Wei Ran chuckled, reaching out to rub Lin Shenzhi’s head. “You silly goose.”
Lin Shenzhi was great at everything, except that he occasionally liked to worry needlessly.
Wei Ran cupped Lin Shenzhi’s cheeks, making him lift his head and look directly into his eyes. “Lin Shenzhi, I love you, down to my very bones. There is no way I am ever leaving you in this lifetime.”
He was not joking; he was completely serious. He really, truly loved Lin Shenzhi.
“Did you remember that?” Wei Ran asked.
Lin Shenzhi tried to nod, but with his face cupped in Wei Ran’s hands, he could only blink. “I remembered.”
“Come on, repeat it back to me.”
“Wei Ran will never leave Lin Shenzhi for the rest of his life.” Lin Shenzhi’s speech was slurred because his face was being squished into the shape of a steamed bun by Wei Ran.
“Awesome!” Wei Ran rubbed Lin Shenzhi’s face, the soft texture completely addictive.
Not daring to tease him too much, Wei Ran played with him for a little while longer. After confirming that Lin Shenzhi was feeling completely comfortable, he quickly pulled him into an embrace so they could sleep, wanting to make sure Lin Shenzhi got plenty of rest.
Beneath the covers, holding Lin Shenzhi and breathing in his scent, Wei Ran felt an unprecedented sense of contentment and peace in his heart.
He slept soundly through the night without a single dream.
At dawn, Wei Ran woke up early, tiptoed downstairs, and boiled a pot of stomach-soothing congee.
When Lin Shenzhi came downstairs, Wei Ran was currently doing battle with a cucumber.
Wei Ran had only graduated from college not long ago. Before graduation, he had always eaten in the school cafeteria, and at home, there was his dad, so he rarely had the opportunity to cook. Compared to Lin Shenzhi’s cooking, his culinary skills were practically apocalyptic.
Fortunately, he was not completely devoid of signature dishes; he did have one or two dependable recipes, such as instant noodles and smashed cucumber.
Plain white congee paired with sweet, sour, and spicy smashed cucumbers was simply perfect.
“Wait, it will be ready in a second,” Wei Ran said while frantically busy trying to stuff the cucumbers into a basin.
Lin Shenzhi did not step forward to help. Instead, he sat down at the bar stool in the spot Wei Ran usually occupied, mirroring the way Wei Ran normally looked at him, and quietly watched.
He discovered that this exact spot provided a panoramic view of everything happening in the kitchen—Wei Ran’s frantic and clumsy movements, his serious expression, and the smile that refused to leave the corners of his mouth.
“All done.”
The moment Wei Ran announced that breakfast was ready, Lin Shenzhi finally snapped out of it, realizing only then that he had been staring at Wei Ran for a long time.
Wei Ran handed a spoon to Lin Shenzhi. “My dad should be arriving tomorrow.”
Lin Shenzhi paused in the middle of scooping up a spoonful of congee.
He looked up, his face entirely expressionless, but his eyes widened slightly. He looked completely innocent and anxious, just like a startled big dog.
Wei Ran’s throat bobbed. He quickly looked away, afraid that if he kept looking, Lin Shenzhi might not even need to go to work today.
Wei Ran said, “Don’t worry, my dad has a pretty good temper. Ever since I was a kid, he has hardly ever gotten angry with me.”
Wei Ran offered a sincere guarantee, “I will talk things over with him properly, and also about our wedding.”
Even if his dad did not agree, he would never leave Lin Shenzhi, though it did not seem like his dad disagreed; he was just genuinely shocked.
Half a month ago, when he called his dad to tell him he had someone he liked, his dad had been quite surprised. Upon learning that his girlfriend was actually a man, his dad was even more shocked. And when he found out the day before yesterday that he had already registered his marriage with Lin Shenzhi, his dad had simply sat there speechless for half a day.
It was only after Wei Ran mentioned they would be holding a wedding in a few days that his dad finally snapped out of it and said he would come over as soon as possible.
Compared to his own situation, both of Lin Shenzhi’s parents had already passed away, leaving him entirely alone at home, which made certain things much simpler.
“Okay.” Lin Shenzhi tasted Wei Ran’s smashed cucumber, which tasted sweet amidst the sour and spicy kick.
Lin Shenzhi figured Wei Ran must have mistaken the salt for sugar; otherwise, why would it taste sweet?
