By the time he got home at six-thirty in the evening, twilight had only just begun to fall.
When he opened the door, his Alaskan Malamute—who usually stood sentinel at the entrance without fail—was nowhere to be seen for the first time.
The lights in the apartment were all on, and the air was thick with the savory, sweet aroma of braised fish mingled with the scent of steaming rice.
“Ah Qing, you’re back?”
Hearing the commotion, a figure poked his head out from the kitchen and said, “Hurry up and change so you can wash your hands for dinner. The fish and rice are almost ready. I’ll just whip up a quick stir-fry of garlic sprouts with cured pork, and then we can eat!”
It was his mother, who had come over to visit.
He gave a soft murmur of assent, changed into his loungewear, and headed straight into the bathroom to wash his hands.
When he came out, he spotted the Alaskan Malamute tucked away in a corner of the living room, completely absorbed in devouring its dinner.
“Finished washing up? I was cooking just now, and Saisa must have caught the scent because he trotted over dragging his little bowl to nudge me. I went ahead and scooped him some kibble. I don’t really understand all those nutritional supplements you like to mix together, so I didn’t dare mess around with them.” His mother emerged from the kitchen carrying a dish, gesturing with his chin toward the massive dog as he spoke. “Saisa, your daddy is back. Go tell him to get you something nice.”
With that, he set the dish on the dining table and darted back into the kitchen. “Go tend to Saisa’s food first. I’ve got your dinner covered.”
Pfft.
There wasn’t a single thing wrong with those words, yet they still sounded incredibly bizarre.
After dinner, Xiao Shuqing took charge of the cleanup while his mother set about tidying up the various cluttered corners of the apartment.
The washing machine hummed with a low vibration.
The robot vacuum spun in lazy circles across the living room floor, with Saisa dutifully trailing its every move.
By the time the mountain of pots and pans had been scrubbed clean and the stovetop wiped down, a stern voice drifted over from the study, calling his name: “Ah Qing, come here a moment.”
He dried his hands and walked out. Inside the study, his mother sat rigidly at the desk, clutching the two diagnostic reports from the hospital.
Arranged conspicuously across the desktop were all the adult novelties Yin Yu had purchased.
Even though he hadn’t bought those items himself—and had only unboxed them to store them away out of sight—seeing them laid out in the open like this still felt like a severe violation of his personal boundaries.
Yet, before his own temper could flare, his mother’s fury erupted first.
“Why didn’t you tell us your gland was in such terrible shape? Were you seriously that afraid we would pressure you into finding an Alpha?”
“Look at the state you’re in! You’re an Omega in your late twenties, yet you’re hiding at home using these kinds of things? You actually have to rely on objects like this just to get by? Xiao Shuqing, don’t you feel any shame at all?”
Xiao Shuqing closed his eyes tightly, forcing himself to breathe through the sudden spike of irritation. “First of all, those are my private personal belongings. You never had the right to rifle through them in the first place. Even if you happened to stumble upon them, you should have respected my privacy and returned them to where they belonged instead of—”
“Rifle through them? I only saw them because I was trying to tidy up your room for you!”
“Everything was already exactly where it was supposed to be, perfectly organized. It didn’t need tidying.”
“If I hadn’t gone through them, would I have ever found out about your medical reports? Would I have ever known your gland had deteriorated to this point! Were you planning to wait until you were admitted to the ICU or dead before letting your mother know?!”
The older man shouted at him, tears welling up and spinning within the rims of his eyes.
It was always like this. The moment logic failed him, he would spiral into hysterics.
From childhood to adulthood, it had happened every single time.
“Can you please just—”
Before he could even finish his sentence, he was cut off.
“No. I’m calling the matchmaker right now to ask when on earth they’re going to find an Alpha for you.”
With that, he dialed the matchmaker’s number directly.
“Hello, Xiao Ruan? No, nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine. I just wanted to check in and see if there’s been any progress between Xiao Shuqing and that Alpha recently. It’s already been nearly a month.”
“Oh, I see. Well, thank you for your trouble. You’ve been a matchmaker long enough to know that when it comes to these matters, children are always reluctant to communicate with their parents.”
