“Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”
Song Muxiang nearly lost his balance and slipped right off the chair.
He stared intently at the old man in the white lab coat in front of him, his gaze completely vacant, his red lips parted slightly. It took him a long moment before he finally squeezed out a sentence: “Are you kidding me? I’m a guy.”
“Young man, you’re the one being congratulated here,” the elderly doctor said, an expression loaded with subtle meaning appearing on his face. He asked, “Lately, have you had a loss of appetite, a lack of energy, and a constant urge to sleep?”
Song Muxiang nodded.
“That’s it then.” He displayed the scan to Song Muxiang, pointing to a spot with his finger. Song Muxiang leaned forward, but before he could clearly make out the content on the sheet, it was snatched back by the doctor.
“No need to be too surprised. In this day and age, a man getting pregnant isn’t all that rare. Setting aside our own country, just look abroad—didn’t America just come out with a new drug specifically researching this? What was it called again?”
“Doctor,” Song Muxiang interrupted his rambling. “Are you sure this isn’t a misdiagnosis?”
The elderly doctor narrowed his eyes slightly. “Young man, do you know how many patients I’ve treated in my lifetime? I’ve seen everything short of a ghost! Let me ask you: has it been a month since your last sexual activity?”
Song Muxiang froze, his eyes instinctively darting away. His voice dropped to a level as quiet as a mosquito’s buzz: “…It should be.”
“That’s it then. Even though it’s only been a month, since your physiological structure is different after all, an abortion carries a huge risk.” The old practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine packed the scans neatly back into the bag. “Have a good talk with the baby’s father!”
At the main entrance of the hospital, Song Muxiang stood all alone, feeling completely dazed and lost in the wind.
He turned his head to look back at the hospital’s large signboard, almost able to see through the light blue glass to the silk banner hanging inside the consultation room earlier that read: “Miraculous Hands Bring Back Spring, Friend of Women.”
The phone in his pocket vibrated a few times, as if trying to pull him back to that night.
One month ago, at a bar.
“Muxiang, let me toast you a glass! Congratulations on returning to the single life! I wish you many more days like today, year after year, urgh…”
“What kind of crazy act are you pulling? This is so embarrassing.” Fang Ran pulled Luo Yuan who was about to crawl onto the table down by the scruff of his neck, shaking him twice in an attempt to sober him up. “We came here tonight to celebrate for Muxiang, why are you over here singing and dancing?”
Holding his glass, Song Muxiang was already used to seeing such scenes. He saw right through them: “…Isn’t it just that you guys wanted an excuse to get together for a drink again?”
“How can you say that? We are genuinely happy for you.” Fang Ran looked at Song Muxiang, grinning. “You finally dumped that scum! Time to welcome a wonderful new life!”
“…” Song Muxiang silently raised his glass and took a sip. Watching Luo Yuan, who had run out of energy after throwing his drunken fit and collapsed into the booth, he didn’t feel a single trace of joy about returning to singlehood.
There was a strange curse on Song Muxiang: none of his relationships ever lasted past three months.
God had granted him a drop-dead gorgeous face, yet at the same time stripped away every normal romantic prospect he could have had.
It was almost as if he was cursed with a passive buff that turned him into a recycling bin for trashy guys. From the time he first tasted love until now, he hadn’t managed to date a single decent person who actually acted like a human being.
Yet, if someone truly asked him why he kept switching boyfriends so frequently when things were like this, Song Muxiang would only shift his gaze away awkwardly, brushing it off with the excuse of “I couldn’t bring myself to say no.”
He had thought that this time he would finally break the record and have something long-lasting, but in the end…
Song Muxiang picked up his glass. Under the dim lighting, the color of the liquid inside wasn’t clear. He downed it in one gulp. A spicy, harsh burn poured down his throat, choking Song Muxiang into a sudden fit of coughing. Unable to hold onto the glass in his hand, it slammed down onto the tabletop with a sharp clack.
Fang Ran heard the noise and looked over. She looked at him, then at the glass, her expression instantly changing: “That was my Long Island Iced Tea!”
