As soon as Lian Jue entered the door, the lights in the living room switched on.
The auntie[1]
In this case, she’s a live-in domestic maid employed by Lian Jue to take care of the house and Kangtong, but she’s also called ‘aunt’ when address, and that implies they’re close to her and in friendly terms. —Alle came out of the room with a short-wool blanket draped around her shoulders. “Sir, you’re back?”
“You haven’t slept yet?” He asked, his head lowered as he changed his shoes in the entrance hall.
“Older people sleep lightly., I heard the sound of the car, so I got up to take a look.” Walking over, the auntie helped Lian Jue take off his coat. When she saw his tired expression, she made a surprised sound. “Looks like you’ve been drinking, sir. Did you drive back by yourself?”
“I didn’t.” Unbuttoning his shirt cuffs, Lian Jue rolled up his sleeves. “Is Tongtong asleep?”
The auntie shot Lian Jue a doubtful look, unsure if he was denying drinking or if he was denying driving with his ‘I didn’t’. Lian Jue refused to elaborate, and she didn’t want to be nosy, so in the end, all she said was, “He’s asleep. He fell asleep after talking to you on the phone. Would you like some tea, Sir? I’ll brew you some sobering tea……”
“No need.” Lian Jue walked towards the sofa and sat down. Two exam papers were spread out neatly on the coffee table. He picked them up and skimmed through them. The child’s handwriting wasn’t very good; the words were bunched together despite each stroke being in the correct order.
“Tongtong placed it here last night. He said that you’d be able to see it if you came back.” She was a little helpless, the auntie poured a glass of warm water and placed it on the table, “Last night, he refused to let me sign it for him no matter what I tried. I told him to place the papers here and that if you didn’t come back by early morning, I’d sign it for him, and this time he listened.”
Lian Jue took out a fountain pen from the pencil case on the table. Beside the perfect score written in red ink at the upper left corner of the exam paper, he found an empty space to sign his name.
His eyes swept over the paper and glanced at the box where the student’s full name was to be written. He hesitated, then in front of the two characters that meant the name ‘Kangtong’, he added the character meaning ‘Lian’.
Upon seeing Lian Jue’s writing, the auntie’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “Are the procedures done?”
Now that he’d thought about it, Kangtong had been living with him for more than two years. For those two years, Lian Jue had been unable to complete the adoption procedures, having been too young to meet the age requirements for adopting a child. As a result, it had made schooling and other outings for the child very inconvenient. When Lian Jue had turned thirty the week before, he’d finally been able to complete the adoption procedures for Kangtong, which took a load of worries off his mind. At the very least, he could spend less effort when it came to enrolling Kangtong into a public school in the future
The auntie didn’t understand the trivialities of Lian Jue’s work. All she knew was that the child had finally been officially adopted and upgraded to a proper residence. which simply was the first major event in the family.
A smile immediately spread across her face. “That’s good,” She said, grinning as she took the pencil case and papers from the coffee table. She placed them back inside the yellow school bag on the sofa. “I’ll add two more dishes for Sunday’s meal. Ah! I’ll add it starting tomorrow!”
Lian Jue smiled faintly.
He leaned back on the sofa, closing his eyes to rest for a while. The sweet smell of wine lingered faintly in his nose, and he suddenly recalled the absurd incident from last night, and the sobbing man with tearful yet lustful eyes.
Lian Jue propped his elbows up on the sofa arms, tilting his head and rubbing exhaustedly at his brow.
The auntie turned her head. Upon seeing his actions, she asked, “Are you uncomfortable?”
Pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind, Lian Jue shook his head.
He opened his eyes and sat up. Not wanting the auntie’s efforts to go in vain, he picked up the cup of water from the coffee table and took a sip, placed it down when he was done, and got up from the sofa. He raised his hands to the collar of his shirt, unbuttoning it. “I’m going to bed first,” he said as he walked to the stairs. “You should also rest early.
Behind his back, the auntie made a surprised sound.