“Yes, thank you for looking out for him.”
He hung up the phone.
He hadn’t even bothered to consult Xiao Shuqing first before casually painting a portrait of an uncommunicative son to the matchmaker.
“No matter what, you absolutely must find an Alpha this year! Your father and I have such a happy life together; we didn’t leave you with any childhood trauma, so why on earth are you so opposed to starting a family? Have I ever demanded anything else from you in all the years I spent raising you? All I want is for the child I brought into this world to live a safe, healthy life, with someone who can look after him. Xiao Shuqing, is a mother really being that unreasonable?”
Xiao Shuqing pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a long, weary sigh. “You’re not being unreasonable. I will make an effort to find an Alpha, but could you please extend some basic respect to my privacy?”
His mother fired back instantly: “Do you really think you need privacy right now? You came out of my own belly—what part of you haven’t I seen! What privacy could you possibly have? Once you actually find an Alpha and get married, I will naturally respect your privacy!”
Xiao Shuqing, who had been trying to handle the situation with calm rationality from the very beginning, finally snapped at the phrase “What privacy could you possibly have?” A cold, biting smile curled onto his lips. “No privacy? In your eyes, do I even count as an independent human being? Mr. Jiang, I am twenty-nine years old. I have been a legal adult for eleven years. Furthermore, even the ABO Civil Code stipulates that every natural person possesses an inherent right to privacy from birth. I am an autonomous individual with my own consciousness and thoughts. Even if I truly end up dying as a direct result of my choices, that remains my decision, and it is a consequence I am fully prepared to accept.”
“You! Fine! I see you don’t just want to destroy yourself—you want to drag your father and me to the grave right along with you!”
“You want to die so badly, right? Fine! Figure it out yourself from now on! Go rot in your own self-destruction!”
In the end, his mother stormed out alone in a fit of rage.
He slammed the door behind him with a violent thwack, sobbing as he left the building.
Lingering in the air was the fading aroma of the fish and rice. Xiao Shuqing stood frozen for a long time before he finally forced his stiff limbs to move, slowly gathering the items on the desk and returning them to the drawer one by one.
Shortly after he finished tidying up, his phone began to ring. It was a call from his father.
He stared at the flashing screen for a brief moment, hit the mute button, and walked over to the refrigerator to crack open a bottle of Rio.
He sat cross-legged on the plush living room rug. Sensing his master’s profound dejection, the Alaskan Malamute trotted over and pressed its massive body against him, nuzzling its head repeatedly against his chest.
The man’s lips curled into a faint smile as he stroked the thick fur around the dog’s neck. “Don’t worry.”
He tilted his head back and took a long swig of the sweet alcohol.
In reality, the moment his mother had laid eyes on those two diagnostic reports, he had already entered a state of acute psychological trauma. He was like a cornered, hyper-reactive cat—even the slightest stimulus would cause him to lash out defensively. Human beings were no different.
Knowing full well that a person would say the most reckless things in that state.
He had still chosen to weaponize those cruel words to provoke him.
“Even if I truly end up dying as a direct result of my choices”. Looking back now, every single syllable must have felt like a dagger driving straight into his mother’s heart.
He knew exactly what his mother feared most, yet he had used that very fear to tear at his soul.
The man’s grip tightened around the neck of the glass bottle.
He shouldn’t have allowed himself to spiral into that reactive state right along with him.
If only he had managed to control his emotions a bit more, if only he had recognized his mother’s fragile psychological state a fraction sooner, he wouldn’t have spoken so recklessly.
He opened their small family group chat, but the interface was entirely silent. He didn’t even know if his mother had made it home safely.
A little red notification dot appeared on his Moments discovery page. The icon belonged to that familiar, vacant little yellow duck.
Clicking on it revealed a photograph of a chalkboard.
It was covered in a dense cluster of incomprehensible equations and characters, alongside a pair of drawn ducks that looked just as blank and dazed as the user’s profile picture—one large and one small, standing side by side.
The caption read: [Yay. ✌️]
It looked exactly like someone subtly dropping hints about being in a relationship.
