Chapter 21

Genuinely worried that his pheromone really did stink, Wen Ran kept one hand clamped over the back of his neck the whole way back. The moment they reached the Wharf he was first in line to shower and change, and only after he'd put his Neck Ring back on did he feel a little better.

Thinking it through, his Gland was artificial, and so was his pheromone — they could never compare to a naturally born AO. So if what he ended up secreting really did stink, well, that wasn't impossible either. There was no AO Test result that could rule it out.

No wonder Gu Yunchi hated it when he let his pheromone out. Turned out there was this reason too.

His mood sank. Wen Ran didn't get it. Gu Yunchi's pheromone smelled so good, so why did his — the one with a 97.5% match to him — stink? If Chen Shuhui found out, would she think it was humiliating and fly into a rage?

Once everyone had cleaned up, the teacher walked them all to a famous seafood restaurant nearby for dinner. Gu Yunchi and the others walked ahead of Wen Ran, He Wei with an arm slung around both Gu Yunchi's and Lu Heyang's shoulders. 'Brothers, I've made an important decision.'

Gu Yunchi: 'Not listening.'

'I haven't spent my birthday on a yacht in years. How about this year?' He Wei turned to Gu Yunchi. 'Young Master Gu, lend me your yacht, would you?'

'Eight hundred thousand a night.' Even with his own brothers, Gu Yunchi kept the accounts straight.

'No problem.' He Wei turned again, this time to Lu Heyang. 'Young Master Lu, cover it for me, would you?'

'Sorry. Money's a little tight lately.'

'Heh heh.' He Wei acted like he hadn't heard, cheerful. 'Then it's settled. I'm going to go invite Xiao Chi right now.' With that he spun around and ran back off to find Chi Jiahán.

Even the expensive, fresh seafood tasted like nothing. Wen Ran filled his stomach and then set down his chopsticks and just sat there. Only when the teacher announced they were free until they regrouped to head back to the hotel in an hour and a half did Wen Ran stand up and walk out of the restaurant alone.

Around him was the bustling Seaside Resort Area. There was a bakery; Wen Ran went in, saw a Croissant, thought it over, and in the end didn't buy it. The Croissant he'd taken home from the Cloud Bay restaurant that one time had been mediocre. He no longer trusted a Croissant made by anyone except that one chef at Gu Yunchi's Residence.

The bakery was full of tempting smells, which made Wen Ran think of his own stinking pheromone, and just like that he felt small and hurried out.

He wandered aimlessly for a long while, until he passed a stationery shop. Wen Ran finally found something to spark his interest, and decided to buy a few of the Drawing Pen sets.

The register was on the other side. Standing in line, he looked out through the glass at a children's play area, where a few parents stood waiting by the railing — and Wen Ran's gaze caught.

He stared, not moving, for nearly a full minute. When it was his turn to pay, Wen Ran snapped back. After settling up he hurriedly pushed the door open, bag in hand, took a few steps, and called out tentatively, 'Auntie Sun?'

No response. Wen Ran wouldn't give up. He walked over to her and lightly tapped her shoulder. 'Is that you, Auntie Sun?'

Sun Huiying turned her head, looked at Wen Ran blankly for a few seconds, then suddenly froze. 'Xiaoshu? Is that Xiaoshu?'

Wen Ran let out a breath and smiled a little. 'It's me.'

'Xiaoshu's grown so big.' Sun Huiying's eyes shone with emotion. 'When you called me I didn't even recognize you. If it weren't for that mole under your eye I really might not have placed you. So tall now.'

'You haven't changed much.' Wen Ran asked, 'Are you here on a trip?'

'The whole family came on a trip. My granddaughter kept clamoring for the slide. The others are still eating, so I brought her over first.' Sun Huiying took Wen Ran's hand. 'So how are you? Are you doing well now? After you got adopted we never heard a word again. We worried about you for the longest time.'

Doing well? Being asked that question mattered far more than how well he was actually doing. Ten years after leaving the Orphanage, he'd somehow run into the auntie who'd cared for him as a child — his earliest family, the one who taught him to dress himself and fold his blankets, to read a character at a time, instead of forcing him into high-risk surgery, turning him into an Omega, into a chess piece.