When Shen Tingwei woke up, darkness filled his vision. The room was filled with the rich and sweet smell of wine, mixed with the distinctive scent of lust. The hotel’s soundproofing was very good—it was so silent that he could hear his own heartbeat. Concentrating, he opened his eyes, staring into the void. The curtains were tightly drawn, and the time on the electronic watch by his bedside glowed with soft white light.
After a while, he came back to his senses and slowly propped himself up into a sitting position.
His cheeks were still hot, and his whole body was aching as if it was about to fall apart. His throat filled with the taste of fishy bitterness that surged over his taste buds again and again, subsequently followed by an intense feeling of discomfort as if there was a big invisible hand gripping his internal organs, firmly pinching and twisting one organ at a time. He opened his eyes and waited for the dizziness to pass before coming to the realization that his legs were weak and had no strength. He resisted the nausea in his stomach with difficulty as he turned over, using the wall to support himself on the way to the bathroom.
When the bright incandescent light lit up, he instinctively squinted his eyes and staggered to the washbasin. Using his hands to support himself on its cold marble surface, he bent over and vomited.
His stomach was empty—he hadn’t eaten anything since the day before. No matter how much he retched, nothing but a bit of water came out. His stomach felt like there were sharp needles prickling from the inside, bursts of intricate pain that lasted for a while.
He knew without lifting his head that he would cut a sorry figure. Turning on the tap, he collected cold water in his cupped hands, rinsing his mouth several times.
The stuff on the corners of his mouth and chin had dried up and his skin was stretched taut. He used the water in his hands to wash himself clean bit by bit, from his chin to his neck to the pit of his stomach.
When he raised his head again, Shen Tingwei looked silently at his reflection in the mirror.
The person reflected in the mirror looked pale and sickly with a face soaked in water. His lips were moist and swollen red. His damp hair was swept to the back of his head, exposing a full and beautiful forehead, water dripping from his eyelashes. Dark red marks decorated his neck and chest like little stars made from bites and pinches.
The aroma of wine on his body had faded thanks to the absurd incident last night. Slowly, he reached out a hand to touch the glands on the back of his neck, only to shrink back as if his fingertips had been scalded.
The glands on the nape of his neck were still aching. The pain and fear that had risen when the man from the night before tugged at the flesh of the back of his neck were still deeply imprinted in his mind.
Uncontrolled emotions, unbearable heat……strange beta.
Feeling glad was beyond absurd. Fortunately, the person he had met was a beta.
He remembered the man pressing against his glands. He’d nearly lost his strength/consciousness multiple times from the pain. If the man last night had been an alpha, perhaps it would have been more troublesome……
Shen Tingwei closed his eyes, his lips pursing even tighter.
……what on earth happened?
Shen Tingwei’s differentiation came later than most people. It wasn’t until after he graduated from university that his secondary sexual characteristics gradually appeared. Apparently, he had inherited it from his mother.
His mother was a sweet-tempered omega woman who was the perfect picture of a traditional housewife, and his father was his mother’s academic advisor during her master’s and doctorate degrees. They got to know each other and naturally got together during their studies.
When it was confirmed that he had differentiated into an omega, his mother had stroked the hair on his temples with a smile. “I’d always thought I was a beta before I was 24 years old. If I’d known earlier that I would differentiate into an omega, I probably wouldn’t have continued studying and wouldn’t have met your father.”
He remembered asking why.
“The moment an omega starts their differentiation, they need to search for an alpha of their own to belong to.” His father had explained to him, smiling.
“Shouldn’t we wait to fall in love?” Shen Tingwei had asked.
“Love can only be sustained with someone of a high degree of matching, my child.” His father had said, shaking his head slowly.
By his father’s side, his mother’s face had been hard to look at when his father had said those words.
Lowering his eyes as if he had noticed something, Shen Tingwei had quickly changed the subject as if nothing had happened, asking, “Does an omega really need an alpha? There are many Betas who still insist on refusing to marry……”
“Because they are Beta.”
Shen Tingwei hadn’t known much about it at the time, but his father had only smiled and said that ‘you’ll understand later.’
