Because neither would concede to the other, at night the two of them slept in one bed but with something like a whole galaxy between them.
Jiang Zhi lay on her side scrolling her phone when a WeChat message notification suddenly popped up.
Group owner “Little Blue Bun” invited “Mapo Tofu” into the group chat.
Huh, a new member.
Then a whole trail of welcome messages popped up, and Jiang Zhi hurried to join in.
Mapo Tofu: 【Wow, so many sisters in the group. Does everyone have a pregnant man at home~hhhh】
First Beauty of the Galaxy: 【Hahaha, you can tell from the group name. My husband just hit four months, five more months and he’ll unload.】
Mapo Tofu: 【Ow ow~ Should I say it or not, my boyfriend is already in late pregnancy, the due date is next month (little face slightly red)】
Seeing this reply, the expression on Jiang Zhi’s face froze. If the due date was next month, wasn’t he eight months along now?
This reply blasted out quite a few lurkers who had been slacking off.
【Oh my goodness, your boyfriend is eight months along already, even earlier than sis Ma Xiaohua’s husband in the group!】
【Ah, I always thought sis Ma’s husband was the first man to get pregnant, panda-head-shocked.jpg】
Mapo Tofu: 【(tucked hands) Emmmmm, it’s a bit funny to tell hahaha. We only found out there was a kid when we went to the hospital for a checkup a couple of days ago. Before that we always thought he had just put on weight, and that’s why his belly was so big and round.】
【Pfft! Hahahaha, now that you put it that way… my mind is opening up.】
【Holy cow, then all those big-bellied, dripping-with-fat, greasy middle-aged men all over the streets, they couldn’t all be carrying kids, could they? The more you think about it the more terrifying, ahhh (no offense meant to the young lady’s boyfriend!)】
【Please stop the mind-wandering!!!】
【Sisters, who gets it, my boss is a typical middle-aged, weight-gaining, greasy man. Just this afternoon in the meeting I watched with my own eyes as a button shot straight off his belly button onto my forehead. It stunned me on the spot.】
【? So tragic and so funny hahahaha】
Mapo Tofu: 【Sisters, let me show you my boyfriend’s big pregnant belly, there’s fetal movement.】
【Video】【Video】
【Oh heaven, this pregnant belly is so pale and tender, slurp slurp, like a big steamed bun heheheh~ Feels like a very cute pregnant man, hinting madly!】
Mapo Tofu: 【Get it, get it, get it, we’re all our own people.】
【Image】【Image】
The boy in the photos looked to be in his early twenties, his features proper and delicate. The background was a classroom, and he sat with his head turned toward the camera, his smile very sunny.
【Pretty handsome. This is a pre-pregnancy photo, right? He looks so thin haha】
Mapo Tofu: 【(covering face) My boyfriend has an idol’s burden and won’t let me post photos of him now. He thinks it would lower his looks in other people’s eyes~ Everyone just make do with these, they’re photos from when he was at university~】
Jiang Zhi clicked in and took a look too, and felt he looked a bit familiar, like she had seen him somewhere.
She frowned and thought, and then it dawned on her: wasn’t he the boyfriend of that Little Blue Book blogger?
Then Mapo Tofu was the blogger herself.
Jiang Zhi couldn’t help sighing that the world really was small.
【Wait, sis! Who’s that handsome guy behind your boyfriend, a friend? (starry eyes)】
【Same question! Even though only a hazy half of his face shows, he has such an atmosphere, help!!!】
In the photo there really was someone else sitting behind Mapo Tofu’s boyfriend.
He wore a spotless white shirt, his figure straight and lean, his head lowered as he wrote something. Only a small half of his profile showed, but you could still see his superior bone structure, his cool brows and eyes, his straight nose.
This person looked very familiar too.
Jiang Zhi couldn’t help enlarging the photo to look closely, but unfortunately the photo had a filter on it and was a candid shot, so the image quality was very blurry.
She looked for a long while and still didn’t recognize who it was.
Just then a voice grinding its teeth fell abruptly from above her head. “Jiang. Zhi.”
Jiang Zhi jolted, quickly turned off her phone and rolled up into a sitting position, and came face to face with Duan Heyu’s oil-green face.
