Jiang Ran had made up her mind: she would never open the door until the person outside knelt and apologized to her and her child—because the kind-hearted female lead never gets a happy ending. If the female lead is too forgiving, she will become the tragic heroine in a painful story, and the tragic heroine might even have one of her kidneys removed by the male lead to save the delicate female rival!
This was the first scenario Jiang Ran dismissed immediately. After all, the dog outside was a medical student, always dissecting lab rats and rabbits. The idea of him removing a human kidney was just a bit too realistic.
“Jiang Ran.”
“Hmm?”
“Open the door.”
“To save you from repeating yourself pointlessly, let me be clear: I won’t open it.”
The person outside remained calm.
He could still talk to her like this, so he was probably just sent here to knock on the door. As for why his wife had locked herself in someone else’s bathroom, he clearly found it baffling, but was completely unaware of the truth.
He just kept knocking persistently.
“Stop knocking. Even if you break your hand, I won’t open the door,” the woman said lazily, sitting on the toilet seat with her legs crossed. “Do you want to call my dad and borrow a demolition team to take the door off its hinges?”
She was being arrogant.
She even wanted to mock the close relationship between her husband and her father.
Because she suddenly realized that with this new life growing inside her, for the next estimated year, her status in the family would surpass all previous Jiang family rules or Bei family regulations—
The glorious days when her husband and father-in-law used to team up and occasionally launch counterattacks would be gone forever!
Tremble!
Their era has ended!
“Jiang Ran, listen to me. Let’s talk about this outside.”
Outside the door, the man clearly had plenty of patience.
If he had wanted to talk calmly, he wouldn’t have called her by her full name like that—it was the tone reserved for scolding someone.
Jiang Ran was thinking clearly, so she treated his words like background noise. She reached over to rinse the pregnancy test stick on the sink beside the toilet, then tucked this precious immunity card into her pocket.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that you’re suddenly throwing a tantrum and locking yourself in someone else’s bathroom?”
The man outside was still trying to reason with her.
Unfortunately, one of the main reasons that prevent eighty percent of modern women from getting married or dating is that men really love to spout those tedious, long-winded lectures that even dogs wouldn’t want to hear—
Pointless drivel, who wants to listen to that?
It’s just a waste of life.
“Throwing a tantrum?” Jiang Ran said to the person outside. “We’re married, so there’s a bond between us. Don’t say I didn’t warn you—why don’t you check the fresh, brand-new chat history on WeChat?”
“I told you, my junior misunderstood what I meant when he replied for me, so he ended up sounding like that.”
“If you were already too impatient to reply to me on WeChat yourself, then why bother sending anything at all?”
Her argumentative logic was surprisingly sound. One could reasonably suspect that this woman had been dominating the snow circle and acting like a bully for years without ever being scolded simply because she was a master at steering the narrative and quickly seizing the moral high ground.
At least at this moment, the person outside fell into brief silence after her questioning.
Three people outside exchanged glances.
Standing near Bei Jiao, when he turned his head back to knock on the door with a look of confusion and innocence on his face, Qiu Nian tugged at Li Xingnan’s sleeve and whispered, just loud enough for the two of them to hear, “Tell me, I wasn’t this annoying back then, was I?”
Li Xingnan lovingly patted her face. “You’re so good to me. I actually feel a little guilty now for not getting up in the middle of the night to make you green rice balls.”
Qiu Nian: “Is this the ‘why is the moon not beautiful or round tonight—according to Natsume Soseki, does that mean you don’t love me anymore’ kind of vibe?”
Li Xingnan: “Exactly. The Pandora’s box has already been kicked wide open.”
Nearby, Bei Jiao leaned one hand against the door, trying futilely to reason with the annoying person inside. “I was busy with work and couldn’t type to you myself.”
“I understand you’re busy with work and can reply when you have time. I’m not unreasonable,” the voice from inside the bathroom sounded muffled through the door. “I never set a rule that you must reply to my messages within half an hour. What upset me more was all your half-hearted responses.”
“I wasn’t being half-hearted.”
“You just didn’t realize you were.”
“…”
It was unclear whether the person outside had run out of patience, but he finally went silent.
Jiang Ran rolled her eyes, patted the pregnancy test stick in her pocket, and showed no sign of panic. She even picked up her phone and opened a literature website to read some clichéd domineering CEO novels to enrich her literary knowledge…
So, what should happen after the scene where she gets pinned against the wall and kissed?
How about a domineering female CEO slapping the male lead and dragging him to the police station?
She was happily imagining this when she suddenly heard footsteps retreating from outside the bathroom—
At first, she thought it was a problem with her ears. She paused, lifted her head, and three minutes later, she suddenly heard the sound of a key sliding into the lock.
“?”
