He is not my boyfriend.
He didn’t say it out loud.
Because the moment his gaze briefly collided with Li Yang’s, Ran Fan no longer had the presence of mind to care about his colleague and hurried toward Li Yang instead.
Li Yang opened a black umbrella over him, blocking out the violent wind and rain outside. His breathing hovered near Ran Fan’s temple and within that shadow cut off from the rest of the world, Ran Fan lifted his eyes and caught sight of Li Yang’s jawline, sharp and clean.
In his heart, he began comparing Li Yang’s appearance with Jiang Minyu’s.
This was the third time he had made such a comparison. The first time was when he saw Li Yang’s photograph in the files; the second time was that night, both blurred and vivid at once.
The feeling was much the same all three times. Each time, he thought that compared to his father, Jiang Minyu resembled his strikingly beautiful mother more, radiant, like peach blossoms in full bloom, a beauty that seemed to flourish extravagantly.
Yet upon closer inspection, he had not completely escaped the superior framework inherited from his biological father.
That intoxicating air of luxury and nobility clinging to him, one could trace its origin to Li Yang’s face.
Silently withdrawing his gaze, Li Yang opened the car door for Ran Fan.
There was no driver tonight and the car had been changed as well, looking unusually low key.
After seeing Ran Fan into the passenger seat, Li Yang got into the driver’s seat. He handed Ran Fan a towel first, then a blanket.
“Thank you,” Ran Fan replied, flustered as he fumbled with them. He added, “Sorry, I kept you waiting so late.”
“What are you apologizing to me for? I insisted on coming to pick you up.”
“Where are we going now? Are we going to see a doctor right away? Isn’t it too late?”
Ran Fan asked.
Taking him to see a doctor was the reason Li Yang had given for appearing here in the first place.
“It’s not late. The medical team was assembled specifically for you and is on call twenty-four hours a day. Everything revolves around your convenience, that’s the baseline of their service.”
“Don’t worry. After the examination, I’ll take you home. If you don’t mind staying over, even better. I’ll take you to work tomorrow morning. It won’t delay your job.”
“It’s fine. I don’t need to go to work tomorrow.”
Ran Fan lowered his head and explained, “I resigned today.”
Li Yang wasn’t surprised. He kept his eyes on the road as he drove. Rain blurred the scenery ahead, then with a single sweep, it was wiped clean again, clear as a mirror.
Ran Fan continued, “I want to go somewhere for a while.”
“Where to?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
The air fell into a brief, profound silence. Ran Fan hurriedly patched it up in a stiff, awkward tone: “I’m not trying to run away.”
Li Yang was amused and chuckled softly, saying nothing more.
The car fell quiet like that.
Say something, Ran Fan thought, racking his brains with all his might yet no matter how hard he tried, nothing came to mind.
At that moment, the blanket on his legs was lifted by the man beside him and drawn up from his knees to his shoulders, wrapping him in a gentle, spreading warmth.
Li Yang said, “It’s fine. The road ahead is long. Get some sleep.”
He didn’t know how much time passed before Ran Fan was awakened by the surging, overlapping sound of water.
He hadn’t expected that with his heart pounding in such chaotic disorder, he would actually fall asleep. Still half-dazed, he wondered why it didn’t sound like rain. Then he opened his eyes and saw, beyond the highway in the distance,
the heaving, roaring surface of the sea.
Stars filled the sky; beneath them lay the black ocean. The rain had stopped.
The windows were shut tight, without a single crack yet in his haze he could almost smell the sea breeze rushing toward him.
S City bordered the sea. On the outskirts of the bustling metropolis lay a scenic central island, heavily frequented by tourists. Several large attractions stood on the island, making it a widely known stretch of land worth its weight in gold.
Ran Fan had once wanted to come here with Jiang Minyu for a long time but for many reasons it never happened. He hadn’t expected that under such circumstances, he would set foot on this land for the first time.
Li Yang drove along the ring road all the way to halfway up the mountain, stopping at the entrance of an enormous private villa estate. The estate backed onto the sea, with endless greenery spread before it. In a daze, Ran Fan was guided out by Li Yang’s hand at his back.
He murmured blankly, “I thought we were going to the hospital.”
“Hospitals are crowded and full of prying eyes. There are fewer people here, though the location is more remote. Would you dislike it?”
