Ji Ran did not stay down for long. After washing up, he headed to the company.
Everyone was as busy as ever and no one noticed his little act of rebellion. Ji Ran sent the game analysis to Han Shenbut for the time being, he received no reply.
At noon, the administrative department sent a message to the company wide group chat, announcing that the company would reimburse everyone 500 yuan for Christmas and asking everyone to prepare a gift for the exchange.
Ji Ran barely even celebrated his own birthday, let alone Christmas but the matter of preparing a gift nevertheless stayed on his mind.
A 500 yuan budget was more than enough for a student but for someone in the workplace, it was still somewhat tight. On top of that, his colleagues all had excellent taste and Ji Ran did not want his gift to come across as careless or lacking in thought.
He carefully did his research and, in the end, chose a unisex perfume.
People in investment banking tended to care quite a lot about their appearance. Even a poor soul like Ji Ran, who lived in a rented apartment and squeezed onto the subway every day, dressed in a suit and tie every single day, giving off the appearance of an elite professional.
Most of his colleagues would use perfume anyway. Even if they did not like the particular scent, they could always put it in a diffuser and use it as an air freshener in the restroom.
At two in the afternoon on Christmas Day, the administrative department notified everyone to go to the lobby for the gift exchange. Ji Ran brought the perfume with him. As Lu Ke passed by his side, she was carrying the latest model iPad Pro in her arms, saying that it was Han Shen’s gift for the exchange.
Ji Ran felt a faint twinge of envy. His secondhand computer had been in service for three years and had become so sluggish that it was beginning to affect his work. If only he could draw that iPad…
But that was all he dared to do, wish for it. There were several hundred people in the company. There was no way he could possibly be that lucky.
The gift exchange began soon afterward. Han Shen made a brief appearance during the event, drawing a number before he even had time to exchange his gift. He had to leave because of work.
Ji Ran drew a DJI smartphone handheld gimbal. Inside the packaging was a handwritten card:
“A handheld gimbal can improve image stability when shooting videos. I hope it will be useful to you, Leo”
Ji Ran filmed videos himself and occasionally took videos of the cats downstairs in his residential complex. Although he had not managed to draw the iPad, this gift was actually quite practical for him.
He went over to thank Leo and Leo took the opportunity to invite him to the Christmas party that evening.
Ji Ran had no friends in the city. After hesitating for a while, he accepted, a little excited by the invitation.
Ji Ran was also faintly curious about who had drawn Han Shen’s tablet. He refreshed his Moments and the answer soon appeared.
The lucky one was Lucas, a management trainee who had joined at the same time as him. Lucas was a huge fan of Han Chen and he had posted a nine photo unboxing collage on his Moments, his delight practically overflowing from the pictures.
As expected, luck always seemed to belong to other people.
Ji Ran opened his half broken computer and continued working. It was not long before a message from Leo popped up in the lower right corner of his screen.
[Leo]: I forgot to ask earlier. How much work do you have left? If you can’t finish it, I can help you.
[Julian]: What time does the party start?
[Leo]: There’s no fixed time. It’s at my place, so just come over after work.
Ji Ran felt a faint stir of excitement in his heart. At his age, he had never actually been to a friend’s home as a guest.
His family had always kept a very close eye on him and, ever since he was little, had never allowed him to run around wherever he pleased.
Ji Ran had attended high school in the city. He was a boarding student and had to stay at school for two weeks at a time before he could go home for a break.
Ji Ran remembered one particular week very clearly. After school one day, instead of going straight home, he went to a park with several of his classmates. There were quite a few stray cats in the park and students who lived nearby and went home every day would often go there to feed them.
Winter was approaching. One of the calico cats had given birth to kittens and because everyone was worried that the mother cat and her kittens would not survive the winter, some kind hearted students decided to build a cat shelter for the strays.
Ji Ran was one of them.
The process was somewhat difficult. Several high school students stumbled through the work in a flurry of activity, fumbling around and making mistakes but in the end, they managed to finish the shelter.
When Ji Ran personally picked up one of the tiny kittens and placed it inside the shelter, an indescribably soft feeling spread through his heart.
How could there be such an adorable creature in the world?
It was so soft and cute and it was so affectionate with people.
Seeing how much he clearly loved it, one of his classmates laughed and egged him on.