After finishing breakfast, Wei Ran walked Lin Shenzhi to the front door. Watching Lin Shenzhi get into the car and drive away, Wei Ran opened his computer and searched for a menu of stomach-soothing dishes, deciding to deliver congee to Lin Shenzhi for lunch.
The house had plenty of ingredients, but Wei Ran clearly overestimated his own cooking abilities.
After struggling for an entire morning, looking at the dishes he had produced, which possessed neither visual appeal nor decent flavor, Wei Ran wore an expression of pure agony.
After thinking it over, he packed up the congee, dashed out, and stopped by a nearby restaurant to order a few dishes before hurrying over to Lin Shenzhi’s company.
When Wei Ran arrived, it happened to be lunchtime.
Taking the elevator to the seventeenth floor, the moment the doors opened, Wei Ran spotted Lin Shenzhi’s assistant, Jin Qili, stepping out of Lin Shenzhi’s office from a distance away.
Jin Qili was a few years older than both him and Lin Shenzhi and was extremely capable. He had worked at the Lin Group since Lin Shenzhi’s father’s time, and Wei Ran trusted him a lot.
“Assistant Jin,” Wei Ran greeted proactively.
“Here to deliver lunch?” Assistant Jin pushed up his glasses and smiled. “Happy newlyweds.”
Wei Ran’s face split into a brilliant, radiant smile. “Thank you.”
“President Lin is inside,” Jin Qili said, gesturing toward the nearby office before heading toward the elevator.
Watching Jin Qili leave, Wei Ran knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
Wei Ran pushed the door open and walked inside.
Aside from a few potted green plants and a clean, spacious layout with an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, Lin Shenzhi’s office was just like the man himself: cold, restrained, and devoid of the slightest trace of impulsiveness or caprice.
That was the case in the past, at least. Now, sitting on Lin Shenzhi’s minimalist desk was a golden God of Wealth figurine, something completely unfitting for the office environment, yet adding a strange, humorous charm to the room.
Wei Ran had given it to him back when they first met.
At the time, they had just finished watching a movie, and as he headed downstairs, he spotted the God of Wealth in a boutique shop. He had laughed on the spot, thinking it suited Lin Shenzhi perfectly.
Lin Shenzhi never smiled, yet that God of Wealth looked utterly comical.
He had simply meant it as a joke, but who would have thought Lin Shenzhi would take it seriously? The man actually placed it right inside his office, right on the desk where anyone walking through the door could see it immediately.
Inside the room, Lin Shenzhi was currently bowing his head to read through some documents.
Lin Shenzhi at work was a completely different person from Lin Shenzhi at home; at work, he was serious, rigorous, and strictly devoid of smiles.
Wei Ran’s gaze traveled from the wrist bones of Lin Shenzhi’s suit all the way up, passing his arms and shoulders, before finally resting on Lin Shenzhi’s neck. The top button of Lin Shenzhi’s suit shirt was always buttoned all the way up.
Wei Ran’s throat bobbed involuntarily, feeling a strong urge to rip it open.
“Time to eat,” Wei Ran spoke up.
Lin Shenzhi looked up. The instant he saw Wei Ran, a flash of surprise crossed his eyes, his entire face softened, and his eyes lit up.
Habituated to the routine, Wei Ran placed the thermal lunchbox in front of Lin Shenzhi and offered a slightly awkward explanation as he opened it, “I also bought a couple of dishes.”
Compared to the dishes he had bought, the ones he cooked himself looked utterly disgraceful.
“Drunken Red Mansion?” Lin Shenzhi knew what Wei Ran was thinking.
“Yes!” Wei Ran’s attention was instantly diverted, as he loved the food from Drunken Red Mansion. “How about we choose Drunken Red Mansion as the venue for our wedding?”
“Alright.”
Lin Shenzhi picked up a spoon and began sipping the congee with quiet refinement.
Wei Ran sat across the desk, watching him quietly. “Why do you say yes to literally everything? If you keep this up, I am going to turn bad.”
Lin Shenzhi raised his gaze and gave a light hum. “Okay.”
Wei Ran could not help grinning foolishly. “My wife is so good.”
The tips of Lin Shenzhi’s ears turned somewhat self-consciously red; he could never handle those two words.
Wei Ran always forced him to use two completely different words at the very end. When he refused, Wei Ran would tease and torment him in every possible way until he surrendered completely, crying out for mercy.
Just as Wei Ran was sitting there grinning foolishly, his phone suddenly rang.
Seeing the caller ID, Wei Ran quickly answered. “Dad.”
“I just landed.”
Wei Ran froze for a second. “What?”