In the three seconds Jiang Ran’s brain froze, that hand, naturally skilled with a scalpel, deftly opened the bathroom door. Through the crack, a tall, broad-shouldered figure appeared.
His eyes were dark, his face as handsome as ever, but the cold atmosphere around him was like an unexpected early spring chill, radiating an intimidating, dangerous vibe.
“Done playing?”
His low, cold voice pierced her ears. His thin lips were pressed into a tight line, his expression stern.
He looked down at the woman sitting on the toilet lid and asked emotionlessly, “Do you want to sit here a bit longer?”
Jiang Ran’s few seconds of awkward silence were hers alone. She moved her lips slightly and finally pointed out, “My legs are numb. I can’t stand up.”
Peeking through the doorway with great interest, the married couple exchanged astonished glances as Bei Jiao stepped into the bathroom.
“You invited me to call your dad and send a demolition team to take the door off its hinges,” Bei Jiao said, squeezing into the bathroom. “How is using my key to open the door considered cheating?”
As he spoke, he extended his open palm toward her, clearly expecting her to place her hand in his.
Jiang Ran stared at his palm without moving. Only when he slightly raised his eyebrows did she calmly say, “My legs are numb. I can’t stand up.”
Without hesitation, Bei Jiao stepped forward, effortlessly scooped her up under the knees and around the waist, and carried her out of the bathroom.
…
Jiang Ran was safely seated on the sofa, still pretending to be in pain, her legs awkwardly curled up, looking genuinely uncomfortable.
Bei Jiao sat on the same sofa and reached out his hand, but before he could touch her, she slapped it away. “Don’t touch me. Your hands are too rough.”
Jiang Ran gritted her teeth, enduring the pins-and-needles sensation spreading up her legs.
Bei Jiao didn’t insist. He wasn’t going to keep reaching for her after being slapped. It wasn’t a big deal anyway—if she wanted to stubbornly endure it, then let her.
He simply withdrew his hand, leaned back on the sofa, and said, “Alright, talk. What’s going on?”
It wasn’t even four o’clock yet. Considering the time he had rushed back, if his professor had been stricter, he might have been marked absent for the afternoon—
But when he heard that Jiang Ran had locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out, he still rushed back immediately.
After all, she had been acting strangely since the morning, off and on, and he had no idea why. It was clearly something that couldn’t be explained over the phone, so he thought he should come back and check on her.
At this moment, Jiang Ran leaned against the sofa cushion, feeling Qiu Nian and Li Xingnan’s eyes on her too. The couple were clearly straining to listen, visibly tense.
Jiang Ran looked at Bei Jiao, paused for a few seconds, and said, “Nothing much. I’m just pregnant.”
The air hung still for a few seconds.
Qiu Nian’s eyes widened like Ultraman’s—big, round, and ready to shoot lasers.
But Bei Jiao remained silent for a while, rubbing his temples and shifting positions.
When he didn’t speak, Qiu Nian and Li Xingnan weren’t sure what to make of it. Even Li Xingnan, who had been half-jokingly watching the drama unfold, straightened up slightly—his posture suggested that if Bei Jiao so much as frowned, he probably wouldn’t make it out of this apartment alive.
At this critical moment, Jiang Ran smiled at Li Xingnan. “No need to be nervous. Look at his expression—he clearly doesn’t believe me.”
Bei Jiao turned to look at her. “Should I believe you?”
Jiang Ran wasn’t angry at all.
She just thought this dog was pretty funny. If it weren’t for the two other people present, she might have directly asked him, “Don’t you know whether we used protection or not?”
She guessed it was probably from that night in the Olympic Village. That night, he had been in such a state—like the most grand-scale human wave tactic in history, as if the entire population of Earth had been charging toward the moon, and in the end, there had to be one Neil Armstrong.
Jiang Ran took out the pregnancy test stick from her pocket and threw it at his face.
And in a considerate gesture, considering his slight germophobia, she added, “I washed it.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, the stick landed on his face.
Caught off guard, Bei Jiao blinked, then slowly picked it up after it landed on his lap and looked at it.
When he saw the two clear red lines, he was instantly stunned. He didn’t rush to hug Jiang Ran, or jump up in joy, or even look devastated. Instead, he turned his head and handed the stick to Li Xingnan, asking, “How do you read this?”
Li Xingnan, seeing the blank look on his face, relaxed a bit from his earlier tense state. “You can’t even read a pregnancy test? You’re a disgrace to Peking Union Medical College? They should revoke your graduate degree if this gets out?”
Of course, Bei Jiao knew how to read it—he just couldn’t believe he was reading it right.
He looked at the pregnancy test stick in his hand, then casually stuffed it into his pocket and stood up.
He glanced at Jiang Ran, who gave him a bright smile, so he sat back down.
Then he thought something was off, so he stood up again.
Three seconds later, he sat back down.