“Top student, why don’t you keep a cat? Since you like it so much, why not take it home and raise it?”
Ji Ran did not answer for a moment.
Actually, his family had kept a cat too. There were plenty of mice in the countryside and most households kept cats to catch them.
The cat in Ji Ran’s family was a tabby named Xiaohu. There was a distinctive 王 shaped marking on its forehead. Most of the time, it was lazy and languid but when it came to catching mice, it was incredibly sharp and agile. It was the family’s great protector when it came to guarding their grain.
His family merely regarded the cat as livestock but Ji Ran secretly treated Xiaohu as his friend. He even had to hold it in his arms when he slept.
When Ji Ran was nine years old, the village elementary school was merged with the school in the town, so he had no choice but to attend school in the town.
That same year, Ji Ran’s younger brother was born. His grandmother, who had always taken care of Ji Ran, went to another part of the country to help look after the child. The family’s farmland could not be left uncultivated, so they handed it over to a distant uncle to farm.
Ji Ran remained at home, living together with his grandfather and his uncle.
His uncle had no children and liked children very much, so he was not particularly bad to Ji Ran. However, he had a terrible temper and was always arguing with Ji Ran’s grandfather. Little by little, Ji Ran began to dislike that home.
Fortunately, he still had Xiaohu.
Every weekend when he returned from school, what Ji Ran looked forward to most was playing with Xiaohu.
He carefully calculated his living expenses and saved every bit of money he could, using whatever remained to buy ham sausages for Xiaohu. He would bring them home and secretly feed them to the cat.
One weekend, when Ji Ran returned from school as usual, he took out the ham sausage and went looking for Xiaohu, intending to feed it.
But no matter where he looked, he could not find the cat.
Only after asking his uncle did he learn what had happened.
Xiaohu had been given to a relative.
It had been eaten as part of their treatment for an illness.
Ji Ran’s eyes widened and his entire body froze.
The next day, his uncle brought home a new kitten. Pointing at Xiaohu’s old food bowl, he said to the new cat, “See this? Xiaohu got old and wasn’t useful anymore, so someone ate it. You’d better catch plenty of mice. That way, you’ll have food to eat.”
After saying that, his uncle poured some leftover scraps and rice into the cat’s bowl. The kitten was starving and it quickly began wolfing down the food.
Ji Ran stared blankly at the scene before him, as though an enormous hand had closed around his throat and squeezed it tight.
“Don’t you like cats?” his uncle asked with a laugh as he held the kitten. “Why aren’t you playing with it anymore?”
Ji Ran’s face filled with terror. He turned and ran, not daring to go anywhere near the kitten again.
He called his parents and said in a trembling voice, “Mom, I don’t want to stay at home. I want to go stay with you. Is that okay?”
“What are you coming here for?” The woman’s voice immediately became stern. “We’re having a hard enough time out here. We didn’t come here to play.”
Ji Ran bit down hard on his lower lip, forcing himself not to cry as he said, “Then… Can you come back?”
His mother replied, “But if we come back, we won’t be able to make any money. Without money, how are we supposed to pay for your schooling?”
Ji Ran said, “I can stop going to school.”
“What foolish thing are you saying? Have you learned bad things from people outside?” The woman’s voice grew even sterner.
Ji Ran remained silent, his small face flushed from holding everything inside.
“If you don’t study, what else can you do?” the woman began scolding him harshly. “We’re not at home, so we can’t keep an eye on you. You have to listen to your teacher and study hard. You’re not allowed to fool around, understand?”
Ji Ran bit his lower lip, feeling wronged yet stubborn as he said, “But my little brother is with you.”
“What?” The other person seemed unable to understand what he meant.
Ji Ran asked, “Why can he do it when I can’t?”
“You and your brother are different. If we had another choice, we wouldn’t have wanted to keep him with us either. Your grandmother coming over has already cost us a lot of money.”
“But I…” Ji Ran still wanted to continue but the moment he opened his mouth, tears began falling uncontrollably.
Hearing the child’s sobs, the woman finally softened her tone. Slowly, she said, “Be good, Ranran. Remember to study hard and get perfect scores in both subjects. Mom will come home for New Year and buy you new clothes.”
Ji Ran did not bring up his wish to go stay with his parents again. He still secretly fed the kitten ham sausages but he no longer played with it, nor did he dare let the cat climb onto his bed anymore.
