Duan Heyu started to feel extremely unbalanced inside. Why should he be over here quietly heartbroken while Jiang Zhi was over there carefree and happy?
When his itch to act up came on, nobody could stop it. He deliberately rolled over to make a big noise, and seeing that nobody paid any attention, he simply muttered loudly.
“Tsk, so noisy, I can’t sleep.”
Fussy thing. Jiang Zhi lifted her eyes at him lightly, then put on her earphones.
Duan Heyu: “…” So this damn girl wouldn’t take oil or salt.
He had hinted so obviously, and she still didn’t know to put down the phone and come keep him company.
Jiang Zhi played her game, but she did split off part of her attention onto Duan Heyu.
In her peripheral vision he reached out and clicked the light off, his voice coming muffled out of the quilt. “Your phone screen is too bright, the glare makes my eyes hurt.”
Hearing the sound of Jiang Zhi coming over, that dog immediately added, “The doctor said a pregnant man has to get proper rest, can’t be agitated, can’t be disturbed.”
“Dis. Turbed. You get it?”
He was afraid she’d forget his identity as a pregnant man and give him a good beating.
A moment later the bed behind him sank in one spot, and Jiang Zhi’s voice came from behind. “Duan Heyu, since you can’t sleep, then let’s talk.”
The room with the light off was very dim. A hazy beam of moonlight came in through the glass window, and Duan Heyu could barely make out her outline.
Inexplicably a bit nervous, he swallowed. “Talk about what?”
“Little pregnant man, share the journey your heart has been on these past weeks.”
In the darkness the woman’s voice was light and bouncing, as if the next second she would laugh out loud.
Duan Heyu: “…” Share a woolen thread. She picked exactly the kettle that wasn’t boiling.
He ground his teeth, and counting on the dark so Jiang Zhi couldn’t see clearly, he secretly rolled his eyes at her a few times.
Then he squeezed two words out from between his teeth. “Get lost.”
In this stretch of time he had cursed his way through every dirty word he knew. It really was too damn fucked up. How had a thing this absurd, absurd enough to open the door for absurdity’s mother, happened to him??
The unluckiest part was… he and Jiang Zhi had only done it that once, and one time got him pregnant.
It was karma, it definitely was karma!
If he had listened to Jiang Zhi and worn a condom back then, none of this would have happened.
Duan Heyu regretted it bitterly, tasting deeply what it meant that one slip becomes a thousand years of regret [1]one slip becomes a thousand years of regret (yi shizu cheng qiangu hen, 一失足成千古恨) Idiom, a single misstep brings lifelong regret jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234065_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234065_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
His intestines were about to turn green with regret when something warm and soft suddenly pressed against his back, and the pores there popped open.
Duan Heyu’s body stiffened, and a memory that made faces red and hearts race shot up.
He stiffly moved his neck, his throat tight. “What are you doing?”
While he was dazed, Jiang Zhi’s slender arms wound around him from behind, her chin pressed into the hollow of his shoulder, and from her throat spilled a low hum that went soft into the cracks of his bones.
“Let’s do something adults are supposed to do. It’s been so long… don’t you want to?”
What answered her was the heavy sound of a swallow.
“You…”
Duan Heyu’s little heart pounded wildly. He hadn’t been off his vegetarian diet for long and was at the age when the blood runs hot. That night with Jiang Zhi had been the first time for each of them.
He had thought it was a good chance to show off his manly prowess and get a grip on Jiang Zhi, but who knew he would nearly be mocked into hiding.
So how could he not want to? A man who didn’t want to wash away a past shame wasn’t a good man!
He slowly reached for the hand at his waist, stroking the delicate back of Jiang Zhi’s hand suggestively, then slid his ten fingers into the gaps between hers and locked them tight.
“I didn’t buy condoms, so let’s not wear one this time.”
“…”
The atmosphere bubbling with little yellow bubbles came to an abrupt stop.
That sentence of Jiang Zhi’s was no less than a club to the head, dragging Duan Heyu bodily out of his daze of desire.
“Jiang Zhi, you’re messing with me on purpose, aren’t you?” He sat up abruptly, the lingering mood retreating. “You even want to skip the condom. I really couldn’t tell, Jiang Zhi, you have the potential to be a scumbag woman! Once was bad enough and you want to trick me a second time. Do you have a heart?”
Jiang Zhi pillowed both hands behind her head, swinging her long crossed legs, and looked at him with a raised brow.
“What trick? Don’t put it so nastily. Wasn’t it you that time who coaxed and begged and refused to wear one, afraid it would affect the experience?”
Afterward she had gone home and replayed the scene, and it suddenly dawned on her: all that sweet talk from that bastard Duan Heyu was just because he didn’t want to wear a condom. No condom = scumbag!
