Lop-Eared Guard

Warning: self harm 

The room was lit with a lamp. Inside, there was an iron-railed bed. Xia Jingtian was lying against the bed board with his right hand handcuffed to the bed. 

He idly thumbed through Yan Yi’s notebook. 

Xia Jingtian had been confined for the past few days, so he was bored. The palm-sized notebook was flipped through a dozen times. It had become a little worn. 

What Gu Wei said was still right; If you don’t fall in love, you won’t face bullshit. 

The little rabbit was really good, but in the end, it wasn’t him in his heart.

There was a page on the notebook that was covered with tears. “Jin ge was hurt because of me,” was written, the plus sign was followed by a lot of zeros, giving Lu Shangjin a thousand points as he wished. 

He knew that the pursuit of his own sudden whim in any case could not withstand the ten years of someone’s pure friendship. 

There was rustling outside the square window opposite the bed, and the window lock was pulled open by a force of gravity. Xia Pingtian quietly came in, putting the insulated lunch box next to his pillow. 

“Pork rib soup, quickly eat while it’s hot.” Xia Pingtian stood by the broken bed and looked down at him. There were bruises all over his body from the iron bars. He felt around for the box of bruising ointment from his pocket and threw it at Xia Jingtian. 

“Look, look, what did I say?’ Xia Pingtian wandered around the confinement room in exasperation at his failures, “I asked you not to go out and find trouble. You’ve pissed off our dad right?” 

Xia Jingtian poked himself up to lean against the iron bars. With one leg up, he pillowed his head with his hand and looked at his brother, “Because I was busy sending Lu Shangjin locations at the time, so I didn’t have time to hide from dad’s people, otherwise dad wouldn’t have been able to catch me at all.” 

Xia Pingtian closed his eyes and held his forehead. 

“Ge, I want to go to the army.”

Xia Pingtian paused at the sudden sentence. He sat at the foot of the bed in silence, then took a cigarette and lighted it. 

“That is a tough place.” He took a breath, “Go to school. If you don’t want to work with me after you graduate, or you want to continue studying abroad or start your own business, anything is fine.” 

“I want to go to PBB.” Xia Jingtian repeated, used to being willfully stubborn with his brother.

While he searched overnight for Yan Yi’s whereabouts, he found a lot of little things he hadn’t noticed. 

In recent years, search notices had been flying everywhere. Many omegas had gone missing, but such news were like stones sinking into the sea, as if evaporating into thin air without a trace. 

Most of the missing omegas had a differentiation grade of J1 or so, and glandular hunters were inextricably linked to them. 

It turned out that the dark corners of the world sheltered evil and concealed corruption, invisible and untouchable to the young master in the ivory tower. 

“You should finish school first.” Xia Pingtian thought, “The publicity isn’t good these two years, Lu Lin is afraid to seize Gu Yuanzhi’s power. Recently, PBB…has been turbulent. We can’t even feel how deep the waters are.”

“Then you ask dad for a favour for me. Ask him to get me out there.” Xia Jingtian had to take the second best option, “I’ll go meet up with Lu Shangjin for the last time. I won’t stir up trouble for you.”

Xia Pingtian frowned, “Dad is in a fit of anger right now. He said that you made the Xia family lose face because of a little rabbit. If I go now to plead with him, I’ll be handcuffed next to you later.” 

“…” Xia Jingtian crossed his legs and lowered his head, “It’s so suffocating here.”

“Hah, you now know it’s suffocating.” Xia Pingtian snickered. 

This broken “tian” was also his own little brother. Watching his arrogance ground away and his head lowered, it made him a little bit unbearable instead.  

“Eat up first, I’ll figure out the rest.”

His phone vibrated. Xia Pingtian glanced down at it: it was Lu Shangjin. 

“Lu ge.”

Xia Jingtian immersed himself in eating. Hearing that it was Lu Shangjin, he glanced up and mouthed to ask his brother, “Found him?”

Xia Pingtian mouthed back, “None of your business.” 

The voice on the phone sounded helpless, almost pitiful:

“Pingtian, can a rabbit’s depression be treated?”  