Later, the kitten grew into a large cat. During the hottest months of July and August, it fell ill with some unknown disease and died. His uncle found the dead cat troublesome to deal with, so he hung its body from a tree beside the river and never kept another cat again.
As a stray cat, at least there would be kindhearted people willing to feed it but once it followed him home, all it could do was live from one meal to the next and eventually die like some piece of livestock.
Ji Ran shook his head and said calmly, “I’m sorry. My family won’t let me keep a cat either.”
“That’s such a pity,” the girl sighed. She lowered her head and spoke to the cats. “I’ve posted an adoption notice. I hope someone will get back to me. Until then, you guys should stay here and live well.”
After saying that, she crouched down and gently stroked one of the cats on the head.
Ji Ran quietly watched the scene, his mood as gloomy and heavy as the sky above him.
“Meow~”
Suddenly, his legs went weak beneath him. The little kitten he had fed came running after him.
Ji Ran stood rigidly for two seconds before walking away without looking back.
It was merely a small incident that happened before Ji Ran returned home. After settling the stray cats, he went to the bus station and bought a ticket back home.
What he never expected was that someone from his village had seen him lingering around the city and after returning home, that person told his family about it.
Perhaps it had been nothing more than an offhand remark without any malicious intent. In the countryside, however, there was practically no such thing as keeping something secret. Whatever someone had done would eventually spread through one channel or another.
That evening, Ji Ran received a call from his mother. She questioned him about every little detail, making it obvious how displeased she was with his decision to act on his own.
“From now on, come straight home after school. Don’t wander around outside by yourself, understand?”
“Going out to play costs money, too and the city is especially chaotic. There are so many cars on the roads and it’s dangerous. I’ve even heard there are human traffickers.”
“Mom is only worried about you. It’s not easy for us to make money out here. You need to behave yourself at home, understand?”
“I’m sorry.” Ji Ran lowered his head. “I won’t do it again.”
From then on, Ji Ran followed the rules every single day. He never made another move that could be considered out of line.
The year Ji Ran was admitted to university, his parents finally returned to their hometown. Using the savings they had accumulated over many years, they bought a house in the county town and carefully had it renovated. At last, the whole family was reunited.
Ji Ran, however, attended university alone in another place and only returned home for short stays during the winter and summer vacations, almost as though he were an outsider who had somehow found himself within his own family.
All those years of strict supervision had left him without any particularly deep friendships. Ji Ran had always been envious of the kind of friendship where people grew up together from childhood, casually visited one another’s homes and even stayed overnight.
And this time, he had finally received an invitation, too.
……
Ji Ran lowered his head and typed, unable to suppress the excitement bubbling inside him: [Thank you. I don’t have much work left. If nothing unexpected happens, I should be able to make it.]
And then something unexpected happened.
With only half an hour remaining before the official end of the workday, Han Shen suddenly handed Ji Ran a document and told him to submit it before he left work that day.
The work itself was not particularly difficult but it was extremely time consuming. Even if Ji Ran worked without stopping, it would take at least four or five hours.
If he arrived five hours late, the party would already be over by the time he got there.
Ji Ran gathered his courage and asked, “Does this have to be done right now? I still have other work to take care of.”
Han Shen replied, “The others can wait a little. Do this one first.”
Ji Ran: “……”
Han Shen said, “It’s urgent. Thanks for your hard work. Once you finish this, you can rest over the weekend.”
With his superior putting it that way, what else could Ji Ran possibly say?
He sent Leo a message: [Sorry. I suddenly got an urgent task just now. I might not be able to make it tonight…]
Leo replied: [How much work is there? Give half to me. We can finish it earlier.]
Ji Ran felt too embarrassed to let Leo help him. Leo was very popular among the management trainees and if he ended up missing out on the gathering with everyone because of Ji Ran, Ji Ran would feel guilty to death.
Ji Ran refused his offer. Leo sent him a crying little person emoji, expressing his regret that they could only get together another time.
Ji Ran replied okay but he did not believe that Leo would necessarily invite him again next time.
The night grew late and his colleagues gradually left to celebrate Christmas. Soon, the only sound remaining in the office was the steady tapping of Ji Ran’s fingers against the keyboard.
Around ten that evening, Ji Ran refreshed his Moments and unexpectedly saw that Han Shen had posted a new update.
