Her mouth was faster than her brain, and by the time she wanted to brake, it was already too late.
Influenced by Duan Heyu’s pregnancy, Jiang Zhi subconsciously saw a man getting his period as perfectly reasonable, and only after the words were out did she suddenly realize how absurd it was.
It was over. The other person wasn’t a goofy man like Duan Heyu, where a haha laugh could dissolve the awkwardness.
—But something even more absurd was still to come
“Mm.”
“…Mm?”
Jiang Zhi went blank. What was that supposed to mean?
Xu Yancan pinched the space between his brows, his voice very faint. “I’ve undergone a mutation.”
Mu—tation?!
Jiang Zhi’s pupils had a magnitude-ten earthquake. She scanned him up and down and said in disbelief, “You’re pregnant too?”
No wonder he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol tonight.
Xu Yancan’s iceberg-like face was briefly startled for an instant, then his expression returned to normal. “No, it’s just my… period.”
Jiang Zhi stood there as if her whole body had been frozen in place, unable to believe that the words she had blurted out without her brain a moment ago were actually true.
He didn’t need to explain the rest in detail, Jiang Zhi understood what his situation was now.
She looked dully at Xu Yancan, standing in front of her with period blood running down. “Is there anything I can help with?”
“I need your coat.”
“Sure.”
Jiang Zhi didn’t think twice and took off her coat on the spot and handed it to him. The coat just taken off was warm in the hand, and with a light sniff you could smell a fresh orange scent.
Xu Yancan lowered his eyes and tied her coat around his waist, covering the trousers soaked through red.
“How much was the coat? I’ll transfer you the money.”
“No need, no need!”
Jiang Zhi shook her head like a rattle-drum. As an old hand who had lived with her period morning and night for years, she knew deeply how much trouble it was to dirty your clothes out in public.
Although their genders were different, empathy still arose.
“I’ve worn this coat for many years. Even if I weren’t giving it to you today, I was going to throw it away.”
Xu Yancan pressed his pale lips together slightly. “Then thank you.”
Jiang Zhi waved a hand carelessly. At this critical juncture she actually had a bellyful of questions she wanted to ask, but this time and place really weren’t the moment to probe.
She took two steps forward first, waved to him, and said warmly:
“Come on, I’ll see you out. From the look of you it should be cramps. When you get back, you can stick a warm patch on your belly, drink some brown sugar water, and go to bed early tonight.”
The words Jiang Zhi said to him in one breath were more than the past four years added together.
Xu Yancan tightened the coat at his waist and moved his long legs. His amber eyes were crystal clear like gems, beautiful enough to leave people dazzled for a long time.
Leaving the heated KTV, Jiang Zhi, wearing only a sweater, was whipped by the cold wind, and through sheer stubborn willpower she didn’t shiver once.
There was a trace of loosening in Xu Yancan’s cool brows and eyes. He looked at her sideways, his brows drawing together slightly.
“You don’t have to wait here with me.”
Jiang Zhi sniffed hard. Her big round eyes were so clear and bright, the tip of her nose faintly pink, sweet and artless as a young deer.
“Don’t misunderstand, I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”
“…Oh.”
“By the way, remember to tell Hanhan, so she doesn’t worry.”
“Mm.”
From far off came a rustling sound of footsteps on snow. Jiang Zhi fixed her eyes on it for two seconds, and then the corners of her mouth lifted on their own.
Under the dim yellow streetlight, Duan Heyu was wrapped up all over like a walking rice dumpling, his thick padded coat making you feel its solid warmth at a glance.
Both of them saw each other through the thick night and quickened their steps toward each other.
When she reached him, before Duan Heyu could speak, Jiang Zhi burrowed into his arms with great practice, her cool little hands sliding into his pockets. The toasty feeling made her comfortable all the way to the crown of her head.
Oho, she was actually this forward. Duan Heyu didn’t say it out loud but was secretly delighted, holding her and not letting go.
