WRA CH10

Chapter 10: He Would Never Treat a Sunflower as a Child

Xiang Zhen waited until 1:30 in the morning. His head felt exceedingly heavy, drooping so low it was nearly touching the floor, forcing him to prop up his chin with both hands.

He couldn’t sleep. His husband was still outside driving, so he had to wait for him to return.

Knock, knock. Two crisp raps sounded against the door—unmistakably Zhou Sicheng’s rhythm.

Xiang Zhen scrambled up and dashed toward the entrance, twisting the lock open from inside before Zhou Sicheng could even fish out his keys: “Hubby, you’re back!”

Zhou Sicheng looked down at Xiang Zhen’s upturned little face, and the exhaustion accumulated from a full day of meetings and driving vanished in an instant. He reached out and pinched the soft flesh of Xiang Zhen’s cheek: “Don’t wait up next time.”

Xiang Zhen: “Hubby, come quick and drink the fish soup I stewed for you!”

Zhou Sicheng swept his gaze across the stove, spotting the electric rice cooker in keep-warm mode. “You made it in the rice cooker?”

Xiang Zhen explained, “Because I didn’t dare look at it, I tossed it straight into the rice cooker, shut the lid, and pressed the ‘Soup’ button.”

Zhou Sicheng had learned just yesterday that the soup setting was locked at two hours, whereas fish soup only needed half an hour. He opened the lid, and sure enough, inside lay a fish stewed to absolute mush, its dead eyes staring wide open.

Zhou Sicheng: “Are you afraid of killing living things?”

Xiang Zhen nodded. All things held a spirit; it was best not to do the deed with one’s own hands.

Zhou Sicheng: “Do you usually chant sutras?”

Xiang Zhen: “Ah?”

Zhou Sicheng: “To help pass its soul onto the afterlife.”

Xiang Zhen nibbled on his lip. He didn’t know how to chant sutras. Who would have thought his husband had even more compassion for living things than he did? His husband was so kind.

“Hubby, I chanted for it in my heart. You can drink it now.”

Who would ever want to drink a bowl of fishy, overcooked mush in the dead of night? It hadn’t been seared on both sides beforehand, nor was there any ginger added.

Zhou Sicheng had zero appetite. Yet remembering the text Xiang Zhen had sent him, he refused to be a buzzkill husband. Picking up a bowl, he decided to skip the meat and just stomach some broth.

Xiang Zhen piped up, “I haven’t added salt yet.”

Zhou Sicheng paused. “Consider that a smart move.”

No salt was far better than too much salt.

Drawing upon the experience he had cobbled together yesterday, Zhou Sicheng added a spoonful of salt. He anticipated it would taste foul, but the reality surpassed his expectations. After all, he had eaten food prepared by five-star chefs his entire life, with the absolute lowest bar being dishes made by his own hands.

He had no intention of letting Xiang Zhen off the hook: “Have a bowl yourself.”

Xiang Zhen promptly scrambled backward onto the bed: “I’m not drinking it. It was made for you.”

Zhou Sicheng: “It tastes awful.”

Xiang Zhen wasn’t surprised by this critique in the slightest; he knew his own limits. “But it’s nutritious.”

Humans were always like that—fond of things that tasted awful as long as they were nutritious. To retain nutrients, they chose boiling and steaming, labeling frying and baking as unhealthy.

A Yao didn’t need to care about that; a Yao only needed to eat what they liked.

Therefore, Zhou Sicheng had to drink the fish soup, while Xiang Zhen didn’t.

Zhou Sicheng found himself ridiculous for letting a single bowl of fish soup trigger such guilt earlier. He shoved the rim of the bowl right up to Xiang Zhen’s lips: “You’re not willing to share the hardship with me?”

Xiang Zhen: “…”

I’m willing, hubby T_T

The two each choked down a bowl. Xiang Zhen repented to Zhou Sicheng: “Hubby, I’m never cooking again.”

Zhou Sicheng let out an “Mn,” but immediately realized: didn’t that mean all future cooking fell entirely on him?

Zhou Sicheng climbed into bed. Going from an executive king bed to this small cot felt quite jarring, especially when turning over brought him face-to-face with dozens of potted sunflowers occupying the entire stretch from windowsill to bed frame. Milk tea buckets from various brands were arranged like salvaged junk.

Hoarding junk was truly an illness.

Looking closer, the numbers seemed to have grown again.

“You planted new ones?”

Xiang Zhen: “I’m sorry, hubby, I secretly drank milk tea behind your back.”

Zhou Sicheng: “Drinking milk tea isn’t the problem. The point is that you should throw the cups away, not use them to grow sunflowers.”

