The Cold Side Character from a Male-Lead Novel is Pregnant - Chapter 19

“You can win me back.”

As soon as Chen Kan’s words fell, the sound of kitten claws scratching at the door came from inside, a soft rustling noise. A slight sound also came from the room next to the single dormitory; someone coughed heavily. However, Chen Kan remained exceptionally quiet. His thin lips were tightly pursed, as if he were engaged in a necessary confrontation.

Yan Yu stood in the light, his hair slightly messy and his lips pressed into a straight line. He raised his hand to adjust the collar that Chen Kan had crumpled, his movements steady but his brow furrowed deeply.

“Should I understand this as you wanting to get back together with me?”

He felt the hand Chen Kan had on his waist tighten slightly. Chen Kan’s thumb and forefinger firmly gripped the curve of his waist, dominantly asserting control over his body. Yet, Chen Kan’s calm, greyish eyes showed no sign of weakness. It felt as though, in the space between breaths, only Yan Yu was waiting for an answer.

“You can misinterpret it that way if you like,” Chen Kan said faintly after a long silence. “But do you have a better choice? I mean, besides me.”

Yan Yu was indeed a bit at a loss. He had already sensed that Chen Kan might still be interested in him, which was why he was testing him this way. However, he hadn’t made up his mind yet, so he paused and ultimately did not respond.

After a long silence, perhaps feeling that staying in the hallway was not a good idea, he used some force to break free from the ambiguous posture. He turned and headed downstairs, his slippers making a light tapping sound on the concrete stairs. Chen Kan followed silently behind him like a gloomy, heavy shadow.

In the first-floor duty room, Old Zhao was reading a newspaper through his reading glasses. Yan Yu tapped on the glass window, making his voice sound as normal as possible. “Uncle Zhao, I forgot to bring my keys. Could I borrow the spare set, please?”

Old Zhao looked up, his gaze moving past Yan Yu’s shoulder to settle on the tall, imposing, and ill-tempered Chen Kan standing behind him. Old Zhao pushed up his glasses and gave an understanding smile. “Oh, Xiao Yan, Captain Chen is here too?”

Yan Yu gave a vague “Mm” in response.

When they got the keys and went upstairs, several neighboring doors opened slightly. A young colleague poked his head out, his gaze shifting between the two of them, and let out a soft, mischievous whistle. Yan Yu looked straight ahead, though the tips of his ears burned. He walked quickly to his door, opened it, and pulled Chen Kan inside. The door shut, cutting off the outside world.

Chen Kan walked straight to the bed and sat down, the bedboard letting out a slight creak. Yan Yu glanced at him and turned into the small bathroom. The sound of water running echoed; he stayed inside longer than necessary.

When he came out, he saw Chen Kan still sitting in the same spot, his posture unchanged. The silver-white kitten was crouched by the pillow, its tail held high and its glass-like eyes staring warily at Chen Kan. The man and the cat were in a silent standoff, but on Chen Kan’s left cheek, there were now three fresh red scratches.

Yan Yu’s footsteps faltered for a moment. Seeing him, the kitten immediately leaped lightly off the bed and scurried to his feet. Instead of climbing up his trouser leg, it stood on its hind legs, resting its front paws on his knee and letting out a thin, soft “Meow.”

Yan Yu instinctively leaned over to scoop it up. Just as his fingertips touched the warm fur, the kitten used the momentum to spring upward. Its claws hooked onto the zipper of his jacket, and it used its small head to nudge the slightly open gap. Before Yan Yu could react, it slipped through the opening like a nimble silver fish. It pressed against his warm skin, burrowing all the way to his chest over his heart, curled itself into a ball, and went still.

A soft, clear lump rose beneath the thin fabric of his clothes, rising and falling gently with the kitten’s breathing.

Chen Kan was also looking at him, or rather, at the subtle rise and fall of the lump on his chest, his gaze darkening. Yan Yu finally realized that Chen Kan was still waiting; he was waiting for the answer to the persistent question he had asked earlier.

But what could he do? Yan Yu was a person with a lot of “survival anxiety.” His life didn’t even have ruins; it was just a patch of desolate dust.

“Let me think about it.” Yan Yu turned off the overhead light and sat on the bed, feeling exhausted. His back was turned to Chen Kan, and after a long while, he managed to squeeze out another sentence. “Go back for now. It is very late, and you have work tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Chen Kan let out a short response, but he didn’t move an inch. His cold, hard facial features remained taut. Afraid that Yan Yu would run away, he directly asked the question that had bothered him for so long. “When you broke up with me back then, had you already found a replacement? Is that why you dumped me so easily?”

“What replacement?”

“The next lover.”

“And what if I had?”

A ball of fire was stuck in Chen Kan’s chest. He stared at him without changing his expression and said word by word, “If you had, I would lock you up.”

“That violent?”

