To Marry My Little Chestnut - Chapter 26

On the way back to Haicheng, Yu Yan was still suffering from motion sickness. After he had been asleep for an hour, he remained restless with a furrowed brow. Zheng Tingyang instructed the driver to pull over at a rest area, deciding they would only continue once Yu Yan was sleeping more soundly.

The media moved fast. Before evening fell, news of Haoyang Group’s stock market crash was already being broadcast, and relevant authorities had begun auditing the company’s accounts. Financial news outlets were openly identifying the primary benefactor of this collapse: Zheng Tingyang.

In a short span of time, he had toppled Guangmao in Haicheng and then moved to the capital to tear out the roots of Haoyang. It served as a grim confirmation of what he had told Gao Wenjing: as long as Zheng Tingyang existed, any rise in Haoyang’s stock would be proof of his own incompetence.

“Tingyang,” Yu Yan murmured in his sleep. Cradled in the man’s arms, his nose instinctively nudged against him, searching for a scent, even if it was just the faint aroma of body wash.

Zheng Tingyang held him by the shoulder, his palm resting on Yu Yan’s waist, applying gentle pressure. An Omega’s frame was naturally small, and the physical burden grew heavier in the later stages of pregnancy. “Does your waist still hurt?” he asked softly.

Yu Yan frowned and shook his head, whispering in his sleep, “I do not dare anymore.”

I do not dare.

Zheng Tingyang’s fingertips paused in midair. He looked down at Yu Yan’s face, his heart aching with a sharp, bitter pang. He had heard those exact words before, back in high school.

He closed the news feed on his phone. A message arrived from Xiao Kai abroad: “He is about to be pushed into the incinerator. Are we really not letting his son see him one last time?”

Zheng Tingyang replied: “It is bad luck. Handle it yourself.”

Xiao Kai: “OK.”

Old Mr. Yu had fled the country, only to die in a foreign land. Zheng Tingyang recalled the old man’s loathsome face as he had once interrogated Yu Yan: “Do you dare to have contact with such a disreputable person ever again?”

Contact?

Whenever he thought of it, Zheng Tingyang wished he could have carved the old man into a thousand pieces. It was far more than contact; he had married the boy and intended to guard him for the rest of his life.

Zheng Tingyang was adopted by his foster father when he was five years old. He was just an unremarkable Beta child in an orphanage with nothing special about him. At the time, the government had introduced a policy providing an eight hundred yuan monthly subsidy for adoption. His foster father had taken him in solely to embezzle that money.

As for his biological parents, he considered them dead. He had no memories of them, feeling as though he had been born to be discarded.

His foster father was a chronic alcoholic whose wife had fled while pregnant with someone else’s child. Zheng Tingyang’s memories of the man were a blur of drunken domestic violence. Sometimes, even with his head bleeding from an injury, he would be forced to take three yuan to go out and buy the man cigarettes.

The worst incident occurred when he was ten. His foster father gave him five yuan, and he was heading home with the remaining two yuan in change. It was a very windy day, and the bills were swept out of his tattered school uniform, disappearing into the sky.

His foster father accused him of stealing the money and beat him mercilessly. When the neighbors finally called the police and he was taken to the hospital, he truly believed he was going to die.

As a child, Zheng Tingyang was not strong. He was chronically malnourished and covered in scars, appearing even frailer than other children. He met Yu Yan for the first time during that period of agony, when it felt as though the God of Death was reaching for him.

Though he was only ten, he was silent and somber, unlike any child his age. While a nurse spoke to him in a soft voice as she administered an IV, he watched other children who were surrounded by family. He realized then that he was simply the only one who was alone.

Other children would cry when they first arrived for shots or medicine, but their parents would patiently coax them until they were smiling again. Young Zheng Tingyang watched them with a mix of confusion and bitterness.

He limped to an empty bathroom and looked out at the high windows. He climbed up with effort, hoping he could sprout wings like a bird and fly away into the sky. Then, standing on the windowsill, he saw a child in the adjacent stall.