When Xia Pingtian rushed to An Fei Ya hospital, Lu Shangjin had already been sitting on the bench in the corridor for a while, constantly pressing his hands to his eyes that were sore and swollen because of excessive late nights. 

Several experienced veteran professors were gathered in the meeting room, asking Lu Shangjin about the condition. 

“He recognizes me sometimes, but sometimes he doesn’t.” 

“I just went to peel an apple for him, but when I went back, I saw him slitting his wrists back and forth with a razor blade. It didn’t look like he was committing suicide. It’s self-harm.” 

“He has frequent outbursts of anger and breaks everything in sight before giving up.”

“He’s asleep in the closet now, I’ll have to rush back in a while.”

The old professors looked at each other and gave some advice to Lu Shangjin, telling him to go back and use more soothing pheromones. As long as he was always taken care of by the soothing pheromones of his marker, the state of his condition could gradually be managed. 

Lu Shangjin fell into a chair and clutched his head in pain. 

The spider probably used all his soothing pheromones on his brother and he looked at Yan Yan like he was admiring jewellery on the counter, or a new outfit on the runway, only not seeing him as a person. 

A young doctor suggested to cover up the mark, “If the fit between you and the patient is higher than the fit of the marker, a coverage mark can be achieved, but there is a risk of failure.”

With this statement made, the atmosphere in the conference room suddenly turned cold. 

Xia Pingtian gave a wink to the doctor who made the suggestion and patted Lu Shangjin’s shoulder. 

It was as if there was a dull knife cutting back and forth in Lu Shangjin’s heart.

It was the degree of fit yet again. 

Dazedly, he held the corner of the table to support his body, “Our…degree of fit is very low.”

The final result was to let Lu Shangjin go back to take care of the patient first and observe for a period of time. A doctor would then be sent to check it out. 

The young doctor secretly grabbed Xia Pingtian when he left the conference room and enquired in a whisper, his eyes shining, “Hey, hey, is this that- that young master Lu who was in the arms business before and is now out of the game? I have seen their helicopters abroad before. Shit, the flying eagle badge is very impressive.”

Xia Pingtian put his arm around his shoulder, “Little thing, the coverage mark you mentioned just now is enough for Lu Shangjin to chop you up a hundred times. He’s in a bad mood now and doesn’t have time to acknowledge you.” 

The young doctor was still curious, “How low is it really?” 

Xia Pingtian couldn’t hold back. He took a look behind him and said like it was a joke, “75%. It amuses me. I have never heard that 75% of the fit can be managed together, it’s a matter of life or death. Look at the way Lu Shangjin looks, how he has become. The whole circle is worried about him.”

The doctor was stunned, “So low? Then why do they want to get together…I have never met a couple with such a low degree of fit before.”

“You talk too much. Go wait for me at the office.” Xia Pingtian pinched his chin and wrapped a hand around the small waist under the white coat, “Close your mouth tighter for things you shouldn’t talk about.” 

It was said that the new goods was an expert in the field of glandular research, and he was a highly qualified student who came back from abroad, quite energetic. Fortunately, he hadn’t pissed off Lu Shangjin just now. Otherwise, this little love would’ve died young.

Lu Shangjin didn’t dare to delay outside for too long. He didn’t find anyone to take care of Yan Yi, as ordinary nannies simply could not handle the tantrums when Yan Yi was ill. Senior-ranked bodyguards were only alphas, which could stimulate Yan Yi’s destructive desire even more. 

That said, how many bodyguards were capable of holding down a rampaging little rabbit now?

The elevator went up from the garage to the first floor. Lu Shangjin pressed the elevator door button anxiously and he squeezed out just as the doors opened a crack, not bothering to change his shoes and take off his coat before running to the storeroom and gently pulling open the closet door. 

Yan Yi was nestled into a ball, still sleeping quietly. 

Lu Shangjin sat on a small bench used to cushion his feet in the storage room and gently touched the little rabbit’s tail.

