CH 8

The bright red strawberries of the same sizes were delicately arranged in the paper box. They were most likely freshly picked and arrived by air, even being able to smell its fresh and sweet fragrance. Yan Yi knew that half of it was the smell of money. He could only use the remaining strength he had after resisting the pain to put on an expression that he liked eating them.

His stomach churned and twisted as though a strong man was wringing a towel. Almost about to wring dry, Yan Yi suppressed the gripping pain and swallowed the cold watery food.

He ate more than ten in a row.

What he enjoyed wasn’t the strawberries, but the soothing pheromones tainted on the hand that fed each strawberry,

There were subtle functional differences in the pheromones of a person’s glands, which could be roughly divided into different functions such as oppression, soothing, courtship etc, each changing according to the mood of the body.

Releasing soothing pheromones required the alpha to be patient and tranquil in order for it to take effect. Out of desire to protect a naturally weak omega, it will naturally flow out of the gland and stimulate the receptors of the omega’s glands, transmitting nerve impulses to the center, so the omega would receive a sufficient sense of security as it functions as an analgesic and stabilizer.

As Lu Shangjin lacked patience, releasing soothing pheromones made him tired.

As well as the desire to protect Yan Yi.

An omega who was standing on top of the pyramid, with a third-grade differentiated top gland that alphas couldn’t even catch up to, able to forcibly stop two GTRs with his bare hands, able to catch an AK47 bullet of high velocity with his bare hands, and break the bulletproof glass of a helicopter with his bare hands. Such a one-in-a-million omega was wearing out Lu Shangjin’s pity year after year.

Lu Shangjin had bought a pair of expensive wedding rings and knelt down on one knee to put it on Yan Yi’s ring finger, so Yan Yi mistakenly thought they were married.

After the mark was removed from his gland, and had no longer become a hindrance, Lu Shangjin thought they had broken up. To Yan Yi, it was the breakdown of a family, and the shelter he had lived in for more than ten years no longer had his name.

He felt as though he had bought a tube of toothpaste when the days were tight.

When it was first bought, even a slight squeeze would produce a large amount, and he would want to suck it back. Once a lot was used, he would begin to fold and crush it, rolling it into a roll and wanting to squeeze only a bean-sized amount. He’d become exhausted, but as it could still always be squeezed out, he wouldn’t throw it away for the time being.

The invulnerable little rabbit didn’t need protection at all.

Lu Shangjin touched his head, “I have an afternoon flight, just a short business trip, when I come back I’ll take you home.”

Yan Yi’s heart sank after hearing the words “business trip”, but was much relieved after hearing the second half of the sentence.

He smiled as a weight lifted off his mind, why did putting the three ordinary words ‘take you home’ together become so warm? Like a match suddenly lighting up in the bitter cold, sparkling in the reflection in Yan Yi’s eyes.

“Mn, take me home…” Yan Yi held onto Lu Shangjin’s hand before he could retreat back and kissed his fingertips.

Lu Shangjin leaned down and kissed between his eyebrows, “Be good.”

After he left, Yan Yi was left alone in the empty grey and white intensive care unit. He took out a pen and his notebook that he often used to record his memories, flipped to a new page, and wrote down three words, ‘take you home’.

A plus sign was added after, ‘+ 112 points’.

Every time Lu Shangjin made him sad, he would subtract one point. He didn’t want to like him anymore after subtracting down to zero from a hundred points.

Until just now, Lu Shangjin’s score was minus 12, enough to have his license revoked. But Yan Yi still loved him.

Just a sentence about going home was able to completely fill his broken heart.

Yan Yi spent two hours leaning against the toilet bowl in the washroom, throwing up all the cold strawberry juice stirring in his stomach.

His empty stomach felt a little more comfortable.

Climbing back into his bed nest, he scrolled through Weibo and boredly unfollowed all the people he didn’t know on his following list. He didn’t really know how to use the app in the past, and had followed hundreds of random accounts.

After unfollowing several accounts, it seemed that a protection mechanism was triggered. A verification code was needed for each unfollow.

In a daze, Yan Yi entered the code one by one. When he came back to his senses, the only person left on his following list was Yuan Mi.

It turns out that a person could be bored to this point.

Best actor Yuan’s new drama had been released; a gorgeous costume drama poster, wearing black clothes and a pair of swords with a cold expression, as he stood in the center position next to a long-haired alluring alpha with a sense of strong destructive power.

The fans howled as they competed for the hottest comment with screenshots, the ‘ahhhhhh’ comments sounded like ear-shattering voices.

In the GIF, the alluring alpha lowered his head to kiss Yuan Mi’s forehead. Yuan Mi lifted a pair of watery and innocent puppy-like eyes, looking affectionately at his partner. It was a little forceful, but the expression of a prostitute was still there.

The kiss that Lu Shangjin placed between his eyebrows was similar to the one in this picture, perfectly charming with just the right angle of his head lowered, as perfunctory and estranged as to fulfil a certain kind of lens effect.

Yan Yi also posted a comment:

“Great acting.”

——

Ten minutes later, this had been insulted by thousands of fans’ comments and became a hot comment.

“Now the fake fans have been hidden so deeply? Are you the one with 88 personalities?”

“Meaning- our Yuan Yuan, you can do it if you tried, nmsl1 heart.”

“Longans2 don’t cause accidental injuries, what if they’re a new fan, please control it. Don’t attract haters for Yuan Yuan, thank you.”