“What exactly are you doing looking at photos of other men behind my back late at night instead of sleeping? Making me angry on purpose? Are you going to climb into the sky?”
Jiang Zhi explained, “Someone in the group chat posted photos of her boyfriend, so I just took a casual look.”
When he saw that hateful face, Duan Heyu decided not to believe a single punctuation mark of what she said. “Do you take me for stupid or face-blind? That’s obviously Xu Yancan!”
A green-tea face he would recognize even if it were burned to ashes!
Xu Yancan? Jiang Zhi’s expression paused slightly, and the images in her head automatically overlapped and compared. Ninety percent similarity.
Ah, well, then it couldn’t be anyone but him.
Things having come to this, Jiang Zhi felt that even with ten mouths she couldn’t explain it clearly, so she simply scrolled the group chat back to the very first page and showed it to Duan Heyu.
“It really is just a coincidence.”
Duan Heyu huffed and read the messages one by one going down, then one by one coming back up. When he reached the record of the group’s heated discussion of how men would give birth, his heart went cold and his chrysanthemum tightened.
He wished he could poke out both his eyes.
No, no way… it really had to come out of that place??
He could just barely accept a cesarean, but pushing a child out in a natural birth, what was the difference between that and taking a dump in front of everyone’s eyes??
Ahhhh, fuck fuck fuck!!
He did not want to shit in public!
Duan Heyu declared he couldn’t accept it. He was utterly collapsing inside, wanting to bang his head against the wall but afraid of the pain.
Watching his face get worse and worse from the side, Jiang Zhi guessed he had probably been frightened, so she comforted him. “It’s fine, these days you get painless anesthesia for childbirth, it’s over in a little while. And you’re a tough man with eight-pack abs, so having a baby is even more of a piece of cake.”
“One fart and it’ll be out.”
Duan Heyu: “…” This young master does not fart in front of people!
Duan Heyu read the chat records until he had read himself into shutting down, and he couldn’t even spare thought for the Xu Yancan matter. He turned his back alone and went to sleep.
Jiang Zhi looked at his back and felt he was a bit pitiful.
Tsk, good thing the mutation happened, otherwise the pitiful one right now would be her.
The next day, Jiang Zhi got up and went out to buy groceries. Duan Heyu opened his eyes and got up right after her, he hadn’t slept all night.
The moment he closed his eyes, he was lying stark naked on the birthing bed, every hair on his body shaved clean, a crowd of doctors and nurses around him shouting encouragement, pair after pair of wolf-and-tiger eyes watching how he pushed the child out.
Duan Heyu wanted to die.
Some people are alive but he was already dead.
—No, he couldn’t be the only one suffering!
Duan Heyu grabbed his hair irritably, and suddenly a flash of inspiration came—
Women could make a group, so of course men could too!
He got moving at once and started posting on all the big social platforms looking for pregnant men. Unsurprisingly the result was that his male compatriots sprayed him with dog’s blood [1]sprayed him with dog’s blood (gouxue lintou, 狗血淋头) Idiom, a drenching torrent of abuse jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234072_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234072_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); from head to toe, and his account was reported and muted.
This made Duan Heyu curse mothers nonstop.
Did none of those pregnant men go online? He wasn’t the only man in the country who was pregnant!
The ones cursing him now were purely big idiots. He cursed them to have ten babies in one pregnancy in the future!
When Jiang Zhi came back, what she saw was Duan Heyu pacing back and forth in a rage, his mouth cursing away without end like a spouting gourd [2]like a spouting gourd (zhutong dao douzi, 竹筒倒豆子) Metaphor, words pouring out nonstop jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234072_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234072_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
She went over and asked and learned about the stupid thing he had done, and instantly laughed out loud unkindly.
Duan Heyu: “…Your laughing is disturbing me.” How hurtful.
Jiang Zhi politely covered her mouth. “Oh oh hahaha, sorry.”
Duan Heyu was too angry to want to deal with her.
Jiang Zhi picked up her own phone and said with a beaming smile, “Pregnant men are still a minority right now. If you post online looking for companions with that much fanfare, of course the other men who haven’t mutated yet will curse you as an idiot. Isn’t making a pregnant men’s group simple? Let me ask the ladies in my group whether they’re willing.”
That was a reliable idea.