The child wore a hospital gown made of much finer material than his own, but his tears fell like a string of broken pearls. Zheng Tingyang decided not to fly away; he wanted to see why the boy was crying.

He handed a piece of paper through the gap. The door opened to reveal a boy with red, swollen eyes. The child froze upon seeing the wounds on Zheng Tingyang’s face and used a tear-stained tissue to gently wipe them.

They sat in silence. Zheng Tingyang was silent because it was his habit and he had no friends; the other boy was silent because his father forbade him from making any. Eventually, the two little figures huddled together. The boy peeled open a milk tablet for him. Zheng Tingyang was baffled; he did not know that something so white could be so sweet—far sweeter and more fragrant than the rice he usually chewed.

They sat together in the sun, watching birds fly past the window. Young Zheng Tingyang, trapped in poverty, envied the birds’ ability to soar; the other child envied their freedom. They were worlds apart, yet they were exactly the same: unloved, lonely, and used as tools for their fathers to collect money or vent rage.

The afternoon sun was warm, so warm that it made Zheng Tingyang want to ask if the boy would come back to sit in the sun tomorrow. He wanted to be his friend.

“Young Master Yu? Where are you? Do not run around. The children outside are very bad.”

Zheng Tingyang realized the boy’s surname was Yu. If people were looking for him, he must be the child of a wealthy family. When the Yu family butler saw Zheng Tingyang, he recognized him as the boy the doctors and nurses were discussing—the one who had supposedly stolen from his father and been beaten.

“He is a bad child,” the butler said. “You cannot be friends with bad children, do you understand?”

The young boy blinked earnestly. “He is a good friend. A good boy.”

Zheng Tingyang watched him be led away. His heart felt empty, and his eyes stung. His foster father had said that eight hundred yuan a month was not enough to cover the cost of raising him—that he was a losing bargain, a piece of Beta trash that couldn’t even be sold off.

But that boy had called him a good child. When his foster father broke his head, Zheng Tingyang only bled. But watching that boy’s retreating back, he cried.

I am a good child. Even if it was only a chance meeting, did that make them friends, Little Yu?

Zheng Tingyang began to seek him out. In junior high, his school was only two blocks away from the neighboring private academy. Every morning at seven, he would wait at the second traffic light. He would see a luxury car stop, and the student Yu would lean his head out of the window because of motion sickness.

Through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, he waited at that light every day just for that one glimpse.

His grades were excellent, and he began receiving scholarships. His foster father realized he wasn’t entirely useless—at least the man would offer a rare word of praise when Zheng Tingyang brought home prize money.

During a part-time job, he ran into Yu at a club. Even after several years, the boy still hid in the bathroom to cry when he was mistreated. Zheng Tingyang wondered why he had so many tears and why his heart ached so much for him.

Growing up in the streets gave Zheng Tingyang a bad reputation. He had been in fights when targeted, and by the time he reached high school, he was labeled a delinquent. In high school, they attended the same campus. Yu Yan was precious and sheltered, while Zheng Tingyang was the “troublemaker.”

Yu Yan was an Omega. Half of the wealthy young heirs in Haicheng had ties to the Yu family. During gym class, people would follow Yu Yan; during breaks, people would stare at him in the hallway as if he were a figure in a painting. Zheng Tingyang followed him from a distance, listening to the cicadas in the trees as if they were playing a romantic melody.

His foster father would never let him attend university. He worked at night and slept in school during the day, relegated to the corner as a problem student. He fought often—against those who gossiped about Yu Yan or those who looked at him with predatory eyes. Because of the fighting, he struggled to keep up with his schoolwork.

Yet, after every fight, a notebook would appear on his desk with a milk tablet tucked inside. When the bell rang, Yu Yan and Xiang Qian would walk in laughing. Yu Yan would instinctively glance toward the corner. Their eyes would meet, and Yu Yan’s eyes would curve into beautiful crescents like the new moon.