It cost her a whole month of poor rest, all from fear of an accidental pregnancy. Fortunately her period arrived as promised.
During that time the two of them quarreled plenty, and Duan Heyu blurted out, “If you’re pregnant then just have it. It’s not as if this young master can’t afford to raise it, what’s so hard about having a baby? Then you can just stay home having children and raising children, how relaxing.”
It simply shattered her worldview.
Because of that one sentence, Jiang Zhi was so angry she didn’t speak to him for a month and made up her mind to break up.
Who knew that when they met again, Duan Heyu, this dead straight man with his blown-out worldview, would be carrying a kid? The way of heaven really did come around, hahahaha!
Jiang Zhi lay at his side and reached up to pat his shoulder twice. “Take it easier, it’s just having a baby, what’s so hard about it? It’s not as if you can’t afford to raise it. Then you can just stay home raising children and having children, how relaxing.”
Duan Heyu: “…” Grass, a kind of organism.
Bitter. Real bitterness wasn’t shouting and making a scene…
Duan Heyu lowered his head dejectedly like a defeated rooster.
Seeing him look so pitiful and resigned to his fate, the smile at the corner of Jiang Zhi’s mouth grew wider. So this was how good it felt to rub salt in someone’s wound.
She really did have the potential to be a wicked woman.
“It’s a great happy event, what are you making a bitter face for? Come on, give me a smile.”
…Not one word of it did he want to hear.
Once Jiang Zhi had had enough fun, she quit while she was ahead. Without the slightest reserve she pulled his hand over and put it on her own waist, rubbed her face against him, and pecked his lips twice like a dragonfly touching water.
Obedient and soft as a cat.
Duan Heyu: …Softened, softened, his heart went soft into a complete mess.
The two of them in the dark held each other tightly just like that, nothing to do with desire. After the kiss that stopped at a light taste, they slowly settled back into calm.
“When do you plan to tell your family about the pregnancy?”
Duan Heyu: “We’ll see. It’s still early.”
“Your belly will get bigger and bigger as the months go on. Are you planning not to go home for the whole pregnancy? You should know it can’t be hidden.”
Of course he knew it couldn’t be hidden, but there was nothing to be done. Just imagining how his family would react to knowing he was pregnant made his skull hurt. Whether they could accept it was one thing, he himself couldn’t get past that mental hurdle.
In any case, every day he could drag it out was a day.
“You don’t need to worry about this.” His tone was irritable, unwilling to discuss the topic. “I’ll handle it as I see fit.”
Seeing this, Jiang Zhi didn’t ask any more. She said good night to him and got ready to sleep.
But Duan Heyu felt something was off. He tossed and turned thinking about it for a long while and finally worked out what was off.
How come only he was answering questions??
Duan Heyu flipped upright like a carp. “When are you going to tell your family about my pregnancy? Do they know I exist? Have you actually never told them I exist?”
Jiang Zhi was pounded awake by his one question after another, and she punched him in the chest in bad temper.
“You may not be sleeping but I still am!”
Duan Heyu stared hard at her. “You still haven’t answered my questions.”
Jiang Zhi rubbed her wrist and gave him a sidelong glance. “Whatever you plan is what I plan.”
Such an equivocal answer naturally couldn’t satisfy Duan Heyu. His plan was to lay it out for his family and then marry her. Was hers the same?
Duan Heyu was both hopeful and all over the place.
Jiang Zhi really had no interest in teasing him right now.
She yawned with watering eyes. “Probably when the government officially announces the news. After all, this is still confidential for the moment, but it should be soon.”
From what she knew so far there were already twenty-odd cases, and the actual number was definitely higher than that.
Duan Heyu pressed his lips together. It wasn’t an answer that satisfied him a hundred percent, but what she said was the fact.
Jiang Zhi lay back down, and Duan Heyu tugged at her again. “You only answered one question, there are still two questions you haven’t answered.”
And they were the most important ones.
Had she ever told her family he existed?
No.
To put it cruelly, if not for Duan Heyu suddenly getting pregnant, there was no way they would still be sleeping under one quilt.
Jiang Zhi was too sleepy to open her eyes, so she gave two perfunctory grunts.
Duan Heyu’s face immediately stretched into a donkey’s. He burrowed into the ox’s horn [2]He burrowed into the ox’s horn (zuan niujiaojian, 钻牛角尖) Idiom, fixating stubbornly on a dead end jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234065_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234065_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, sworn to break the clay pot and ask all the way to the bottom [3]break the clay pot and ask all the way to the bottom (dapo shaguo wen daodi, 打破砂锅问到底) Idiom, pressing a question relentlessly jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234065_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234065_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
She had driven over from home this late at night to keep him company, listened to his nagging and his complaints, gone along with him as much as she could and not lost her temper at him, and now he was climbing from her nose onto her face.