Yan Yi: “……”

Yuan Mi was still on set as he scrolled through Weibo while getting his makeup done. When he saw the hot comment on his Weibo post, “great acting”, he narrowed his eyes immediately.

He looked at the ID.

‘How can you eat bunnies’.

An unknown burst of fire squeezed up to Yuan Mi’s neck, and he took a bite of a malva nut and forced it down. He opened the Meituan app and ordered two catties of rabbit head.

Just as he placed his order, a phone call came in.

He confirmed the caller was ‘Director Xia’; someone who couldn’t be provoked.

“Hello director Xia.” Yuan Mi smiled politely. He covered his mouth with the script and went to a corner to speak softly.

“Send me the address of the hospital. The money has been added to your card.”

It was the arrogant and irreverent tone of an alpha.

——

Not long after, Yan Yi received a private message that he had been blocked and deleted, and not allowed to post comments for three days.

For the first time in his life, so many people had talked to him. It’s a pity that this lively state died within 15 minutes.

Teasing best actor Yuan could really kill time. After six to seven hours, Yan Yi was too tired to even hold his phone. He nestled into his pillow, waiting for the spread of swelling pain in his bones to hit like a tide, the drug to kick in, and the torture that came day after day.

Sometimes, he wanted to go outside for a walk. Loneliness wasn’t caused by suffering from insomnia in the dead of the night, but he wanted to have a drink occasionally, flip through his address book, then forget about it after some thought.

It was almost eight o’clock. Yan Yi ran to the bathroom several times but couldn’t vomit anything. In the end, he didn’t even have the energy to climb back to bed, so he lied on the edge of the toilet seat, as sorry as an arrogant uncle who had drunk half a pound of Wu Liang Yue liquor.

He knelt beside the toilet and fell asleep, so it was more convenient to throw up.

When Lu Shangjin was around, he wouldn’t forget his manners. He showed Lu Shangjin his most perfect and strong side, not wanting to add adjectives such as “troublesome” to the already fading impression in his heart.

At midnight, the door of the ward opened gently, and a tall, straight figure carried a stack of square boxes and walked inside. Instead of turning on the bright overhead light, he used the illuminated screen on his phone and turned on the small, dim table lamp at the head of the bed so as to not wake the person sleeping under the blanket.

The alpha held his breath, not releasing a single trace of smell of his pheromones. When he glanced at the bed, it was empty.

He looked around the ward and found a little rabbit curled up asleep on the ground in the bathroom.

From his impression of the little lop-eared rabbit who carried a black helmet in one hand and pointed a Desert Eagle at his forehead with the other, he was like a different person. He was as weak as a butterfly with broken wings, dead from the first north wind in the harsh winter.

In his restless sleep, Yan Yi felt his body gently being carried, and then a sufficient amount of soothing pheromones spread, protecting the weak body. Yan Yi’s tensely curled body slowly relaxed as he leaned against the warm chest.

He had never felt such reassuring comfort. The person patiently released the soothing pheromones, neither irritable, nor mingling with disordered impurities.

The light smell filled the air. It was hard to distinguish what the scent was; it could occasionally be smelled in the flower shop, seemingly like Baby’s Breath flowers.

The sufficient soothing pheromones accompanied him until six in the morning before it disappeared.

Yan Yi slept until noon and was woken up by the nurse who brought his medicine in. Next to his pillow, there was a stack of paper boxes left behind by someone unknown.

He opened them to have a look; the three boxes were imported timothy hay.

While giving him the medicine, the nurse asked, ‘Who sent these tea leaves?”

Yan Yi couldn’t remember clearly. The window was wide open, and the only smell of pheromones that would help determine the identity of the visitor had also disappeared before Yan Yi woke up.

He said, “It’s not tea.”

The nurse asked curiously, “What is it?”

Yan Yi took a handful of hay and put it into his mouth. It was fragrant and chewy, he couldn’t help eating another handful.

“It’s rabbit food.”

For the next few days, this became the only staple food he could stomach down without throwing up.

But he didn’t dare to investigate, and resisted finding out who the faint smell of Baby’s Breath on the boxes belonged to, his instinctual fear coming from the kindness of strangers.

When Lu Shangjin returned, Yan Yi’s state had improved. He gradually adapted to the side effects of the anesthetic, so he could go home and wait for the operation.

Yan Yi sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window at the green belt speeding past, but he was actually looking at Lu Shangjin’s sharp and alluring side profile in the rearview mirror.

In the past, Yan Yi would be the one to drive, so there were few opportunities to look at Lu Shangjin quietly, to watch him for a long time without being distrubed or refused.

As the car drove in an unfamiliar direction, Yan Yi suddenly became alert and asked in astonishment, “We’re not going home?”

Lu Shangjin continued to look straight ahead. When they reached a red light, the slender fingertips tapped gently against the leather sheath of the steering wheel.

“Going to my house. My parents want me to take you back to visit.”

During the business trip, Lu Lin made another international call to urge Lu Shangjin once again, he was pestered beyond endurance.

The corner of Yan Yi’s mouth that always carried a little tilt became extremely stiff. The tip of his nose quivered slightly and his feet stamped uncontrollably,

“No, I’m not going, Jin ge, I’m not going!”

Trembling, he held onto his left hand and hid it behind his back, retracting into his sleeve. His palms turned cold with sweat as he held the glands at the back of his neck with fear.

Footnotes

Nmsl (你妈死了/ ni ma si le): internet slang for “your mom is dead”Longan: I’m assuming this is Yuan Mi’s fandom name, in chinese its “gui yuan/ long yuan”