Chapter 3#
So… Big!#
The pitch-black, dense night was lit by a warm lamp in one corner. A fine, drizzling rain spilled into the open-air corridor, the light hazy and blurred, as if one had wandered by mistake into someone’s nocturnal dream.
Zhen Ye’s heart pounded chaotically. For a brief moment, he wanted to walk straight up—whether to strike up a conversation or just chat, so long as he could learn the other’s name.
He stepped forward, and the rainwater pooled in the hollows eagerly seeped into his cracked, splitting shoes. The wet, cold socks, the numb, frozen toes—they instantly yanked him back to reality.
He looked down, but saw his own reflection in the puddles.
Exhausted. Bedraggled.
The spark-like thought died in an instant.
On the phone, his grandmother, upon hearing that he’d found a direction forward, hung up with peace of mind.
Zhen Ye gripped his umbrella, standing in the shadows of the corridor, tucking his mud-stained sneakers further into the dark.
He looked back at the man beneath the lamp, took a deep breath, and asked: “Excuse me, how do I get to Building 4?”
The Alpha had been sitting, but now he turned sideways. The faint, whirring sound of mechanical axles made Zhen Ye suddenly see and realize—the other man was sitting in a wheelchair.
His gaze traveled from the man’s waist to the cashmere blanket draped over his knees, and further down, he could faintly make out a leg peeking from the blanket’s edge. On the other side, where the calf should have been, it was empty.
Though he was a stranger, Zhen Ye couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret. For someone so handsome and elegant to be physically disabled—the man must have gone through a painfully unbearable period.
Zhen Ye himself had once been severely injured, with fractures, and had been admitted to the ICU. He could fully imagine how agonizing it was to lose the ability to walk.
At that moment, the man answered in a gentle voice: “Go out this way along the corridor, take the second right turn, and it’s that building.”
Zhen Ye silently gripped the umbrella handle harder, bowed his head slightly, and said “Thank you.” Then, imperceptibly, he tilted most of the umbrella toward the streetlamp side.
He walked quickly, almost as if fleeing. And so he failed to notice the stone slab beneath his feet, pushed up by plant roots.
Suddenly, his toe slammed into the protruding edge. His body tilted, and in the next instant, he lost his balance entirely, pitching forward in a sharp fall.
“Careful—”
The urgent rattle of wheelchair wheels.
Zhen Ye’s vision plummeted; the damp, filthy ground rushed toward his face. But the next second, it was cut short, landing him on a warm-toned woolen blanket.
Rong Yu held his slim waist, catching him steadily in his embrace.
Zhen Ye was dizzy for a moment, his fingernails sinking into the soft, light-brown cashmere. Noticing the wrong texture, he looked up in shock—only to meet the man’s downward gaze.
Those eyes were black as lacquered ink. Perhaps because of the backlighting, they seemed deep and fathomless. Yet just by looking at his handsome, relaxed brow, one could tell he was in a good mood, with a trace of subtle amusement.
Zhen Ye’s cheeks flushed. Realizing he’d fallen onto the man, he braced his hands to get up. “Sorry about this…”
But he was too nervous, his leverage off, and he tumbled back down, this time colliding directly with the man’s chest.
The slightly loose black sweater, of fine, high-quality material, was pulled taut against his body in that instant, revealing the shape of a strong chest like a figure emerging from water.
Zhen Ye’s face was pressed against the man’s chest, his mind a complete blank. Slowly, only two words surfaced:
—So big.
His consciousness had already wandered off.
Rong Yu saw him floundering, and smiled softly with pressed lips. A pair of large hands slipped under his armpits, and as easily as picking up a kitten, set him down on a nearby stone bench.
Zhen Ye’s awareness slowly returned, and a hint of crimson crept up his ears.
Now that they were at eye level, Zhen Ye had nowhere to put his gaze, so he could only let his eyes drift, feigning composure as he asked: “Sorry… I didn’t hurt you just now, did I?”
He stole a few glances at Rong Yu, little knowing that Rong Yu’s eyes were also wandering, observing him in return.
The Omega had delicate, handsome features—the kind that should have been bright and striking. But the faint shadows under his thin eyelids clearly spoke of insufficient qi and blood.
He wore a black outdoor jacket washed gray from repeated laundering, its edges frayed, revealing a longer, old sweater underneath. His sneakers were in even worse shape—the thin mesh soaked through, the heel worn away at one layer. No matter how one looked at it, this was hardly the proper attire for a cold, late autumn.
A far cry from the “doing just fine” he’d insisted upon while paying respects to his mother up in the mountains.
What a little liar.
Under the layered lamplight, the autumn rain lingered like mist, and a gust of wind lifted Zhen Ye’s light-brown bangs, carrying the scent of his pheromones to Rong Yu’s nose.
A light sniff—it was the crispness of bergamot. Another breath—the spiciness of ginger.
Combined, they became a special, mellow fragrance. It was the kind of scent suited to burning quietly in an old, time-worn wooden temple, offered up in stillness.
However.
The scent seemed a little too strong.
“I’m fine.” Rong Yu remained unobtrusive, adjusting the Alpha suppressant ring on his wrist, turning it up from low to medium. At the same time, his gaze lowered, landing on the Omega’s hanging left hand:
“More importantly—how did you cut your hand?”
Only then did Zhen Ye look down and open his palm.
The spring catch on his umbrella was an old-fashioned type, its edges sharp. When he’d fallen earlier, he’d instinctively gripped the handle, and the palm had been sliced open by it.
The wound didn’t actually hurt much. Instead, there was a slow, numbing tingle soaking through his skin and flesh.
