Feng Yuan, quick as lightning, hung up.
Cold sweat poured down his back.
His mother, who had been reading a magazine behind him, looked up in confusion. “I thought I heard a phone ring. Was that yours or mine?”
“Mine. Wrong number,” Feng Yuan said without changing his expression. He swiftly moved his phone to the other side, where his mother couldn’t see it, and messaged Gong Ze back: Just send a picture!
On the other end, Gong Ze: ?
Alright then.
He had thought Feng Yuan would prefer watching a live video of the muscles in motion. Gong Ze looked down, snapped a quick, random photo with his phone, and sent it over.
Once again, it was a terrible angle. His four-pack abs blurred into one lump. But from this angle…
Feng Yuan stared at the large bulge in the black athletic pants, his gaze fixed.
Damn.
Even the taste of the shredded chicken congee in his mouth changed.
Feng Yuan’s desire was stirred, making him restless. He typed: “Come to this place to see me at 2 PM.”
Gong Ze looked at the address Feng Yuan sent him on his phone, replied with a simple “Okay,” then put his phone away and stuffed his clothes into his gym bag. Amidst the concealed gazes from all over the gym, he slung the bag over his shoulder. As he left, more than one sigh could be heard behind him.
While waiting for the elevator, Gong Ze suddenly heard footsteps behind him, followed by a waft of fragrance.
“Handsome.”
Gong Ze didn’t realize the first call was for him. Then came the second: “Hey, handsome Alpha waiting for the elevator!”
Only then did Gong Ze turn around in confusion.
An Omega girl in sky-blue workout clothes stood behind him. Her eyes were bright, and a smile played on her lips. She boldly held up her phone and shook it at him. “Can I get your WeChat?”
Gong Ze said softly, “No need.”
Her smile unwavering, the girl glanced at his empty wrist. “You don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend, do you?”
Gong Ze shook his head.
He thought about it for a moment. Feng Yuan probably didn’t count as his partner.
He was his sugar parent.
“Then let’s add each other. Just as friends. I can see you’re a beginner. I can teach you how to work out. I’m a regular at this gym. My workout partner got into a car accident a couple of days ago and broke a bone, so she’s in the hospital. We can be partners instead. The results will be even better.”
Seeing the sincerity in the girl’s eyes, Gong Ze hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly pulled out his phone. “…Alright then.”
After they added each other, the girl didn’t pester him further. Instead, she smiled brightly, waved, and said goodbye.
“See you later.”
So the Alpha, who didn’t like to talk, relaxed his expression considerably, nodded politely, and left the gym.
[Great, your acting skills are really getting better and better. You could win an Oscar.]
The system praised him.
Gong Ze was playing the original owner’s character — oblivious, go-with-the-flow, living in his own lazy, withdrawn world — perfectly.
“It’s not all acting.”
After all, he had just lived an entire lifetime in the last world.
From youth to old age, his temperament had mellowed considerably.
Especially with his lover by his side, deeply influenced by Lu Youling. Even if Gong Ze was a piece of cold jade, having been warmed against someone’s heart for half a century, now that person was gone, yet he still carried Lu Youling’s warmth and shadow.
Time was truly terrifying. The sharp, murderous martial god could transform into a gentle, refined scholar. The cunning, sarcastic master of schemes could also gain a sense of peace.
So Gong Ze’s relaxed, unhurried demeanor — like an old man leisurely strolling through a market — was completely a natural performance.
[You haven’t read the rest of the plot yet.]
“No rush. I’ll do it later.”
He had originally planned to go home, eat lunch, and put his things down, but then the hospital called and told him that Gu Panpan — his cheap son — was awake.
So Gong Ze changed course and went to the hospital to see his son.
He had gone in the morning too, but hadn’t caught the child awake.
The little boy had nearly burned his brain out from the high fever. He was on continuous IV drips, which probably contained sedative and calming ingredients, so he slept most of the time.
When Gong Ze arrived at the hospital, he greeted the nurse on duty and pushed open the door to his cheap, precious son’s hospital room.
Inside, the tiny five-year-old child lay on the hospital bed. He had messy black hair and dark pupils, the whites of his eyes red from the fever.
His little lips were dry and cracked. On his cheeks, which barely showed any baby fat anymore, hung teardrops. He looked at the world with unease and fear.
The lower half of the bed was flat and empty, with no little feet or legs visible — like a teddy bear left on a big bed during a childhood game of house.
When he saw Gong Ze enter the room, the cheap, precious son’s pupils contracted. His gaze was unfamiliar and fearful, no different from how he would look at a complete stranger.
Gong Ze could understand.
The original owner and the five-year-old munchkin weren’t related by blood, and the original owner was also a single-core brain.
His core was selfish and cold. As long as the munchkin didn’t bother him, he wouldn’t bother the munchkin. So the original owner mostly ignored the child.
Until the munchkin’s mother disappeared.
He wouldn’t take care of him.
He wouldn’t be so angry as to tell him to get lost, but he also wouldn’t give the only bedroom in the house to the child, nor would he deliberately save food for him.
The child didn’t dare to ask for anything. He could only live silently and cautiously beside this unfamiliar adult man, eating the leftovers from the original owner’s takeout, and sleeping on the living room sofa with not even a single blanket. When the original owner got drunk, the child would get scared and hide in the bathroom to sleep.
There was no abuse, but there was also no warmth.
For an adult, maybe this wasn’t a problem. But for a five-year-old child — at an age when he should be clingy with his parents, like a little kitten who wants to stuff itself into its parents’ pocket, needing adults to give him a sense of security at every moment — it was fatal.
A rabbit will die from loneliness.
And a child will die much faster than a rabbit.
Gong Ze had never even held this child once. Neither had his mother.
