Chapter 2#

It was raining outside. Manyu wished the rain would come down harder — ideally blowing into a mild typhoon, nothing that could hurt anyone, but enough to make travel impossible, so he’d have a legitimate excuse to shirk this errand.

Unfortunately, fate was not on his side. He arrived at the memorial service venue two hours later, meekly and dejectedly, only to be stopped at the entrance by bodyguards just as meekly. A group of journalists and media personnel were stopped alongside him.

Inside the hall, funeral music hung heavy in the air. Outside, traffic was bumper to bumper — so lively that anyone who didn’t know better might have mistaken it for a wedding.

The “white moonlight” surnamed Lu — Manyu still didn’t know his first name — only that the Lu family was a prominent clan many times more powerful than the Sheng family. The grand scale of the memorial said it all.

He had never attended such a solemn occasion. The thought of bringing Sheng Lin back from inside made his courage falter.

“No invitation, sir — we apologize, but we can’t let you in.”

Blown about by wind and rain, his hair plastered to his face, he asked softly and politely a couple more times, but the bodyguards’ answer didn’t change. He couldn’t very well press the issue — after all, he’d worked odd jobs himself and knew how hard it was to serve under someone else’s orders.

Manyu held his umbrella, planning to squat somewhere until the memorial ended, then catch Sheng Lin at the entrance. That would count as completing his task.

Crouching beside him were two journalists who hadn’t made it inside either, sucking on lollipops and whispering.

“How exactly did Young Master Lu die? Wasn’t he studying abroad perfectly fine?”

“Pfft, you know what that personality was like, don’t you? Wild, reckless, doing whatever he pleased. At seven or eight, he dared to rig the wiring at his dad’s wedding to his stepmother — flipped the breaker and every light in the venue exploded, looked like a demolition site. At twelve or thirteen, got sent to a juvenile correction camp and incited all the delinquents to revolt — blew up the camp at midnight, snuck into the broadcasting station, and at one in the morning read some declaration of freedom over the airwaves. Half the city thought it was haunted…”

The older journalist smacked his lollipop a few times but still hadn’t gotten to how the man actually died.

Gossip was human nature. Manyu wanted to know what kind of person this Enigma his husband was infatuated with really was. The more he listened, the more terrifying it sounded — yet he couldn’t help inching closer to the two reporters, unnoticed. Seeing their soaked shirts, he offered them half his umbrella.

“Th… thanks. Which outlet are you with?” The sudden shelter from the rain overhead made both journalists turn their heads to see a slender, gloomy young man holding an umbrella, head bowed, sleeves slipping to reveal a pair of thin wrists — so pale against the dull, overcast day that they practically gleamed. He didn’t look very old, maybe a university student who hadn’t graduated yet.

They stared for a moment, then warmly thanked him, offering him a piece of candy in return. The young man responded shyly without speaking. They didn’t press him, assuming he was a newbie from some media outlet doing grunt work, and continued: “Ran away from home at fifteen, got his credit card cut off, faked his ID, joined an entertainment company as a trainee, swindled a pile of money and simultaneously blew up his dad’s affair scandal across the entire country. The Lu family spent at least three hundred million on PR that one year alone. At sixteen or seventeen, stirred up some small-time operation, bit off more than he could chew, and ended up getting hunted down. Turned eighteen, and his dad finally packed him up and shipped him overseas…”

Manyu had been living in boarding school at the time, ears sealed to the outside world, completely oblivious to these anecdotes about the capital city. Listening now, he could feel a faint twitching in his temples, and from the depths of his heart came a wave of despair and sorrow. If his husband loved someone like that, how was he ever supposed to win his heart? No wonder Sheng Lin grew more and more dissatisfied with him the longer he looked at him.

He was cowardly, incompetent, bland and flavorless — so ordinary that he was like a single drop of water falling into the ocean.