“Where are you staying? I just landed, and I am taking a cab over,” the person on the other end repeated.
Wei Ran stood up as if struck by lightning. “Didn’t you say you were arriving tomorrow?”
Panicking slightly, Wei Ran turned around and tried to bolt toward the door. After running a couple of steps, he remembered he needed to inform Lin Shenzhi, so he spun back around and mouthed the situation silently: his dad had arrived.
Lin Shenzhi had already picked up on what was happening. Seeing Wei Ran rush out in a panic, he immediately followed. “I am going too. I will have the driver take us.”
As he spoke, Lin Shenzhi took the lead toward the elevator while pulling out his phone to call the driver.
Asking which airport his dad was at, Wei Ran did not have time to chat further and hurriedly followed behind Lin Shenzhi.
When the two of them reached downstairs, the car was already waiting at the entrance.
Quickly jumping inside, Wei Ran named the airport, and the car immediately sped off toward their destination.
Sitting in the car and watching the vehicle merge onto the highway, Wei Ran finally came to his senses and realized they probably did not need to panic quite this much. The airport was not going to run away, and neither was his dad, probably.
Wei Ran glanced at Lin Shenzhi beside him. If he thought things were funny before, this look almost made him burst out laughing.
The almighty President Lin, who could remain entirely unfazed when facing multi-million-dollar contracts, was currently sitting rigidly upright like a primary school student, keeping both hands obediently resting on his knees and staring straight ahead without blinking.
If he were a cat right now, every single hair on his body would undoubtedly be puffed up in alarm.
“You do not need to be so nervous,” Wei Ran quickly comforted him.
Lin Shenzhi turned his head stiffly to look at him, the tension on his face completely unchanged.
This was going to be the very first time meeting Wei Ran’s father.
Wei Ran was left speechless.
The driver probably had never seen Lin Shenzhi look like this either, repeatedly sneaking glances through the rearview mirror.
Finding it more and more amusing, Wei Ran saw how nervous Lin Shenzhi was and suddenly felt much less nervous himself.
Thinking better of it, Wei Ran took the initiative to bring up his father. “Actually, I used to be terrified of my dad.”
Lin Shenzhi looked puzzled. “Why?”
It was not that Wei Ran had never talked to him about his father before, but he had not mentioned much, given how short their time together was.
“My mom caught a chronic illness when she gave birth to me, and she never fully recovered. When I was four, she suddenly fell violently ill and passed away, so in a way, she left because of giving birth to me. Because of that, ever since I was little, I was terrified of my dad, terrified that he would resent me.”
Wei Ran had never spoken about these things to anyone.
On the night the funeral ended, he had seen his dad sitting on the floor of the master bedroom, hugging his mother’s clothes and weeping. His eyes were swollen and red from crying, yet he had not made a single sound.
He had never seen his dad cry like that, and that scene stuck with him until today, remembered for nearly twenty years.
From that moment on, he began to fear his father, afraid that his dad hated and resented him. If it were not for him, his mom’s illness would not have worsened, and she would not have died.
After that, his dad drank heavily into a drunken stupor every single day for over half a year, only slowly recovering once Wei Ran started kindergarten.
His dad went back to work, started dropping him off and picking him up from school, and began taking him along to live their lives, though his dad also grew increasingly quiet and taciturn.
Wei Ran had almost no memories from before he turned four, but in all the memories he did have, his dad had always been a man of few words, with a perpetually melancholic look in his eyes.
That was likely why that lingering fear never truly faded away as Wei Ran grew older, but instead seemed to intensify step by step.
Wei Ran gripped Lin Shenzhi’s hand, relaxing his body back against the seat. “When I was in middle school, I even held grudges against him in my heart.”
He used to not understand, but now he finally did.
Losing the love of your life yet forcing yourself to pull it together immediately to take care of a child, not everyone could pull that off. If it were him, he probably would have drowned the rest of his life at the bottom of a liquor bottle.
“Wei Ran,” Lin Shenzhi squeezed Wei Ran’s hand back. He had never heard Wei Ran mention any of this before.
Wei Ran chuckled. Looking at Lin Shenzhi’s worried expression, a mischievous streak suddenly welled up inside him. “Still nervous?”
Reminded of reality, Lin Shenzhi snapped back to attention instantly.
His complexion turned pale white, looking as though he might throw up at any second.
Wei Ran felt a pang of pity and did not dare tease him anymore, quickly changing the subject. “Did I ever tell you why I am so afraid of bugs?”