Such a child would live in constant fear. He wouldn’t know how to express sadness because he was in a state of shock every second of every day, and had already forgotten what normal emotional feedback felt like.
“Gu Panpan.”
Standing at the door, Gong Ze said to the child on the hospital bed, who was so tense his hair was about to puff up like a hedgehog’s: “I divorced your mother. Your mother is gone.”
He informed him in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.
The munchkin on the bed flinched, his pupils shaking violently. But he still didn’t speak easily, nor did he cry. He waited for Gong Ze to pronounce his fate, radiating a fragile, premature maturity.
Gong Ze paused for a moment, then said, “From now on, you’ll live with me.”
“…………”
·
Gu Panpan’s biological father was unknown.
The woman had been nineteen when she gave birth to him. She spent her days hanging out in bars and nightclubs, partying with a group of idle, good-for-nothing friends. If she hadn’t not shown much of a bump during pregnancy, and occasionally still bled — which she mistook for her period — Gu Panpan would have been aborted long ago.
It wasn’t until she was six months pregnant that the woman realized something was wrong. But by then, it was too late.
So she pinched her nose and gave birth to him. On the very day she gave birth, she was on the phone, arguing and fighting with every man she’d slept with, demanding child support. She made the entire delivery room a chaotic mess, with countless passersby crowding at the door to gawk.
She herself was still a ‘child’ — lost in life, bent on self-destruction. How could she possibly have the maternal instinct to endure the hardships of raising a child?
As a baby, Gu Panpan was left at home all day. He only got fed when the woman came back from her debauchery. His milk was laced with alcohol and nicotine and all sorts of other harmful substances from the mother’s unhealthy habits — more toxic than tainted milk powder. It was only by sheer luck that he survived.
When Gu Panpan was three or four years old and could walk, the woman started taking him with her.
She would be doing things with men while Gu Panpan played outside the door.
When they finished and came out, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, the woman would smile and tell Gu Panpan to call the man “Daddy.”
As a child, Gu Panpan had been passed around to call various men “Daddy.” His mother’s boyfriends were weekly disposables, and so were his “fathers.”
Gu Panpan was young, but he had already dimly come to understand many evil things in the world.
Later, the woman married Gong Ze. After the wedding, Gu Panpan had a father in the legal sense. But now his biological mother had abandoned him and run away, leaving him with only his stepfather.
No blood ties. No affection.
Gu Panpan, prematurely mature, could sense that the man had no obligation to raise him, and that if he left, his fate would be dire.
He also sensed that his mother had done something wrong.
So he learned to shut his mouth.
He didn’t cry, didn’t make a fuss, survived with quiet resilience, and tried to lower his presence, hoping the man would never notice him so he could stay in the house.
Gu Panpan had never dared to look this unfamiliar stepfather directly in the face.
Between his height and his cautious survival instincts, whenever his cheap stepfather came to mind, all Gu Panpan could remember was a pair of straight legs.
But now, the man’s face was slowly coming into focus in his mind, becoming clearer and clearer…
·
“From now on, you’ll live with me.”
The stepfather sat on a stool beside his bed and said this.
He wasn’t being thrown out, and there was no sign of the impatience his mother used to show him, nor the cold indifference the man had treated him with in the past.
“Your mother is gone, but I’m still your stepfather. If you want to call me Dad, you can. If not, you don’t have to. I’ll raise you from now on. From now on, it’ll just be the two of us in this house.”
Gu Panpan stared at him blankly.
Young children are very smart. Adults always think babies don’t understand anything, but in reality, they’re often more ‘perceptive’ than adults.
So Gu Panpan understood even more how important these words were to him.
There still wasn’t much conversation between them, but his tense nerves slowly relaxed. Because the man had said: From now on, it’ll just be the two of us in this house.
— I am also a member of that family.
I’m not a child that nobody wants.
Tears silently streamed down Gu Panpan’s face, falling into his ears.
Gong Ze glanced at him. This child couldn’t even cry out loud. Was it because he was afraid of being disliked by adults and kicked out?
After a long time, the little child spoke in a hoarse, childish voice: “I got sick… cost a lot of money… Mom won’t pay.”
Gong Ze understood his meaning instantly. “She doesn’t need to pay, and you don’t need to pay either. Just get better.”
“But that’s… a lot of money…”
He had heard the nurse who changed his IV talking to a coworker in a pitying tone.
[This child is so pitiful. His biological mother married his stepfather and took him along, then she ran away, leaving him alone with a stepfather who isn’t blood-related and doesn’t know him well.]
[But this child is both lucky and unlucky. Although his stepfather didn’t seem very affectionate when he brought him here, he immediately went to raise money for the child’s treatment. I heard their family’s financial situation is average, but he prepaid a lot for the hospitalization fees.]
[How much?]
[Fifty thousand yuan.]
After the black-haired little child in the hospital bed finished speaking, he shed even more tears.
His pitiful, helpless, lonely aura softened Gong Ze’s heart slightly. In his previous life, he and Lu Youling hadn’t had children. They had considered adopting, but ultimately decided against it.
He hadn’t expected that in this life, it would happen instead.
Gong Ze knew that the more prematurely mature a child was, the earlier they understood things, the more guilty they would feel. He thought for a moment, then reached out and touched the child’s small hand, which had an IV catheter taped to it.
“It’s okay…”
After a moment of silence, Gong Ze continued, “From now on, if you eat well and dress well, and if you never get sick again, you’ll save all the money you would have spent on future illnesses. That can make up for this time.”
That was how a child’s logic worked. Hearing this, Gu Panpan’s eyes immediately lit up. He nodded seriously. “Mm. I won’t get sick again.”
The corner of Gong Ze’s mouth curved up. He stroked the child’s cold little fingers again.
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