After I Died, My Childhood Friend Became Daddy - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: He Went Mad Long Ago Traveling Ten Years into the Future…

A youth dressed in a blue-and-white school uniform stood lonely on the road. The fog around him was thick, and the two faint lights of a vehicle could be seen approaching from ahead.

It was a swaying heavy truck.

A man ran desperately from not far away, screaming heart-wrenchingly, “Ranran”

The next second, the truck slammed violently into the youth’s body.

At seven o’clock in the morning, Huo Yan opened his eyes.

He didn’t need an alarm clock; his biological clock was extremely precise.

His dark eyes stared at the ceiling. After a few seconds, he blinked stiffly, forcing himself to break away from the nightmare.

Ten years. This terrifying dream had haunted Huo Yan every day, but he had never thought of intervening, let alone listening to a psychiatrist for hypnosis or therapy.

This was the only way Huo Yan could dream of Fang Ran.

Even if it was at that final, tragic moment.

He got up and went to the bathroom. The sound of water splashed loudly. Ten minutes later, after a simple wash, Huo Yan went to the dressing room. A whole row of ceiling-high wardrobes were filled with the same style of clothes: white shirts and black or grey suits.

He changed his clothes mechanically. Downstairs, Liu Ma had already prepared breakfast. Knowing that the Master did not like having people around him, she sensibly went upstairs to clean.

On the table were black coffee and fried eggs. It wasn’t that Liu Ma only knew how to cook these, but rather that for ten years, the Master had eaten only this, day in and day out.

Huo Yan was a person who had no need for anything.

He was like a robot.

After a simple breakfast, Huo Yan began the final step of his morning routine.

On the bedroom table sat over a dozen medicine bottles of various sizes, mostly psychiatric drugs. But after taking them for so many years, they had clearly shown little effect.

No, perhaps they were effective.

Huo Yan thought self-mockingly.

At least he hadn’t completely turned into a lunatic yet.

Though that was what everyone else called him.

He swallowed a handful of colorful capsules with water. At that moment, the phone in the drawer rang.

The ringtone was very retro; after all, it was a phone from ten years ago.

Huo Yan’s movements paused slightly, and then he slammed the glass water cup heavily onto the table.

He propped his hands on the tabletop, his chest heaving violently, his face turning slightly pale.

Another hallucination.

Just as he always dreamed of Ranran, that phone, which had been sealed in the drawer for so many years even though Huo Yan regularly charged it, repaired aging parts, and looked through the photo albums and text messages countless times he had never imagined it would actually ring.

Gasping for air, the ringtone continued to sound.

In the empty house, it even seemed a bit eerie.

Huo Yan paused, then suddenly pulled open the drawer.

An old-style phone lay there quietly, the screen lit up, showing a string of numbers from an unknown caller.

It wasn’t a hallucination.

Huo Yan’s fingers trembled slightly as he picked up the phone. He tapped to answer and placed the phone gently against his ear. His voice was dry and raspy. “Who is it?”

…

“The call went through?”

On a long bench in the police station reception room, the youth sat obediently and nodded. “He said for me to wait for him; he’s coming to pick me up now.”

The policeman advised him, “Go back to the hospital and receive proper treatment. Don’t run out again.”

Hearing this, Fang Ran bristled slightly.

“I’m not mentally ill. Why don’t you believe me? I was really kidnapped!”

The policeman said helplessly, “But what you said that you were kidnapped to the old abandoned steel factory nearby that factory was leveled seven or eight years ago. New buildings are standing there now.”

“And you said you were hit by a truck, but you don’t have a single scratch on you. We checked the surveillance on that road, and no trucks were on it today at all.”

Fang Ran stopped talking. He pursed his lips tightly, his head drooping slightly.

The policeman paused, swallowing the rest of his words.

There was something even more bizarre. According to the name and ID number the youth had just given, a search in the internal police network showed that this person named Fang Ran had been reported missing ten years ago.

The policeman shook his head, turned to get a bottle of water, and handed it to Fang Ran. “Wait for your friend to pick you up. Just sign the inquiry form and you can leave.”

Quite pitiful, to have something wrong with his head at such a young age.

Fang Ran silently took the water. He looked up, watching the digital clock on the opposite wall.

The seconds jumped one by one.

The time displayed in the bottom right corner:

Year 2027.

How could it be 2027?

Fang Ran licked his dry lips and stiffly averted his gaze.