“Young Master wasn’t peaceful overseas either. First half of the year, decided he was depressed, took a leave of absence and drove a tractor herding sheep in the Southern Hemisphere. Second half, couldn’t sleep, went to the Arctic Ocean to sail and work as a fisherman. Finally graduated — and supposedly died in his second attempt at crossing the tropical rainforest. Took half a month to get the body repatriated.”

Manyu finally pieced together the life story of his husband’s white moonlight from the two journalists. He felt even more powerless than when he’d arrived. Beyond the realization that he could never measure up, there was also a sense of disbelief — a person who blazed onto the scene so magnificently and blazed right off it, gone at just twenty-two. So young. He should have brought flowers.

The mournful music drifted out on the wind. Outside, a fine, relentless rain fell. The journalists, unwilling to leave without prey, continued squatting at the gate, waiting for a chance to score an exclusive. Manyu blended in among them, waiting for his husband.

He figured they wouldn’t move to the banquet hall for dinner until after dark, and he was prepared to squat until then.

Who expected that after only half an hour, a piercing scream shattered through the dim overcast sky from inside the hall. The screams were followed by thunderous footsteps closing in from within. The door burst open with a deafening bang, and people shoved and jostled each other in a panic. The normally dignified ladies and gentlemen were deathly pale, faces twisted in fright, as if one more step too late and they’d be torn apart by tigers.

“The corpse came back to life —!!! The corpse came back to life!!!”

“Ahhhhhhh—!!! Ah—!!!!!”

Several journalists’ eyes lit up. They wriggled through the crowd like fish. The bodyguards clearly couldn’t control the chaos in time.

Manyu was afraid of being dragged out and reprimanded, so he didn’t dare follow them. He just wanted to press himself against a wall, his eyes sweeping rapidly through the crowd for his husband. The reporter beside him, lollipop still dangling from his mouth, saw him standing there like a dummy and yanked him inside.

“What are you waiting for, breaking news! Still spacing out? When do you expect to be made permanent?”

The scene was even more chaotic than he’d imagined. Some sat on the floor looking sickly green. Some would have sprouted four legs to run if they could. Some screamed but couldn’t move. Some fainted on the spot, only revived by the butler pinching their philtrum. And there was a tall, slender figure in Chinese-style burial robes, casually seated atop the coffin with legs spread wide, the memorial tablet and offerings scattered all over the floor.

Perhaps it was because love ran deep — among the sea of people, Manyu spotted his husband at a glance. He hurried over, bowing and murmuring apologies, parting the crowd and holding the umbrella over Sheng Lin’s head.

“Testing, testing…” A magnetic, languid voice radiated outward from the memorial altar, laced with the faint crackle of static, echoing through the hall plastered with the character " lay a foundation " (mourning). After a brief sound check came a cheerful, breezy announcement, utterly out of place: “Surprise! Distinguished Guests, welcome to my funeral! I am Lu Yinbing. I’m very disappointed — it’s been four years, and all you people feel about me being alive is fear. Not a single one of you is genuinely happy for me.”

“That said, luckily I’ve always been magnanimous… Oh, my dear father, what’s this? You’ve fainted? So moved, are we?”

The reporters with their cameras and lenses charged forward like hyenas who’d caught the scent of blood, pressing in so tightly that the front was sealed shut. The panicking guests gradually calmed down, finally realizing that this funeral was, once again, nothing more than another one of Young Master Lu’s pranks.

…

Lu Yinbing —

What a beautiful name. If Manyu hadn’t heard the man’s glorious exploits in such detail, he would have imagined the name belonged to a refined, composed, cool-tempered sort of person.

He instinctively sensed something off about what Lu Yinbing had said, but it had been delivered with such brazen confidence that surely nothing was actually wrong.

Oh — Manyu’s heart skipped a beat. He belatedly realized: his husband’s white moonlight had come back to life!

