Quarrel at the head of the bed, reconcile at the foot of the bed.
Chu Tingyun deliberately prolonged the ending of the phrase, making it sound ambiguous and suggestive.
For a moment, Jiang Shenghai was actually stunned.
Even though the same-sex marriage law had been passed ten years ago, and even though Chu Tingyun had been married for three years, he still couldn’t accept the idea of two men being together in bed…
Jiang Shenghai had been through many ups and downs in the business world and had long been accustomed to hiding his emotions. Yet, this son of his could always manage to make him so angry that his hair stood on end with just one sentence.
“Alright, alright! Chu Tingyun, I don’t care if you like men, but you’re thirty-three years old and still don’t have a child. What will you do when you’re old?”
“That’s why I specifically chose someone younger and in good health.”
Chu Tingyun leisurely exhaled a puff of smoke,
“If we both get old, we’ll just spend your inheritance to enjoy our old age.”
“With money, you can get anything. As long as the price is high enough, there will be plenty of people fighting to take care of me and my little old husband.”
Jiang Shenghai: “……”
He was so angry that his hands were trembling, but upon careful consideration, he couldn’t refute it. Probably infuriated to the point of losing his temper, Jiang Shenghai directly stood up and slammed the table—
“Rebelled, truly rebelled! How could your mother and I have given birth to such a…”
At this moment, Chu Tingyun had already crushed his cigarette and was turning to go upstairs, but the mention of his deceased mother made him pause.
Chu Tingyun’s expression darkened instantly.
Chen Wanqing quickly realized something was wrong and immediately came out to smooth things over.
“Alright, alright, it’s good that Tingyun and… reconciling is a good thing. Besides, he’s so grown up now, he naturally knows his own business.”
Saying this, she turned her head to look upstairs, speaking in a very gentle tone:
“You said you’ve already eaten at home, so hurry up and go rest in your room.”
Chu Tingyun stood on the stairs, casually turning back. He didn’t look at Chen Wanqing but smiled slightly down at Jiang Shenghai from a superior position:
“It’s really surprising that you still remember my mother.”
This sentence was spoken in Russian.
Only Chu Tingyun and Jiang Shenghai understood it, but it didn’t prevent both of them from changing their expressions simultaneously.
At this moment, Chu Tingyun didn’t intend to play dumb with the old man. He quickly switched back to Chinese, gave Chen Wanqing a casual glance, and said lightly:
“I thought you had completely forgotten about my mother when you were having an affair with this woman.”
In an instant, the entire hall fell silent. Jiang Shenghai’s face turned from red to white.
Chu Tingyun’s mother was Russian, and a naturally gifted figure skater. In her youth, she was as beautiful as a fairy from a snowy land.
She came to China to participate in a friendly exchange competition. Jiang Shenghai was taken by a friend to watch, saying there were many foreign beauties, each one more stunning than the last.
The cliché love story unfolded. The young master of the Jiang family fell in love at first sight and launched a vigorous pursuit, using various methods every day, quickly winning her over.
During their passionate period, Jiang Shenghai even gave her a Chinese name, with the surname Chu.
The name Chu, meaning “pure and lovely.”
But this foreign girl’s family background was far too ordinary compared to the prestigious Jiang family. Her family was naturally opposed. However, under the influence of youthful hormones, the two quickly married.
The talented figure skater gave up her career and even her return home for the sake of her family.
—Because she was pregnant.
Hormones, anxiety, the discomfort of being in a foreign country, and the physical pain of childbirth gradually took away her beauty.
She became fat and unattractive, and the daily grind of family life made her feel like a bird locked in a cage. Her speech also became increasingly trivial and dull.
It was at this time that Jiang Shenghai had an affair, and his four-year-old son witnessed it firsthand. Naturally, this led to a divorce, and the heartbroken mother took the child back to her hometown to live.
Until Chu Tingyun was fourteen, when his mother died of illness, he was brought back. By this time, Jiang Shenghai had already married the woman who had intervened.
They even had two children.
A boy and a girl, looking like the happiest family in the world. It seemed as though… Chu Tingyun was the outsider and the interloper.
At that time, very few people knew about Jiang Shenghai’s first marriage, and Chu Tingyun largely inherited his mother’s looks and didn’t have the surname Jiang. So for a long time, he was considered an illegitimate child.
In the sensitive and vulnerable years of adolescence, living in such a family environment, this created the current conflict between Chu Tingyun and the Jiang family.
At this moment, Chen Wanqing’s eyes reddened, and she suddenly covered her face and cried.