“Isn’t this Coke?” Song Muxiang grabbed a paper towel to wipe away the tears brought on by his coughing. Even though he had only just swallowed it, he already felt like something was leaping around inside his brain, making him terribly dizzy. “I feel a bit…”
His vision went dark.
The last thing he could hear was Fang Ran’s anxious voice.
Song Muxiang didn’t touch a drop of alcohol on normal days. Even when he came to bars with Fang Ran and the others, he would only order sparkled water. The main reason was that he was an absolute light-weight who knocked out after a single drink. Throwing drunken fits was nothing—what was worse was…
The vibration kept intensifying. Song Muxiang instinctively reached out his hand and groped around, but ended up bumping into something. With a loud thud, his still-vibrating phone fell onto the floor.
The sound brought him to his senses a little. Song Muxiang propped himself up to sit up. Before his eyes even opened, he groggy fished around beneath the bed, finally picking up the phone. Without even looking at the name on the call screen, he muttered, “Hello?”
“Muxiang! Are you okay? Are you still alive? Are you missing any organs?!” Luo Yuan’s voice blasted straight through the speaker. Startled by the noise, Song Muxiang moved the phone two inches away: “What are you talking about?”
Luo Yuan: “Where are you?!”
Song Muxiang: “I’m at home… wait, no.”
He was finally looking clearly at his surroundings now.
Where was he?
The even worse consequence of drinking for him: a total black out.
A messy double bedroom, pajamas that had been changed for him, plus this whole-body soreness and exhaustion.
The drunken one-night stand straight out of novels and movies, where someone pulls up their pants and acts like a stranger—it had actually happened to him?!
“Luo Yuan.” Song Muxiang’s hands were trembling slightly. He instinctively pulled the blanket up higher over himself, unsure of what he was trying to hide. “Who brought me to the hotel?”
“I wanted to ask you that—wait, what?! You’re at a hotel?!”
“You, you, you—who did you run off with?! I just had a couple extra drinks and you ran off with someone?! Didn’t you just break up? Don’t tell me you’re—”
How should I know?
Song Muxiang hung up the phone directly.
Outside the hospital entrance, he stared at the message from Luo Yuan asking how the checkup results went. Feeling his temples throbbing, he simply muted his phone, turned off the screen, and chose to ignore his friend’s messages.
He had no energy to organize his thoughts or respond to Luo Yuan right now.
What could he say? Say that the male virginity he kept for over twenty years was gone, and on top of that, he had broken human medical science to carry a child? If he actually said those words out loud, Luo Yuan would probably suspect he went to see the psychiatric department.
The sun was sinking in the west. Unknowingly, he had spent so long fussing around at the hospital. He squeezed the bag in his hand, then took a few steps toward a trash can, stuffing the scans straight into it.
He didn’t want to face it; he’d escape reality first.
Although romantic rumors about him had never stopped since childhood, and he was used to moving seamlessly from one boyfriend to the next, Song Muxiang still remembered the concept of self-respect. Up until now, he had remained a completely clean, innocent boy who would still blush just from holding hands.
After navigating the romance scene for so many years, to end up losing his virginity after being floored by a single glass of Long Island Iced Tea—and now being forced to play the role of a delicate wife fleeing with a child, without even knowing who the baby’s actual father was…
How did things end up like this?
Song Muxiang’s mind was an utterly tangled mess. He wandered aimlessly along the main road, somehow winding up by the riverbank without realizing it. The warm glow of the setting sun reflected on the water’s surface. As a gentle breeze carrying a slight watery scent blew over, it managed to clear his head a bit.
At the very least, he had to figure out who was the one who took him away, right?
It couldn’t possibly be that after he blacked out, he suffered a mental break, escaped the bar right under his friends’ noses, ran to a hotel by himself to book a double room, and finally had an epiphany inside that awakened a single-parent asexual reproduction skill, could it?