Yu Yan protected him, and Zheng Tingyang thought of him.

In their second year, an Alpha classmate approached Yu Yan and asked what he smelled like. Zheng Tingyang entered the room and kicked the boy in the stomach, telling him to get out of the way. The Alpha was popular, and a brawl ensued. The dean intervened, and the other parents demanded punishment. Zheng Tingyang was given a major demerit and placed under observation.

The next day, there was no candy on his desk. He frowned. During gym class, while everyone else was outside, he stayed in the classroom to sleep. Yu Yan sneaked back to get his water bottle while Xiang Qian waited at the door.

As Yu Yan tried to leave, Zheng Tingyang kicked his chair back to block the path. He demanded, “Where is the candy?”

Yu Yan flushed a deep red and whispered, “That was a milk tablet.”

“Why is it gone?”

Xiang Qian, thinking there was trouble, hurried in to check on Yu Yan. Yu Yan quickly said he had found his bottle and let himself be pulled away. When Zheng Tingyang opened his notebook later, he found that this time, it wasn’t candy inside. It was a cartoon-patterned bandage.

That was the second time they had spoken in high school.

By senior year, his foster father grew suspicious. While searching his uniform for money, the man found the bandage and the expensive notebook. He went to the school and caused a scene, claiming the school was responsible for his son’s poor behavior. He tried to extort money using the notebook as evidence that the school had “corrupted” his boy.

Within a week, the foster father was dead. It was an accident. Zheng Tingyang did not want an explanation from anyone. He naively thought that without his foster father, his future would finally be bright.

He took his earnings from a summer job—a physically demanding but well-paying position. As the college entrance exams approached, he wanted to tell Yu Yan that no matter which school he chose, Zheng Tingyang would find a way to be nearby.

Amidst the flurry of test papers and graduation celebrations, Zheng Tingyang returned the expensive notebook, now filled with study notes, to Yu Yan. While others celebrated in the hallway, the two were separated from the joy by a single door. Inside the equipment room, Yu Yan opened the notebook to find a letter. It was an envelope containing Zheng Tingyang’s entire summer salary, and tucked within the money was a note.

Yu Yan’s phone rang; it was his father. He did not answer. He only looked up with reddened eyes and asked, “Are we close, Student Zheng?”

“You stole this notebook, didn’t you? Do you know how expensive it is? This money isn’t even enough to buy one of my books. You cannot take it away.”

Yu Yan’s lashes trembled. He took a step back, and tears fell again. He forced himself to sound cruel, his voice strained as he said, “You are not worthy. You are not fit to touch my things. I do not want it anymore. My father says that things touched by people like you are dirty.”

“We are not close.”

“After I go to university, I am getting engaged,” Yu Yan said, sniffing. His eyes were full of tears and a sense of helplessness.

Zheng Tingyang recognized that look. It was the same look he had as a child when he was forced to lie and admit to a crime he didn’t commit. It was a look that screamed, Save me.

Zheng Tingyang pulled out a tissue. Just as he had done ten years ago during their first meeting, he wiped Yu Yan’s tears for the second time in seven years. “Okay. We are not close.”

Xiang Qian called for him in the hallway and pulled him out of the equipment room, asking why his eyes were red and if he was sad to leave high school.

Hidden in the shadows, Zheng Tingyang reached out and briefly hugged the empty air where Yu Yan had just stood.

They were not close, so distant that they had barely spoken throughout high school. Yet they were too close; with just one look, he understood Yu Yan’s lack of choice. From the moment Yu Yan stepped out of that room, they were worlds apart, the line clearly drawn.

The celebration of high school graduation was the curtain call of his secret crush. He could not bear to make things difficult for Yu Yan, so he had to let go of his own resentment.

Yu Yan, Zheng Tingyang loves you.

A shattered love letter can be taped back together, even if it is many years too late.

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