The "Honest" Beta Deceived Day and Night by a Twisted Obsessive - Chapter 2

“Engagement or not, even if it’s settled, it can still be broken.”

If Duan Huaijing had known that going downstairs the next morning would lead to an encounter with his cheap excuse for a fiancé, he would have sooner climbed out of the window.

Lacking the benefit of hindsight, he waited until the sounds of breakfast in the ancestral home had died down before finally trudging out of his room. He rubbed his neck, glancing around. The decor of the manor was understated, yet every corner was tucked with luxury goods and one of a kind antiques.

Duan Huaijing had never seen such wealth in his life; he could work himself to the bone for a lifetime and still not be able to afford a single vase in the Xie household. At first, he thought his unease was a sense of professional inadequacy, but he soon realised it was pure, unadulterated resentment of the rich.

Not daring to look any further, he wasn’t sure what he might do if his jealousy truly boiled over.

As he reached the landing, his gaze inadvertently drifted downstairs, and his vision froze. A man sat there with his legs crossed, chewing gum with a reckless, nonchalant air. It was Xie Ming, the man who was rarely home and preferred gallivanting around outside.

He was sprawled on the sofa, a flirtatious smirk on his face as he exchanged suggestive messages with someone in a mobile game. From this angle, Duan Huaijing could see the crown of Xie Ming’s head; likewise, if the man were to look up, he would see Duan Huaijing standing right there on the stairs.

Duan Huaijing never felt good after seeing Xie Ming. He had no desire to go looking for trouble, and besides, seeing him today reminded him of his mother’s stern instructions from the day before.

Give Xie Ming a child.

Duan Huaijing stood frozen for two seconds before turning to leave. He could hear Xie Ming’s flirtatious banter with his teammates in the game; the man clearly didn’t give a damn about the fact that he had a fiancé living in the same house.

Suddenly, the habitually impulsive Xie Ming pulled back his arrogance, his voice instantly tightening. “Big Brother.”

Duan Huaijing paused. He instinctively looked back downstairs.

Xie Ming had pocketed his phone, abandoning the girl in the game like a primary schooler caught by his parents. Standing before him was a man with a powerful aura even from a distance, the sense of pressure he exerted was palpable.

Xie Yun’s gaze swept over the phone screen. His voice was indifferent as he said, “You have a fiancé.”

It was a clear warning.

Xie Ming despised Duan Huaijing in his heart, but in front of his brother, he had to put on a show of being chastened. “I haven’t forgotten.”

As Xie Yun stepped aside to leave, Duan Huaijing didn’t want anyone to think he was eavesdropping, so he quickly scurried away. What he failed to notice was that as Xie Yun walked away, he instinctively glanced up toward the stairs.

“Brother, why aren’t you wearing your coat today?” Xie Ming asked casually.

Hiding around the corner of the stairs, Duan Huaijing’s fingers curled slightly.

He could have deluded himself about the coat he received yesterday when he didn’t know who sent it, but seeing the clothes Xie Yun was wearing today, he could no longer keep up the charade. They were a matching set.

Xie Yun was the one who had sent someone to give him that coat.

Duan Huaijing clenched his fists. Who knew if the man just wanted to show off that obviously extortionate coat in front of him? Or perhaps it was a subtle way of mocking him for being a country bumpkin who didn’t know quality when he saw it.

He heard Xie Yun turn around. His voice was as calm as ever, forming a sharp contrast to Duan Huaijing’s twisted jealousy. “Why do you ask?”

Xie Ming had only asked in passing and hadn’t expected a real answer. “Nothing, just curious.”

Xie Yun’s gaze seemed to sweep toward the stairwell. Duan Huaijing curled himself further into the shadows, staring down at his toes.

A bunch of phonies.

Taking advantage of the fact that no one had spotted him, Duan Huaijing slipped back to his room, grabbed his bag, and left through another door to head to work.

He had been quiet and socially awkward since he was a child. He didn’t understand the office politics or the subtle nuances of the workplace. To put it kindly, he was “overprotected”; to put it bluntly, he simply didn’t know how the world worked.