'I'm okay.' Wen Ran kept it to one line too. 'I'm in high school now, a very good Preparatory School.'

'It's good that you're in school.' Noticing Wen Ran's Neck Ring, Sun Huiying hesitated. 'You...'

Wen Ran smiled. 'I differentiated into an Omega.'

'It's all fine, all fine. As long as you grew up well and can study, that's enough. You were so good and obedient when you were little. I always thought, after you were adopted they must dote on you. A shame we lost track of you after. Seeing you today, I can rest easy.'

It took a few blinks to keep the wet from spilling over his eyes. Wen Ran said, 'Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts all this time. You don't work at the Orphanage anymore?'

'Not for ages. Years ago our Orphanage got merged, the staff turned over batch after batch, everyone scattered. I remember you used to play with Xiaozhuo a lot when you were small, didn't you? He found his birth father later and got taken home, lost touch with us too. No idea how he's doing now.' Here Sun Huiying's voice dropped a little. 'Xiaoshu — after you were adopted, did any... strange people ever come looking for you?'

'No. Why do you ask?'

'It's nothing, nothing. It's all in the past. As long as you're doing well, that's what matters.'

Something felt off inside him. Wen Ran wanted to say more, but his Mobile Phone rang — the teacher, calling to hurry him back for the regroup. Wen Ran hung up. 'Auntie, I came out with classmates for a school activity. I have to head back now. Could you give me your number?'

'Sure, sure.' Sun Huiying keyed her number into Wen Ran's Mobile Phone. 'Hurry back now. Watch yourself on the way.'

'Mm.' Wen Ran bent down and hugged her. 'Auntie, I'll go now. We'll see each other again if we get the chance.'

'All right, good boy Xiaoshu.' Still the same voice she'd soothed him with as a child, Sun Huiying patted Wen Ran's back. 'Study hard. You study hard now.'

In those brief few minutes of meeting, he became Xiaoshu again, and not Wen Ran.

'I will.' Wen Ran rested against her shoulder and rubbed his eyes.

By the time he got back, Gu Yunchi and Lu Heyang were nowhere in sight; only He Wei was still doggedly pestering Chi Jiahán. At Cloud Bay, Wen Ran didn't go up to his room. He walked alone to the garden plaza at the hotel entrance and sat by the fountain, staring into space.

That Orphanage was very ordinary — small, run-down. The yard had no rubber track, just coarse sand and gravel and a few pitiful patches of grass. The swing chains were caked in rust and shrieked a grating creak when you swung. Everyone wore donated old clothes, living rough and clueless, fond of collecting chalk stubs from the classroom to scrawl on the cement floor, drawing hopscotch grids.

No family, no parents. In communal living, the quiet kids inevitably got picked on, and Wen Ran was one of them. For the umpteenth time, after an older, rowdy kid kicked his stone castle flat, Wen Ran crouched on the ground watching in silence as usual — and then that Alpha kid named Xiaozhuo dropped out of nowhere and slammed a trash can down over the other kid's head.

A brawl broke out then and there. Wen Ran froze amid all the cheering, crying, and shrieking, until a teacher came to break it up. Xiaozhuo, blood across his forehead, yanked at Wen Ran's clothes, made him stand up, and said loudly, 'You tell the teacher! Did he start it or not!'

The pushover finally found a little backbone. Wen Ran nodded and pointed at the instigator. 'He's already stomped on my castle a bunch of times today.'

Apologies, conflict resolved, everything back to calm. Amid the creak-creak of the swaying swings and the children's chatter, the aunties cradled babies still in swaddling clothes, swaying as they sang.

'The blue blue sea is the fishes' sky, little child sleeps in the clouds and dreams. Seaweed's a soft pillow, moonlight's a faraway lamp... the wind wipes your tears away, don't you cry anymore... come home now, someone's waiting for you...'

They sang it year after year. The swaddled babies learned to toddle, started learning their letters and numbers, and new abandoned babies were carried wailing into the Orphanage, walking the same childhood all over again in those songs, round and round.

Eleven years gone by. He'd thought he'd forgotten it all. Turned out he still remembered.