He was a pregnant man, true, but she was still in the even more uncomfortable days of her period.
Not letting her sleep really was too much.
“Duan Heyu, settle down for me.” Jiang Zhi opened her eyes and looked at him coldly. “Make any more fuss and don’t blame me for slapping you.”
Jiang Zhi had a gentle, harmless face, but the personality hidden under that skin had nothing to do with it.
The instant her face went cold, Duan Heyu went as quiet as a chicken: …
obedient.jpg
The next day Duan Xiao came to make his rounds, and the moment he entered he saw his own unlucky cousin sporting two dark circles, and he burst out cackling on the spot.
After Jiang Zhi fell asleep last night, he had sunk into his own wounded world and couldn’t come out of character for a long time, gazing deeply at the ceiling all night.
There was a routine physical examination every morning. Duan Heyu lay sprawled on the ultrasound bed with his clothes pushed up to his chest, his flat lower belly exposed.
Jiang Zhi crouched in front of the machine’s screen and stared blankly at the little dark blob on it.
Apart from the ultrasound she had watched yesterday to prove Duan Heyu was pregnant, this was, in the real sense, her accompanying him to a prenatal checkup.
Maybe because Duan Heyu really didn’t look like a pregnant man, with no great physical change from before the pregnancy, what Jiang Zhi felt staring at the tiny embryonic bud on the screen was mostly wonder, without any joy or anticipation about becoming a mother.
It was just… pretty flat.
Duan Xiao held the prenatal report and looked through it, then showed a reassuring smile. “The fetus is stable, no problems, keep it up.”
After lunch, Jiang Zhi was halfway through a game when Duan Heyu coaxed and dragged her out. They drove his Ferrari out of the hospital’s underground garage and left everyone in the dust.
This was the first time Duan Heyu had driven out for a stroll since checking into the hospital. It wasn’t that the hospital wouldn’t allow it, it was that he refused to have a stranger accompany him, and the hospital wasn’t comfortable letting a pregnant man go out on his own.
So he had stayed cooped up in the hospital for a whole month without moving.
Like a divine beast out of its cage, he took Jiang Zhi running all over Haishi. First Disney, then a concert, and in the evening a cruise boat to admire the glittering night view.
Off the boat there really was nowhere left to go, so the two of them walked slowly along the riverside.
“A-Zhi?”
Hearing someone call her from behind, Jiang Zhi turned around.
The man in a suit in front of her looked refined and proper. He raised a kindly smile, his tone familiar as he looked at her.
“I thought the back of you looked like you, and I didn’t expect it really was.”
Seeing clearly who had come, Jiang Zhi’s expression didn’t stir at all.
Compared to his enthusiasm, Jiang Zhi all but wrote “don’t come over here” on her face, indifference mixed with distaste.
The woman standing beside Jiang Wenbo noticed her coldness and couldn’t help sizing her up, then asked in a sweet voice, “Wenbo, who is she?”
Jiang Wenbo smiled and introduced her. “This is my second uncle’s daughter, Jiang Zhi, the younger cousin I mentioned to you before who studies at Haishi University.”
“A-Zhi, this is my girlfriend Wei Yurong. You can call her sister-in-law.”
“Mm.”
Jiang Zhi wasn’t buying it at all.
Wei Yurong felt a bit displeased. What kind of attitude was that? Did she have any manners?
She could see that Jiang Zhi didn’t want to bother with her, and she wasn’t about to press a warm face against a cold backside [4]press a warm face against a cold backside (relian tie leng pigu, 热脸贴冷屁股) Idiom, being rebuffed after friendly overtures jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234065_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234065_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. She pulled her boyfriend along to leave, and just then Duan Heyu came toward them carrying two bottles of water.
Wei Yurong’s eyes went straight in an instant.
!!
Damn, so handsome. Whose idol had gotten loose?
Looking more closely, wow, brand names from head to toe, and even the watch was a custom model worth over a million!
Then seeing how intimate that little idol was with Jiang Zhi, Wei Yurong turned sour. He couldn’t be her boyfriend…
Jiang Wenbo was quite interested. “A-Zhi, is this your boyfriend?”
“No—”
“That’s right, I’m her boyfriend.”
Jiang Zhi: “…”
Wei Yurong: I hate this.
Before Jiang Zhi could stop it, Jiang Wenbo had already turned to Duan Heyu and introduced himself.
The moment Duan Heyu heard this was Jiang Zhi’s cousin, he perked right up and chatted enthusiastically with him, ignoring the warning looks Jiang Zhi sent over several times.
It went on until they were talking about exchanging contact information, when Jiang Zhi, unable to bear it any longer, cut in.
This idiot!
References[+]