Duan Heyu leaned over and watched her post in the group. It was nine in the morning on a weekend, and he had thought hardly anyone would be around.
As it turned out, quite a few people replied.
【Sure, sure, I agree! Ever since my husband got pregnant, he hasn’t kept in touch with his buddies. He doesn’t even dare call them for games, afraid they’ll invite him out drinking (laughing-crying). He’s been stuck at home until he’s almost depressed.】
【Seconded, seconded~】
【A pregnant men’s group is pretty good. When they have nothing to do the men can exchange pregnancy tips, hahahaha】
【Exactly, my partner never shares his pregnancy experiences with me. Ask and there’s nothing. I think he’s just embarrassed.】
The proposal to make a group got unanimous agreement.
Duan Heyu was overjoyed. He created the group chat at once and set an entry password, and before long a lot of people joined one after another.
Xiao Ye: 【Fuck, finally a pregnant men’s group, brother was suffocating!】
Brother Tong Everything Is Big: 【Dang, there are actually twenty-odd people? That’s a relief, good thing I’m not alone (bitter)】
CK: 【Damn it, don’t mention the words pregnant man, it makes me burn to hear it. What the hell kind of thing is this! I was a perfectly good tough guy and now I’m forced to stay home nurturing a pregnancy, son of a bitch!!!】
Happy All My Life: 【@CK, brother, stop complaining, at least you get to nurture your pregnancy. I’m five months pregnant and my wife orders me around doing housework every day. I sleep later than a dog and get up earlier than a chicken, cooking, washing clothes, mopping floors, and looking after the kids every day, and if I don’t do it well my wife curses me for eating for free.】
Everyone: 【???】
At that moment, Happy All My Life had just finished mopping the floor and sat down to rest for a bit. His backside hadn’t even warmed the seat when his wife, just awake and coming out of the bedroom, saw him idly playing with his phone, and her face fell at once.
“You get up in the morning and do nothing but sit around slacking! Is the rice cooked? Are the clothes washed? Is the floor mopped? Don’t think that just because you’re pregnant you’re the master and I have to enshrine you!”
“Now that you eat my food, drink my drink, and use my things, you have to serve me properly and serve this family properly!”
Scolded by his wife with no distinction between right and wrong, Happy All My Life dared to be angry but not to speak. He weakly opened his mouth to defend himself. “Wife, I’m five months along already, the doctor said I can’t keep working so hard, otherwise it’s bad for my body…”
“Pah!”
Happy All My Life’s wife put her hands on her hips and spat, her gaze cold and contemptuous. “Years ago when I was pregnant with our eldest, you and your mother ground me down plenty. At eight months I was still carrying a big belly and waiting on the two of you, mother and son. Where were you then to say a couple of words? Your belly is only five months along, what housework can’t you do? Don’t be so precious!”
“This family lives on me now. Do it or don’t, and if you don’t, get out.”
Ever since he got pregnant, his wife had been like a different person. She no longer gave to him unconditionally or toiled for the family. She left early and came home late for work every day and threw all the housework and their two daughters onto him to look after.
When she came home, she no longer gently asked after his comfort. Instead she dumped all the anger she took outside onto him, and one small thing done badly would bring her abuse down on him.
At first Happy All My Life would still feel the offended rage of shame turning to anger and want to give his wife a hard beating the way he used to.
But before he could raise a hand, his wife beat him savagely first. The terrifying part was that as a man he couldn’t put out any strength to resist at all. The more he blocked, the more fiercely his wife hit, and in the end he was one-sidedly beaten into a pig’s head.
His fear in that moment couldn’t be described in words. There was only one question in his head: when had his wife’s strength gotten this big?
The savage, ferocious look on his wife’s face made Happy All My Life tremble with fear whenever he thought of it, and he lived as if walking on thin ice. Even his mother, who had always been the strong one at home, was pressed down so firmly by his wife that she didn’t dare raise her head or dare speak up for him.
The center of this family had shifted completely from him to her.
The pregnant men in the group had no idea what deep water and hot fire Happy All My Life was in. Hearing him pour it out, they only thought he was bragging and selling misery.
Happy All My Life didn’t reply again. He only stared quietly at the group messages that kept popping up, shook his head and sighed, and threw himself back into the endless labor.
References[+]