The Beta Wife Claimed by Competing Alphas - Chapter 21

In the end, no one is truly inseparable from another.

“A fool who can’t see things clearly. Living a life like this is exactly what he deserves.”

Mu Yan froze.

Hearing those words, it felt as if something had exploded in his head with a deafening roar.

He stared blankly at Lu Chong, his lips trembling slightly as if he couldn’t believe Lu Chong would say such a thing. Because he was never good at arguing with others, he couldn’t find a single word to say when he should have been defending his brother.

He had always known that Lu Chong looked down on his brother.

It wasn’t a vivid hatred like the one Lu Chong felt for Lin Guojun; it was pure indifference, a simple belief that Lin Yi was not the same kind of person as him. Mu Yan had always known this, but he had kept himself deaf and blind to it.

A brother was a brother, and a lover was a lover. They didn’t have to live under the same roof, nor were they connected by blood. As long as Lu Chong didn’t say it aloud, Mu Yan could pretend he knew nothing.

But this time, for the first time, Lu Chong had bloodily stripped away the mask of his contempt for Mu Yan’s family.

The first time Lu Chong and his brother met was during the Spring Festival the year after Mu Yan’s family faced their crisis.

After his mother fell ill, they would bring her home from the hospital on New Year’s Eve so the family could have a meal together. Mu Yan had never asked specifically about Lu Chong’s family, but on the day before New Year’s Eve, seeing that Lu Chong hadn’t started packing, Mu Yan carefully spoke up.

“I’m not going back. There’s nothing worth celebrating,” Lu Chong replied without even looking up.

“If you don’t go home, won’t your parents worry about you?”

“No,” Lu Chong said without blinking. “My dad is dead, and my mom remarried.”

Mu Yan was stunned.

Even though his own family situation wasn’t necessarily any happier than Lu Chong’s, hearing Lu Chong’s calm tone still made Mu Yan’s heart ache with a sharp, twitching pain.

“Come home with me, okay?”

Lu Chong nodded and said yes.

Mu Yan went to the market to buy meat and New Year’s supplies. When he introduced Lu Chong to his mother and brother, he only said Lu Chong was a friend from City A who couldn’t get a train ticket home, so he had brought him along.

Lu Chong kept a stiff face but greeted the mother and brother politely enough.

Grandparents and grandchildren always share a special bond. Since his mother fell ill, she saw Jiajia less often, so during the New Year’s Eve dinner, she insisted on holding Jiajia and feeding her first. Jiajia was also clingy toward her, refusing to let even Lin Yi hold her.

Later, Mu Yan wanted his mother to eat her own dinner, so after much coaxing, he took his little niece into his arms. “Will Uncle feed you, okay?”

Children are not well-behaved when eating. No matter how good a child is, there are always moments of mischief during a meal. For every spoonful of rice Mu Yan fed her, he had to coax her with three or four sentences.

“Xiao Lu, would you like a drink? It’s homemade.”

Xiang Zhuo liked to have a little drink now and then, and their family made fruit wine every year that wasn’t very strong. It was sweet, delicious, and didn’t make one drunk easily.

“No thanks, I don’t like drinking.” Lu Chong’s fingers rested on the edge of his cup, a clear gesture of refusal.

Xiang Zhuo felt a bit awkward and picked up a bottle of soft drink instead. “Then would you like some yogurt?”

Lu Chong said nothing, merely shaking his head again.

Lu Chong never drank those kinds of beverages that didn’t even have a recognizable brand.

Mu Yan quickly explained for him. “Brother Xiang Zhuo, his stomach isn’t very good. He can’t drink those.”

“Oh, I see.” Having been given a way out, Xiang Zhuo followed Mu Yan’s lead and didn’t say anything more.

Mu Yan regretted bringing Lu Chong home. Perhaps his desire for Lu Chong not to be alone on New Year’s Eve was just wishful thinking; Lu Chong clearly didn’t like these kinds of occasions. After a while, he nervously glanced at Lu Chong’s profile to see if he was unhappy.

At that moment, Lu Chong frowned. He brushed his left sleeve with a very small movement, a flash of deep disgust crossing his eyes, though it vanished instantly.

Mu Yan was sitting on his left side. Just now, it seemed Jiajia had accidentally touched him.

Mu Yan didn’t have time to think of anything else, nor did he know what to say. He simply pulled Jiajia a little further to the left, wanting to make sure she didn’t accidentally touch Lu Chong again.

Even back then, he should have known that Lu Chong didn’t like his brother.

“Lu Chong,” Mu Yan’s tears burst from his eyes. “He is my brother.”

“How can you talk about my brother like that?”

Lu Chong’s expression darkened even further.

Lin Yi. It was always because of Lin Yi.

Every bit of bottomless tenderness and tolerance Mu Yan gave him would be retracted every time it involved this non-blood-related brother.

Lu Chong didn’t avoid his gaze. His voice didn’t even hold a hint of emotion, cold as if he were simply stating a fact. “Isn’t it the truth? A stupid Omega from the countryside who didn’t even finish vocational school. Is there a single thing he’s done that looks like something a person with a functioning brain would do?”

Mu Yan’s heart constricted violently, as if someone had grabbed his chest and squeezed hard. For a moment, even breathing became difficult. His eyes grew red, and his nails dug deep into his palms as he desperately fought back the tears.