He turned slightly, wanting to reach for Jiang Ran, but as soon as his fingers touched her hand, he pulled back in alarm, as if she might shatter from his touch. He put his hands behind his back and looked at her. “Go home?”
Before she could answer, he stood up again, walked over to her, squatted down beside the sofa, and looked up at her with those dark eyes. Softly, he said, “Jiang Ran, let’s go home.”
No one could resist a little puppy sitting with his knees hugged, gazing up with those big, black eyes.
Not even Jiang Ran.
Although she wasn’t quite sure what kind of mood Bei Jiao was in right now—why was he acting like she wouldn’t survive the spring after getting pregnant?
Fortunately, the two of them followed the law of conservation of intelligence—one’s brain evaporated, and the other’s kicked in. So even though she had originally planned to play the drama out a bit longer, she now silently reached out to pat his head and let him take her hand to stand up.
Holding her hand, Jiang Ran remembered she had occupied Qiu Nian’s bathroom for nearly an hour as a little pregnant diva. She turned to Qiu Nian, who was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, and smiled. “Let’s go to the hospital together to register for prenatal care in a couple of days, okay?”
As soon as she spoke, before Jiang Ran could say anything, she felt the person holding her hand tremble slightly.
“Alright,” she said to Qiu Nian. “Don’t scare him.”
Qiu Nian looked puzzled. “What did I even say to scare him?”
Until they left the door, Bei Jiao hadn’t even turned back to say goodbye to Qiu Nian and Li Xingnan.
…
With Qiu Nian’s door now closed behind them, the hallway was left with only the two of them.
Jiang Ran took a deep breath, squeezed the big hand she was holding, and was about to ask if he had come back to his senses—
But before she could open her mouth, she was suddenly pinned against the wall.
Not really pinned—he used his arm to support her waist, gently bumping her with his shoulder—
Jiang Ran leaned back against the wall, blinking in confusion, wondering what was going on—was it time for the wall-pinning-and-kissing scene already?
The next second, she felt a heavy dog head nuzzling into her neck.
The cold tip of his nose pressed against her artery, sending a chill down her spine. She flinched but held back the urge to curse. She reached up with her hand, stood on her tiptoes with difficulty, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and patted his back gently, asking with great patience, “What’s wrong?”
The hand around her waist carefully tightened.
He didn’t speak. Just held her.
And wouldn’t let her go.
Jiang Ran thought she had already been gentle enough, assuming he was just shocked by the sudden new identity. So she softened her tone even more. “I didn’t prepare you for this well, did I? Did I scare you?”
He didn’t speak. Just held her in the hallway.
Jiang Ran stood for a while, her arms aching from being raised so long, her patience wearing thin. From the initial loving concern, she gradually shifted to thinking, *What a timid chicken—just getting pregnant, is it really that big of a deal?*
“Bei Jiao, are you done yet? I know I’m just rehearsing for the baby, but you should know when to stop.”
The threat had barely left her lips when she suddenly felt something warm and wet slide down her neck and into her collar.
Her voice stopped abruptly.
A heavy, sniffling breath came from her neck.
Five minutes later, Jiang Ran’s collarbone was a sea of tears.
Jiang Ran: “…”
…
Fifteen minutes later.
Qiu Nian never expected that the newlywed couple, who she imagined should already be lying in bed at home sharing their feelings, would return to her sofa.
When she opened the door, she saw her pregnant friend carrying a man over six feet tall. To be honest, she couldn’t even control the expression on her face.
Jiang Ran, still expressionless, said to her, “Yep, we’re back. Someone here cried so hard he couldn’t walk.”
Qiu Nian looked at the red-eared, face-buried-in-Jiang-Ran’s-neck person, who was practically folded in half at the waist—
Qiu Nian: “…”
Back on the sofa, Jiang Ran held a box of tissues, pulling out one sheet after another and handing them to the dog in her arms.
One by one, the tissues were taken, and the person buried in her shoulder gradually slid down into her lap—while other babies might receive their first kiss from their father on the belly, Bei Ao-ao received a flood of his father’s teary, overwhelming love.
When Jiang Ran pulled out the last tissue in the box.
It was nearly six o’clock in the afternoon.
Li Xingnan, who had been sitting beside them in silence, had finally watched the show long enough to get hungry. He naturally ordered dinner for four with his phone. After placing the order, he couldn’t bear to put the phone down. He glanced at the trash can, now piled high with tissues soaked in tears and snot, and at the dog curled up in Jiang Ran’s arms, who might already have cried himself unconscious.
“Can I post this on WeChat Moments?” he politely asked.
In the past hour, he had already taken at least fifty photos and ten videos.
No point in letting them go to waste.
No other intentions.
Just that life is short, and his WeChat friends, who have spent their lives doing good deeds, shouldn’t miss such a funny moment.
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