The family was in perfect harmony, mother kind and daughter dutiful, when an ill-timed shrill ringtone cut in.
Jiang Zhi pulled the phone out of her pocket. What came into view was an unfamiliar string of numbers, and without thinking much she pressed the answer button.
Then Old Jiang and Zheng Wan saw their daughter’s face fall, her tone very impatient. “Is this ever going to end?”
The couple couldn’t help exchanging a glance. They pretended not to care and walked off, then immediately turned their backs and pricked up their ears to listen.
That’s right, it was Duan Heyu’s call again. Who would have thought that this guy, blocked one moment, would go get a new SIM card the very next. Jiang Zhi grumbled to herself: where was this initiative before? He had to wait until they were breaking up to make all this fuss.
“Jiang Zhi, show me a bit more respect in your attitude!” Duan Heyu’s young master temper caught fire at a touch, and his mouth rattled on like a machine gun without stopping. “If you hadn’t blocked my number, would I have had to run out in the middle of winter to get a card? Am I not tired? I %! *¥%*—”
Yammering on and on until it made your head hurt.
Jiang Zhi: “If there’s nothing, I’m hanging up.”
“Stop, hold it! Who said there’s nothing? I called you about something, I have something very important to tell you!”
There was no way Jiang Zhi believed him.
It was nothing more than being dumped and feeling unbalanced and wanting to vent at her. If he had caught her in a normally good mood she might have played along a bit, but now he was just unlucky to have caught the few days of her period when she felt worst, so of course, the farther he rolled off the better.
—Beep beep beep
Duan Heyu held the phone, his face black as the bottom of a pot.
“Aiyo, hung up on again?” A man’s crisp laughter came from beside him. “Heyu, you really should rein in that temper of yours, otherwise no matter how many cards you get, it won’t be enough for her to block.”
The veins at Duan Heyu’s temple twitched. He threw off the hand the man had put on his shoulder and said angrily, “Shut up!”
“All right, all right, I’ll shut up. Don’t get too worked up either. After all, today isn’t like the old days. Careful you don’t disturb the fetus.”
Hearing the words “the fetus,” Duan Heyu jumped up like a lion with its fur standing on end and slammed a fist on the table, knocking over the teacup.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was really goddamn insane. Why would he, a grown man, get pregnant?!!
Ah, why? On what grounds?!!
Heaven knew how he had gotten through this stretch of time in the hospital: frightened every day, having nightmares of being taken away and sliced up for research, his fragile heart on the edge of collapse at any moment. If he weren’t strong, he would have jumped off the top floor of the hospital long ago and ended it all.
Duan Xiao picked up the teacup, crying out aiyo in distress. This was a mutton-fat jade tea set he had spent a big price hunting down. The warm glow of it hadn’t even worn off yet, and he couldn’t let anyone ruin it.
He glared at his hapless cousin, resenting that iron wouldn’t turn to steel [1]resenting that iron wouldn’t turn to steel (hen tie bu cheng gang, 恨铁不成钢) Idiom, exasperated that someone won’t live up to their promise jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234061_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234061_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. “You, you. Can’t you just say things properly? If you really can’t get the words out, then send her a text and get her to come to the hospital, and that’s that.”
Duan Heyu’s eyes lit up. He thought it was workable.
In the evening, Jiang Zhi, who had just come out from her shower, received a text message from Duan Heyu.
—A-Zhi, I’m pregnant.
…Thunder rolled. Jiang Zhi’s two big eyes were about to glare a hole in the screen. Did that bastard Duan Heyu have any shame left?
He could just open his mouth and say a thing like this. Did he take her for a three-year-old? Men could get a hammer of a pregnancy!
It could be said that he had refreshed her understanding of him once again. There was no bottom line to speak of.
After being speechless for a while, Jiang Zhi laughed out loud and replied: Which wild man’s is it?
Duan Heyu replied lightning fast: Yours (and attached a color ultrasound along with the hospital address).
Jiang Zhi: …
Damn, so this bastard was really putting on a show now.
Jiang Zhi had no time to go crazy with him. She exited the screen and was about to catch up on a show when Duan Heyu’s call came in, refusing to give up, once and again, dogged.