“He is my brother,” Mu Yan’s voice trembled, but he spoke every word clearly, as if wanting Lu Chong to hear them perfectly. “The tuition for me to attend A University was earned by him, cent by cent. I know you’ve always looked down on my brother.”

He raised his eyes to look at Lu Chong, his voice low and raspy but filled with a stubborn strength. “I am also from the countryside. Have you always thought I was a fool, too?”

The air fell into a sudden, dead silence.

Lu Chong’s expression stiffened slightly, as if he hadn’t expected Mu Yan to say that. Looking at those red-rimmed eyes, he suddenly felt a sharp prick in his heart.

But that slight discomfort was quickly covered by irritation. “Stop bringing up old debts. I’m just discussing the matter at hand. Setting a password that Lin Guojun could guess—if that isn’t stupid, what is? Just calm down.”

And just like his brother, Mu Yan truly wasn’t smart either. If he hadn’t hidden his family situation during university for the sake of his pathetic pride, Lu Chong would have stepped in and solved the Lin Guojun issue long ago.

Poor people are just stubbornly defiant and have a strangely excessive sense of self-respect.

Mu Yan didn’t argue with Lu Chong anymore.

He stood there with his head bowed, his fingertips tightly clutching the hem of his shirt, as if trying his best to calm his emotions. After a long while, he took a slow breath. When he looked up again, his eyes had regained their calm.

“You’re right,” Mu Yan said, gripping the door handle without turning back to look at Lu Chong. “I’ll go out and calm down for a bit.”

The door slammed shut behind him.

This rental apartment had seen God knows how many generations of tenants, but the quality of the door was surprisingly good. No matter how roughly it was treated, it simply engaged the latch quietly.

Perhaps on some day in the near future, it would also break down without warning.

In Lu Chong’s memory, he had slammed the door and left the house many times after losing his temper with Mu Yan, but this was the first time Mu Yan had ever slammed the door.

Lu Chong stared at that door, the emotions in his eyes churning uncontrollably.

It was already late at night.

The long-neglected motion-sensor light didn’t turn on immediately at the sound of Mu Yan’s footsteps. As Mu Yan walked through the dim hallway and made it halfway down the stairs, the light at his front door finally flickered on, stretching his shadow long in front of him.

Only after he was far from home did Mu Yan finally reach out and touch his face.

He felt a patch of wetness.

At this hour, the glitzy nightlife of City A’s CBD might have just begun, but here, there was only the reflection of the streetlights on the river surface, swaying quietly.

Lu Chong didn’t like his family. Hadn’t he known that all along?

Why did he only feel angry now? Why did he only realize now that if Lu Chong truly respected him, he wouldn’t treat his brother that way?

Mu Yan was actually angry at himself, too.

His phone kept ringing in his pocket. Mu Yan didn’t dare turn it off. His job didn’t require much overtime, but if an emergency happened, he had to go back, so he had to stay reachable.

Mu Yan rejected Lu Chong’s call once, but the phone kept ringing relentlessly.

Mu Yan answered it but didn’t speak first.

“Are you done calming down?” Lu Chong’s voice came through. It sounded distorted over the phone, making it feel particularly unpleasant. “If you’re done, come back.”

“I’m done calming down,” Mu Yan said softly.

“Then hurry back. Why are you acting like someone else? Running out wearing so little. If you get sick, I don’t have time to take you to the hospital.”

Lu Chong was right. The temperature by the river was lower than in the rest of the city. Mu Yan wrapped his clothes more tightly around himself.

It was still a bit cold because the wind would blow in through his collar.

“There’s no need.”

Mu Yan’s voice was very light, so light it seemed it would vanish along with the white mist of his breath.

“No need for what?”

“If I get sick, there’s no need for you to take me to the hospital,” Mu Yan said.

Lu Chong seemed to have forgotten that they had only known each other for three years. For twenty years, Mu Yan had lived his life alone.

If he was sick, he could buy medicine himself. If things got bad, he could ask his brother and friends to take care of him.

He had his own family and friends, his own life, and his own hopes for the future. He wasn’t born just waiting for the moment he would meet Lu Chong.

In the end, no one is truly inseparable from another.

“What do you mean?” Lu Chong asked coldly.

He sensed that Mu Yan’s tone was off. Although it was still as gentle and peaceful as usual, there was an indefinable difference.

“Lu Chong, let’s break up.”

“Fine,” Lu Chong said. “Mu Yan, I’m asking you one more time. You want to break up, is that it?”

The wind by the river came in gusts, and right now the wind was at its strongest.

This area was an economic development zone. The wind wasn’t just wind; it was filled with dust and sand. Mu Yan’s eyes were sensitive, and the wind kept making them water.

“Yes,” Mu Yan repeated. “Let’s break up, Lu Chong.”

“Fine,” Lu Chong agreed. “Just don’t regret it. Mu Yan, do you really think you’re some kind of prize? Do you think I can’t live without you? Or are you in a hurry to break up so you can go find that good roommate of yours?”

“I never thought that. All these years, it has always been, it was me who couldn’t leave you.”

All these years, it was he who liked Lu Chong. It was he who couldn’t leave Lu Chong.

But now, he didn’t feel so inseparable from Lu Chong anymore.

He still liked Lu Chong. Love cannot be erased in a single moment, but disappointment can reach its limit in a single moment.

“But I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

Support