“I can be.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

Chen Kan’s arrogant and cold gaze swept over him, his tone hardening. “I just told you. You can win me back.”

Chen Kan left soon after, but those words echoed in Yan Yu’s head. He thought about them while eating, while sleeping, and during gaps at work. Every word seemed to have a hook, repeatedly churning in his heart, making him restless and casting an inescapable filter of irritation over everything he saw.

Yan Yu had indeed been quite depressed lately. Since returning from giving birth to the kitten, he hadn’t been quite himself. There was always something in his mind that was hard to adapt to. How can a human give birth to a kitten? How can a man produce?

Forget it. Yan Yu couldn’t think about it anymore.

He would remember the birthing process, which was far from pleasant. The pain was continuous, like warmth being slowly drained from his bone marrow, though it was bearable. It was just that the blood flow looked terrifying at the time; he almost wondered if he had left an invisible faucet running. However, the blood didn’t flow onto the ground; instead, it congealed in the air to form a sphere.

Then, when the blood reached a certain volume, the red color faded layer by layer, gradually becoming translucent. One could vaguely see a small, fluffy shadow curled up inside. It wasn’t a bloody scene like a normal birth; it was more like a spirit essence shaping and solidifying itself. The final layer of the “cocoon,” thin as a cicada’s wing, dissolved silently into a shallow golden mist of blood that dispersed in the air.

At the same time, a tiny, wet-sounding “Meow” was heard. A kitten fell into Yan Yu’s weak arms.

Yan Yu felt too tired to speak, but he also felt the process wasn’t exactly a birth, but more like being parasitized by a spirit fetus. After all, he hadn’t used the human birthing process, nor had he produced a human. Then he heard the Administrator’s shocked voice. “Holy crap! It looks like you have started lactating? He seems to be nursing from you!”

Yan Yu had to admit that from that moment on, he really wanted the whole world to end. He was a man. What was he producing?

It took Yan Yu a long time to accept this fact, and perhaps he needed even longer. When Yan Yu faced great pressure, he preferred to be alone. So, in the days following the birth, he hadn’t been able to give much thought to Chen Kan. Saying he wanted to move out was only because he was afraid Chen Kan would find out if they shared a room. He never believed Chen Kan’s nonsense about “throwing him away after use.” In fact, he had seriously considered the possibility of getting back together.

Therefore, Yan Yu fully understood how much courage it took for Chen Kan to follow him out and say those things. After two or three days of consideration, he sent a message to Chen Kan in the way Chen Kan liked.

[NoBusinessRetire]: I can win you back.

Sure enough, he quickly received a reply from Chen Kan.

[ShenGe]: Mm.

Chen Kan’s chat box showed “typing” for three minutes. Six eager words—”Congratulations, you won me back”—were sitting in the input bar. He hesitated, and then he was too late.

Yan Yu had already proposed a new condition.

[NoBusinessRetire]: But I will still move out first. [NoBusinessRetire]: Give me a month first. [NoBusinessRetire]: I need to think about how to win you back.

Chen Kan was in a meeting, staring coldly at the person giving a report. He put his phone face down and didn’t reply all day. He even left Yan Yu hanging for exactly 360 minutes, only replying with an extremely cold “Mm” after work. When looking at the chat history, Yan Yu’s chat boxes were long while his own were short, creating the illusion that Yan Yu was the one “chasing” him.

Chen Kan admired this for a while and finally felt that he could visit Yan Yu’s single dormitory after work. He wanted to see if Yan Yu needed to buy anything for the move and, while he was at it, take away that annoying, manipulative kitten.

However, Yan Yu didn’t give him the chance. When Chen Kan entered the room, Yan Yu was already standing up. A dark grey duffel bag sat by his feet, its zipper tightly closed. The clingy kitten sat atop the bag, its tail elegantly curled around its paws. Seeing Chen Kan enter, the tips of its ears twitched almost imperceptibly, and its round eyes were full of confusion over what “the human was up to now.”

Yan Yu held a half-old canvas bag, the straps tightening around his knuckles until the skin turned white. His face lacked color, like a piece of cold porcelain. His eyelashes were lowered, casting a quiet shadow beneath his eyes. He spoke two words in a flat, steady voice, as if making an announcement:

“Let’s go.”

Only then did Chen Kan’s gaze fall back on the luggage. He thought Yan Yu would wait until Monday to move, but he hadn’t expected the man to be so decisive in packing his things. He moved fast, Chen Kan thought.

But wasn’t this backward? This was Yan Yu’s single dormitory. The items in his bag had only recently been moved out of Chen Kan’s guest bedroom; why were they being packed back into a bag?

“Where are you going?” Chen Kan frowned.

Yan Yu’s face showed no emotion. As he passed by Chen Kan, he brought a slight breeze with him.

Yan Yu said, “Let us return to the palace, Prince.”

Chen Kan: ..?

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