Her blood pressure shot up from the annoyance, and she cursed herself for having been blinded by lust back then, sunk in good looks with lard smeared over her eyes, for taking a fancy to such an infuriating thing.
She pressed the answer button and was about to scold him when she heard Duan Heyu shouting at the top of his voice, “I really am pregnant. If you don’t believe me, come to the hospital. A doctor can’t lie, can he?”
Jiang Zhi got stuck.
There was some sense in that, but not much. How could a man be pregnant? If Duan Heyu was going to make something up, he could at least make up something decent. But… Jiang Zhi wavered inside. She glanced at the time on the wall. Nine in the evening, not too late.
Then she’d go take a look. That kid Duan Heyu couldn’t very well pull any tricks on her inside a hospital.
Jiang Zhi took her key and walked out, and suddenly it dawned on her.
Nine times out of ten that kid had had some accident and gone into the hospital, wanted her to come see him but was too embarrassed to say it straight, so he made up an absurd reason. Childish.
The little blue electric scooter sped steadily and swiftly toward the hospital in the night.
She got off and cut the power, then hurried along by the ward number Duan Heyu had given her. The elevator stopped on the third floor, and she took two steps at a time to reach the ward and push open the door.
The moment the door opened, the person inside jumped in fright and bounced straight up off the bed.
“Are you a ghost? You walk without a sound.” Duan Heyu clutched his chest, his face still not recovered from the shock, and muttered his complaints in a small voice. “And you didn’t knock.”
Jiang Zhi narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down. “I thought you were missing an arm or a leg. Looks like you’re pretty fine, lively as a dragon and a tiger. You must be able to take a beating.”
Duan Heyu reflexively shrank his neck and backed away warily. “What are you doing? I’m a pregnant man now!”
“…” Jiang Zhi raised a hand and pointed at his head. “Is something wrong with you?”
Low on harm, extremely high on insult.
Duan Heyu flung the quilt aside and got out of bed, pushing up his sleeve to bare his arm. “Count how many needle marks are on this arm. All this time I’ve had blood drawn for tests every day, been surrounded and watched by a pile of medical experts and scientists, and isn’t it all because… because I’ve got your seed!”
Jiang Zhi stared at his bared arm and was silent for a moment.
Utterly sincere: “Sorry, I can’t see clearly.”
She had left in a hurry and forgotten her glasses.
Duan Heyu was very unhappy with her reaction. He had suffered this much for her, and she showed nothing at all? Forget a smile, couldn’t she at least give a couple of words of comfort?
Being this cold to him, could it be that she wanted to shirk responsibility?
Just as he was about to explode in rage, Duan Xiao, who had been watching from a dark corner, hurried to step out.
“Miss Jiang, long time no see.”
Hearing the slightly familiar voice, Jiang Zhi turned her head out of habit and met a pair of warm, smiling eyes.
Jiang Zhi immediately recognized who the person in front of her was
—Duan Xiao
Duan Heyu’s older cousin.
Less than two months after she and Duan Heyu got together, Duan Xiao had treated the two of them to a meal. Seeing him now in a white coat, Jiang Zhi remembered hearing Duan Heyu say before that Duan Xiao’s profession was doctor.
It seemed he worked at this very hospital.
Jiang Zhi nodded to him politely and exchanged a couple of simple pleasantries.
Duan Xiao had practiced medicine for eight years and had seen all sorts of people. He had long trained up the skill of reading faces and words, and with a single glance he understood what the other person was thinking.
This prospective sister-in-law of his didn’t trust him, didn’t trust him at all.
Duan Xiao straightforwardly took out the diagnosis and the scans and handed them to Jiang Zhi, smiling. “Miss Jiang, after a series of proper, rigorous examinations at our hospital and a joint diagnosis by our experts, my cousin Duan Heyu really is—”
“Preg. Nant.”
Jiang Zhi: “?”
“…Huh?”
She looked at the sky, looked at the ground, then looked at the two cousins in front of her, and slowly asked, “Cosplay? Or a prank?”
Duan Heyu: …
Duan Heyu was so angry he nearly fell over backward. He stiffened his neck and roared, “Aren’t you clear about what you did to me yourself?”
As he said this, he lifted his shirt to reveal his flat lower belly. “Look, hasn’t it gotten bigger? Feel it!”
