Chapter 14: 14

Warning: Depictions of child abuse

 

Ye Ci was unable to withstand the tricky maneuver and hurriedly denied: “I, I’m not angry with you.”

He couldn’t figure out where the panic was coming from, but it absolutely wasn’t anger.

“Really?” Huo Tinglan confirmed.

The two were so close that Ye Ci could almost feel that velvet-thin Adam’s apple vibrating when Huo Tinglan spoke.

He felt tingly.

Scratching his intolerably itchy ears, he was inexplicably worried: “Really. Hurry, hurry and get busy.”

“I’ll go. By the way . . . .” Huo Tinglan smiled, staring at Ye Ci’s little red ears. Ultimately, because those ears were so red that it broke his heart, he unhurriedly leaned against the door and asked in a low voice: “Dinner may be a little later today. Are you hungry? Should I have someone bring some refreshments? What do you want to eat, sweet or salty . . . .”

What he said was clearly serious, but whether it was because his tone was too gentle or what, it sounded like charming, sultry lovers’ talk.

“. . . .What? That, sweet . . . .” Ye Ci was confused and didn’t know what was going on. He only knew that voice made his ears numb, and he looked at Huo Tinglan as if begging for help. “Salty too . . . . either way is fine.”

The Alpha glands on the back of his neck were restless. Huo Tinglan became increasingly enthusiastic and teased with a smile: “Want something to drink? Tea? Juice?”

“Which, whichever.”

“Does Darjeeling black tea sound good at the moment?”

“Okay, Huo-shushu, I still have a lot of homework, and I have to hurry up and write.”

“. . . . . .”

Seeing that Ye Ci would collapse if he kept teasing him, only then did Huo Tinglan restrain his remarkable abilities, turning around and closing the door. The room was quiet. Ye Ci sat at the desk and hurriedly spread out the papers, writing at a tremendous speed. He rubbed his ears from time to time and the tip of the pen made a rustling sound.

After grinding through the questions for a while, Ye Ci’s mood gradually settled down and his attention was successfully focused on the paper. 

Thanks to Huo Tinglan’s guidance these days, he had made rapid progress. Both sets of papers were stage test papers, and the knowledge points targeted were the new content learned in the classroom in the past two months. Not many of the topics gave him trouble.

The midterm exam was a few days later, and the ranking was hard to predict. After all, a large portion of the second-to-last exam since the beginning of school had thrown him, but his score should improve a lot.

After finishing the two sets of papers, Ye Ci finally got back some sense of how it had felt to do practice questions before he dropped out of school. In a rare carefree mood, he shook his sore hand and intended to rest for a few minutes before starting on language and literature.

Just then, a few cries from a cat came from outside the door.

Ye Ci raised his eyes, opened the door, and anxiously looked around the corridor.

A chubby Napoleon Bantam cat was in the corner, its bright satin-like fur puffed up slightly with anger. Ye Ci’s “half-sibling” younger brother, Chu Rui, was shooting rubber bullets at it with a toy gun that he had obtained from somewhere.

Chu Rui was eight years old this year. He had inherited the vicious selfishness in Chu Wenlin’s bones and was very spoiled by his grandmother, so willful that not the slightest bit of cultured upbringing from a prominent family could be seen. Chu Wenlin and his mother, Ruan Jaiyi, were attending the tea party just now, and although he reluctantly pretended to be obedient for a while, as soon as he slipped out of the jurisdiction of the adults, he immediately revealed his true nature.

Ye Ci hadn’t spoken to him much. Leaving aside not wanting to, there was just no chance.

– – If one little thing went wrong, he would scream like a scalded pig.

Ye Ci glanced at Chu Rui and didn’t say a word. He quietly picked up the cat, rubbed the place where it was hurt by the rubber bullet, and turned back to the room. In his arms, the fat little cat acted coy. Seeing that Ye Ci was treating him kindly, he wiggled around and meowed, complaining tenderly.

The corners of Ye Ci’s mouth turned up as he ignored Chu Rui’s loud shouts behind him.

He was simulating the sound of gunshots: “Bang! Bang, bang, bang!”

Immediately after, a rubber bullet hit him in the back of the head.

His skull was struck painfully, feeling as if the little boy had punched him with all this strength in his defenseless state. There was even a moment of darkness in front of Ye Ci’s eyes.

The destructive power of this toy gun was incredible, and if aimed at the eyes, it could knock a person out.

“Hahahaha!” Chu Rui laughed excitedly and jumped around. The fat mounds of his face were stained with a few uneven patches of red, with a pair of tiny eyes sunk into the flesh.