Shen Tingwei didn’t have to wait for very long.
The rich scent of roses was consistent with the aura of an alpha.
The alpha was a good talker with a good complexion. As his father had said, he was indeed a suitable marriage partner if one judged by appearances.
When they were about to leave, the alpha had politely hugged him by the entrance of the restaurant. Voice lowered, he whispered in Shen Tingwei’s ear, “Your smell really is special.”
Shen Tingwei frowned slightly and took a subtle step back. He politely but stiffly said, “Thank you.”
The alpha somewhat forcefully left his number on Shen Tingwei’s phone. “You can call me anytime, Weiwei.” He said, smiling.
The pheromones the alpha was releasing were too strong, making Shen Tingwei feel uncomfortable.
When he returned to his car and told a friend who had called and asked about the blind date about it casually, his friend scoffed and said that the man was just like a peac*ck spreading its tail and had bad intentions.
Having been a ‘beta’ for 23 years, Shen Tingwei wasn’t too sensitive or aware of pheromones, which made it harder for him to judge whether or not the other person’s behavior was crossing the line.
If you feel uncomfortable, his friend had said, indignant in his efforts to make Shen Tingwei understand, then the alpha’s actions were considered sexual harassment.
The increasingly sweet smell of cranberry wine flooded the cramped insides of the car. Shen Tingwei kneaded his temples from dizziness. “Really? But he seems like a nice person,” He had said, interrupting his friend as he drove his car towards a parking space by the side of the road.
There was a sharp inhale from the person on the other end of the call as if they had choked on thin air. “I see you’re not just slow in differentiation, your brain’s also slow in developing!” He roared furiously.
The yell made Shen Tingwei even more dizzy. Before he could even say that he was driving and would call back later, a loud explosion pierced straight through his eardrums.
A violent blow smashed into the back of his car. His back slammed into the backrest of his seat, the impact bouncing him forwards onto the driver’s wheel— right as the airbag ejected, smashing his prone body backwards once again. His head spun heavily, his ears filled with the sound of buzzing, and the anxious voice over the phone suddenly seemed very far away; a voice that he couldn’t hear clearly no matter how hard he tried.
Someone yanked the car door open. The rich aroma of wine thinned, mixing with the fresh air rushing into the cramped space. It took all of Shen Tingwei’s strength to gasp for breath. As if something was stuck inside his chest, there was an increasing pressure on the pit of his stomach, making it more and more difficult to breathe.
His heavy eyelids finally drooped shut. The sounds around him were drained away little by little until the noise in his ears finally quieted down.
The wet and cold rain hit his face, rousing him from his slumber.
When he opened his eyes again, Shen Tingwei realized that he was neatly dressed and collapsed in an alley.
For a brief moment, Shen Tingwei was stunned.
He couldn’t tell where he was, let alone why he had collapsed there, but the increasingly strange feeling in his body left him no time to think about it.
It was dusk. The rain was pouring heavily, and the temperature was growing colder. His body was growing hotter and hotter, immediately followed by his glands emitting the familiar and unusually strong scent of wine.
The first period of heat after differentiation flared up. He was terribly dizzy; his throat felt like it was on fire and his mouth and tongue were parched, yet he was trembling as if he was indescribably cold.
He needed inhibitors.
But this place was too strange. It was like there was a blank space in his memory. Shen Tingwei could only do his utmost to resist the discomfort of the early stage of heat like a headless fly as he searched for pharmacies, feeling helplessly bewildered as he was faced with repeated rejections and strange looks in each pharmacy he tried; a feeling that only grew as he searched for the inhibitors he needed…..
In the end, it was fruitless.
In desperation, he could only find a place where he could temporarily resist the heat, but he unexpectedly encountered the same predicament as when he tried to buy medicine.
When the hotel refused to let Shen Tingwei check in once again, the dizziness clouding his consciousness began to fade.
Where exactly is this place?
[1] 阿姨 [āyí]maternal aunt, step-mother, childcare worker, nursemaid, a woman of similar age to one’s parents (term of address used by a child)