Until his gaze focused and he noticed there was an eye-stabbing backdrop—
Duan Heyu’s smile disappeared at once. As if he had smelled a dangerous signal, his face went stern and his tone displeased. “Why is he here?”
Jiang Zhi wanted to explain, but her head was pressed down by Duan Heyu and held firmly against his chest.
Duan Heyu’s manner was arrogant. “I’m Jiang Zhi’s boyfriend.”
“I know.”
Know his ass. If he knew, he still dared to show up in front of her!
Knowing made it even more hateful.
The light answer without any emotion made Duan Heyu, being male himself, feel a surge of provoked anger.
A male’s instinct was to eliminate any other male who might seize his mate, so Duan Heyu laughed coldly, pushed Jiang Zhi aside, and reached up to undo two buttons of his coat.
“One on one. I’ll give you three free moves.”
Jiang Zhi: ?
Had she pressed fast-forward? How had it gotten to one on one?
Xu Yancan still wore that block-of-ice expression.
Jiang Zhi’s toes dug at the ground in embarrassment, but she couldn’t leave it alone. She gave a dry laugh, took Duan Heyu’s arm and pulled him back. “What kind of fit are you having now? Has your brain flooded? Come back to the hospital with me.”
Duan Heyu stood unmoved. “Don’t get involved, this is a grudge between men.”
“Does he even know you? Where does a grudge come from at a first meeting… All right, don’t make trouble for me. You may not want your face but I want mine!”
Jiang Zhi was nearly furious to death, thinking she never should have agreed to let him come pick her up.
Duan Heyu went on with his fit and undid two more buttons, revealing the gray turtleneck sweater underneath, his expression utterly contemptuous. “Scared already? Afraid this young master will beat you until your own mother wouldn’t recognize you? You dared to set your mind on this young master’s person, so today I’ll let you know why the flowers are this red!”
Jiang Zhi: …Stop talking already, stop talking!
Xu Yancan’s body moved, his long leg taking a slanting step.
Duan Heyu’s alarm bells rang at once and he took up a fighting stance.
“I don’t stoop to a pregnant man’s level.”
Xu Yancan brushed past his shoulder without giving him a single glance, and having said that he got straight into a private car stopped at the roadside.
The instant he opened the car door, he looked back and softened his voice. “Senior, goodbye.”
The car door slammed shut and it left in a cloud of dust, all in one smooth motion.
Duan Heyu, jolted awake from being petrified: “…”
He turned his neck with a crack crack crack, his eyes hollow. “What did he just say?”
Jiang Zhi looked at the sky and looked at the ground, picked up the padded coat he had dropped on the ground, shook it out, and wrapped it around herself. “Did he say anything? I don’t think so. Come on, back to the hospital.”
“…”
“Didn’t you say it was just roommates and nobody else?”
The grim tone above her head made Jiang Zhi stumble.
She said, “He’s Hanhan’s—”
“Wait, where’s your coat? I remember you went out wearing a coat. Hold on! That bastard—”
The quiet corridor had little foot traffic. On this floor of VIP wards there were basically no outsiders apart from the occasional nurse coming up to change medication and the doctor making rounds.
An intern nurse on her first day of work came out of the elevator and heard an extremely demonic burst of laughter. The laughter penetrated the solid walls and shuttled back and forth between her left and right ears like 3D surround sound.
This was…
The little nurse’s uneasy gaze met the head nurse’s.
The head nurse smiled kindly. “It’s fine, it’s normal, you’ll get used to it.”
Sigh, another one had gone mad.
—Inside the ward
“Hahahahahahahaha!!!”
“Keep your voice down. You’ve been laughing for an hour since we got back, haven’t you laughed enough?”
“Hahahaha, he actually got his period, hahahaha, a man, bleeding, bleeding period blood, and it leaked out the side!!”
Sitting on the bed, Duan Heyu laughed until the branches and blossoms shook, rolling all over the bed. He slapped his own thigh red without seeming to feel it at all, wiping the corners of his eyes and cackling.