Initially, he was worried that being slow on the uptake and bad at small talk would make communication impossible. Before entering the office, he had memorised everything he planned to say for the day. Fearing he’d forget, he even scribbled notes on his palm for quick reference.

To his surprise, his colleagues were all very easy to get along with. The “scripts” he had prepared went unused, and by the end of the day, he had managed to become a familiar face.

As he was packing his things to leave a colleague working by the window joked, “Whose parent is here to pick them up?”

Duan Huaijing heard it but didn’t take it to heart. He said his goodbyes with a slightly stiff politeness, slung his bag over his shoulder, and pressed the button for the ground floor.

The shadow of his morning encounter with Xie Ming still loomed. He walked slowly, intending to head home later to avoid crossing paths with him again.

The person the colleague had mentioned was standing not far away. Duan Huaijing didn’t notice what they were wearing because he kept his head down, sticking to the very edge of the pavement. However, he could feel the aura of arrogance radiating from the person even from a distance.

As he drew closer, Duan Huaijing shifted to the side. “Excuse me, let me through.”

“What do you mean ‘let me through’!” A shrill, sharp voice exploded in his ear. He looked up instantly.

He saw his mother’s face.

Duan’s mother had been quite good-looking when she was younger, but in her quest for beauty, she’d had numerous injections and surgeries. Consequently, her face had eventually collapsed. When she wasn’t smiling, she looked like a wraith; when she did smile, her features seemed to bunch together uncomfortably.

She didn’t lower her voice, and several passing employees turned to look. Duan Huaijing, who had been terrified of being noticed his whole life, lowered his head even further until he was practically folded in half.

But his mother felt quite good about herself. She actually seemed to enjoy the attention. In her mind, she was likely playing the role of a wealthy socialite on the verge of the high life, speaking in the tone of someone saying, “Here’s five million, stay away from my son.”

She barked, “Find a way to get me and your brother into Old Mrs. Xie’s birthday banquet tomorrow.”

Duan Huaijing thought he had misheard. “I don’t think the Xie family sent an invitation.”

Upon hearing this, his mother shot him a fierce glare. “Are you thick? You get in whether there’s an invitation or not! Aren’t you Xie Ming’s fiancé? If you just beg him a little, surely he won’t refuse his future mother-in-law?”

The word “mother-in-law” made Duan Huaijing feel physically sick. However, having never dared to disobey her since childhood, he tried to be diplomatic despite how difficult the task was. “I don’t really have a say in the Xie household.”

His mother looked ready to roll up her sleeves and give him a piece of her mind, but seeing the crowd gathering, her “celebrity” self-restraint kicked in. Her hands stayed still, but her mouth didn’t stop.

“That’s because you’re useless! You’ve been there this long and you still don’t know how to capture a man’s heart. What use are you? Your brother is reaching marriageable age soon. If his big brother is such a waste of space, I have to look out for his future myself. The people attending tomorrow are the elite of every industry. If someone takes a liking to your brother, our family will finally move up in the world, don’t you know that!”

Duan Huaijing knew. Their family business was a sunset industry, and in recent years, it had been on the brink of bankruptcy. If it weren’t for the title of “Xie Ming’s fiancé,” they would have been packed off back to their village long ago.

His mother was lost in her own script, as if immense wealth was just around the corner. She grew more excited as she spoke, repeatedly cutting him off. Finally, she dropped a final word: “Fine. I don’t care how you do it, but your brother and I are appearing at that banquet tomorrow. If we aren’t…”

She paused, her eyes narrowing.

In his mind, Duan Huaijing instinctively filled in the words he’d heard so often as a child: The cane at home needs the dust knocked off it.

A shiver ran down his spine. The shadow cast by the cane made him agree to her unreasonable demand in a moment of mental blankness.

His mother turned and strutted away arrogantly.

Duan Huaijing stood there for a long time so long that no one else was coming out of the office building. He opened his chat with Xie Ming; the most recent message was a mass-sent “Happy New Year” from a year ago.