He walked up to the guardrail, pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped away Luo Yuan’s messages, and located Fang Ran among his contacts:
【Do you still remember where I went after I got drunk that time?】
Luo Yuan couldn’t be relied on, but according to his lingering memories, Fang Ran had still been sober. Leaning against the railing, he watched the old men and women dancing the tango on the plaza across the river, actually finding it a little romantic.
Who didn’t start out with beautiful fantasies about love? Song Muxiang was especially someone who never learned his lesson despite falling down every single time.
If he hadn’t personally experienced catching someone in bed in a real-life erotic spectacle, he really would have thought he had met his soulmate who would break his three-month relationship jinx.
Still, thinking carefully about it, who could have taken him away right in front of his friends?
His ex-boyfriends had all been dumped into his blacklist in bulk; none of them could possibly know which bar he was at or what he was doing. If he had to think about it and pick through his tiny social circle, the most likely culprit was that psycho ex who still loved to stalk and cling to him even after breaking up.
If it really was that guy, then he could go straight to the police right now.
Song Muxiang let out a soft tch. He then browsed through his blacklist and found the contact whose note was a middle-finger emoji.
After hesitating for a long moment, typing and deleting repeatedly—he still sent the message out:
【I’m pregnant with your child.】
The very second it was sent, he wanted to recall it.
Song Muxiang’s finger hovered over the screen. Before he could press down, a voice call popped up like a sudden clap of thunder, startling Song Muxiang so badly that he flinched all over, nearly dropping his phone into the river. After finally catching his grip and seeing the caller clearly, he breathed half a sigh of relief.
“Hello…”
“Song Muxiang, what on earth did you do?” Fang Ran’s voice was filled with anxiety. “A whole month has passed, why are you suddenly asking about this? Did you run into trouble again?”
“It’s hard to explain in a few words. Who did I leave with back then?” Song Muxiang rubbed his tight temples.
Fang Ran paused, her voice slowing down as if trying to recall. “I can’t remember the face clearly, but he said he was your current boyfriend. Luo Yuan said he recognized him, too.”
Song Muxiang: “And you just let me leave with a stranger?”
Fang Ran: “I wasn’t comfortable with it at first either, but he showed me his phone—even his wallpaper was a picture with you! You were clinging to him with your whole body back then, practically on the verge of making out in the middle of the street, do you know that?”
“How is that possible?”
Screech——Bang!
A sharp, ear-piercing sound of brakes exploded on the road not far behind him.
Song Muxiang froze and turned around. He had been about to check which reckless hooligan was speeding on the road during broad daylight without fear of crashing into the river, only to see an eye-catchingly bright, flashy purple Porsche perform a gorgeous drift. It burst into his field of vision and finally pulled up right in front of him.
Fang Ran was still mumbling continuously on the other end of the line, saying who knows what, her voice sounding faint and muffled.
The autumn breeze rustled the tree leaves softly. Song Muxiang could even smell the faint scent of dust kicked up by the tires.
He felt a bit panicked, instinctively feeling as though a guy with a full-body tattoo and yellow hair was going to step out of the car in the next second—had one of his exes come to seek revenge?
The music was switched off, and the car window slowly rolled down. The person inside was wearing sunglasses, so Song Muxiang couldn’t see their face clearly either. Just as he was trying to search his mind to see which of his exes drove a car with such a flashy color, a familiar voice already rang out:
“Muxiang.”
Song Muxiang stared in shock.
It wasn’t a stranger, nor was it an ex-boyfriend.
It was the desk mate who had filled his entire youth, the attentive sidekick who was always thoughtful enough to lend him pens, bring him water, and cover for him, and the childhood friend who had been sent abroad for further studies a few years ago and subsequently lost all contact.
Why would he meet him here?
Their eyes met. The man stepped out of the car and walked toward Song Muxiang. The sound of his footsteps coming closer and closer was scattered by the wind, knocking softly against his heart.
Song Muxiang froze inwardly. He nervously hung up the voice call, but because his fingers moved too fast, he accidentally tapped on that sent message and selected the option to “Read the last message out loud.”
“Muxiang, long time no see.”
“Xia Zhaoye…”
“I’m pregnant with your child.”
All three voices rang out at the exact same time.