The men untied Wen Yu and Fu Chen, chained them to a pillar instead, and then sent people to deliver meals to the two of them.
The food was unexpectedly decent, rich in oil with two meat dishes and one vegetable dish.
Fu Chen picked up his plate and started eating. As he ate, he kept glancing out of the corner of his eye at Wen Yu, who was clearly terrified, his complexion exceptionally pale and sickly.
“What are you afraid of?” Fu Chen said. “Their target is me.”
Wen Yu glanced at him, wanting to say that he thought nothing good would happen to him if something went wrong with Fu Chen, but ultimately held his tongue. Looking at the plate full of meat dishes, Wen Yu furrowed his brow slightly. Using his chopsticks, he fished out the deeply buried vegetables and wolfed down a few mouthfuls with his rice.
In the end, both the rice and vegetables were completely gone, while the meat remained entirely untouched.
Normally, Fu Chen never paid attention to Wen Yu’s dietary preferences. It was only today that he realized Wen Yu apparently didn’t eat meat.
Placing their food trays on the ground side by side made the contrast stark.
One tray had only a few stray vegetable leaves left, while the other had only meat remaining.
“You don’t eat meat?” Fu Chen asked. He hadn’t paid much attention before, but looking back now, he really couldn’t recall ever seeing Wen Yu eat meat. When Wen Yu dined at the Fu household, Fu Chen never had the mental bandwidth to care what he ate, usually only seeing Wen Yu munching on plain slices of bread at school.
“Mm.” Wen Yu let out a muffled response. Troubled deeply in his mind, he answered offhandedly.
Wen Yu thought to himself: even if he was Fu Chen’s destined match, the worst-case scenario after his death would simply be finding another Omega to undergo the gland transplant surgery, or even a Beta would do, because ultimately, Fu Chen’s condition required the high-compatibility pheromones generated by a destined match.
That being the case, he apparently wasn’t an indispensable person who had to be rescued.
If the kidnappers made exorbitant demands for money, he clearly wasn’t worth a heavy ransom.
Of course, Fu Chen could sit back and wait leisurely for his father’s rescue, but Wen Yu had no choice except to consider what he should do, or more accurately, what would happen to Cheng Xiaoling if he were no longer around.
If he hadn’t met Cheng Xiaoling, Wen Yu might well have chosen to end his dull and fragile life on any random night of being bullied in the Zhou family home, since he had long since lost the will to live anyway.
The only reason he stayed alive now was because he wanted to take Cheng Xiaoling away from the Zhou family to live a slightly better life. If Cheng Xiaoling were gone, none of this would have any meaning left.
Wen Yu didn’t care when he died; upon his death, probably very few people would feel sad, and the number of people rejoicing would likely far exceed those mourning.
Yet Cheng Xiaoling had to live.
“Why don’t you eat meat?” Seeing Wen Yu’s reaction, Fu Chen knew the other hadn’t listened to a word he said, and feeling rather annoyed, he repeated himself with a slightly louder voice.
Dawning belatedly that Fu Chen was speaking to him, Wen Yu snapped back from his own train of thought and said, “Hm? What did you say?”
“I said,” Fu Chen disliked repeating himself, and his tone was already turning sour, “why don’t you eat meat.”
Why don’t you eat meat?
Hearing this question, Wen Yu lowered his gaze, his eyelashes fluttering slightly as memories of some thoroughly unpleasant experiences resurfaced.
“Because I used to keep a little dog.” Wen Yu paused, remaining silent for a brief moment before continuing. “Later, someone served a plate of meat for me to eat. After taking a bite and finding the taste very strange, I asked what kind of meat it was.”
“The person said,” Wen Yu’s voice sounded normal at first glance, but listening closely revealed a slight tremor. He seemed to be trying his absolute best to keep his voice sounding normal, yet failed to achieve complete composure, “that it was the meat of the little dog I used to raise.”
Wen Yu could still recall that voice filled with playful cruelty, and the hearty laughter that erupted when they saw Wen Yu staring back at them with a pale, ashen face.
Fu Chen never expected that behind Wen Yu’s aversion to meat lay such an agonizing and unmentionable past, and his brow furrowed deeply.
In truth, the memories of that day had already grown hazy, likely protected by the brain’s defense mechanisms acting on biological instinct to make Wen Yu forget that event. Consequently, Wen Yu had long forgotten his immediate physical reaction afterward, remembering only that after eating that single bite of meat, he had vomited the entire night and could never touch meat ever again.
Catching sight of fatty meat would trigger the memories of that day to resurface, accompanied by a rising wave of nausea. At the very beginning when it was most severe, Wen Yu couldn’t even bear the sight of meat. As years passed, Wen Yu slowly learned to endure the urge to vomit upon seeing meat, but he still remained completely unable to swallow any.
Fu Chen finally understood why Wen Yu was so thin. Eating only vegetables and no meat at an age when his body was growing, how could his nutrition possibly keep up? It would be a miracle if he weren’t thin.
Silencing himself upon hearing such an answer, Fu Chen seemed capable of deeply empathizing with Wen Yu. After all, he too had once kept a small dog that was stolen by dog traffickers while being taken out to play, its ultimate destination likely ending up in someone else’s belly.
Back then, he cried and begged for the entire city to search for his little dog, but the butler simply brought him a puppy of the exact same breed, causing young Fu Chen to cry even harder.