It had been nearly forty minutes since he reported to the police station. Everything here was constantly overturning Fang Ran’s worldview.

An absurd thought sprouted in his mind.

He had time-traveled?

Traveled ten years into the future.

Fang Ran’s heart was beating a bit fast.

He thought again of that phone call just now.

The police told him to contact a relative, but Fang Ran was an orphan; he had no relatives. He instinctively called Huo Yan.

The two of them had grown up together in the orphanage, eating and living together. They were childhood friends more than that, they were “iron brothers!”

Only, he hadn’t expected that the Huo Yan of 2027 would actually answer his call.

Fang Ran had stumbled through a bunch of words, incoherent and messy, but after Huo Yan heard them, he only left two words in a hoarse voice.

“Wait for me.”

After returning the phone to the policeman, he began the long wait.

Actually, it hadn’t been that long, but in ten years, S City had expanded and was no longer the small city it used to be. Driving from the south of the city to the north took two hours.

Fang Ran was waiting a bit anxiously, but he never thought Huo Yan wouldn’t come to pick him up. After all, their relationship was so good enough that they could sleep in the same bed.

In winter, when he felt cold, he would sometimes burrow into Huo Yan’s quilt. His childhood friend was a natural furnace, and Fang Ran loved to shove his ice-cold feet against his legs.

There were many people coming and going in the police station. Every time the door was pushed open, Fang Ran would snap his head up to look like a pitiful little puppy.

But they were all strange faces. Fang Ran withdrew his gaze in disappointment.

He also secretly wondered in his heart.

What would Huo Yan look like ten years later?

He couldn’t have grown taller, right? Huo Yan was already a head taller than him. He should be able to earn a bit of money, right? Could he treat him to a KFC Family Bucket?

The door was pushed open once more.

The room seemed to fall silent for a moment. A man rushed in urgently, the buttons on his collar not even fastened. The moment he pushed the door open, he looked straight at the youth sitting on the bench. His breathing stopped for half a second, then became short and sharp. Huo Yan raised a hand to grip the doorframe, leaning into it so hard his knuckles turned white.

A few scattered people nearby recognized this face. Whispers began to spread, and a few words drifted into Fang Ran’s ears.

“Financial news…”

“Rich list…”

Fang Ran looked up and suddenly collided with a pair of dark, sunken eyes.

He froze for a moment, eyes widening. He opened his mouth, seeming to want to say something, but his throat felt tight, and his voice was blocked by something.

Huo Yan was the first to regain his senses, doing his best to recover his usual cold composure. He exhaled, taking large strides toward Fang Ran.

Fang Ran’s first reaction was: So tall…

As expected, he had secretly grown taller behind his back.

Huo Yan walked up to Fang Ran and looked down at the youth. Even now, he felt like this was a hallucination perhaps he had taken too much medicine this morning, or the wrong medicine.

Even so, Huo Yan would rather die in this illusion.

His voice was very soft, slightly hoarse. “Ranran?”

“Huo… Huo Yan.”

Ten years.

A person’s changes were truly massive.

While signing at the front desk, Fang Ran secretly glanced sideways to size up his childhood friend. He estimated that now, he only reached up to the man’s chest.

Dammit! He had missed out on ten years of meals!

Wearing a suit and tie what did Huo Yan do now? He couldn’t be a real estate salesman, could he? Why did he have his hair slicked back? It made him look quite mature.

After signing, Huo Yan turned around. The moment their eyes met, Fang Ran quickly looked away.

“Let’s go. We’re going home.”

The word “home” made Fang Ran pause, as it was a distant concept for two people who grew up in an orphanage.

Wait

The shock of time traveling was so sudden that Fang Ran had almost forgotten about the previous kidnapping.

He urgently grabbed Huo Yan’s arm. “I was kidnapped! It was the Huo family people. I overheard their conversation. They wanted to force you to go abroad!”

Huo Yan lowered his eyes, his gaze falling on the crook of his arm.

The youth’s fingers were slender and fair, each fingernail so rounded and tinted with a pale pink.

Adam’s apple rolled up and down. His gaze moved further up, landing on Fang Ran’s lips red and soft, opening and closing.

Fang Ran said a lot, but seeing that Huo Yan had no reaction, he thought Huo Yan also believed something was wrong with his head. He got a bit angry. “Did you hear me? I’m telling the truth!!”

Huo Yan snapped back to his senses slightly and gave an “Mm.” He subtly lowered his arm, taking the opportunity to hold Fang Ran’s hand.

