmosphere at the station had been oppressive for days. The laughter and playful banter that once filled the place now existed only in their memories. Every heart was heavy with grief and anger.
One morning, while the firefighters were out doing their morning drills, Ren Yi went alone to the officers’ dormitory and stopped beside Sun Dingyi’s bed.
Although they were no longer military personnel following the restructuring of the fire service, they had retained the discipline and habits of soldiers. The blanket on Sun Dingyi’s bed was still folded into a neat, tofu-like block, and everything on his desk was arranged in perfect order. Nothing had been touched.
Ren Yi sat on Sun Dingyi’s bed. For a moment, he could almost imagine that the dormitory door would swing open at any second, and Sun Dingyi would walk in after morning training, chatting and joking as he came over. They would talk about the game they had watched the night before and debate what to eat for lunch. Ren Yi could even remember every crease on Sun Dingyi’s face when he smiled.
If only none of this had happened. If only it had all been a nightmare.
With a creak, the dormitory door opened.
Ren Yi abruptly raised his head, a flicker of light appearing in his eyes. But when he saw who had entered, his gaze dimmed again.
Cui Yisheng looked at Ren Yi in surprise. “Captain Ren, you…”
When he realized that Ren Yi was sitting on Sun Dingyi’s bed, his expression changed.
“Why are you back?” Ren Yi asked flatly.
“I wasn’t feeling well, so I took the day off.”
“Get some rest, then.” Ren Yi stood up to leave.
“Captain Ren.” Cui Yisheng bit his lip, hesitating before asking, “That day… if I’d gone back up sooner, would things have turned out differently?”
His SCBA air supply had been running low, and his protective suit was damaged, so Ren Yi had ordered him to go down, change into fresh gear, and bring up several spare air cylinders. After descending, Cui Yisheng had reported the interior conditions to the incident commander, changed his clothes, collected the cylinders, and returned. The entire process had taken no more than ten minutes, but by then Ren Yi had already led the team inside.
If he had been a little faster, could the outcome have been different?
Ren Yi cut him off. “Don’t think like that. This has nothing to do with you.”
Cui Yisheng’s eyes reddened. “Squad Leader Sun and I came from the same hometown. When I first arrived, I couldn’t adapt to the northern climate and coughed for over a month. He took such good care of me.”
Ren Yi drew a sharp breath and gently pressed his lips together.
“Captain Ren, tell me… We spend every day trying to save other people, but sometimes we can’t save them. Sometimes we can’t even save our own brothers.” Cui Yisheng wiped away his tears. “Do you remember that boy? The one who was trapped against the windshield and bled to death right in front of us. He begged us to save him. We got him out, but he still died. I… I keep wondering what the point of all this is. What’s the meaning of what we do?”
Ren Yi turned back. Tears hovered in his eyes as he answered softly, “We’ve saved more people than we’ve failed to save. That’s the meaning of what we do.”
Cui Yisheng slowly shook his head, his face filled with profound helplessness.
Ren Yi wanted to offer him a few words of comfort, but he realized that those words couldn’t even comfort himself. How could he convince someone else? All he could do was pat Cui Yisheng on the shoulder before practically fleeing the dormitory.
But where could he run? Sun Dingyi’s presence seemed to linger everywhere throughout the station.
This was the first time Ren Yi had faced the death of one of his firefighters since becoming station captain.
He still remembered how, when he was a child, his father would sometimes become overwhelmed by pain and sink into despair, growing irritable and withdrawn. Back then, safety hazards were more common and fire prevention measures were far less developed, so the fatality rate among firefighters was much higher than it was now. During his father’s decades of service, he had faced the loss of comrades several times. The worst incident had been the explosion at Baosheng Chemical Plant, where four members of his father’s station had died in a single incident. And even that station hadn’t had the highest fatality rate.
How had his father managed to get through it?
Could he get through it too?