Fu Chen didn’t often dwell on the matter; it was indeed a very distant memory, but every time he thought about how his beloved pet dog, treated like a friend, had been cruelly slaughtered, a dull ache always twinged in his heart.
Fu Chen spoke up, “Have you ever heard of a saying?”
Wen Yu: “What?”
Fu Chen: “That all dogs who pass away go to Dog Planet, where they live happily alongside other dogs.”
This truly was a story filled with hope. Wen Yu listened in silence, unwilling to indulge in wishful thinking that Fu Chen was comforting him, yet he still felt deeply grateful to Fu Chen for sharing such a wonderful story with him.
“Thank you.” Wen Yu expressed his gratitude softly.
Moonlight like water poured through the warehouse windows, quietly sketching the outline of Wen Yu’s profile. The silvery radiance draped like a delicate veil gently across Wen Yu’s elegant bridge of nose, while amidst the intertwining light and shadow, Wen Yu’s lips remained partially visible.
When Wen Yu spoke, his lips and teeth parted, revealing a glimpse of pale pink tongue and lips.
It was Fu Chen’s first time closely and meticulously examining Wen Yu’s face. Lately, he always found himself staring blankly at Wen Yu; ever since learning Wen Yu was that person, he felt as though he could never look enough at Wen Yu’s face, finding it pleasing no matter how he looked at it.
Yet Fu Chen’s gaze remained far too scorching, causing Wen Yu to turn his head toward him with a look of confusion on his face. His stark, black-and-white eyes seemed almost capable of speech, silently asking Fu Chen why he was staring.
“At Shen Yuqing’s engagement banquet, why did you deliberately seduce me?” Fu Chen stared straight into Wen Yu’s eyes as he spoke, roughly figuring out his recent abnormal behavior and internal struggle. Some things always felt stuck like a fishbone in his throat, infusing his perspective of Wen Yu with far too many complicated emotions.
Wen Yu had no idea why Fu Chen would suddenly ask this, but perhaps because they were kidnapped together and thrown into such dire straits, Wen Yu was someone accustomed to preparing for the worst-case scenario. Believing he might not even live to see tomorrow’s sun, he felt emboldened to speak with greater frankness and audacity in front of Fu Chen.
“Just as you’ve always believed, it was for money, to climb up and latch onto the Fu family.” Wen Yu locked eyes with Fu Chen, answering with complete sincerity.
“You did it willingly?” Fu Chen pressed further.
“Yes.” Wen Yu nodded. “I did it willingly.”
Hearing Wen Yu answer this way, the tragic script Fu Chen had originally drafted in his mind for Wen Yu suddenly seemed to have no use at all. However, recalling how Shu Ran constantly muttered phrases like “a gambling father, a critically ill mother, a younger brother still in school, and a shattered self,” Fu Chen decided to probe further.
“Is your dad a gambler?”
Zhou Yuanyang was indeed an avid gambler; otherwise, the Zhou family assets wouldn’t have been squandered away so rapidly, leaving them on the verge of bankruptcy. Wen Yu nodded.
“Is your mom critically ill?” Fu Chen asked again.
In Wen Yu’s heart, Wen Xiaohui, his birth mother who had subjected him to endless abuse, never counted as a true mother. Instead, Cheng Xiaoling, who had always cared for him tenderly and treated him with gentleness, felt much more like a mother, and she was indeed critically ill in bed. Wen Yu nodded once more.
“Is your younger brother still in school?”
The only person Wen Yu could consider a younger brother was his half-brother Zhou Yu’an, who was currently attending high school. Wen Yu continued nodding.
Shock surged through Fu Chen’s heart. Everything matched up completely!
Recalling further, Fu Chen remembered Shu Ran mentioning that protagonists in such situations typically resorted to out-of-character actions solely to scrape together medical fees for their mothers, and in the process would encounter another protagonist, their destined soulmate.
Fu Chen used to scoff at the cheesy Mary Sue novels Shu Ran read, but now he felt that art truly originated from life, and those novels definitely helped some grain of truth.
“Did you do things you originally weren’t willing to do just to scrape together surgery fees for your mother?” Fu Chen asked the final question.
Wen Yu’s eyes widened slightly. Had Fu Chen investigated him? This census-like interrogation coupled with the accurate pinpointing of his predicament meant Fu Chen must have definitely run a background check.
The amount of conversation the two of them had shared today nearly rivaled their entire total from the past month combined.
“So, you knew all along.” Wen Yu wore a blank expression, feeling a sense of release instead. Truth be told, it was only a matter of time before Fu Chen investigated him; not investigating would have been the strange part, seeing as they were bound to live under the same roof.
A surge of emotion stirred in Fu Chen’s chest. Didn’t this prove that Wen Yu wasn’t the kind of person who used unscrupulous means to climb up to power? He did it to save his mother.
Unlike what he had always assumed, Wen Yu actually had compelling hidden hardships and wasn’t a malicious schemer at heart.
Fu Chen suddenly chuckled.
Looking at him quizzically, Wen Yu asked, “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing.” Fu Chen stared straight at Wen Yu. “Just suddenly feeling like you actually look like a good person.”
Clueless about what Fu Chen meant by those words, Wen Yu furrowed his brow slightly.