Before he was seven, his biggest wish was to see the sky outside the Orphanage. Later he saw it and found it wasn't so wonderful after all — even cruel. But there was no turning back; he could only keep walking forward, forward, while behind him the years split open in great bold strokes, his childhood vanishing in silence, fast, to the far edge of the opposite shore.

He wanted so badly to go home — back to that more or less warm Orphanage, back to the childhood with no real pain, only small unremarkable troubles.

Head bowed, a pair of feet entered his line of sight and stopped, a faint smell of liquor with them. Wen Ran's lashes twitched. He looked up along those legs — under the night sky, Gu Yunchi's expression was like he was examining a bowl of spoiled rice.

Gaze shifting slightly, Wen Ran saw Lu Heyang's back as he walked on ahead. The two of them had probably just had some drinks at a bar and wandered back. Right now he really couldn't muster the energy to make conversation or curry favor. Wen Ran lowered his eyelids again and looked at the ground.

He'd never once shown any emotion in front of Chen Shuhui or Wen Rui, yet he said to Gu Yunchi, frankly, 'I'm sad.'

Sad that Auntie Sun still remembered him, still asked if he was doing well. Wen Ran didn't understand why being cared about, being kept in mind, being missed could make a person sad.

And those strange words too — Zhang Fangyi saying he looked like someone he knew, Auntie Sun's evasiveness... Wen Ran couldn't make sense of it, and didn't know how to. More than curious, he felt afraid.

Gu Yunchi watched him, one hand in his pocket. 'Sad about what.'

Wen Ran shook his head again. All he could do was say, vaguely, that he was sad. Everything else couldn't be revealed to anyone — least of all Gu Yunchi.

'Burned through the five hundred, did you,' Gu Yunchi said.

Great — Wen Ran was yanked right back to reality. He opened the plastic bag at his side and showed Gu Yunchi the few pens. 'No. I just bought these. There's still four hundred-something left.'

'Pretty thrifty of you.'

'There was nothing I wanted to buy,' Wen Ran said.

'And yet you're sitting here putting on a mope.'

'I'm not putting it on.' Seeing Gu Yunchi reminded him of another sad thing. Wen Ran asked, 'Does my pheromone really stink to you?'

The degree of match decided the difference in the scent an AO got when smelling the other's pheromone. To Wen Ran, what his own pheromone actually smelled like wasn't all that important anymore; what mattered was that what Gu Yunchi smelled was a stink — his whole self had been remade for Gu Yunchi, and in the end he gave off a stinking pheromone toward Gu Yunchi, which was, in a sense, a failed surgery.

'What's it to you,' Gu Yunchi said. 'The match still not good enough to satisfy you?'

'But if what you smell is a stink, that's still kind of awful, isn't it.' Wen Ran, oblivious, went on sexually harassing Gu Yunchi. 'Your pheromone smells really good — a very special kind of fragrance. I've remembered that scent ever since I smelled it last time.'

Gu Yunchi asked him, 'Did you lose something diving today.'

Wen Ran thought back and shook his head. 'No. Why?'

'Then what about your face.'

'I...' It took his brain a turn to realize he'd just been insulted. Wen Ran blinked. 'I'm not even allowed to say your pheromone smells good?'

'You can try saying that kind of thing to a different Alpha,' Gu Yunchi said mildly. 'He'll just think you want to sleep with him.'

The last words were too blunt. Wen Ran took the hit and sat stunned a good while before answering, 'I wouldn't say these things to a different Alpha. I only say them to you.' Thinking it over, that wasn't great — it seemed the more he scrubbed the dirtier it got. Somehow his face and ears went hot, and he stammered out, 'Even — even if I say these things to you, I don't mean I want to sleep with you.'

Gu Yunchi said, 'Dream on.'

He turned and walked off. Wen Ran wiped his burning face with the back of his hand and chased after him, walking alongside him at an arm's length. 'It's not actually a stink, right?'

'It stinks.'

'It doesn't,' Wen Ran insisted.

'Then why keep asking.'

'So it smells good, then?'

Gu Yunchi pulled a cigarette out of the pack and shot him a sideways glance. 'If you don't want to get detained for sexual harassment, shut up.'