37. A Turning Point in an Instant

To be fair, it was only after mingling outside that Bai Haonan realized just how beautiful the girls at the hospital’s fitness center truly were. His ventures beyond were motivated purely by a desire for novelty; his main focus remained on untapped possibilities within. Thus, after leading the team for about a month, Bai Haonan had become so enamored with his current life that he’d nearly forgotten he was still on the run. In fact, in his somewhat oblivious way, he had almost entirely forgotten about the police. Perhaps in Bai Haonan’s mind, law enforcers were always on par with referees—corrupt, unjust, arbitrary—so he never held them in much respect. His interactions with police had been rare, mostly limited to barroom introductions—“So-and-so is a cop”—and perhaps the officers maintaining order on match days, whom he always looked down upon.

During this fugitive life, Bai Haonan mainly sought to evade the bookies. His primary concern was that the police might be bribed by those bookmakers to obtain information about him; otherwise, he would have resumed living openly under his own identity. Bai Haonan didn’t consider himself guilty of any crime. “The law does not punish the many”—a saying from the football world—was something he heard often. As long as you weren’t made an example of, match-fixing was a trivial offense. He didn’t even understand the law.

That was why Bai Haonan almost always drove drunk; if something happened in Jiangzhou, the club would sort it out. This habit left him completely forgetting that drunk driving could get one arrested.

So, with all these factors in play, it happened one night: tipsy from another round at a bar with a nurse, he started driving her back to the hospital. At the bar street’s intersection, two police cars blocked off all but one lane, lights flashing. Bai Haonan, entirely unworried, drifted his car forward—only to be stopped.

In truth, neither was particularly drunk. Bai Haonan’s plan was to slip into a dark corner of the thousand-acre hospital grounds and have a little fun; the drinking was just to set the mood. The nurse—who had been the one with the hot towel during that 1-vs-7 episode—looked at Bai Haonan with dewy eyes, her hand on his thigh, her mind as foggy as his, oblivious to the situation outside. The officer saluted, caught a whiff of alcohol from inside the car, and asked for their licenses and registration.

In an instant, four uniformed officers surrounded them, one at the passenger window deftly reaching in to turn off and remove the keys.

Luckily, it was the nurse’s car. She had driven this same car during the previous 1-vs-7 episode; Bai Haonan had left the stadium with her and couldn’t be bothered to move his own vehicle. Otherwise, the license plate alone might have aroused suspicions of car theft.

The alcohol hadn’t yet set Bai Haonan’s heart racing, but now, all at once, it pounded fiercely in his chest—thud, thud, thud!

This was bad!

The nurse was frightened, glancing helplessly around before watching Bai Haonan pull out Liu Hao’s ID and driver’s license and hand them over.

The license was an afterthought when he’d gotten the fake ID—“Want a license too? Half price,” they’d said over the phone, and Bai Haonan had agreed without a care for money. Unlike the ID, the license was nothing fancy; with some wear it looked fake enough. The traffic officer glanced at the license as a formality, barely checking for authenticity before tossing it onto the trunk of the police car. “Please step out and cooperate for inspection…”

Still trembling, the nurse retrieved the registration from the sun visor, while Bai Haonan spoke anxiously, “I’m sorry, I did have a little to drink. But she’s had more, so I drove. It’s all my fault. She’s the owner—please let her go. She’s terminally ill with a brain tumor; the diagnosis is in the glove box.”

Indeed, the nurse worked in neurology—she’d brought Bai Haonan’s MRI results before. She’d once joked about leaving someone else’s brain tumor report in her glove box, saying it’d scare him to death if mixed up, since inpatient MRI reports usually list only the image number, not the patient’s name, and sometimes patients aren’t told about terminal illnesses—a practice known as protective medicine. Bai Haonan remembered her casual remark.

Shocked, the nurse quickly composed herself, adopting a look of despair she’d seen often in the hospital, mimicking it to perfection, and produced the diagnosis. Naturally delicate and melancholy, she now appeared the very image of a tragic beauty: the imaging described an inoperable brain tumor, already advanced, the prognosis reading between the lines that every day alive was a gift.

After a few seconds’ hesitation, the police agreed to let the car’s owner go and permitted someone else to pick up the car later. As for the drunk driver, he was going nowhere; a patrol car would soon take him for a blood test and the usual procedures. The nurse shed tears, slumped in anguish, but still couldn’t “save her boyfriend,” nearly feigning a faint. Bai Haonan said, “Just move the car to the side of the road. You can come get it tomorrow or have someone else pick it up. Go home and rest—don’t wear yourself out.”

The nurse later said that at that moment, she was ready to give herself to him—well, she already had—but now she wanted to marry him. Bai Haonan had shown such composure and responsibility, so clever in distancing her from trouble, that what woman wouldn’t be moved?

But Bai Haonan, by then, was already preparing to resist arrest by force. Letting her go first was simply to avoid involving her.

He’d never been caught before, but plenty of oddballs on his team had faced this. He knew that drunk driving now meant at least a few days in detention. At the station, the authorities would quickly realize Liu Hao’s license was fake, and then real trouble would begin—false documents were a minor issue compared to the questions of identity and motive.

Bai Haonan’s heart pounded for a few seconds before, as after that car accident, he calmed quickly, focused on survival. Only when one is about to lose everything does one realize how precious freedom is.

Having fled once, Bai Haonan didn’t mind fleeing again. Now, he remembered his shadowy fugitive existence. Not a wanted criminal, perhaps, but still forced to hide in anonymity.

After all, in his mind, bookmakers were all-powerful underworld figures. If they found him, especially if he were in prison, he’d be doomed.

With this decision made, Bai Haonan began to prepare. He didn’t dwell on the mess he’d leave behind—after all, everyone from the nurse to Qiao Yingna to Chen Sufen could deny any connection to him. He was, after all, just a nobody.

But whether through the officers’ experience or the physical contact that revealed his iron-athlete physique, as the nurse departed in a taxi and a policeman moved the car to the curb, another officer quietly produced a pair of handcuffs. As Bai Haonan, head bowed, was mentally mapping the area and planning a long-distance dash, the officer snapped a cuff around one wrist and secured the other end to the iron guardrail by the roadside. “Behave yourself. If it’s just drunk driving, it’s a few days’ detention at most. Doesn’t look like you drank much. Don’t make it worse by acting out.”

Bai Haonan glanced at this officer, at least in his forties, and didn’t resist. He quietly tested the guardrail—sturdy, but not unbreakable—then slumped down, feigning dejection, waiting for his chance. He believed it would come.

At that moment, two seemingly random, entirely unrelated events occurred.