“Don’t worry. Everything has already been resolved.”

Fang Ran blinked.

Right, he forgot it was ten years later now.

He was led out by the hand just like that. When he saw the Rolls-Royce parked by the door, Fang Ran’s eyes almost popped out. “You! Your car?!!”

He quickly let go of Huo Yan’s hand, trotted over to the car, and couldn’t help but reach out to touch it. “A-Yan, does this car come with an umbrella?”

The nickname, absent for ten years, entered his ears again, making Huo Yan’s heart stop for a beat.

Huo Yan paused, walked over, and propped one hand against the side of the car, enveloping Fang Ran beneath him in a commanding posture. “It has an umbrella.”

Fang Ran kept saying “Wow!”

It was practically a chorus of “wows.”

He remembered when they were in the first year of high school, he had seen rumors online saying that the umbrellas in a Rolls-Royce cost 100,000 yuan each. Fang Ran had daydreamed dizzily, “If I can carry a 100,000-yuan umbrella in the future, it wouldn’t be rain falling from the sky; it would be money.”

Huo Yan had amusedly placed a math paper in front of Fang Ran. “There’s no 100,000 yuan, but I can treat you to ten-yuan mixed noodles tonight.”

Fang Ran immediately raised both hands and then slumped onto the desk. “Thank you for the Imperial favor!”

The orphanage paid for their tuition and meal cards, but pocket money was very scarce only about fifty yuan a month.

It was fine when they were little, but in middle and high school, they craved street snacks. Fang Ran’s own money was always gone by the beginning of the month, and then he would start pestering Huo Yan.

Huo Yan wouldn’t give it to him directly. Usually, he would dangle it over him: he had to reach a certain score on a mock exam or memorize an entire unit of English vocabulary before Huo Yan would take him out for snacks.

100,000 yuan… he hadn’t even seen that much money in his dreams.

Let alone that this wasn’t just an umbrella it was a whole car.

Fang Ran even wanted Huo Yan to take a photo of him with the car. “What do you do now that makes so much money…”

He paused, thinking of something, and looked back at Huo Yan. “Did you return to the Huo family?”

At the mention of the Huo family, Huo Yan’s expression dimmed. “I did.”

Fang Ran didn’t know what to say. After hesitating for a long time, he said moodily, “You should have. After all, your surname is Huo.”

Huo Yan didn’t want to talk more about it with him. He helped Fang Ran open the car door. “Get in first.”

Fang Ran also lost his previous excitement and sat obediently in the car, no longer speaking.

Unlike him, Huo Yan had known since he was very young that he was a child of the Huo family specifically, he had been sent away by them.

Huo Yan was a child of a branch family. After his parents died, the Old Madam Huo took him in because she had no children. But as soon as she had her own child, she immediately sent someone to throw Huo Yan into the orphanage.

The irony was that the Huo family was an old-money clan in S City with immeasurable assets, donating over 100 million to charity every year, yet they refused to raise one little Huo Yan.

Even more laughable was that in their third year of high school, the Huo family came knocking.

Perhaps they had committed too many sins; both of Old Madam Huo’s sons died of illness. Aside from Huo Yan, there was no one left in the main line to inherit the estate. If Huo Yan wasn’t brought back, it was very likely the branch families would take over, and Old Madam Huo might even be kicked out.

She had beautiful dreams of making Huo Yan a puppet head of the family, but Huo Yan had absolutely no interest. He hated the Huo family to the core and even thought about changing his surname once he became an adult well, taking Fang Ran’s surname would be nice.

At that time, they had planned their future: to go to S University together, study the same major, and live in the same dorm.

Huo Yan would have been crazy to listen to that old woman and go abroad to some finance school.

He didn’t expect the one who was crazy was Old Madam Huo.

She kidnapped Fang Ran.

She wanted to use Fang Ran to blackmail Huo Yan into obedience.

That day at the Huo family ancestral home, Huo Yan was pinned to the ground by several people. He gritted his teeth, looking up at Old Madam Huo with eyes so red it looked like they might bleed. “I’ll listen to you. I’ll do everything you say. I can go abroad. Just let Ranran go.”

But on the other side, Fang Ran had already secretly escaped. The place was desolate with no houses nearby. Running forward led to the national highway, and just at that moment, a speeding truck came driving by. It hit Fang Ran.

The roadside surveillance footage ended abruptly there.