Xiang Zhen: “But I bought a whole packet of sunflower seeds. They must be planted this year; if left for next year, the germination rate will plummet.”

A whole packet? A vein throbbed at Zhou Sicheng’s temple. A packet would easily contain hundreds of seeds.

“Give me the seeds. I’ll take them to be planted elsewhere.”

Xiang Zhen shook his head, hugging Zhou Sicheng from behind to gloss it over: “Hubby, let’s go to sleep.”

Zhou Sicheng didn’t want the entire room overgrown with sunflowers by the time he returned from his business trip: “Do you want me, or do you want the sunflowers?”

Xiang Zhen froze. He couldn’t be without his husband, but he couldn’t abandon the sunflowers either.

When he first arrived in this city without a husband, he had planted sunflowers for companionship so he wouldn’t feel lonely at night.

Back when Xiang Zhen was still just a sunflower seed, he had bounced down from his mother’s flower disc alongside his gege and jiejie, taking root and sprouting. Yet when Xiang Zhen felt the sunlight, his consciousness had vaguely awakened. Gaining sentience meant cultivating into a Yao. This tiny sunflower grew exceptionally slowly yet remarkably sturdy. By the time his gege and jiejie were blooming and setting seeds, he still had only two leaves.

When he finally grew his third leaf, his peers were already in their fourth generation. Vegetation had no sentiment; the cycle simply continued on and on.

By the tenth-plus generation, his junior descendants all grew taller than Xiang Zhen.

There were many hazelnut trees and small animals in the mountains.

Later, a lightning strike ignited a forest fire, stripping the area of all floral life.

Scalded until he hopped, Xiang Zhen suddenly realized he could move. He frantically yanked his roots from the soil, fleeing for his life in absolute panic.

Using his two leaves, he tightly clutched a single sunflower seed he had dug up from the earth.

When the mountain rain finally descended, Xiang Zhen’s leaves were plastered with ash.

The seed he had dug up never sprouted again.

Another twenty years passed before Xiang Zhen’s blooming phase arrived, allowing him to cultivate a human form.

Humans felt nostalgia for childhood; he felt nostalgia for hazelnut groves and sunflower patches.

He knew forest fires were part of nature’s law. His ancestors had also taken root after a wildfire when birds carried seeds across the land.

Be it humans or plants, all rebuilt their homes.

Zhen meant lush and flourishing vegetation.

He wanted a field of sunflowers.

Yet things were different now. Every mountain and plot of land had an owner, and human development of the land was unprecedented. China’s annual sunflower cultivation reached ten million mu; how magnificent the blooming sunflowers of Bayannur were!

However, those were agricultural varieties bred for consumption and oil, squeezing eight hundred seeds onto a single flower disc. Xiang Zhen’s maternal lineage was nowhere near as productive.

Xiang Zhen had scavenged online for a long time before managing to buy original heritage sunflower seeds. For now, he could only cultivate them in his rental room.

Once the sunflowers grew bigger, he planned to carry them to the rooftop. He had chosen this place specifically because the rooftop was a common area where clothes could be hung out to dry and vegetables could be grown.

Sensing his silence, Zhou Sicheng thought: Fine. You preach love with your mouth, but in reality, I’m not even as important to you as a bunch of bean sprouts.

He didn’t actually dislike sunflowers. Otherwise, Xiao Kui Bao wouldn’t be named Xiao Kui Bao, and sunflowers wouldn’t be planted in front of the Zhoufu headquarters.

On the contrary, Zhou Sicheng was quite fond of them; sunflowers were the favorite flowers of his late mother.

On his fifth birthday, his mother had gifted him a handful of sunflower seeds, teaching him the joys of planting, harvesting, and generational passing.

However, the way Xiang Zhen cultivated sunflowers seemed downright morbid to Zhou Sicheng.

It was just like keeping dozens of cats in a sixteen-square-meter room when one’s own living space was already suffocatingly narrow.

Xiang Zhen tried to tug Zhou Sicheng around, attempting to persuade him: “Milk tea buckets are wonderful! The labels on them even let me record when I planted them, so I know whether they’re sprouting late or not.”

Hearing this only irritated Zhou Sicheng further. He broke free from Xiang Zhen’s grip with considerable strength.

Extending his long arm, Zhou Sicheng scooped up a milk tea bucket from the floor. Blame his eyesight for being too sharp; he read the printed label—

Grass Jelly Super-Tall Cup | Full Sugar | No Ice | Add Sweet Red Beans

05/04/09:58

Meaning this cup of milk tea had been produced on May 4th. On that day, Xiang Zhen hadn’t even arrived here yet.

Zhou Sicheng: “You picked this cup up from the trash?”