On his way back, his right eye kept twitching, afraid that the little rabbit had made some big move that would break the sky and earth again. He was already mentally prepared to see the villa in ruins and had asked his assistant to arrange for a new house.

He accompanied him quietly. 

Now, as long as the little rabbit was well, he was willing to do anything. 

Yan Yi twitched in his sleep, his calf suddenly tensing up. The little rabbit’s face crumpled as he held his calf in a daze, “It hurts…”

Lu Shangjin hurriedly picked him up and held in his arms to support his cramped calf, pressing and kneading with moderate pressure, while bowing his head to comfort, “It won’t hurt, it’ll be okay soon, ge is here.” 

Yan Yi broke out of his hazy sleep and opened his eyes dazedly, mumbling repeatedly:

“Ge…”

“Good boy.” Lu Shangjin carried him, “Let’s go eat, let’s go eat something.” 

He hired a cook two days ago, but was kicked out by Yan Yi. 

After ordering takeout, Yan Yi overturned everything again and asked for Lu Shangjin’s phone. 

Lu Shangjin handed it to him, and he called the police extremely slowly. 

Saying that his alpha was going to poison him with takeout. 

Lu Shangjin had no choice but to cook. 

Yan Yi’s attitude towards Lu Shangjin was also suddenly even colder and colder, but at least Lu Shangjin was the only alpha who could get close to him, as if the emperor had appointed his favourite concubine to serve him.

Lu Shangjin locked all the sharp weapons in the entire villa into the basement, so the tableware had been replaced with wooden ones. 

Carrying Yan Yi, he slightly swayed his body and asked gently, “Yan Yan, eat some shrimp for dinner to supplement calcium, okay?”

Hearing the word “shrimp”, Yan Yi froze, then he struggled frantically in Lu Shangjin’s arms. Both his hands were about to lift the table again, but Lu Shangjin grabbed them and pressed them onto his heart, “Good boy, we won’t eat shrimp, we won’t eat this. What do you want to eat?” 

Yan Yi fell into a daze for a long time, and said he wanted to have winter melon soup. 

“Alright, winter melon soup.” Lu Shangjin held him and lowered his head to kiss his hair, “Be good and sit for a while, ge will make winter melon soup for you.”

The good thing was that someone would deliver fresh ingredients every day. Lu Shangjin rummaged through the refrigerator and actually found a piece of winter melon wrapped in plastic wrap. 

He went through the refrigerator for a while. When he went back to look for Yan Yi, he was crouched in a ball sitting on a chair. He had broken the wooden plate on the table and was trying to poke the tip of the wood through his palm. 

“Don’t move!” Lu Shangjin ran over and grabbed the wooden plate and looked closely at his hands. There was only a red mark on the palm and no blood. 

He took a deep breath and picked up Yan Yi, patting his back, “Baby, don’t be like this.” 

Yan Yi was indifferent and said lightly, “Winter melon soup.”

Lu Shangjin could only carry him to the empty cupboard by the kitchen counter and glanced at him every now and then, before searching on the Internet for tutorials on how to make winter melon soup.

The hands that used to carry sniper rifles and tactical daggers looked a little clumsy slicing up the winter melon.

Once he threw all the pieces of winter melon, which were cut into irregular shapes, into the boiling water, Lu Shangjin averted his gaze to look after Yan Yi. Yan Yi was sitting obediently in the cupboard, as if only the small narrow space could make him feel safe. 

After tossing about for over an hour, Lu Shangjin picked up Yan Yi with one hand and let him sit on his forearm, while putting the winter melon soup on the table with the other. 

“Come Yan Yan, let’s eat.” Lu Shangjin held him to sit on his lap, scooping up a spoonful and blowing on it to cool, before feeding Yan Yi. 

Yan Yi tasted it. 

“This is pumpkin soup.”

Lu Shangjin froze for a long time and tasted it himself. Except for putting a little less salt, the taste was average, but it should be winter melon.

He coaxed softly, “Don’t fuss, baby, it’s winter melon soup.”

Yan Yi raised his round almond eyes, still expressionless in his gaze as he said softly:

“Then I want to eat pumpkin soup.”