He felt as though he were being roasted over a fire squeezed between a relentless mother and a spoiled, irrational playboy. He gripped his phone case, drafting his message several times before finally typing: Hello, this is Duan Huaijing. What time are you arriving at the banquet tomorrow?

He clung to the last shred of his dignity, not daring to ask anything more direct. He wanted to get straight to the point, but knowing Xie Ming might not be willing to help, he had to test the waters first.

Night had fallen, and the green glow of the phone screen was the only light. Terrified of missing a reply, he kept swiping the screen to keep it from going dark.

Perhaps half an hour later, or maybe an hour, the reply finally came.

Xie Ming: Busy. I’m taking someone else.

Old Mrs. Xie had only invited him because he was Xie Ming’s fiancé, and they had been told specifically that they were to attend as a couple. If Xie Ming was going with someone else, who was he supposed to go with?

Duan Huaijing’s heart sank. He typed and deleted in the chat box, afraid that speaking his mind would annoy the man or make him lose his temper. As the long string of text vanished letter by letter, his dignity seemed to go with it.

To make matters worse, a message from his mother popped up: Your brother and I are all packed. I don’t care how you do it, I want to be in that banquet tomorrow, do you hear me!

Duan Huaijing’s throat tightened. He felt a wave of exhaustion and frustration—the kind of feeling you get after ploughing four acres of land on an empty stomach, only to find out you’ve ploughed the wrong field. He felt like a piece of meat that couldn’t run or complain, just sitting there while mosquitoes sucked him dry.

He had never received a single word of praise from his mother. In the past, he could excuse it as her favouring the younger child, but eventually, it didn’t matter whose fault it was—he was always the one who took the blame.

They were both her biological children, yet they were treated worlds apart. His brother could break something and act cute to get out of it, or ask her for help when he faced trouble. Duan Huaijing, however, only got a finger pointed at his nose and the cane. Years of being suppressed and belittled had made him increasingly wooden and incapable of normal social interaction.

And whenever he became like that, he would be scolded for being “as dull as a block of wood.” It was a vicious cycle.

The words he heard most often were: “You’re a Beta. You can’t bear life like an Omega, and you don’t have the strong body of an Alpha. You are destined to be more ordinary than ordinary for the rest of your life.”

Finding courage from who-knows-where, Duan Huaijing exited the page. For the first time, he didn’t reply to his mother’s message.

He wiped his face and walked to the bus stop. A light drizzle began to fall.

While waiting for the bus, he spotted two people in the cake shop across the street. One was his fiancé who had just claimed to be “busy,” and the other was the Omega who had been trending with Xie Ming a few days ago. The Omega looked both innocent and seductive, with a soft lock of hair falling over his forehead adding a touch of tenderness. The two of them stood close together, their movements intimate.

Duan Huaijing watched for a few seconds before a bus pulled up and blocked his view. The doors opened, releasing a foul mix of pheromones, foot odour, and sweat.

A scruffy-bearded man inside shouted at him, “Are you getting on or what!”

Duan Huaijing gripped his bag and took a small step back. The doors hissed shut, and as the bus pulled away, it generously gifted him a face full of exhaust fumes.

With nowhere to go, he decided to walk home. Halfway there, he saw a shop called “The Sorrow-Easer.”

The interior was decorated in a vintage style and was quite spacious. The lights were of varying colours and brightness, making the place look like a dazzling galaxy from a distance. As if possessed, Duan Huaijing walked in.

Can it really ease sorrows?

Once inside, he realised it was essentially a bar, though the atmosphere was much better than a typical one. He found a corner, ordered a drink, and sat there watching the performances on stage.

It was his first time in such a place. His ears were filled with sounds—the kind of vitality that had been missing from his drab, uneventful life. His heart hammered against his eardrums like a drum, and a flush naturally crept onto his face. He wanted to wave his limbs like the others, but his movements were stiff. Afraid of drawing mocking stares, he sat bolt upright, simply watching.

During this time, a few men came over to talk to him. They claimed to be workers there whose families were struggling, with younger siblings in school and elderly parents to support. Duan Huaijing, feeling a sense of shared hardship and thinking he might as well try to ease his sorrows since he was already here, ordered a few more drinks.