Given how frantically his mother had called the matchmaker earlier, he wondered if the matchmaker had already reached out to the boy.
It was probably best to give him a heads-up.
With that thought in mind, Xiao Shuqing switched the interface back to their private chat box.
He didn’t have the habit of deleting his chat history, so their most recent interaction remained the single “Goodnight” Yu Siyuan had sent over a week ago.
He lightly tapped the vacant little yellow duck icon, and a vibrant firework blossomed across his screen.
It actually looked quite beautiful.
Unable to resist, he tapped it twice more.
He kept tapping until the dazed little yellow duck finally popped up in their chat thread, sending over a meme of a massive question mark.
Yu Siyuan: Professor Xiao, is something wrong?
Xiao Shuqing: Nothing.
Xiao Shuqing: I suddenly just wanted to watch fireworks.
Yu Siyuan: Oh.
Yu Siyuan: Okay.
Then, both sides fell quiet.
Xiao Shuqing massaged his throbbing, slightly feverish temples, realizing a beat too late that his behavior was a bit childish.
He began typing into his phone: Apologies, I might have drunk a little too much.
Before he could even finish typing the sentence, a firework suddenly exploded across his screen once more.
Then another, and another. Before the previous explosion could even fade, the next one shot right up into the interface. The firework emojis flooded the screen in a rapid blur, easily stacking up to more than a dozen consecutive bursts.
Yu Siyuan: It looks a bit prettier this way.
Yu Siyuan: The nudge feature has a cooldown timer.
[Yu Siyuan nudged You]
Xiao Shuqing froze briefly before letting out a low, soft chuckle.
Yu Siyuan: Professor Xiao, are you sure nothing is wrong? Fu Bao called me tonight to ask about us. He said your dad called him earlier.
Yu Siyuan: Fu Bao is Ruan Fu, the matchmaker from the dating platform.
Another message popped into the thread.
After a moment of thought, Xiao Shuqing skipped texting and dialed the boy’s number directly.
A soft, hesitant voice traveled through the receiver: “Hello, Professor Xiao?”
“Mm. Yu Siyuan.”
The moment he spoke, his voice sounded a little raspy.
“Are you drunk?”
“I’m alright. I only had two bottles of Rio. My impulses might be a bit uninhibited right now, but my mind is still perfectly lucid.”
“Ah? What do you mean by that?”
The voice over the phone sounded a little bewildered.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, alright.”
The dry conversation carried no warmth whatsoever, freezing over completely before they could even exchange a few lines.
For a moment, the only sound remaining in the receiver was the faint hiss of static electricity, punctuated occasionally by the boy’s shallow breathing.
Xiao Shuqing stood up, grabbed his pack of cigarettes, and walked out onto the balcony. With a sharp flick, his lighter sparked to life, and he bit down on the cigarette filter.
The balcony lights weren’t switched on, leaving the flame to flicker and dance against the shroud of night.
“Yu Siyuan.”
The man held the cigarette pinched between his index and middle fingers, his voice dropping to a low rasp.
“Mm. Professor Xiao, I’m here.”
“Do you want to get married?”
The exact instant the question left his lips, the surrounding air seemed to freeze in place. A long time passed without a single syllable of a reply coming through the receiver.
In the darkness, the corners of the man’s lips lifted into a silent, mocking smirk.
Xiao Shuqing, what on earth are you doing? Are you seriously asking an Alpha who is currently head-over-heels in a passionate Alpha-Alpha relationship if he wants to marry you?
Even if the boy hadn’t disclosed his true sexual orientation to his family, it didn’t mean he would be willing to enter into a marriage of convenience with an Omega.
He really must be drunk. He was acting a little insane.
Xiao Shuqing closed his eyes tightly, pressing his fingertips against his throbbing temple as he spoke softly, “Apologies—”
The word of apology had barely escaped his lips as a soft exhale when it was abruptly cut short by the voice suddenly crackling through the earpiece.
“I can.”
The boy spoke slowly, his pace sluggish.
His voice was hesitant, but the answer was unmistakable. I can.
He said he could get married.