Fang Fengqin wiped away the blood again, his tone casual. “Probably. There were too many, I forgot.”
Fang Long did not seem particularly dissatisfied with his promiscuous lifestyle. In his view, an alpha being romantic was a good thing, following the style of his own youth.
“There just happens to be a project that requires the Ji family to bridge the connection, and Ji Binglv is this omega’s uncle. Figure out a way to smooth this path over.”
“What do you mean?” Fang Fengqin looked at him with cold eyes. “You want me to go fawn over an omega?”
“If you can directly fawn over Ji Binglv, that works too,” Fang Long said expressionlessly. “Marry this omega back, and I won’t bother with you anymore.”
“I’m not marrying him.”
“Then I’ll have your brother marry him.” Fang Long waved a hand, getting a headache just looking at this brat. “Get lost.”
Fang Fengqin was burning with unvented anger. He walked out with a cold face, and as he passed Fang Rongxi, his arm was grabbed.
“Did he hit you?” Fang Rongxi saw the slap mark and blood on his face, his brows slightly furrowing.
Fang Fengqin paused in place, letting himself be pulled over to wash his face.
Fang Rongxi took out a handkerchief, dampened it with warm water, and gently wiped away the dried nosebleed on Fang Fengqin’s face.
The brothers hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and for a moment they had virtually nothing to make small talk about.
“Keep your temper in check in front of him, don’t be so rash,” Fang Rongxi said softly. “Why force things to this extent?”
“He has the nerve to beat me to death,” Fang Fengqin stubbornly retorted.
Fang Rongxi pressed his lips together in displeasure. “Big brother doesn’t like hearing you say things like that.”
Fang Fengqin stopped talking, and upon closer inspection, shimmering tears were still caught in his eyes.
Fang Rongxi let out a soft sigh. He knew that Fang Fengqin’s intentional or unintentional distancing from him over the years was deliberately put on for Fang Long to see.
When it all came down to it, he was only a beta and could never take root in the snobbish circles of the Fang family.
“Does it hurt?” He gently touched Fang Fengqin’s face.
Fang Fengqin suppressed the heat in his eyes and brushed his hand away. “I don’t need you to care.”
“If I don’t care, who will?” Fang Rongxi pressed the corner of his slightly reddened eye. “What did he call you in there to say?”
Fang Fengqin lifted his eyes to look at him. “He said he’s going to give all the shares to me and make you my assistant.”
Fang Rongxi chuckled lightly. “Alright, being your assistant is fine too, saves me from not being able to find the shadow of you all day and worrying.”
“Have some ambition.” Fang Fengqin’s face turned cold.
“As long as our Orange has ambition, that’s enough,” Fang Rongxi just smiled. “You’re an alpha after all, how could a beta like me compare?”
His original intention was just to coax Fang Fengqin into a good mood, never expecting that hearing these words would feel like poking Fang Fengqin right in his sore spot.
Fang Fengqin’s expression went completely flat, as if the brief warmth between the brothers just now had been an illusion.
“I’m leaving.” He gave Fang Rongxi a calm look, turned around, and walked out without a shred of lingering attachment.
Fang Rongxi was slightly startled. Looking at his back, he ultimately didn’t make a sound to urge him to stay.
He couldn’t control himself from thinking back to when they were little.
Fang Fengqin was four years younger than him. Back then, before Zhong Lu married into the Fang family, she despised the two of them as baggage and hadn’t taken much care of them.
Fang Fengqin could practically be said to have been raised single-handedly by Fang Rongxi. His food, drink, housing, and bodily functions, his joys, angers, sorrows, and delights, had all played out right under his eyes.
The brothers had been so close back then they couldn’t be pried apart. Fang Fengqin used to cling to him, crying his eyes out while hugging him on his very first day of school, which ended up dragging a few tears out of Fang Rongxi as well.
Yet at some point in time, the brothers gradually grew distant.
Fang Rongxi recalled that it seemed to start the year Fang Fengqin presented as an alpha; communication between the two of them suddenly vanished.
In the end, it was because he despised him for being a beta.
Fang Rongxi gave a helpless, low chuckle, feeling somewhat desolate as he touched the back of his neck.
For some reason, the back of his neck suddenly felt a dull ache.
The nosebleed that had just stopped began to flow once more without warning.
Fang Fengqin pulled his car over to the side of the road, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over him, and within a moment broke out in a layer of cold sweat.