Duan Xiao covered his face: what kind of tiger-and-wolf talk was this?
Jiang Zhi followed his finger and looked, stared for a few seconds, and reached a conclusion. “Mm, you have gotten quite a bit fatter.”
Duan Heyu was waiting for her to put a hand on him, but Jiang Zhi wore the expression of someone looking at nothing more than a slab of pork, as flat as flat could be. He suddenly felt bleak and furious. She was the one who back then couldn’t keep her hands off his eight-pack abs, the one who had drooled over them.
Her putting on such a bored, look-but-don’t-see face now made him feel worse than being killed.
“Do you not want to take responsibility?” Duan Heyu stared at Jiang Zhi. “So you’re pretending not to believe it.”
Jiang Zhi understood Duan Heyu, just as Duan Heyu understood her. Jiang Zhi was the kind of person whose inner turmoil grew the calmer she got, and that performance just now showed that she already believed it seven or eight parts out of ten at least, with the remaining two or three parts nothing but wishful thinking.
The moment Duan Heyu finished speaking, Jiang Zhi’s expression stiffened for an instant, and her gaze fell back to the stack of diagnoses in her hand. “Run the examination again. I want to watch it myself.”
After a series of twists and turns, Jiang Zhi struggled to accept the fact that she had happily become a mother.
She felt the two lumps on her chest. Soft, warm, real. Then she glanced at Duan Heyu’s tall, refined… mm, real.
So could someone tell her what on earth was going on? Why was her one-meter-eighty-something, unmistakably male boyfriend carrying a kid?
It was too magical, so magical that she reached out several times and pinched the flesh at Duan Heyu’s waist, and only after watching him leap up and down like a baboon and yelp did she believe she wasn’t dreaming.
A man… had actually grown a uterus?
And there was an embryo inside the uterus!
Jiang Zhi’s mind was blank. She couldn’t work it out or make sense of it, and sank into a hundred thousand whys, her eyes going unfocused.
Duan Heyu grimaced as he pulled his pants back up. He looked up and saw her as if she had lost her soul, and rolled his eyes with a mocking laugh. “That’s all the backbone you have.”
Hearing his voice, Jiang Zhi slowly came back to herself, her gaze circling over him.
Duan Heyu covered his belly and warily moved away. “What are you looking at? I’m not going to abort this child!”
An abortion right now was the equivalent of gambling with his life. With no precedent for men getting pregnant, not a single expert dared guarantee that an abortion in a man carried no danger to life. If it went wrong it would be two lives lost in one body.
He would rather take the risk and give birth to the child than die this soon on an operating table. After all, a good death was worse than a lousy life [2]a good death was worse than a lousy life (hao si buru lai huo zhe, 好死不如赖活着) Idiom, even a wretched life beats dying jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234061_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234061_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
How could Jiang Zhi fail to see that his mind was set on scraping by alive? She brushed back the hair by her ear and gave a lazy smile. “Relax, even if you wanted an abortion I wouldn’t agree, since if something happened I’d hardly escape the blame either. For now you just stay in the hospital and nurture the pregnancy properly. Call me if anything comes up.”
As soon as he heard she was leaving, Duan Heyu’s face stretched long. “You don’t plan to take care of me? You’re going to leave me alone in the hospital to live or die on my own?”
“Take care of you how? I’m not a nurse’s aide.” Seeing him start to sulk with his nose not a nose and his eyes not eyes, Jiang Zhi added, “Doesn’t staying in the hospital nurturing a pregnancy cost money? I have to go find a job, otherwise where would the money to pay come from?”
She had originally planned to be a salted fish lying flat, but now she could only find a way to get ashore and make money. Her own child she would raise herself. She didn’t have the face to drag a whole family along and live off her parents.
Most importantly, she needed to find a place to calm down.
Not long ago she had just imagined the scene of Duan Heyu being pregnant, and who would have thought her words would come true!
Who could understand? This was too damn unbelievable. Although Duan Xiao had revealed that Duan Heyu wasn’t the first man to get pregnant, that didn’t dampen in the slightest her excitement at wanting to throw back her head and laugh three times.
Hahahahaha, this is really fucking awesome, men can get pregnant now!
Great news to be spread far and wide!!!
References[+]