Even more like a pig.

Ye Ci took a deep breath and didn’t dare to look back.

He could imagine Chu Rui’s disgusting appearance at this time, and feared that he would not be able to resist the urge to use violence against an eight-year-old child.

However, reasoning with this little beast would only bring shame on himself, not to mention . . . . he also needed the medical expenses provided by Chu Wenlin, so he couldn’t be impulsive.

Ignoring him was the only way.

He walked back to the room, and an insult suddenly came from behind him: “Bastard.”

The child’s voice was crisp and bright, but had a natural maliciousness.

As well as a sick excitement.

Seeing that Ye Ci didn’t attack and just walked back quietly, Chu Rui became more courageous. He smiled and sang like a children’s song: “Bastard, lowlife . . . .”

He was as excited as a novice experimenter who had stolen several dangerous reagents and thrown them into the cage, impatiently observing the reactions of the lab animal.

The eight-year-old child could say childish things, but was terribly cunning in some ways. He knew that this cheap brother couldn’t afford to offend him, and if he wanted to bully him, he would bully him.

Ye Ci closed his eyes and pretended not to hear.

Seeing that he was unmoved and ignoring him, Chu Rui was flustered and took out his trump card, shouting: “My mom said your mom was –”

“ ! ”

With just these few words, Ye Ci’s eardrums buzzed.

His mother was his weakness, the place he couldn’t let others trample upon him no matter how hard he swallowed back his voice . . . .

But at this moment, Chu Rui’s provocation stopped abruptly.

Huo Tinglan’s voice came from behind, calm and quiet, with no emotion to be heard: “Which family are you from?”

Ye Ci was startled and turned around.

Huo Tinglan stood beside Chu Rui, one slender-fingered hand covering Chu Rui’s fleshy head. Lightly and delicately, he directed Chu Rui’s face toward him and turned it left and right.

The gesture seemed less like identifying a dignified living person, than looking for a signature on a spherical handicraft.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!” Chu Rui used his special skill and screamed loudly.

Huo Tinglan nodded knowingly and let go.

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“Dad —-! Mom —-!” Chu Rui repeatedly bounced around and made an unreasonable scene, and then ran off to complain.

Ye Ci watched Chu Rui wailing away, his boiling blood cooled down, and he regained his sanity.

In fact, he had a very mild temper, and didn’t really get carried away by anger when he beat people up before, a habit that came from living in the slums. Most of the people there bullied the weak and feared the strong. If he didn’t fight and show his power when he encountered a challenge, he and his mother would live an uneasy life.

But Chu Rui wouldn’t really be able to affect him, there would be little chance to see him in the future, and the provocation just now had been interrupted.

So there was no need.

Taking a step back, he didn’t have the endless capital to get into it with someone just because of a few insults.

“Huo-shushu.” Ye Ci stood tall and straight, like bamboo that was impervious to wind and snow. He said with a calm tone: “Are, are you calling me to dinner?”

Huo Tinglan’s tall form stood quietly in the softly-lit corridor, looking at Ye Ci.

Ye Ci’s fingers on the cat’s ears were shaking.

He was pretending to be composed.

Seeking refuge and comfort in your own – if in name only – Alpha, acting like a spoiled child and complaining . . . . any of these things were justified in the eyes of an Omega. For Ye Ci, it was unimaginable.

In the face of difficulties, he always chose to be strong and brave.

After a moment of silence, Huo Tinglan smiled gently and said: “I just came up to see you . . . . you may have to wait a little longer for dinner, so why don’t you go back to your room and play with the cat?”

“Okay.” Ye Ci heaved a sigh of relief and hurried back to the room with the purring cat in his arms.

He had cat hair on his hands, and it was inconvenient to wipe his eyes.

Ye Ci turned his face to the side, rubbed the corners of his eyes on his shoulders, and then buried his wet face in the fluffy cat’s belly.

The cat’s body exuded the light fragrance of pet shampoo, and its soft, silky fur absorbed the scent well. Ye Ci was trampled on by those four soft feet for a while, and the knot in his heart dissipated a little.

At this moment, Chu Rui’s dying-pig squeal came through the floor from below.

He was probably being punished.

Ye Ci didn’t care, and was used to hearing it.

It was not necessarily the case that he was being punished – that kind of little brat could get into trouble eight hundred times a day.

But what was different from the past was that Chu Rui’s screams stopped abruptly after a few seconds. After a moment, the screams turned into howls. Even Meng Jiangnu[1] couldn’t compete with that kind of grievance and sadness.