Xiang Zhen felt immensely guilty. From how Zhou Sicheng treated his car, one could tell he was a severe germaphobe. Even while taking passengers daily, the BYD remained as pristine as when it left the factory, the interior spotless. A germaphobe certainly couldn’t tolerate bringing garbage into the house.

“Well…” Xiang Zhen scratched his cheek. “Because I just got here, I haven’t drank that much milk tea yet, and pots are very expensive. The person who drank this cup really knew how to drink—they finished it so cleanly that they even peeled off the sealing film just so they could eat every last bit of sweet beans and crushed peanuts!”

He was actually analyzing it!

Catching a glimpse of Zhou Sicheng’s darkening face, Xiang Zhen’s voice dropped to a whisper: “I washed it.”

Zhou Sicheng’s grip tightened around the milk tea bucket, the plastic crackling under the pressure.

Xiang Zhen was so tense he dared not breathe, terrified that if Zhou Sicheng squeezed too hard, the soil would burst out and the freshly sprouted seedling would snap its tender stem against the floor—a tragedy no divine being could undo.

He couldn’t help recalling a recent mini-drama he had watched, where a crazed male lead dangled the female lead’s son over a ledge, threatening to drop him unless she donated an organ to the female rival.

Xiang Zhen blurted out the female lead’s line: “Hubby, that’s your baby too!”

Zhou Sicheng: “…” Completely lost his mind over plants. He would never treat a sunflower as a child.

He set the super-tall cup down. Feeling as though he had rummaged through the garbage bin alongside Xiang Zhen, he climbed out of bed to wash his hands.

Crisis averted. Taking advantage of Zhou Sicheng’s absence, Xiang Zhen hastily shoved the salvaged cup behind the curtain.

Zhou Sicheng: “Go to sleep. You still have to work tomorrow.”

Forget it. There was no point in arguing with Xiang Zhen; these were all problems that money could solve.

The next morning.

When Xiang Zhen woke up, he heard considerable noise coming from next door. Curious, he pushed open the door to look, only to discover that the vacant unit across the hall had been rented out overnight.

The new tenants were two strapping, burly men built like special forces soldiers on television, currently hauling in everyday essentials.

Noticing Xiang Zhen’s gaze, an athletic guy with a crew cut gave him a friendly smile: “Did we wake you?”

He had tried to tread as lightly as possible so as not to disturb their employer sleeping next door. Yet their employer had demanded they move in overnight; President Zhou’s orders were truly contradictory.

This mission was out of the ordinary. On paper, it was to protect President Zhou’s fiancé, but in reality, President Zhou was sleeping here every single night. Their security team had activated their highest threat protocol—even his captain had deigned to cram into this dilapidated room with him for this long-term assignment.

President Zhou must be paying an astronomical sum.

Xiang Zhen: “You didn’t wake us! We just happened to wake up and came out to look. We’re neighbors from now on!”

The crew-cut guy flashed an eight-tooth grin: “If you run into any trouble, just come find me. Let’s add each other on WeChat.”

Xiang Zhen: “Sure.”

Hearing Xiang Zhen interacting with the bodyguards, Zhou Sicheng walked slowly toward the room’s sole wardrobe.

After a moment’s contemplation, he slid open the cabinet door and felt around inside, touching a packet of sunflower seeds.

Heavy and dense. If these were planted, there wouldn’t even be room to sleep at night.

Zhou Sicheng pocketed the seeds into his suit trousers, casually calling toward Xiang Zhen: “Having steamed buns for breakfast?”

Xiang Zhen: “They haven’t been steamed yet!”

Zhou Sicheng pulled two large char siu buns from the fridge. Xiang Zhen scurried back excitedly: “Take two more, we can treat the new neighbors.”

Zhou Sicheng stepped aside slightly, offering neither agreement nor objection.

Xiang Zhen pulled the rest out: “Good thing I bought four yesterday!”

Zhou Sicheng put the buns into the steamer basket. Seizing the moment when Xiang Zhen went into the bathroom, he stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him.

Time to inspect the bodyguards Secretary Gao had selected.

He was practically amused by anger. Who authorized Secretary Gao to pick two men with bold brows and striking eyes?

Professional bodyguards trained year-round, so their muscle density was naturally leaner and more solid than that of a corporate President.

Zhou Sicheng glanced at the workout equipment already set up inside the unit. Oh, even while on assignment they didn’t forget their training.

And what about him? Every time he tried to work out, Xiang Zhen called him back to keep him company, leaving him with no time whatsoever.

Things couldn’t continue like this.

He needed to rent another room on the same floor, buy a power rack or cable crossover machine, and wait until Xiang Zhen fell asleep. Xiang Zhen slept early anyway; once he nodded off, Zhou Sicheng could slip over to work out for an hour.