“Tingyun, you misunderstood. Your father and I…”
Hearing her speak, Chu Tingyun’s gaze immediately fell on Chen Wanqing.
“Mrs. Jiang, I heard that you were relieved when I didn’t get a divorce just now. Were you quite pleased? After all, I won’t have any children, so everything in the Jiang family will go to your son.”
“Of course, that’s still a long way off. The more immediate benefit is that Jingshu can thoroughly give up and marry into the He family.”
“Selling your daughter to get a benefit for the Chen family, right?”
Chu Tingyun smiled and openly exposed his stepmother’s little schemes.
At that moment, Chen Wanqing’s face turned extremely ugly. She opened her mouth but couldn’t say a word.
By this time, after finishing his round of confrontation, Chu Tingyun had already turned and gone upstairs.
This time, no one shouted to stop him.
Chen Wanqing looked at Chu Tingyun’s back, her expression complex and cold.
In fact, when Jiang Shenghai brought Chu Tingyun back, she didn’t pay much attention to the child.
Because by then, Chu Tingyun was already fourteen. His ordinary background meant that his mother couldn’t provide him with any elite education, and he was sent to learn figure skating.
He would probably just become a simple-minded, physically capable athlete in the future.
Moreover, when Chu Tingyun came back, he knew nothing. Not to mention academic subjects, he couldn’t even speak Chinese fluently, making him practically mute at home.
Jiang Shenghai didn’t like him either because this son constantly reminded him of his past blemish. Not long after, he sent him to a boarding school.
At that time, Chen Wanqing thought it was no threat at all. It wasn’t until Chu Tingyun became the vice president of a branch company at the age of twenty-six that she realized.
He didn’t ascend through Jiang Shenghai’s connections, but from the grassroots to the high ranks of the branch company, and then to the head office. He had fought his way up through real achievements.
By then, Chen Wanqing realized that her husband hadn’t ignored this child; on the contrary, he had valued him greatly.
Jiang Shenghai indeed doted on his youngest son but was also cultivating Chu Tingyun as a successor. Perhaps in the future, all of Jiang’s assets would fall into Chu Tingyun’s hands.
Meanwhile, the Chen family was showing signs of decline. Jiang Shenghai was ruthless and knew that the Chen family’s business wasn’t clean and didn’t want to get involved. So Chen Wanqing had to think of a marriage alliance and find ways to get her youngest son into the company.
However, Jiangshu was disappointing; not only did she break off the engagement, but she also eloped with a poor student on the day of the engagement party. At that time, Chen Wanqing felt like she was going to lose her mind.
But then, an extremely dramatic change occurred.
Even though Chu Tingyun only had a nodding acquaintance with his sister on ordinary days, when he heard that Jiang Jiangshu had run away from the wedding, he was the most reactive person in the family.
Chu Tingyun seemed to have lost his sanity, abandoning all his work at the company and frantically searching for his runaway sister. He disappeared for more than three months, causing several major projects to fail and directly resulting in losses of over a hundred million for the company.
When Chen Wanqing heard this news, she was filled with mixed feelings. She never expected Chu Tingyun to care so much about her daughter.
For a moment, she was distressed by the one hundred million loss and at the same time pleased with Chu Tingyun’s irrationality and such a major mistake.
With such an incident, the company’s elders would certainly be extremely dissatisfied with Chu Tingyun, and even Jiang Shenghai would likely severely punish him, perhaps even removing him from his current position.
But Chen Wanqing could not understand Chu Tingyun’s motives, and she even had the absurd thought that her stepson might have feelings for Jiangshu.
This suspicion terrified Chen Wanqing to the point of almost losing her sanity, unable to sleep through the night.
Fortunately, this did not happen.
Chu Tingyun found Jiangshu, but it seemed he wasn’t specifically looking for Jiangshu but rather for the male student who had eloped with her.
Because a few months later, Chu Tingyun came back with a box of wedding candies. Before Jiang Shenghai could reprimand him about the company, he heard Chu Tingyun say:
“I married Yan Xun.”
“However, he’s shy, so we’re not having a wedding. Just having you all taste a bit of wedding candy.”
In just two short sentences, it was like a missile had been thrown, leaving the entire family stunned.
“……Who?”
Jiang Shenghai doubted his ears, his lips trembling as he uttered the words:
“Who did you marry?”
“Oh, it’s Jiangshu’s ex-boyfriend, the one who eloped with her not long ago. I brought him back and registered us this morning at the civil affairs bureau.”
Chu Tingyun’s tone was very nonchalant, and even as he said this, he actually smiled.
“So from today on, he is mine.”
