“No,” he said slyly, swinging the pendant in front of Zhou Rong: “My parents were just ordinary people. I can’t even remember what they did.”
Zhou Rong gently took the pendant, looking at the old photo inside.
“You look,” Zhou Rong studied him, “at first glance like your dad, but looking closely, you also look like your mom. Though your dad, as an Alpha, was quite… well, distinguished…”
“You can just say he looked like a refined chicken among Alphas,” Si Nan smiled. “But he was actually a Beta, and I’m that one-in-ten-thousand genetic combination of B/O born as an Omega. Want an autograph?”
Zhou Rong was surprised, looking at him curiously.
Si Nan turned to dig out paper and pen from the bedside table, but before he could sign, Zhou Rong snatched them away: “No, darling, I was just making a ceremonial exclamation.”
“
Si Nan thought he meant Chun Cao, given her puzzling developmental issues, but Zhou Rong shook his head regretfully:
“Although medical science has confirmed that any A/O and Beta combination will only produce Beta offspring, and producing A/O offspring indicates perfect genes with high genetic value, I once swore that before finding my own wife, I would absolutely avoid praising Yan Hao’s genes in front of any Omega.”
Zhou Rong smiled slightly: “It’s okay. Yan Hao is far away, well beyond the organization’s specified ten-mile radius.”
Si Nan glanced outside.
The sky was vast, and the pine waves were like a sea.
“But even if he were here, it wouldn’t matter,” Zhou Rong said, playing with the brass pendant.
He pulled Si Nan closer, the two almost pressed together on the pillow. The Omega pheromones in the room became clearer, sweet and provocative, like hidden emotions about to surface.
Si Nan rested on Zhou Rong’s deltoid muscle, letting out a small “Mmm”.
“If he were here, I’d let you choose, and you would definitely choose me. Then I’d banish every other male creature and keep you firmly in this territory, watching without blinking, until you reach out crying…”
Si Nan’s body went soft, lazily asking back: “Why would I definitely choose you?
Do I even need to ask?
Zhou Rong teased, “From the first time we met, you were already captivated by my handsome, suave, and mature demeanor. Since then, you’ve secretly harbored feelings, thinking of me day and night, wanting only me. I’ve seen that little expression of yours all along.”
Sinan let out a faint hum from his nose, curling up wrapped in a blanket.
Zhou Rong, ignoring his protests, threw away the T-shirt he had secretly hidden since last night and took off his freshly changed clean shirt, stuffing it into the blanket. He struggled to extend two fingers, pinching a button on the shirt to prevent Zhou Rong from taking it away again.
Zhou Rong leaned down and kissed his temple, whispering, “Looks like you’re going to follow the objective development of things, hmm?”
Sinan was extremely tired and couldn’t be bothered to speak.
“Sleep for a while,” Zhou Rong comforted. “I’ll go get some food.”
Sinan closed his eyes.
As Zhou Rong was about to get up, his pinky was suddenly hooked. Turning back, he saw Sinan had raised one eyelid— a gesture he would make when slightly interested in something and very cautious.
“Do you like me?” Sinan asked in a hoarse, unclear voice.
Zhou Rong laughed, “Of course.”
He was full of affection, thinking Sinan had asked a silly question, but the next sentence made his hair stand on end and goosebumps break out:
“What about that other Omega?” Sinan asked hopefully, “The one from the special forces competition. Do you remember him?”
Zhou Rong: “………………”
Zhou Rong realized he was experiencing the most severe test of his life, with demands on his eloquence and communication skills no less challenging than the century-old dilemma of “If your mother and I fall into water, who would you save?”
Zhou Rong’s motto had always been to speak human language to humans and ghost language to ghosts, but now he struggled for several seconds before boldly saying, “I don’t quite remember.”
“…Huh?” Sinan was stunned: “Didn’t you say he deceived your feelings?”
Zhou Rong solemnly said, “But now I have you, so my feelings have found their place. I’m completely not thinking about past things anymore. Let all those youthful impulses go to hell. Now I…”
“How can you be so fickle?” Sinan complained.
The words “fickle” completely choked Zhou Rong’s throat. His expression was like he had swallowed four stone eggs, and after a long while, he grievously said, “Please be reasonable, Comrade Sinan. It’s been eleven years! I don’t even remember what he looks like!”
“And we only dated for a few days back then. It was nothing. In the end, he even betrayed my feelings and dumped me. It’s a shameful memory.”
Let’s turn this memory to ashes and let it drift away with the wind…”
Sinan: “………………”
Sinan’s eyes narrowed menacingly: “Drift. Away. With. The. Wind.”
From Zhou Rong’s perspective, Sinan’s eyebrows showed an upward arc at the ends, cold as a knife edge.
“You swear it really drifted away?” Sinan asked.
Zhou Rong devoutly said, “I swear by my parents’ names…”
“Are your parents still alive?”
“…” Zhou Rong helplessly said, “I was raised in an orphanage. Can I swear by the director’s name?”
Sinan ground his back teeth: “Swear by the people’s government, and I’ll believe you.”
Zhou Rong raised his right hand: “By the name of the people’s government, I truly have already…”
He painfully closed his eyes, with ten seconds of complete silence, then tragically said, “No, I’ll tell the truth. Sometimes I do think about it… just think about it! It was quite painful, okay!”
Sinan was somewhat satisfied, lying back, lost in thought.
Zhou Rong, seeing no reaction from him, thought he had survived this challenge, and secretly breathed a sigh of relief – but that breath hadn’t even fully escaped before he could take it back. He saw Sinan suddenly seem to realize something, thoughtfully saying:
“So are you kind of stepping on two boats now?
“
Zhou Rong was stunned for a moment, his inner world as if ravaged by a herd of grass mud horses.
“Ah!” he suddenly shouted while staring straight ahead: “There are zombies!”
Sinan: “…”
“I’ll go kill a zombie, and be right back!” Zhou Rong shot out of the room like an arrow, tumbling and crawling away.
·
- Obviously, there were no zombies. Deep in the mountains, there were no people, and it was the coldest winter of the year. The water in zombies’ bodies had turned to ice, and moving was difficult at this latitude.
Zhou Rong squatted by the stove and made some food. The steam blurred the glass windows. He casually wiped it and looked out from the dirty frosted glass. Sometime unknowingly, snow had started falling. In the distant mountain valley, the river emitted a faint light, and the world was quiet.
“Am I stepping on two boats?” Zhou Rong unconsciously asked himself.
He tried to recall the face of that first love Omega, but it had indeed become blurred in eleven years of memories like falling snow. Over these years, from graduating military school, to peacekeeping missions abroad, to being selected to the central government, then experiencing setbacks and being transferred to 118, he had gone through countless gunfire and life-and-death separations. His memory was like a stone tablet, carved with countless deep knife marks.
“
Although the naive story from when he was eighteen still existed, when remembering it again, what first appeared in his mind was no longer that specific person, but a long, distant, and helpless sense of time.