After a few trips to the toilet, he truly couldn’t drink any more. He slumped onto the padded seat and played with his phone.

When he turned it on, several messages popped up like firecrackers. They were all from the same person.

Unknown: The way your Adam’s apple moves when you drink is so beautiful, baby.

Unknown: Your face is so red from the alcohol. I want to bite… my teeth itch so much. I want to take a bite out of you so, so, so badly.

Unknown: They touched your hand.

Duan Huaijing gasped, looking around neurotically. He hadn’t expected to be watched even here.

“Where are you?!”

Unknown: I’m wherever you are, baby. 

At that moment, in a private booth, a man rested his arm on his chair and said with great interest, “Is your ‘sister-in-law’ really going to be okay drinking like that? The alcohol content in those drinks isn’t low.”

Xie Yun turned off his phone. Hearing that term, he frowned, feeling a surge of hostility toward the word. “His name is Duan Huaijing.”

His friend mimed zipping his lips. “Sorry, forgot they haven’t actually made it yet.”

Xie Yun’s lips thinned in displeasure. He looked down at the floor, a surge of jealousy churning in his chest as his hand instinctively tightened around his phone.

Engagement or not, they haven’t made it.

Even if it’s settled, it can still be broken. It’s worth nothing.

The work messages kept popping up on his phone, but his gaze remained fixed on Duan Huaijing, who was playing with his phone downstairs. His finger slid across the screen. Just as he was about to call his driver to pick the boy up, he saw someone standing beside the lonely Duan Huaijing with ill intentions, the person even reached out a hand.

Xie Yun’s eyes darkened.

His friend had just taken a sip of wine and hadn’t even spoken when he saw that Xie Yun, who had been sitting there, had vanished. He instinctively looked down.

Wearing a black overcoat, Xie Yun exuded the mature aura of an elder. As he strode downstairs, he drew many flirtatious glances, but his gaze was locked onto one spot, like a wolf that had set its sights on a piece of meat.

He arrived just in time. The wandering hand hadn’t touched Duan Huaijing yet.

Duan Huaijing had drunk a lot, and his reactions were slow. It wasn’t until he heard someone being kicked to the ground that he sluggishly turned his head. He saw Xie Yun standing in front of him.

Duan Huaijing tilted his head. His face was flushed unnaturally, and there was a moist sheen around his lips. He looked like a ripe peach. From his angle, he couldn’t see Xie Yun’s expression, but he could clearly see the man’s sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the veins bulging on his forearms.

The man with the wandering hand locked eyes with Xie Yun. It was as if he had seen something terrifying; he scrambled to his feet. Xie Yun, however, grabbed him and forced him to apologise to Duan Huaijing.

Duan Huaijing accepted the apology in a daze. In truth, his mind felt like it was trapped in a thick paste; he wouldn’t have known if someone was selling him off. The beautiful chandelier on the ceiling seemed to be swaying, growing smaller and smaller…

Eh?

Someone caught him.

“Careful. Stand steady.” Xie Yun’s voice was deep and magnetic, vibrating in his ear.

“Oh.  th-thank you.” Duan Huaijing’s speech centres were also drunk today as he stammered his thanks.

Xie Yun’s throat tightened. His face was split in half by the light, and a faint glint flashed in his eyes in the dim environment. His hand gripping Duan Huaijing’s waist tightened instinctively.

Duan Huaijing found the position uncomfortable. He pushed himself up, his cool fingers brushing across Xie Yun’s arm. He had so many questions, but only one came to mind: Could you take me to the banquet tomorrow? Xie Ming is taking someone else.

In his drunken state, he said whatever came to mind in a rambling fashion. His voice, thick with intoxication, sounded incredibly clingy, like a kitten acting cute. “Xie Ming.”

****

The moment those words left his lips, the surrounding air seemed to grow much colder. Duan Huaijing instinctively huddled closer to the source of heat.

This time, however, he was pushed away slightly before he could get close.

“Do you like him that much?”

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