Lin Shenzhi lowered his head, his hand resting against his stomach. This was not the first time recently that he had experienced nausea.
Realizing this, Lin Shenzhi pressed his thin lips into a firm line, a wave of panic washing over him.
Could he really be…
Although the time he and Wei Ran had spent knowing each other was not long, they had dived straight into doing everything they should and should not do shortly after meeting. Counting the time, it had already been a full two months since their first time together.
That night, he had drunk a little alcohol, not enough to get truly drunk, but faced with Wei Ran’s smiling, deeply focused gaze under the moonlight, he had fallen hopelessly and uncontrollably into intoxication.
When he finally calmed down, it was already the next day in a hotel bed, with Wei Ran sleeping right beside him.
That was the only time. He hadn’t prepared anything then, allowing Wei Ran to stay inside him. Every other time, he had always been extremely careful.
More than two months. The timing matched up perfectly.
In a daze, Lin Shenzhi walked back to his office.
Very few members of his lineage were able to grow old alongside humans. Even when past generations had sworn eternal oaths, upon truly witnessing their abnormalities, quite a few people still chose to back away.
Moreover, once they became pregnant, the probability of exposing their complete true form would increase drastically, and there would even be a period of time where they completely lost the ability to control it freely.
As Lin Shenzhi drifted off in thought, a voice suddenly transmitted from the phone in his hand: “Hello?”
Lin Shenzhi looked down. He must have accidentally dialed a voice call just now.
“Where are you right now?” Lin Shenzhi reined in his wandering thoughts.
“At home.” Chen Jiyun’s tone was dry and blunt. Ever since their unilateral argument over his attempts to stop Lin Shenzhi from being with Wei Ran, the two of them hadn’t been in contact for over ten days.
Pulling his focus together, Lin Shenzhi said, “I will come over to see you later. I have something to tell you.”
“About Wei Ran? Don’t talk to me about him. Just hearing his name makes my blood boil.”
“I got our marriage certificate. With him.”
On the other end of the line, a long, dead silence ensued.
A long while later, just as Lin Shenzhi was about to hang up, Chen Jiyun’s exclamation burst through the phone: “Are you out of your mind? Do you even know what you are doing?”
Lin Shenzhi pulled the phone away from his ear. “We will talk when I get there.”
Aside from the matter of the wedding invitations, he also needed to have Chen Jiyun take a look at him. Chen Jiyun studied medicine; although he felt it was impossible, what if…
With that, Lin Shenzhi ended the call.
Chen Jiyun dialed back almost instantly, but Lin Shenzhi chose to ignore it.
With a pale face, Lin Shenzhi gazed down at the pinned WeChat chat with Wei Ran.
He had saved Wei Ran’s contact under his actual name, with a little flower emoji appended right after.
Wei Ran used to tease him for being childish, but no matter how he looked at it, it brought him joy. Wei Ran’s name, that little flower, they both made him happy, so he had never changed it.
Lin Shenzhi’s slender, fair fingers gently stroked Wei Ran’s profile picture. In the avatar, Wei Ran was smiling as if he had sneaked a sip of honey. They had taken it together when they confirmed their relationship, each holding a copy as matching couple avatars.
A notification chime rang out abruptly.
Thinking he might have misclicked again, Lin Shenzhi looked closer and realized it was a message from Wei Ran.
Wei Ran had sent a photo of a rather cluttered office desk.
Lin Shenzhi immediately recognized it as Fang Zheng’s studio. Wei Ran had taken him there before and introduced him to all of his friends.
Following the photo came a message from Wei Ran, guaranteed to make his heart skip a beat as always: “I miss you!”
Looking at those four words, the gloom in Lin Shenzhi’s heart dissipated somewhat.
He opened the message composition box, pondering and deliberating over how to reply. He wasn’t good at sweet talk; after thinking for a long time, he simply typed two words: “Me too.”
Before he could even send the message, another text popped up from Wei Ran: “Fang Zheng says he is so jealous of me.”
Lin Shenzhi read those two sentences over and over again, reluctant to tear his gaze away for the longest time. In this world, nothing was quite as joyful as finding out the person you love happens to love you back.