His heartbeat was so fast it felt as though it were about to burst out of his chest. He let out a low groan of pain, forcefully throwing his head back to stretch his neck straight, the veins on it bulging from the agony.
It was a pain without warning, a situation that had never happened before. After roughly ten minutes or so, Fang Fengqin managed to barely pull himself together.
His entire body felt as though it had been washed through with water, his hair clinging to his pale temples, and dried blood smeared across a large portion of the fabric at his chest.
Fang Fengqin sat silently in the car for a long time.
Waiting until the dull pain and dizziness in his head subsided slightly, he restarted the car, swung the steering wheel, and drove toward Xinghe Road Cultural Street.
Inside the clinic, Qings Tingfeng had been leisurely viewing photos sent by a newly flirted-with little alpha. Hearing movement at the doorway, he lazily raised his eyes to look, only to nearly be frightened out of his wits.
A slender figure wearing a baseball cap was clutching his nose and staggering inward, the front of his white shirt stained a massive, bloody crimson.
He abruptly stood up, rushing forward to support the person. Upon contact, he felt skin that was slightly cool and slick with sweat, his wrists slender enough that it felt like a single hand could snap them.
“You…” He looked at Fang Fengqin’s sweat-drenched back, words failing him.
Fang Fengqin expended the last of his strength to sit down on the stool, finally willing to let go of his hand. As if the pain was simply too much to bear, he parted his lips to say something, but in the next second, his head tilted sideways, and he completely lost consciousness.
“Jinlin! Come down and lend a hand!” Qings Tingfeng shouted at the top of his lungs. “Hurry up!”
The music upstairs stopped, and approaching footsteps drew closer. Wei Jinlin familiarly helped Qings Tingfeng carry the passed-out person into the back room’s sickbed, complaining as he did so, “If you’re sick, go to the hospital. What are you coming to this dump of a clinic for?”
Qings Tingfeng turned around to prep the medicine with somewhat hurried movements. Hearing his son say that, he cursed angrily, “It just shows your old man has prestige, what do you know? Go wipe the person’s face!”
Wei Jinlin refused. “I have to go to rehearsal, the band has a gig tomorrow night.”
As he spoke, he glanced back over his shoulder. When he saw the blood-smeared face of the person on the bed, the foot he had just lifted suddenly paused.
Qings Tingfeng rushed over and gave Fang Fengqin an injection. Seeing the deeply furrowed brow relax slightly, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“What a sin. If he dies here, am I still going to run a business?” He wiped his sweat. Seeing Wei Jinlin standing frozen in place like a post, his anger flared up again. “You’ve got the exact same uselessness as your blind father!”
Wei Jinlin didn’t make a sound, staring fixedly at the person on the bed before suddenly letting out a parted-lip smile after a long moment.
“The last time I came to get medicine, the person I saw was him, right?”
Qings Tingfeng had already removed the baseball cap from Fang Fengqin’s head and was wiping his face with a wet paper towel, his tone casual. “It’s him. This brat hasn’t given me a straight look these years, but I finally get to see one today.”
No wonder he kept himself so tightly hidden; he didn’t look bad at all.
His brows and facial features weren’t the heroic, dashing kind, but rather pretty, blurring the boundaries of gender, with not a single millimeter extra or lacking to achieve this level.
Qings Tingfeng clicked his tongue twice and sniffed the blood; there wasn’t a shred of pheromone scent.
What a pity too. Instead of being a proper omega, he insisted on being an alpha, suffering all these hardships without even knowing if he got what he wanted.
Wei Jinlin stood to the side with his arms crossed, licking the inside of his cheek, and let out a cold laugh. “Do you know who he is?”
“Who?”
Ever since Qings Tingfeng had a falling out with the Ji family and divorced Wei Jinlin’s father, he had holed up in this small clinic, remaining largely out of touch with Rongcheng’s upper circles.
“My fiancé.” Wei Jinlin was genuinely smiling now, adding with a relish for the drama, “The young master of the Fang family, Fang Fengqin.”
Hearing this, Qings Tingfeng understood immediately.
The branch of the Fang family currently holding real power reportedly did so precisely because they produced an alpha.
He turned his head and exchanged a glance with Wei Jinlin.
“No wonder biting people felt like scratching an itch. So, he’s an omega.”
Learning this secret, Wei Jinlin was in a wonderful mood. He reached out and poked the obvious slap mark on the left cheek of the unconscious person on the bed.
Fang Fengqin remained completely oblivious that his biggest secret had accidentally been poked open, his brows furrowing slightly as if in pain.