Lop-Eared Guard

Lu Shangjin slammed the door and left. He sat in the car and smoked one cigarette after another, until his buzzing temples were completely numbed and calmed by the nicotine.

Yan Yi’s fearful and pleading look came back to his mind. 

Lu Shangjin pressed his chest as he lay on the steering wheel to endure the rapid spasmic throbbing of his heart beat. Legs numb with icy coldness, he couldn’t feel anything when he stepped on the accelerator. 

This was probably the most unbridled manic rage he had ever experienced in his life. 

For the next two days, Lu Shangjin spent the night in the company and didn’t go back home. 

Most of the contracts piled on the desk had been signed, and only a stack of Jiu’An Hong Ye contracts were left. Lu Shangjin didn’t have the mood to open them at all, so he simply put them on hold. 

At first, the president of Jiu’An Hong Ye called to ask for them, but dared not ask again after sensing that something was wrong. 

After the meeting, Xia Pingtian came out of the meeting room with his face as black as coal. 

What the hell was Lu Shangjin tossing about for? Was he going against the Hong Ye Xia family? Several delayed contracts were almost overdue, yet he didn’t do anything. What was he doing? 

The baby left by his dad should have had a short life. It had multiple organ failures, so who could save it? He wouldn’t go as far as to bury the Hong Ye Xia’s name with it, would he?

The more he thought about it, the more his anger built up. He couldn’t help but call Lu Shangjin. If he still didn’t pick up, he would ask the driver to take him to Chang Hui immediately. 

Lu Shangjin picked up after ten rings. 

Xia Pingtian held back his fire and asked Lu Shangjin nicely.

Lu Shangjin asked lightly, “Did you help your little brother find Yan Yi?”

“Ah? I didn’t.” Xia Pingtian choked. He did help Xia Jingtian check, but he probably didn’t do anything. 

“You have a good little brother.”

Lu Shangjin hung up the phone.

Xia Pingtian’s breath caught in his throat. He then grabbed the assistant by the collar, “Go, bring me the examination report of that someone Lu Shangjin took for a check-up last time.”

He ripped off his tie in a fit of rage before going downstairs and drove to Xia Jingtian’s school.

Xia Jingtian was usually too lazy to go home and occasionally stayed in the dorms. The entrance guard uncle didn’t stop Xia Pingtian, letting him break into the dormitory building with a few alphas.

Xia Jingtian was really too lazy to go home these days. 

After coming back from Ruins bar, he had been holed up in school and didn’t move much.

His roommate was bent over his desk working on a drawing, while he was leaning against his bed with an old notebook, in a daze.

He brought this notebook out from the second floor bedroom of Ruins bar and had gone through it several times so far.

This little rabbit’s handwriting was as delicate and pretty as himself. 

Besides some memo notes written on the corner of the notebook, the majority of it was like a diary where the happiness or unhappiness of life were written down, and there would be scores related to Lu Shangjin written beside.  

Reading page after page, loneliness could be felt between the lines. 

The score had clearly been reduced to a negative number, but a sentence of “take you home” fully added it up again. 

Ordinary, insignificant little things filled the entire notebook. It was like Xia Jingtian walked through a decade accompanying a teenage little rabbit. 

“Jingtian…are you okay?” His roommate put down his outliner pen and hurried to Xia Jingtian’s bedside. Xia Jingtian was leaning against the pillow with one leg bent; his eyelids were a little swollen and his eyes were red, dispirited and listless. 

“Have you ever liked someone so much that you feel heartache when you look at them from afar?”

His roommate’s mouth opened slightly and he shook his head. 

The hidden security door of the dormitory was kicked open with a loud bang. Xia Pingtian walked in in an aggressive manner, while several burly bodyguards rushed in and took the roommate out before shutting the door.

Only the two brothers were left in the room.

Xia Pingtian firmly grabbed Xia Jingtian’s arm and forcefully yanked him down from the bed, then raised his hand to slap him, roaring with rage, “How capable you are! You’re quite good, playing with someone’s wife until they have a false pregnancy. You learn from the bad but not from good. Fine, this is how I’ll fucking teach you!”

He withdrew the strength in his hand. But Xia Jingtian was still shocked by his sudden slap.

“You like that little rabbit, don’t you?” Xia Pingtian slapped a pile of examination reports onto Xia Jingtian’s hand, “Look how much misery you caused someone – forced abortion of false pregnancy. Lu Shangjin did it himself.”

