Chapter 7#
Marriage#
Old Madam Zhen secretly wiped her tears. In her youth, she had been the daughter of a wealthy family, and she always valued dignity. She refused to cry openly in front of others, hiding in the restroom to call her grandson instead.
On the phone, Zhen Ye seemed to freeze for a few seconds, then grabbed his bag and ran out, speaking in quick, breathless bursts: “Grandma, don’t worry, I’ll be right there—”
Zhen Yuzhen remembered that he had injured his spine falling abroad, and feared he might hurt himself running too fast. “Sweetheart, slow down!”
Out of breath on the other end, he replied, “Grandma, I’ve got a cab.”
Zhen Yuzhen wanted to say a few more words, but Zhen Hongming was already knocking on the door. His ear pressed against it, he called out impatiently, “Ma, are you done yet? We need to go.”
The door opened and the old lady came out with her head lowered. The moment Zhen Hongming saw her red-rimmed eyes, he frowned deeply.
But remembering there were others in the ward, he immediately softened his voice and coaxed: “Ma, didn’t I already tell you? I took that money to invest—within a month, it’ll have doubled and come right back.”
Then, raising his voice slightly so the entire ward could hear:
“By then we won’t need kidneys from outside sources either. Who knows if those were dug out of corpses beyond the Wall—the quality is subpar. Your son is filial—I’m buying a cloned kidney from Rongshen Corporation, the best there is!”
The ward was a four-person room. The other three families shot Zhen Hongming displeased looks at his words.
The “Wall” he mentioned was an isolation barrier surrounding Maocheng. Driving two hours past the barrier led into a state-designated exclusion zone.
That zone was vast, plagued by frequent outbreaks of mutated plants, animals, and fungal contamination. Every year, the state invested heavily, mobilizing soldiers, police, and civilian volunteers to clean it up.
The exclusion zone was dangerously hazardous, with a persistently high mortality rate. Among the volunteers who went willingly, many had signed body donation agreements, making them one of society’s default organ suppliers.
Old Madam Zhen heard him praising some and trampling others. Before anyone else could protest, she slapped him—“Smack!"—a resounding blow across Zhen Hongming’s face.
Zhen Yuzhen’s husband, Zhen Ye’s maternal grandfather, was a retired soldier. Having served for years in the border exclusion zone, he knew the treacherous terrain well. After retiring, he founded a company specializing in the collection and transport of the dead, and comforting their families.
He always maintained deep respect for those lost lives.
Their daughter, Zhen Yi, inherited this conviction and this business.
Only Zhen Hongming loathed the work, thinking it a dirty job dealing with corpses—beneath his dignity. After Zhen Yi passed away and the company fell to him, he took the advice of his worthless friends and insisted on restructuring the company, driving it straight into the ground.
Zhen Yuzhen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “If only Xiaoyi were still here…”
Zhen Hongming had grown up in the shadow of his brilliant older sister his entire life. He couldn’t believe that even ten years after her death, he was still being compared to her.
A surge of wicked anger flared up. He sneered coldly: “Ma, my sister died a long time ago. The only one who can keep you alive now is me, your son. You’re leaving today whether you want to or not!”
He dragged the old lady downstairs, his movements rough, planning to dump Zhen Yuzhen on the ground floor of the inpatient building, then go back up to fetch the luggage.
But when he came back down, someone was crouched beside the blue plastic seating not far away, softly comforting the old woman.
The figure was slender. From the collar of a washed-out, worn jacket extended a pale, unblemished nape—like milk poured from a rusted teapot.
Zhen Hongming thought of the beautiful woman he had spent the night with. Damn, even that omega wasn’t as fair and delicate as his own nephew.
He vaguely entertained some improper thoughts, intending to move closer for a look. But at that moment, Zhen Ye stood up straight and turned sideways, and that face—strikingly beautiful, so resembling Zhen Yi—only added to Zhen Hongming’s irritation.