Yet, alongside the joy in his heart, a prickle of guilt inevitably arose.
He didn’t want to deceive Wei Ran. But if Wei Ran ever found out, he would surely leave him instantly, fleeing to a place where he could never be found again.
Wei Ran’s next message arrived: “I won’t disturb you anymore. Go ahead and get busy.”
At the end, Wei Ran even attached a sticker of a little figure scampering away in a flurry.
With a stern, cross look on his face, Lin Shenzhi poked at the little cartoon figure on the screen. Was Wei Ran planning to scamper away from him like that too?
Looking back at the two words he had drafted but hadn’t sent yet, Lin Shenzhi tapped the text box again, added three more characters at the end, and hit send.
“I love you too.”
Once the message was sent, Lin Shenzhi put his phone down and turned his attention to corporate affairs.
With the wedding coming up in two days, he needed to clear out his schedule in advance.
Over at Fang Zheng’s studio.
Looking at Lin Shenzhi’s reply on his screen, the corners of Wei Ran’s mouth split nearly to his ears, grinning with the silliest, most foolish look imaginable.
When Fang Zheng returned after handling a recently received user complaint, he caught sight of Wei Ran looking like this and shivered with utter intolerance. “Enough already.”
Wei Ran responded with a silly, knowing chuckle.
Unable to bear it any longer, Fang Zheng averted his gaze, refusing to look at Wei Ran another second.
Dropping back into his chair, Fang Zheng leaned against the backrest with a drained sigh. “Why don’t you reconsider my previous suggestion and just come work with me? I will give you technical equity, fifty percent ownership, and the game’s intellectual property rights will belong entirely to you.”
Fang Zheng knew all about Wei Ran’s plans, and he had a general understanding of the game Wei Ran had been preparing. The game was genuinely interesting, and he believed in Wei Ran’s capabilities. Given enough time, once development was finished, it was bound to be an instant hit.
However, the more ambitious a game like that was, the greater the investment in technology and capital it required. It was extremely difficult for an individual to pull it off alone.
If handed over to a large studio, they would naturally hold the upper hand in terms of technology, funding, and experience, but the game would no longer belong solely to Wei Ran, and whether the final product would resemble what Wei Ran originally envisioned became a big question mark.
Wei Ran pondered it for a moment. “I will think about it some more.”
Fang Zheng looked like he had more to say, but ultimately swallowed his words and remained silent.
The creative freedom in his studio was huge, allowing Wei Ran to take full charge and build the game he wanted, but the corresponding technical and financial hurdles were immense.
Especially on the technical side, his own game had only managed to launch thanks to Wei Ran rescuing it. If not for Wei Ran, he would still be hunting down bugs right now.
“Take all the time you need to think about it. My door is always open for you,” Fang Zheng said.
“Mhm.”
After lingering at the studio, a bit longer, Wei Ran calculated the time and headed over toward Lin Shenzhi’s end.
Even though Lin Shenzhi had told him there was no need to come, he still felt a bit uneasy. Chen Jiyun was a rather persistent and troublesome character.
Events proved his worries justified. Leaving Fang Zheng’s studio and arriving at the Lin Corporation, Wei Ran spotted Chen Jiyun hurrying through the front entrance from a distance.
A few minutes later, as Wei Ran stepped out of the elevator on the upper floor, he immediately caught the booming voice of Chen Jiyun echoing down the hall: “Then what are you going to do if he finds out?”
Wei Ran paused in his tracks. Find out what?
“If you aren’t going to tell him, then I will, before you end up suffering down the road! I can’t bear watching you get hurt! Didn’t your dad think that bastard would come back back then? And what happened? He waited and suffered for over twenty years, and that bastard never showed up until the day he died!”
Wei Ran couldn’t help slowing his pace.
The office door suddenly flew open, and Chen Jiyun stormed out looking murderous.
Chen Jiyun was six or seven years older than Wei Ran, and a year older than Lin Shenzhi. Built like a brick house and standing well over six feet five inches tall, he sported thick, bold eyebrows and wore every emotion straight on his sleeve.