Xia Jingtian gritted his teeth and looked down to glance over the examination report. The four words ‘diagnosis of false pregnancy’ pricked his eyes. 

Forced abortion?

How much pain and fear he must have been in? 

“I’m sorry…” Xia Jingtian flipped through the examination report, surprised and flustered, “I accompanied him to get a checkup before, but the examination said he really was pregnant.” 

“Over so many years, the diagnoses at An Fei Ya hospital have never been wrong.” Xia Pingtian turned his back and lit a cigarette to try to constrain the anger washing over his irritable mind. 

“There must be a problem. That hospital must have done something wrong, I’ll go check it out.”

Xia Pingtian grabbed his wrist, “If you dare walk out of this door today, don’t call me ge in the future.”

Xia Jingtian threw his hand off, “You think you’re capable of beating me to death?”

With a malicious rage rushing to his head, Xia Pingtian suddenly activated his J1 ability of gravity control, forcefully pressing Xia Jingtian onto the floor before taking out a pair of handcuffs from his pocket to lock them around Xia Jingtian’s hands.

“I’ll beat you to death when I get back, little beast. Go apologize to the one surnamed Lu. This situation happened because you’re fucking unreasonable, and you don’t feel wronged at all ,making me completely lose face.” Xia Pingtian lifted his little brother, who was struggling with his teeth gnashing in anger, and called the bodyguards to come and get him down and take him away. 

Xia Jingtian was then brought back home by his older brother and was grounded for two days, not allowed to leave his room at all. 

On the second night, Xia Pingtian felt uneasy and came in to have a look. 

His little brother was lying on his back on the bed as he flipped through an old notebook, his eyes dim.

Xia Pingtian placed the white fungus soup he brought in on the table and sat on the edge of the bed, “Xiao Jingzi, have you come around? Will you apologize?”

“If I wanted to apologize, I’d apologize to Yan Yi. The one surnamed Lu isn’t worthy of it. He’s a scumbag, and has never put Yan Yi in his eyes.” Xia Jingtian turned over, his back facing his brother, “You hit me and even handcuffed me. You should apologize to me first.” 

Xia Pingtian took a deep breath, “I’m sorry, okay? Turn around and let me see if you’re hurt or not.”

When he turned around, Xia Pingtian looked down and saw that there seemed to be a little swelling. 

“Take an egg to put on it.” As soon as Xia Pingtian turned to ask the auntie at home to cook an egg and looked back, Xia Jingtian raised his right hand towards him.

“Fuck! You bastard, what are you…” The force of gravity around Xia Pingtian instantly changed direction, catching him off guard as he was sucked and flew out of the room, crashing into the wall with a bang. 

Xia Jingtian slipped out from under his nose and even locked the door.

“Little brat! Come back here!” 

The bedroom door was smashed to pieces with a loud crash. 

    ——

Since Lu Shangjin started living  at the company, it was like a mute button had been pressed in the office building for four days, except for the occasional sound of Lu Shangjin’s hurried footsteps passing by and greetings from employees who were painstakingly overcautious of offending him in the slightest. 

President Zhao’s face was overcast when he came out of Lu Shangjin’s office. He held a pile of messy documents in his hands which were obviously thrown to the ground by Lu Shangjin before he hurriedly picked them up. 

Lu Shangjin wasn’t someone who would easily bring their personal feelings into work. More often than not, he would generally be coldly indifferent and uninterested in anything, and really wouldn’t be irritable.

In surprise, everyone was guessing whether some major changes had happened to the big boss. 

Four to five days passed and Lu Shangjin’s anger had faded into numbness. His head cleared a little as he scrolled through his phone repeatedly.

There was no news from Yan Yi. 

Shouldn’t Yan Yi apologize to him?

Whether it was the video or false pregnancy, it was all Yan Yi’s fault. No matter how fickle he was, at least he would never seek pleasure when he hadn’t broken up with Yan Yi.

Yan Yi’s expression of frantic struggling and pleading cry came to his mind again. 

He kept saying that he didn’t know, kept saying that he was really pregnant with a baby.

So many years had passed, and the words he and Yan Yi spoke to each other became fewer and fewer. In the end, there was nearly not much of an exchange outside of their missions. However, after thinking about it carefully, Yan Yi really had never lied to him before. 

After his wrath, some traces and clues that didn’t make sense suddenly poured into his mind. 

At that time, if he hadn’t messed up the medical kit when looking for inhibitors, he wouldn’t have gone to the storage room to look for alcohol, nor would he have found the pregnancy examination report that Yan Yi had hidden under the pillow in the closet.