Zhen Ye shifted his step, blocking his grandmother from view.
Though an omega, he was tall and slender, casting a lone, elongated shadow diagonally across the ground like a canopy, sheltering the old woman’s figure completely.
“Uncle. Let’s talk outside.”
His tone was cold.
Zhen Hongming snorted derisively. What, was the boy planning to call him to account? He wasn’t afraid.
The two reached a corner outside the building, and Zhen Ye spoke first: “Zhen Hongming, you stole Grandma’s three hundred thousand. How do you plan to pay it back?”
Zhen Hongming hadn’t expected him to call him by his full name right off the bat. His face turned slightly green, and he immediately pulled rank: “Zhen Ye, is that how you talk to your elders? No manners at all!”
“I have no manners for a gambling addict.”
“Gambling?!—The old lady is senile, she got it wrong! I borrowed her money to invest. Investment, do you understand? Ugh… Anyway, this is none of a young whelp like you to meddle in.”
“I understand,” Zhen Ye said calmly, expressionless. “You must have gone around telling people Grandma was hospitalized, then got targeted and set up, tricked into investing in some scheme.”
Zhen Hongming glared sideways, contemptuous. “They’re a big company—an American tech corporation, backed by the industry. You’re a liberal arts omega, what would you know!”
A hint of mockery crept into Zhen Ye’s eyes. “What big company would skip due diligence and take investment from a deadbeat who gambles, drinks, whoring and swindles? And only three hundred thousand at that?”
Zhen Hongming was choked speechless, his face flushing red.
In truth, he had realized afterward that something was off about that woman. But at the time he’d been on a high, and she’d cooed sweetly at him, calling him “Boss Zhen,” saying that losing money back then was only temporary, and there was still time to seize the opportunity and turn things around.
Bewitched by greed, he had transferred the three hundred thousand out of his mother’s account.
Zhen Hongming’s expression turned shifty, but his words still clung to self-justification: “Anyway… anyway, that was my mother’s money. I’m her only son, that money was mine by rights. I’ve taken care of her all these years—even without great merit, I’ve worked hard. Rather than spending so much on a kidney transplant, she might as well give it all to me!… As for you—”
Zhen Hongming found his focus and shifted the target at Zhen Ye, speaking viciously: “A young thing like you, coming to our house every day to freeload, and I’ve never seen you shell out so much as a thousand or two in filial piety.”
“If you truly cared about the old lady, why don’t you cough up the three hundred thousand? All you can do is talk big, hm? Young Master He?”
Seeing Zhen Ye’s expression shift slightly, Zhen Hongming couldn’t help but gloat.
He knew Zhen Ye didn’t want to return to that abusive He family, and couldn’t come up with three hundred thousand either. He said it deliberately, to provoke Zhen Ye.
He was also well aware that Zhen Ye suffered from depression.
But so what?
Apart from the dying old lady, no one in the Zhen or He families gave a damn about him.
“—Fine. I’ll pay.”
The crisp, clear words silenced the restless wind around them.
Zhen Hongming was stunned for a moment before looking at the Zhen Ye who had spoken.
The young man stood with both hands in his coat pockets, his posture almost languid. Though his weary eyes were threaded with red, his expression was calm, and it was with total serenity that he took the whole burden upon himself.
In that instant, Zhen Hongming wore a subtle, haunted look. Because this Zhen Ye resembled his dead, overbearing, all-shouldering sister to an uncanny degree.
And what Zhen Ye did next made his face twist in alarm, nearly scaring the soul out of him.
Zhen Ye pulled out his phone from his pocket, waved it in front of Zhen Hongming to show the recording screen, and said coolly:
“By the way, every word you just said, I’ll play back in full for Grandma and the police. Grandma has said: gamble again, and you’re going in.”
He paused, raising his chin slightly, looking down at Zhen Hongming’s face which had drained of all color in an instant:
“Perfect timing. That three hundred thousand should be enough to keep you locked up for the rest of your life.”