Zhen Ye knew exactly where that feeling came from—when the brain experiences trauma, it releases endorphins to dull the pain and briefly produce a feeling of euphoria, regulating anxious emotions.
In the past few years, living alone in a foreign country, he’d once been addicted to actively “obtaining” that state.
Especially his half-brother, He Junhua, who on every holiday resembling Mother’s Day would send him messages to provoke him, reminding him of how their mother died. With no outlet for his pain, Zhen Ye would simply give himself a cut.
Usually not too deep. He’d just go about his day normally, letting the wound bleed and heal on its own.
“You need to get that wound treated,” Rong Yu said with certainty. “I have a medical kit.”
“No need, it’s already stopped bleeding much.”
The rain grew heavier. Zhen Ye was about to get up and leave, but in an instant, his wrist was caught.
Rong Yu’s movement wasn’t forceful. He took out a medical kit from under the wheelchair, intending to wipe the blood from Zhen Ye’s palm and disinfect it to ease the pain.
But in that moment, a body temperature that wasn’t his own came into sudden contact with his skin. Zhen Ye didn’t dislike the man’s scent, but his nerves reacted with a jolt, and he violently flung the man’s hand away:
“Don’t touch me!”
His breath came in ragged gasps as he stumbled back two steps, like a badly wounded animal.
Trauma-induced stress response.
He could talk to people, but he couldn’t let anyone touch certain parts of his body.
Rong Yu lowered his long lashes, concealing a flicker of darkness in his eyes. He didn’t know where this little rabbit had been during the six years he hadn’t gone up to the mountain to pay respects at his mother’s grave, nor what had happened to leave the boy so scarred and wounded.
He felt that he needed to find out.
Zhen Ye used all his strength to steady his breathing. When he finally managed to calm his racing heart, he realized what he’d done.
“I’m sorry, I…”
“I’m really not targeting you, it’s just that I flashed back for a moment…”
He flashed back to the day, six years ago, when he’d been about to submit his college entrance exam applications—and his drunken biological father had grabbed his arm, yanked him back, and beaten him viciously, until he lay curled, barely breathing, on the doormat by the entrance.
I can never forget it… It’s not that I’m deliberately rejecting your kindness.
His tone sounded normal, but he didn’t notice the fingers hanging at his side, twitching and trembling.
“My grandmother is still waiting for me. I’ll get going. Goodbye.”
Rong Yu didn’t dare try to keep him again. He watched Zhen Ye pick up the umbrella that had cut him, brush past him, and walk from the glow of the streetlamp into the darkness on the other side.
His wheelchair rolled forward a little, and Rong Yu silently watched the lonely, thorn-like figure leave.
Then he pulled out his phone and dialed, his tone no longer gentle as before, but detached:
“Secretary Jin.”
“Chairman Rong, what are your instructions?”
“Look into the He family of Maocheng for me.”
·
Zhen Ye found Building 4 and went into the restroom, where he used a tissue dipped in water to wipe his palm, so he wouldn’t scare his grandmother when he went up to see her.
There weren’t many people in the building at this hour. The elevator only carried Zhen Ye alone. He pressed the button for the 16th floor, leaned against the car, and looked up at the name plates on the wall—only then realizing the entire building was dedicated to the treatment of variant humans.
No wonder he hadn’t found this building. His mother had previously been hospitalized in a regular ward. But his grandmother, with her stronger variant-human bloodline, had been assigned here.
In this country, variant humans didn’t have reproductive isolation between species, but there was a distinction in blood purity. Generally, the purer the blood, the further one was from ordinary humans.
Zhen Ye’s grandmother had 12% rabbit genes, which was already considered quite high. It was said that some rare pure-bloods could even reach 40% or more.
Biologically speaking, such pure-blooded variant humans could no longer be defined as “human.” They should be considered plants or animals that had grown into human form.
It sounded incredible, but this evolutionary strategy had persisted for two hundred years. No matter which country’s history books you opened, you could find similar accounts—in 1819, a catastrophic comet impact brought unknown radiation to Earth.
Humanity worldwide began to mutate. First, people were controlled by fungi and turned into mushroom-men; later, they evolved into plant-animal hybrids.
In fact, tracing back to the source, all life on Earth was on the same evolutionary tree at the molecular level. Humans and bananas share 50% of their genes, so becoming “plant-people” and “animal-people” was hardly impossible.
Zhen Ye had grown two reproductive tracts due to atavistic blood. Though the libido it brought was troublesome, it was still better than his grandmother’s situation—she had rabbit ears on her head, and anyone who saw them wanted to give them a pat.
“Grandma, I’m here.” Zhen Ye peeked in from outside the ward door and saw the old lady sitting on the bed, her amber eyes curving into a smile.
He’d brought fruit and sponge cake. He’d barely set them down on the bedside table when the old lady eagerly pulled him over, rubbing her chin against the top of his head. “My darling! My good little rabbit.”
Few people knew that rabbits also had glands under their chins—scent glands—which rabbits used to express fondness and mark territory.
In other words, an omega of the rabbit clan was born with one extra gland compared to other omegas. And they could use this method to reverse-mark their own alpha.
In her youth, Grandma had been a fiery beauty-rabbit. Whenever she met a handsome alpha, she marked one, then marked another. If Grandpa hadn’t swooped in to take the prize, she could have built herself a whole harem.
Zhen Ye also had a scent gland under his chin, though he’d never tried it and didn’t know if his worked.
After affectionately nuzzling her little rabbit, the old lady felt around and somehow found a piece of bright green tree leaf.
She examined it, and said with some confusion: “Where did this banyan leaf come from, my darling?”
“And it smells—” She took a sniff.
“There’s a human scent on it.” The old lady said, full of suspicion.