– – Chu Rui truly cried.

Not howling, shouting, or screaming, but crying.

As indifferent as Ye Ci felt, unimaginably, he wanted to know what was going on.

Afraid of scaring the cat, he put it on the bed and followed the sound to find it. He didn’t have to walk very far, and only after descending a few stairs, he saw a few people standing or sitting in a small side hall on the first floor. Chu Rui’s fat face was imprinted with two bright red symmetrical slap prints. Chu Wenlin’s face was as ugly as a pig’s liver, and he pointed at Chu Rui’s nose as he violently shouted: “Go ahead and cry! You cry one more time!”

Huo Tinglan sat on the sofa, calm and elegant. As if he disliked the specks of spittle that Chu Rui spattered when he howled, he wiped the front of his suit with a square napkin. After wiping, he threw the expensive silk scarf into the wastebasket with a light gesture.

Chu Wenlin’s wife, Ruan Jiayi, was crying and didn’t care about being dignified. She jumped up and grabbed Chu Wenlin’s raised palm, but was berated by her husband.

“It’s all the shit you taught him!” Chu Wenlin turned his head and pointed at Ruan Jiayi, performing for anyone to see and scolding her just as hard for not knowing how to teach her child.

The disturbance escalated again.

Ruan Jiayi couldn’t bear the humiliation, so with another round of crying, she left with Chu Rui and did not attend the dinner.

After his wife and son left, Chu Wenlin was humble and pleaded guilty. He patted his chest and promised that he would strictly discipline his son when he got home, for fear that the two families would be at odds because of the younger son’s unintentional remarks, affecting their future cooperation.

“. . . . Mr. Chu’s words are too much.” Huo Tinglan’s wording was estranged, no matter that this was his father-in-law. “Moreover, there is no need for you to apologize to me. The object of your apology should be my little gentleman.”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Huo is right.” Chu Wenlin bowed his back, bowed his waist, and nodded his head like he was mashing garlic.

“Xiao Ci . . . .” Huo Tinglan tilted his head and calmly swept a sidelong gaze towards the stairs.

The shadowy kitten who was squatting on the stairs a moment ago had slipped away, obviously unwilling to come into contact with Chu Wenlin and disdaining his false apology.

Huo Tinglan smiled lightly and, fearing that the little ears in the wall might not be able to hear it clearly, turned the conversation and raised his voice: “. . . . has a generous character and doesn’t bother to care about these little things. He might turn around and just forget it, so it can only be his husband who cares in his place.”

Husband . . . .

Ye Ci tripped and almost stumbled on the stairs.

. . . . . .

When Huo Tinglan went upstairs to call Ye Ci for dinner, Ye Ci had slipped back into the room and cuddled the cat for a while.

There was a lot of noise in the side hall, and unless one was deaf, it would be difficult not to hear it. But Ye Ci didn’t know what to say. Someone had helped him vent his anger and teach others a lesson for him. This experience was too unfamiliar, and his heart seemed to be in a ball behind his rib cage, so aching and warm that it practically melted him.

Huo Tinglan leaned against the door with his arms folded, thought for a moment, and calmly helped him broach the subject: “Did you hear that just now?”

“. . . . En.” Ye Ci’s thin eyelids twitched slightly.

“I was simply teaching them a few lessons downstairs,” Huo Tinglan mentioned casually. “The noise was a bit loud, did it affect your studying?”

‘Them’ obviously referred to the Chu Wenlin family of three.

In terms of friendly family relations, Chu Wenlin and Huo Tinglan were considered peers, and were at least ten years older than him. In terms of marriage relationship, the father-in-law was a proper elder, and the word “teaching” was used quite arrogantly and rudely.

Yet, it was enough to work off one’s anger.

Ye Ci’s lips thinned, and he defended the absolute legitimacy of Huo Tinglan’s actions: “No, it didn’t disturb my studies. I was playing with the cat.”

Playing with the cat . . . .

Huo Tinglan lowered his head to smile.

Immediately, he suppressed his smile and said resolutely: “A good family banquet was thrown into chaos because of me. It is also my fault that I have a bad temper and couldn’t hold back in public, and forgot to save some face for Mr. Chu . . . .”

He was doing the self-criticism review, but the tone was teasing, and in his dark eyes there was a sort of tacit mischief with Ye Ci.

“You won’t blame me, will you?” He asked knowingly.

He wanted to get some sweetness from his innocent little lover.

He was taking credit.

[1] Meng Jiangnu is a folk tale heroine whose tears broke down a stretch of the Great Wall to reveal her husband’s body. ⮐

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