·
Zhen Ye meant what he said. He turned and took his grandmother to file a police report.
Zhen Yuzhen was a sensible woman; she wouldn’t coddle her son’s mistakes like an ordinary old mother.
Or rather, she understood exactly how high the stakes were. Fearing Zhen Hongming would keep making mistake after mistake, she was determined to put an end to it.
Moreover, only by filing a report was there any hope of recovering the three hundred thousand swindled away.
But the police officer handling the case gave them a preemptive warning, shaking his head:
“This fraud ring is seasoned. The moment the money was transferred, it was shuffled through several accounts. It’s already been moved to an offshore bank.”
“This case will be difficult to crack, and we can’t guarantee recovering the funds, but we’ll do our best.”
“If any new leads come up later, please provide them to us in a timely manner.”
Upon learning that recovery was a near-impossible hope, Zhen Yuzhen, who had just been fiercely scolding her son moments before, sat down on the chair as if struck, wilting and shrinking, her hunched figure seeming even smaller.
Zhen Ye took the filing receipt and prepared to escort his grandmother home first.
A fine drizzle fell on the bridge of his nose, cold and biting. A female officer from the station chased after them and handed over a courtesy umbrella. Zhen Ye thanked her, then turned and tilted most of the umbrella toward his grandmother.
Grandmother and grandson huddled together as they walked toward the bus stop. The road wasn’t long, yet it felt extraordinarily exhausting and distant, as if they could never reach the end, as if they would never know which road came next.
At the bus stop, Zhen Yuzhen stopped.
Her aged, wrinkled hand gripped Zhen Ye’s arm with a slight tremble—just as she had done over a decade ago, when she picked up her grandson at the school gate, holding on with the same careful, firm pressure, afraid this little rabbit would run off, would fall.
She smiled slowly, as if chatting idly with her grandson in the old days, seeming to have let go: “Sweetheart, Grandma’s illness… we’re not treating it anymore…”
Zhen Ye’s heart seized up.
She was the only person left in the world who cherished him like a child. The only one who would proactively accommodate his feelings, carefully using a nearly placating, playful tone to explain the cruelest truth in this world:
“Keep treating it and we’ll have to sell the house. At Grandma’s age, if I live any longer I’ll turn into a spirit—it’s not worth it. So we won’t treat it anymore.
“The house is for my sweetheart.
“Sweetheart… Grandma may leave one day, but listen—Grandma’s home will always be your home.”
“Still come to Grandma’s house in the future, and watch cartoons, okay?”
Zhen Ye parted his lips, wanting to say something, but a wave of sourness surged into his nose, blurring his vision in an instant.
The traces of age on Grandma’s face seemed to melt away in that blur, returning to the way he remembered her from childhood.
He wanted to say: Grandma, I’ve grown up already, I don’t need to watch cartoons anymore.
He also wanted to say: Grandma, I keep coming to your house because you’re the only one who still remembers my mother.
“Sweetheart, sweetheart, don’t cry…”
But Mom had been gone for so long, and Grandma was leaving too.
Soon there would be no one left to remember the trivial little things of my childhood.
No one left to call me sweetheart, to press a warm hot-water pouch into my arms at the school gate in the cold autumn rain.
I have already lost my mother. I cannot lose my mother’s mother too.
I want you to stay. I want to save you, Grandma.
So, Zhen Ye…
Zhen Ye.
Someone once said your pride is worth a great deal.
Then this time—
you’d better sell yourself for a good price.
……
In the VIP reception room, Zhong Liyun set down her new crocodile-skin handbag and took her phone from her personal secretary.
She glanced at her son. He Junhua was trying on a twelve-thousand-yuan haute couture coat, pure white, making his skin look soft and fair, innocent and lovely.
At the same time, a hoarse voice, worn down by life, came through the speaker:
“I’ll marry him.”
“—But I want three million.”