The photo showed Han Shen posing with a fashionable woman, accompanied by the caption: [Merry Christmas.]
Han Shen rarely posted anything to his Moments. As soon as this update appeared, dozens of their mutual friends quickly clicked like.
Ji Ran, however, suddenly became angry.
He was working himself to the bone at the company while Han Shen had enough free time to go out, have a date and enjoy a lavish Christmas dinner!
Ji Ran did not like Han Shen’s post. Instead, he transformed himself into an emotionless working machine. After finishing the assignment, he did not wait for Han Shen to reply and simply took a taxi straight home.
…..
Half an hour later, Ji Ran was already home yet he still had not received any response from his superior.
An uncontrollable irritation began to build inside him.
If it wasn’t actually urgent, then why had Han Shen insisted that he finish it tonight? Did he really dislike him that much?
The more Ji Ran thought about it, the angrier he became. In a fit of frustration, he changed into his Christmas themed outfit and began trying to distract himself.
He had barely gotten started when his phone suddenly vibrated.
Han Shen had replied to his message.
He had marked the document line by line, pointing out numerous places that needed to be revised.
Ji Ran saw the message but he did not reply. Instead, he set his phone aside and continued trying to indulge himself in his own private distraction.
Three minutes later, Han Shen sent another message.
[Julian, are you still there?]
Ji Ran still did not reply.
He felt that he was becoming more and more outrageous. His superior was constantly chasing him for the work, while he was off doing a whole bunch of ridiculous things instead of responding.
Perhaps he had been indulging himself too frequently lately, because today he had a particularly difficult time getting himself into the right state of mind.
Ji Ran found a male moaning sound to use as background music and finally entered into the right mood, but then his phone vibrated! Han Shen’s call came through!
At that moment, Ji Ran’s outfit was still caught around his knees and he froze completely, staring wide eyed at the incoming call displayed on the screen.
His phone was lying right beside his leg. Ji Ran did not answer and the vibration only grew more insistent, as though Han Shen’s impatient hands were relentlessly urging him to pick up.
【Bzzz! ! Bzzz!】
Under the relentless series of vibrations and increasingly urgent interruptions, Ji Ran finally answered the call, biting his lip hard.
“Julian,” Han Shen’s voice sounded beside his ear. “Did you receive my message?”
Han Shen’s Mandarin was exceptionally standard and his voice was deep and magnetic, even more pleasant to listen to than the male voice on the phone.
Ji Ran’s heartbeat suddenly quickened. As though he had been scalded, he hurriedly threw the phone aside.
“Julian, are you all right?”
“What happened? Answer me!”
His tone was more serious than usual, carrying even a hint of an unmistakably commanding edge.
Ji Ran had intended to hang up but in his panic, he accidentally turned on the speakerphone. Han Shen’s breathing immediately became startlingly clear, as though he were speaking directly beside Ji Ran’s ear.
Ji Ran’s mind went completely blank in an instant. Overwhelmed by the devastating impact, he clapped a hand tightly over his mouth and used the last shred of his self control to end the call.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cressilia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
A little coffee for the person who made these words happen? (｡•́‿•̀｡)
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · A cold-hearted bossChapter 2 · “Your skirt?”Chapter 3 · Ji Ran was caught off guardChapter 4 · Relax, you bit your lip until it bledChapter 5 · Don’t want toChapter 6 · Women’s clothing and DaddyChapter 7 · Ji Ran hunched over and began to sob softly.Chapter 8 · Rebellion, offense, and self-rewardChapter 9 · I hate it when people flaunt their wealth in front of meChapter 10 · CompensateChapter 11 · Why are you following me?Chapter 12 · Damn, he forgot to take off his leg chainChapter 13 · Ji Ran was indeed still afraid of him.Chapter 14 · A message came from OrcaChapter 15 · Self-blame, anger, and tears.Chapter 16 · You have to pay more!Chapter 17 · Did you come here just to yell at me?Chapter 18 · Just bear with it a little longerChapter 19 · Women’s clothing live streamChapter 20 · Could you come and pick me up?Chapter 21 Part 1 · It’s all an actChapter 21 Part 2 · It’s all an actChapter 22 · The actions could be even more brutalChapter 23 · A slapChapter 24 · He wanted to surrender a part of himself