He didn’t know whether to feel horrified or regretful, or perhaps even joyful. This man of his was so wooden that even his emotions lagged half a beat behind everyone else’s. Timidity and inferiority had long since stripped him of the courage to meet someone’s gaze, let alone someone as terrifying as Young Master Lu — one look would probably strike him with lightning and doom him for eternity.

Timidly, he kept his head down, holding onto his husband’s arm, and felt Sheng Lin trembling like a leaf. A pang of sorrow stirred in his chest.

The white moonlight was alive again. No wonder Sheng Lin was so overjoyed.

He should have pushed Sheng Lin to the very front and told Lu Yinbing, “There’s someone here so happy you didn’t die that he’s shaking.” Maybe Lu Yinbing, moved by the gesture, would accept Sheng Lin after all.

But then what would happen to him?

Manyu didn’t want to be abandoned. He didn’t want a divorce either. A divorced Beta went out into the world and got looked down upon.

“Ah Lin, Sheng… Sheng Madam told… told me to bring you… bring you home…” With a sliver of his own little scheme, he reminded softly.

Sheng Lin, for reasons unknown, suddenly seized Manyu’s hand.

His fingertips were slightly cool, but his palm was burning hot. Manyu, for the first time, was treated with such intimacy by him. A thread of happiness bloomed in his chest, and he quickly squeezed back.

Sheng Lin was, admittedly, strikingly handsome and commanding in bearing — 185 centimeters tall, with a high nose bridge, deep-set eyes, and a razor-sharp gaze. That was the very reason Manyu had taken a liking to him after seeing him just once and had stepped into this arranged marriage so wholeheartedly.

In truth, a spineless, honest fellow like Manyu had never dared to hope his husband would hold him as the sole occupant of his heart. He knew he couldn’t compete with the white moonlight sitting on that coffin. But as long as Sheng Lin treated him even a little better than before, that was enough.

He hadn’t even enjoyed it for a few seconds before Sheng Lin seemed to snap back to awareness. He flung Manyu away with a force that was practically a shove. The strength of an Alpha was beyond imagination — Manyu’s ninety-jin frame sailed through the air like a weightless sandbag.

The umbrella slipped from his grasp, tumbling twice in the wind before rolling away as well.

Manyu instinctively reached for it but couldn’t catch it. A searing pain belatedly announced itself, worst across his face. He hurriedly raised his arm to shield it, curling up on the ground for a dazed moment before forcing himself to stand, fighting through the pain.

Sheng Lin stole a quick glance toward Lu Yinbing, confirming he was still surrounded by the crowd, before turning back and glaring at Manyu with venom. “Get lost. Who told you to come make a spectacle of yourself at a place like this?”

“Your… your mother told me to…”

“So if she tells you to come, you come? Are you a dog? Whatever she says, you obey! Have I not told you never to let me see you? I genuinely don’t understand why she insists on making me marry you — old, boring, can’t even speak properly. All you do is embarrass me!”

Sheng Lin, terrified of being seen associating with him any longer, shoved Manyu off and strode toward Lu Yinbing’s direction, barking over his shoulder: “Don’t follow me!”

Manyu thought he had long since grown accustomed to this kind of life.

His mother always said: Marrying into a family like this, suffering is inevitable. Others would give anything for the chance to suffer like this.

But when Sheng Lin shoved him to the ground and called him a dog, Manyu didn’t know why the tears still came.

Raindrops pattered down his cheeks, pooling in the hollow of his collarbone.

He sat there blankly, picking at the seam of his trousers, not knowing what he could do to calm Sheng Lin’s anger. A lifetime of experience had made his first instinct an apology.

“I’m… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

He hadn’t meant to make Sheng Lin lose face. He hadn’t meant to stumble over his words either.

He had once won first prize in a speech competition back in school. Manyu truly didn’t understand why speaking had become increasingly difficult for him.

Sheng Lin couldn’t hear the apology. He didn’t look back, his figure swallowed up by the crowded throng.