Yan Yi’s reaction had merely been of surprise and panic, but not a guilty expression.

He obviously knew that if he were pregnant, he would definitely take him to the hospital for a full examination. Why didn’t he resist then, and even obediently followed him to have an examination?

Was it because he really believed that he was pregnant?

Since it was a false pregnancy, why did that hospital give a pregnancy diagnosis? 

Was it a misdiagnosis? 

With a lot of details piecing together, it made Lu Shangjin, who had always been sensitive and vigilant, to not believe that this was just a coincidence. 

In fact, if he could have been more calm and trusted Yan Yi a little more then, he would not have done something so out of line.

He should have thought of it sooner; Yan Yi would hardly lie. 

Feeling agitated again, he would rather not think about these things and continue to feel at ease and justified by blaming Yan Yi for all the mistakes the two should have borne together. 

But what if Yan Yi didn’t lie to him?

Would he be thinking that he deliberately killed his baby to this day?

Lu Shangjin stood up with a cold expression, taking his suit jacket and car keys.

He wanted to ask him clearly.

His forced compression for his false pregnancy abortion was just to punish him, to give him a good feel of pain and simplyfor him to reflect on his mistakes. 

Moreover, the false pregnancy should be dealt with as soon as possible or it would do more harm. 

Yan Yi couldn’t mistake him for a murderer; this he couldn’t bear. 

He had to ask him clearly. 

The assistant walked in and hurried to stop Lu Shangjin when he saw that he wanted to leave, “The meeting today is very important, you can’t not attend it.”

Lu Shangjin pushed the assistant aside irritably, “Go change the time to next week.”

It was only a half an hour drive from the company to home. On the way, Lu Shangjin ran several red lights. Perhaps he didn’t like to be misunderstood, but besides this reason, Lu Shangjin couldn’t understand the panic that he was about to lose something. 

When he opened the door, he found that it was unlocked. The string in his heart which wound tighter and tighter immediately stretched taut and he instantly felt pain.

There was a puddle of dried water marks spilled on the floor of the foyer. 

The ceramic flower vase was broken into several pieces and the withered roses were lying in the water, their slightly curled petals scattered all over the ground.

Lu Shangjin froze and focused his eyes on one point, a dried petal reflecting in the pupils of his eyes. 

“Yan Yan?”

Lu Shangjin walked into the dining room, hoping to see the little rabbit still making fish soup in the kitchen. 

The kitchen was empty and the pot of fish soup was still there, the soup emitting a spoiled and putrid smell. 

He searched around the large house, but there was no trace of Yan Yi anywhere.  

“Did you…go out?” Lu Shangjin stood in the empty living room, trying to think of where else Yan Yi might be.

He suddenly thought of a place and quickly headed to the storage room, opening the closet door, “Why are you sleeping here again?”

The pillows and quilts in the closet were in a mess, with the things scattered everywhere, and the white sheets still stained with dried blood.

Yan Yi wasn’t here. 

But he could imagine the little rabbit once hiding here in fear, hugging a pillow and trembling in the dark as he waited for someone to take him away or save him with soothing pheromones. 

Lu Shangjin held the closet door and was frozen for a long time. His heart that was hot from anger gradually turned cool and a layer of frost formed. 

There was an old book by the pillow. It was a thin palm-sized book which he had often seen Yan Yi holding recently. 

He picked it up and looked through it. The water of the petals that were pressed inside before had been absorbed by the pages, turning them into thin pieces of specimens that were semi-dry. 

Some feelings were occasionally written on the black spaces.

‘I thought I didn’t like roses, but my nose still turned sour when I received a bouquet of them, because he gifted them to me.’

‘Baby is half a month old, is very good every day, unlike other babies, kick kick kick kick and making daddy feel tired and uncomfortable.’

Turning to another page, there were a few names starting with the word “Lu”. The little rabbit had written a dozen or so of it and circled the names that sounded good. 

Lu Shangjin saw that he had circled “Lu Yuan” and crossed out “Lu Yan”. 

Did he think that his own name shouldn’t appear on the baby?

Yan Yi…

Really thought that he was pregnant with his baby.

And he firmly believed it. He had looked forward to the arrival of the baby even more each day. 

Lu Shangjin’s legs turned soft as he stumbled into the door, his face gradually stiffened and turned pale.

He sniffed carefully. The narrow room was permeated with the scent of opium poppy pheromones. 

There was a strand of sticky spider web on the door handle.