Ran Fan was at a loss for words.
There were already people waiting inside the house. Just as Li Yang had said, the moment Ran Fan arrived, an entire medical team gathered around him.
The house had four floors. The entire third floor was filled with medical equipment. Li Yang showed Ran Fan the doctors’ résumés, every one of them had more years of professional experience than Ran Fan had been alive.
Ran Fan ate, slept and followed the doctors along the whole way. By the time dawn faintly broke, all the examinations were completed.
The results were the same as before: his physical condition was good.
Li Yang stayed by his side throughout, never leaving. After confirming that Ran Fan wasn’t in a hurry to go home, he suggested that Ran Fan rest in one of the upstairs rooms.
Everything seemed to flow naturally but when Ran Fan reached the room and looked around, he froze. The layout was exactly the same as his own bedroom at home, the sheets and quilt were even the same color and style.
Ran Fan stared in a daze. Li Yang stopped at the doorway and said, “I’ve signed confidentiality agreements with the team. Your medical information won’t be leaked.”
“Additionally, I’ll have them prepare two plans. One to ensure you can safely carry the pregnancy to term and another to ensure that the fetus can be terminated smoothly with the smallest possible impact on your bodily functions.”
“You don’t need to feel any psychological pressure.”
Ran Fan nodded along as Li Yang spoke. He kept nodding and as he did, the sounds around him fell quiet. He waited a few seconds, then lifted his head in confusion. Li Yang was looking down at him, eyes lowered, smiling as he said, “You finally looked at me.”
A composed, mature, older man was “smiling” at him.
Ran Fan was momentarily at a loss.
Li Yang asked again, “Do you mind very much that I am Jiang Minyu’s biological father?”
Surprise flashed across Ran Fan’s face. In the next second, he fell into speechless silence, his throat feeling as though it had been filled with glue, unable to produce a single sound.
Had he never thought about it? Had he truly never thought about it?
There had been far too much time for him to think.
He couldn’t answer.
Li Yang’s next words followed, accompanied by his face moving closer. “Do you despise me? An old man like me, knowing that you are my son’s lover yet still approaching you.”
The distance between them shortened but not excessively so. Li Yang’s sense of distance never made anyone feel uncomfortable.
A thin sheen of sweat appeared on Ran Fan’s nose. He knew he shouldn’t yet he still couldn’t help letting his gaze wander. He turned his eyes away and said in a rush, flustered and confused, “I’m not his lover. We already broke up.”
It was Jiang Minyu who no longer wanted him. A sharp pain pricked Ran Fan’s heart but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. “Mr. Li.. I… I…”
Before he could finish, Li Yang took the initiative to interrupt him. “You are a soft hearted person. You are kind to people, you have compassion for small animals. You are a better person than most. You know I’m not joking. You know whether my feelings are sincere or not, don’t you?”
“You don’t despise me. You’re just hurt and you’re still sad. Very sad. Extremely sad.”
“So don’t rush to reject me, alright? You have every reason to be sad. You just need to let yourself be sad, as you wish, until you have the space in your heart again, until you heal.”
The words that followed were a good night. Very soft.
After the door closed, Ran Fan lay face down on the bed. A constant ringing filled his ears, drowning out the sound of his breathing, drowning out the sound of the waves.
His eyes slowly grew moist.
That morning, Ran Fan hardly slept at all.
He held his phone, opened the notes app, skipped past countless memos he had made for the animals received at the hospital and created a brand-new blank page.
He calculated his savings. If he wanted to go somewhere, to travel for a while, he would need financial support.
And he had no money.
After subtracting the mortgage payments, the remainder of his salary plus side income could hardly be called comfortable. After breaking up with Jiang Minyu, Jiang Minyu had once transferred him a sum of money, which he had returned in full.
It wasn’t stubborn pride or a forced attempt to preserve his dignity. Looking back carefully over the entirety of his relationship with Jiang Minyu, Jiang Minyu had not actually taken advantage of him financially.
In the beginning, Jiang Minyu often ate and slept at his place. During university, there had even been times when Jiang Minyu asked Ran Fan to advance tuition fees but later he had repaid everything through part time work.
When they were deeply in love, the giving had gone both ways.