Afterward, as if the signal had been jammed, the screen was filled with large patches of black and white static.

As if he had seen a ghost, Fang Ran vanished.

The driver also claimed he had fallen asleep and felt like he hit something, but there was no blood on the truck and no one around.

Huo Yan stayed at the police station for two days, his eyes bloodshot, watching the surveillance footage before and after hundreds of times, but there was not a trace of Fang Ran.

He posted missing person flyers, he reported to the police, he published ads in newspapers, he offered rewards… but Fang Ran seemed to have vanished into thin air.

There was no news at all.

At first, Huo Yan thought Old Madam Huo had done something to hide the person. He agreed to inherit the Huo family, endured and bided his time, gradually seizing power until the entire Huo corporation was under his control and the Huo family became his word alone.

He locked Old Madam Huo in a mental asylum and tried every means to interrogate her, but there were no results.

His Ranran really seemed to be gone.

Past events replayed in his mind. Huo Yan’s expression grew increasingly grim, and the atmosphere around him turned cold.

Over the years, anyone who had played a part in what happened to Ranran every single one of them he had dealt with.

The people of the Huo family called him a lunatic behind his back. Huo Yan didn’t care; as long as he could find Ranran, he would do things even more insane.

And now…

His Ranran had truly come back.

The car drove through the city and into a villa district. This land belonged to the Huo Corporation, so Huo Yan’s villa was naturally in the best location, with a yard in the front and a garden in the back.

After parking, Fang Ran still felt like he was dreaming.

He looked up at the four-story villa in front of him, still feeling a sense of unreality.

Who hasn’t dreamed of their brother getting rich so they could enjoy the fortune?

In the blink of an eye, the dream had come true.

He murmured, “A-Yan, you really hit it big. Now you can probably buy two cups of milk tea just to drink one and pour the other out, right?”

Huo Yan showed his first smile of the day. “Waste is shameful.”

“Of course, I was just using a metaphor.” Fang Ran blinked. “Do you… live with the people from the Huo family? Is it inconvenient for me to come over so suddenly?”

The smile on Huo Yan’s face faded instantly. He frowned. “How could I possibly live with them?”

He paused, his voice deepening slightly. “Ranran, this is my home, and it’s also your home.”

It is our home.

“My home?”

Fang Ran pointed to himself. “I get to live in such a nice house?”

Huo Yan took the opportunity to hold his hand. “Of course. If it weren’t because you… couldn’t complete the paperwork, I would have put the property under your name long ago.”

Those words sounded a bit scary. Fang Ran quickly shook his head. “No, no, no, don’t give it to me. Just living here is fine.”

Huo Yan curled his lips slightly and didn’t say anything more.

Pushing the door open, the living room was empty. Huo Yan loathed crowds; usually, only Liu Ma lived in, and other maids would come at set times to clean.

“The first floor is the living room. The kitchen and dining room are in the front, and there are stairs in the back leading to the basement. Don’t you like singing? The media room is for watching movies or singing.”

Huo Yan held his hand and continued walking upstairs. “I usually live on the second floor. Your room is right next to mine. The other two empty rooms were knocked through to make a walk-in closet for you.”

“The third floor is my study. I knocked through the entire fourth floor to make a game room for you.”

Huo Yan introduced every room to him. Fang Ran listened dizzily, feeling as if he were in a dream.

Until they reached the end of the third floor, Fang Ran froze for a moment. In the corner was a small door, tightly shut. Based on Huo Yan’s attitude, he didn’t seem to intend to introduce this room. Fang Ran instinctively walked over, his hand reaching for the doorknob. “A-Yan, this room is”

Before he could finish, Huo Yan interrupted him. “It’s just a storage room.”

The man stood with his eyes slightly lowered. He was standing against the light, making his expression hard to read. One could only hear his gentle tone. “Ranran, let’s go to the fourth floor. I made a game room for you there. See if you like it.”

Hearing about games, Fang Ran let go of the door in a second. His eyes lit up, and he hurried over. “Okay!”

Only one second away.

Huo Yan stood beside Fang Ran, subtly putting an arm around Fang Ran’s shoulder to keep him within his reach. He turned his head slightly and glanced at that door again.

If Fang Ran had truly pushed it open just now, he would have seen incense and candles flickering. Before the table sat a bronze bowl, with a faint smell of blood permeating the air. The walls were covered with photos of Fang Ran.

This was clearly a memorial hall for Fang Ran!