As soon as the words were out, Jiang Shenghai slapped him hard.
Slap—!
The crisp and terrifying sound echoed in the dead silence of the hall.
The slap was extremely heavy.
Chu Tingyun felt a blackness before his eyes, as if his consciousness was floating in the air, and it took a long time to come to. His right cheek was numb, and the pain gradually set in.
His mouth was full of a metallic taste, and his ears were ringing with a loud buzz.
“Chu Tingyun, are you insane!!!”
At this moment, Jiang Shenghai was furious, like a completely enraged beast.
“He is a man! And your sister’s ex-boyfriend! Do you know what you are doing? Huh?!!”
If Chu Tingyun had made such a major mistake for his sister, Jiang Shenghai might have scolded him, punished him, but would have also felt relieved.
But, unfortunately, Chu Tingyun did it for a man.
He stole his sister’s ex-boyfriend, caused the company to lose over a hundred million, and married that man.
Jiang Shenghai felt a wave of dizziness, as if the sky was falling.
“Divorce!”
He gritted his teeth,
“Immediately, right now, get divorced! I, your father, do not approve! I absolutely do not approve of such a man entering the Jiang family’s door!”
Chu Tingyun slowly licked the blood at the corner of his mouth:
“It’s okay. I don’t need you to prepare a dowry when I enter his family.”
“……”
Jiang Shenghai’s blood pressure spiked, and he actually fainted on the spot.
The family was in a flurry, quickly calling for an ambulance.
From then on, apart from Jingshu, the Jiang family was extremely wary of Yan Xun, thinking he must be a very scheming male vixen.
Not only did he elope with their most obedient and well-behaved daughter, but even the normally rational eldest son had lost his mind over him.
Jiang Yuheng was repeatedly warned by his mother to stay far away from Yan Xun in the future, and even if he accidentally saw him, he must take a detour.
Among the three children in their family, two had fallen, and the third had to be strictly guarded against no matter what.
That night, while everyone was at the hospital keeping watch over the unconscious Jiang Shenghai, Chu Tingyun, who was completely unconcerned, instead drove home in a very good mood, humming a song.
Indeed, it was a new home.
For the wedding, Chu Tingyun specifically bought a new house. From the decoration to every item in the house, he personally chose and arranged everything piece by piece.
During this process, Chu Tingyun also asked Yan Xun for his opinion, but Yan Xun ignored him. When asked repeatedly, he only replied, “Anything is fine.”
Yan Xun naturally did not look forward to the upcoming married life, as this marriage was forced upon him by Chu Tingyun.
Tap—
The front door opened from the outside.
The house was quiet and dark, with no lights on.
Chu Tingyun’s breath tightened. He quickly turned on his phone, and the small blue dot on the screen flickered slightly, pinpointing their home address.
Confirming Yan Xun was at home, he slowly relaxed.
Chu Tingyun searched every room in the house and finally found him in the study.
The desk lamp emitted a warm light, and the room was filled with the crisp and rhythmic sound of keyboard typing.
Yan Xun was working on the computer.
Because he was facing away from the door, Chu Tingyun couldn’t see his face, only the young man’s straight back and the dense, flowing code on the screen.
At this moment, the crisp typing sound suddenly stopped.
Probably sensing someone behind him, Yan Xun turned around.
He saw the man standing at the door, neatly dressed and elegant, the only discordant note being the glaring handprint on his face.
Chu Tingyun said nothing, just stared intently at him, perhaps waiting for some question or concern.
But Yan Xun, after a few seconds of silent observation, turned his gaze away and coldly left a remark:
“There’s a cold compress in the fridge.”
“……”
Chu Tingyun did not go to the fridge but instead strode directly into the room. Without saying a word, he roughly pushed Yan Xun into the chair and kissed him.
“Mm……”
Yan Xun was forcefully held by the back of his head, forced to tilt it back. This position made him unconsciously part his lips, and sure enough, the next moment, the man’s tongue was inside.
“I told them… about the marriage.”
The intermittent kisses made Chu Tingyun’s voice sound vague,
“Yan Xun, you and Jiang Jingshu… are no longer possible.”
This kiss was urgent and invasive, even carrying a hint of blood. The action caused Chu Tingyun’s already scabbed mouth injury to crack open again.
The man kissed from his lips to the root of his tongue, then pulled away, licking his way to Yan Xun’s ear, speaking in a lover’s gentle tone:
“You only have me, understand?”
“In this life, you can only be with me…”
They were tightly entangled together.
I feel sad for both of them 🙁
I hope they find happiness eventually