Jiang Minyu was a very strong-willed person, decisive, impulsive, easily angered but in terms of character, he was not someone who only knew how to take. He had accompanied Ran Fan through many lonely and difficult stretches of time. Passionate, reckless, charging headlong into everything, he brought plenty of trouble into Ran Fan’s life but he also gave him direction, pulling him forward.
Because of all this, even though Jiang Minyu had been cruel, whenever Ran Fan thought of him, he could never simply set aside his sadness and turn it into resentment. He couldn’t let go so easily.
Jiang Minyu had once been good to him.
And now, he no longer loved him.
How, then, could he get money?
Ran Fan already had an answer in his heart. He had thought it through the moment he submitted his resignation.
As dawn approached, after staring into space for a long time, Ran Fan contacted a real estate agent and listed the apartment he had bought for Jiang Minyu, the home that had once belonged to the two of them together, on a property sales app.
Sleep came only very late.
As he drifted off drowsily, Ran Fan thought: when he wakes up, he still needs to go to the pet hospital again.
To take that raccoon cat away.
He slept for only a few hours. Around noon, Ran Fan woke up.
Perhaps because he had thought about it before falling asleep, he kept hearing faint cat cries by his ear after waking. The tone was very familiar, a chaotic, gruff sound exactly like that of his own big, fat cat.
He paused for a moment, then suddenly sat up in bed, followed the sound downstairs and discovered in astonishment that there really was a cat circling the dining table with its tail held high, looping around again and again.
If it wasn’t the raccoon cat being fostered at the hospital, then who else could it be?
The chubby raccoon cat was inspecting its new environment. When it saw Ran Fan, it didn’t react, continuing to poke its head around nervously, looking everywhere.
Ran Fan couldn’t hide his shock and looked toward Li Yang, who was sitting on a dining chair.
The man was wearing a fitted set of sportswear, which made his well-proportioned physique even more apparent, strikingly different from others of his age.
“……Mr. Li, how did it end up here?”
He knew it was a pointless question, the answer was already there the moment he asked but Li Yang still replied, “I thought you’d be worried, so I went and got it for you.”
“You went yourself?”
“……………My colleagues didn’t say anything to you, did they?”
In truth, there really wasn’t anything. By the time one reached Li Yang’s age, some things, no matter how firmly suppressed, would still seep out through every tiny crack. From many years ago onward, there had been very few people who would actively strike up conversations with him or joke around in front of him.
But seeing the anxious, flustered look on Ran Fan’s face, Li Yang said aloud, “Everyone is a decent person. They were all very polite to me. Whatever they might be thinking inside, at least they didn’t say anything outright. They didn’t mistake us for father and son.”
“How could they possibly think we’re father and son?”
Ran Fan grew a little frantic. “We don’t look alike at all and besides, Mr. Li looks so young.”
Li Yang said, “Do I look young?”
“Very young.”
“I thought I had already lost my appeal.”
“How could that be?”
To anyone’s eyes, Li Yang was unquestionably a man full of charm, thoroughly so, in every aspect.
All of a sudden, Li Yang laughed.
Ran Fan’s words came to a halt and he realized the man was teasing him.
To the outside world, he was someone who gave off a reliable impression yet in front of Li Yang he felt inexplicably diminished. Under Li Yang’s smiling gaze, he stiffened completely.
At that, Li Yang chose not to push it further. He gestured for him to sit down and said, “Good afternoon. Let’s have a meal together before you go.”
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
The chapter has ended. The coffee propaganda begins.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Let’s break upChapter 2 · A hand landed on Ran Fan’s backChapter 3 · Jiang Wenyu’s biological fatherChapter 4 · Li Yang kissed him againChapter 5 · Could you come to the hospital?Chapter 6 · I hope you can give birthChapter 7 · Are you bothered by the fact that I am Jiang Wenyu’s biological father?Chapter 8 · Don’t you think I’m ordinary?Chapter 9 · Don’t consider it me going back on my wordChapter 10 · You are a truly remarkable personChapter 11 · Would you say you’re cold-hearted towards Ran Fan?Chapter 12 · Dr. Ran resigned several months ago.Chapter 13 · Can we meet up?Chapter 14 · You also know the child’s fatherChapter 15 · You are the most important to meChapter 16 · Extra 1Chapter 17 · Extra 2Chapter 18 · Extra 3