And Wei Ran happened to be precisely the type of existence he loathed most.
Running right into Wei Ran the moment he stepped out, Chen Jiyun froze for a second before his eyes bulged in pure rage. “It is you…”
Wei Ran stepped forward. “I came to check in.”
Lin Shenzhi and Chen Jiyun had clearly been fighting again. Chen Jiyun’s face was flushed red with anger at the doorway, while inside the room, Lin Shenzhi sat with an expression as cold as ice.
“What is it that I shouldn’t find out about?” Wei Ran walked into the office.
A flicker of evasion crossed Lin Shenzhi’s eyes, but he immediately steadied his gaze and looked straight at him. “My parents’ past.”
Looking toward Chen Jiyun, Lin Shenzhi’s eyes turned frosty, carrying a heavy warning. “I have already told Wei Ran about my parents. He doesn’t mind.”
Chen Jiyun merely glared viciously at Wei Ran.
“Go back. My marriage is already decided,” Lin Shenzhi stated with unyielding firmness.
Chen Jiyun panicked. “Uncle!”
Hearing this, Wei Ran was instantly amused. Uncle?
He knew Chen Jiyun and Lin Shenzhi were distant relatives, but he had assumed they were of the same generation. He never imagined there was a whole generational gap between them.
And if Chen Jiyun called Lin Shenzhi uncle, didn’t that mean he technically had to call him uncle too?
Imagining the towering Chen Jiyun forced to address him as uncle with absolute reluctance, Wei Ran blossomed with inward glee.
Catching the smile on Wei Ran’s face, Chen Jiyun guessed what he was thinking almost instantly, looking ready to commit murder on the spot. “Don’t you even dare think about it!”
Wei Ran raised both hands in surrender. “I didn’t say a word.”
“Your invitation.” Lin Shenzhi handed an invitation card to Chen Jiyun, his gaze growing colder and more heavily weighted with warning.
Being with Wei Ran was his choice.
Even if Chen Jiyun was dissatisfied, he should be directing it at him.
Faced with Lin Shenzhi looking like that, Chen Jiyun’s bravado instantly fizzled out by more than half, leaving his scalp tingling. He was genuinely terrified of this uncle of his, even though he was a year older.
Glancing between Lin Shenzhi and the invitation card in his hand, Chen Jiyun slammed the door shut and stormed off.
As the door closed, Chen Jiyun’s heavy footsteps faded away toward the elevators at the end of the corridor.
“What is it that I am not allowed to know?” Wei Ran stood up and walked toward Lin Shenzhi.
Although he hadn’t known Lin Shenzhi for very long, he had learned his little tells when lying: Lin Shenzhi had a habit of darting his eyes away and then immediately snapping them back to lock onto him dead-center.
“My parents’ past. He was worried you’d mind once you knew.” After a split-second dart of his gaze, Lin Shenzhi locked his eyes straight onto Wei Ran’s eyes.
Wei Ran was rendered speechless.
This was the first time Lin Shenzhi had ever lied to him.
Wei Ran’s lips parted, the words of interrogation hanging on the tip of his tongue before he swallowed them back.
Stepping forward, Wei Ran wrapped his arms tightly around Lin Shenzhi from behind, pulling him into an embrace.
Taken aback by the sudden hug, Lin Shenzhi turned his head slightly. “What is it?”
“No matter what it is, you can always tell me and discuss it with me. Even if it’s work stuff, and even if I can’t help, I can at least be someone you can vent to.” Resting his chin on Lin Shenzhi’s shoulder, Wei Ran murmured softly right by his ear.
Wei Ran’s warm breath feathered gently against Lin Shenzhi’s neck, sending a tickling sensation through him, melting his heart, and compounding his guilt. “Okay.”
Wei Ran hugged him tighter. As he shifted, his hand brushed against Lin Shenzhi’s abdomen, prompting him to give it a gentle rub. “Have you gotten a bit chubby lately?”
Lin Shenzhi’s body went slightly rigid. “No.”
Finding it strange, Wei Ran thought that Lin Shenzhi had definitely put on weight.