“What use is it for a pretty boy to be so smart and so cold? He still ended up with a pantsful of blood smeared on him!”
“I wonder how that crowd of little fangirls around him would react to knowing he gets his period, hahahaha, male god turns into a sister!!”
Jiang Zhi stuck the knife in. “Oho oho oho, a little. Pregnant. Man has the nerve to laugh at other people.”
“…”
Jiang Zhi: “Don’t forget, you’re a man too. If he can get his period, you’d better prepare yourself mentally in advance.”
“…” Duan Heyu’s heart clenched. His face darkened and he retorted forcefully, “This young master is not the same as that pretty boy, I will absolutely not get a period!”
He simply didn’t believe he could be tough enough to bleed for seven days and not die.
Jiang Zhi smiled without speaking, wearing a “whatever makes you happy” expression.
He thought of how she had defended that pretty boy Xu Yancan.
Duan Heyu felt very unhappy about it. He gritted his teeth and turned the gun barrel. “I haven’t settled accounts with you yet. You just casually gave your coat to a man. Did you think about my feelings?”
The main point was how the hell that bastard knew he was pregnant!
In that situation at the time, Jiang Zhi really hadn’t thought of that layer.
She felt anyone would have lent a hand at that moment, and besides, from beginning to end she had deliberately kept her distance and hadn’t touched even a corner of Xu Yancan’s clothes.
That counted as being very considerate of Duan Heyu already.
Jiang Zhi didn’t think she had done anything wrong and refused to the death to apologize. Her stubborn, guilt-denying look made Duan Heyu’s nerves twitch.
She hadn’t been willing to bring him to her gathering, and she had clearly promised there would be no other men there, and then she turned around and let him run right into Xu Yancan, and he had watched with his own eyes as the man walked off in style wrapped in her clothes…
The more Duan Heyu thought about it the more stifled he felt, and the more angry.
He snatched Jiang Zhi’s phone out of her hand, opened her contacts and found Xu Yancan’s WeChat, and ignoring her shouts deleted the friend with one tap.
Jiang Zhi’s temper flared up in an instant. “Duan Heyu!”
“Dare to add another pretty boy in the future and this young master will delete every one he sees!”
Fine, fine, fine, all right. This bastard’s guts were getting bigger and bigger, fatter and fatter.
“Delete every one you see, is it?” Jiang Zhi’s face was iron-blue as she slowly showed a chilling smile. “No need to wait for the future, I’ll delete one right now.”
Then she snatched the phone back, and with her slender white fingers, right in front of Duan Heyu’s face, she dug out the WeChat contact labeled “You Dog” and deleted it with one tap.
Duan Heyu’s face changed abruptly. “Stop!”
That damn girl had deleted his WeChat again!
This was really damn… fucked up!!
“Tell me what the hell you’re thinking. Would giving in to me cost you a piece of flesh? Where the hell have I treated you badly? Haven’t I been good enough to you? Going against this young master like this for some unrelated pretty boy, you tell me, aren’t you an ungrateful wolf?!”
Duan Heyu was beside himself with anger and pointed at Jiang Zhi’s nose as he cursed away. Never mind how satisfying his cursing looked, only he knew how hollow and how miserable he felt inside.
This mix of guilt, heartache, and anger reached its peak after he saw Jiang Zhi’s face turn completely black.
Jiang Zhi moved. Looking at him with a half smile, she raised her arms and clapped her hands.
The clap clap clap of the applause made Duan Heyu’s back go cold.
“No need to ask, I am an ungrateful wolf. What can you do about it?”
“Starting today, oh no, starting from this very moment, apart from you, I’ll add every pretty boy I see. I’m going to add until my WeChat bursts and is full, add every pretty boy in the whole world. You didn’t know, did you? A pretty boy and an ungrateful wolf are the perfect match!”
Duan Heyu: “…”
Fuck fuck fuck!
Duan Heyu’s mouth trembled and he couldn’t speak. With a smack he fell straight over.