Divorced

Chen Yuchuan promised happily, saying that he would never make Lu Yang angry again, and he would make sure to make it right later.

But when it came to being called husband, Lu Yang wasn’t going to wait. When they got home, Chen Yuchuan had to call him husband in bed.

That night, Chen Yuchuan knelt on the bed, looking back at Lu Yang with reddened eyes. He pursed his lips and said, “Last time, I got a bruise on my knees because of you. My mother saw it and thought you were a pervert who had been mistreating me…”

“When did I abuse you?” Lu Yang lightly rubbed Chen Yuchuan’s neck a few times. “This is a bed, not a floor, so there won’t be any bruises.”

“Then let’s change position,” Chen Yuchuan said.

Lu Yang took a breath and turned Chen Yuchuan around so that he was flat on his back.

He then proceeded to torture Chen Yuchuan all night, forcing him to call him husband again and again.

“Call me husband.”

“Yang, Yang ge…” Chen Yuchuan closed his eyes and moaned.

“No, that’s wrong. Call me husband,” Lu Yang corrected.

“Yang…”

“No…” Lu Yang’s breath was heavy. “Try again.”

“Hus…” With just that sound, Chen Yuchuan’s scalp went numb. Then finally, he opened his mouth and cried, “Husband.”

Chen Yuchuan’s voice was very low so Lu Yang made him say it again.

Twice, thrice….

Until late into the night.

The next day Chen Yuchuan woke up with a hoarse voice, but Lu Yang happily prepared breakfast with a bright face.

When Chen Yuchuan finished eating wontons, he suddenly said, “Husband…”

Lu Yang, sitting across from him, choked on his coffee. He tilted his head and coughed several times.

Chen Yuchuan moved to the seat next to Lu Yang and gave him a napkin. “If you like to listen to me calling you husband, then I’ll call you that every day.”

Lu Yang wiped his mouth with the napkin and then coughed a few times. He raised his eyebrows and looked at the grinning Chen Yuchuan.

“Okay, call me that every day.”

Chen Yuchuan didn’t come home until that afternoon, and so Cui Xiujun had no choice but to believe him. Lu Yang’s reaction last night didn’t seem fake at all.

She finally acknowledged that her son and Lu Yang were really in love.

The reason she opposed them wasn’t because she disliked Lu Yang. People like Lu Yang were hard to dislike.

She just felt that Chen Yuchuan and Lu Yang were not from the same world at all. No matter whether their background or their growing environment, they looked like two people who had no intersections at all.

How could they be together?

But these two, it seemed that no matter how long the line that extended from each other may be, with no interactions, they would still inevitably end up together.

Even after being with Lu Yang for a long time, Chen Yuchuan was still pondering this question, but he still couldn’t figure it out. He only remembered that, when Lu Yang asked him to try dating, he had already really liked him. Thinking about it, if one were to ask him why they were able to get together, he couldn’t really say.

He couldn’t figure out such a complicated question, and one day, he finally asked Lu Yang directly.

At that time, Lu Yang was silent for a moment. Finally, he gave Chen Yuchuan a very mysterious word.

Fate.

The word fate resolved Chen Yuchuan’s doubts, and he began to believe in this word, fate. The fate between him and Lu Yang was the fate of his life.

It was as if there was an invisible rope, one end pulling Chen Yuchuan and the other end pulling Lu Yang. At the beginning, their rope was loose, and the distance was very long. But slowly, they were being pulled together.

Sooner or later, they would always meet at the intersection called “Fate” at a certain moment.

——

On the four hours drive back, Lu Yang and Chen Yuchuan switched seats halfway. The snowy road was slippery and so they drove slowly. By the time they got home, it was already dark.

When Chen Yuchuan got out of the car, he suddenly asked, “Do you think it was our fate to separate?”

“Do you think our fate is broken?” Lu Yang asked, leaning back against the car.

Chen Yuchuan shook his head quickly, his expression a little serious. “It’s not broken. If it does break, I’ll re-tie it again, and I’ll even tie a dead knot so that it won’t break again in the future…”

After Chen Yuchuan finished speaking, he no longer bothered about these mysterious questions. He simply put his hands in his pockets, whistling as he walked upstairs.

“Has the floor heating been fixed?” Lu Yang asked.

“Yeah. I had someone come and checked. It’s because the air filter was clogged, and after it was unclogged, everything worked fine.”

As he was unlocking the door, Chen Yuchuan bent down to check the lock cylinder. When he went out that morning, he’d turned the lock twice to ensure it was properly locked. But now he could open it with one turn.

“The parents have been here?” he muttered.

“Maybe. Ask them when you go visit,” Lu Yang said.

Inside the house, Chen Yuchuan asked, “Are you hungry?”

“I’m not hungry,” Lu Yang replied.

Chen Yuchuan found the boxing gloves from the second bedroom and knocked the two gloves against one another a few times. “If you’re not hungry, let’s go to the gym. I haven’t been there in a while.”

“My boxing gloves are still here?” Lu Yang glanced at him from the living room. “Didn’t you already throw all my things away?”

“No, I packed them in a box and put them in the second bedroom.” Chen Yuchuan took out Lu Yang’s boxing gloves.

When Chen Yuchuan and Lu Yang arrived at the boxing gym, there was a girl at the front desk instead of Xiao Yang.

Chen Yuchuan took out his member card, put it on the counter, and asked, “Where’s Xiao Yang?”

The girl at the front desk replied, “He resigned.”

“Why did he resign?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know, I’m new here.”

After his card was swiped, Chen Yuchuan put the card back in his pocket, dragged Lu Yang two steps forward, and then turned around to ask, “Is Brother Qi there?”

“Yes,” the girl replied. “Mr. Qi is in his office.”

Chen Yuchuan nodded, indicating that he understood, and thanked the girl again.

After the embarrassing incident last time, he no longer rashly visited Qi Yun’s office. Instead, they entered the lounge, changed their clothes, and then chose an empty ring.

“Why did you suddenly ask about Xiao Yang?” Lu Yang asked as he put on his gloves.

Chen Yuchuan told him about seeing Qi Yun and Xiao Yang in Qi Yun’s office. “It was so embarrassing. I shouldn’t have just walked in.”

He then confessed, “I asked Xiao Yang to show me the record of your visits to the boxing gym.”

“Mmn, I came here almost every day during that time period.”

Hear this, Chen Yuchuan no longer pursued the topic. After warming up, he raised his chin at Lu Yang. “Are you ready?”

Lu Yang took a few bouncing steps and waved at him. “Come on. Let’s start.”

Chen Yuchuan was in a hurry. He was usually the one taking the offensive, using all his strength from the very beginning.

Lu Yang kept letting him go. They advanced and retreated, retreated and advanced, and fought evenly for over half an hour.

Seeing that there was no progress, Chen Yuchuan made a gesture for a timeout. He stood with his hands on his waist and took a deep breath. He shook his hair and lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe away the sweat on his forehead and cheeks.

As he bent down slightly, his lower abdomen tightened, causing the muscle lines to become more taut. Beads of sweat slid slowly down the contours of his stomach.

After he’d wiped his sweat and dropped his shirt, he said, “Yang ge, we can’t always be tied. Let’s have a serious game.”

Lu Yang rolled his wrists and asked, “How serious?”

“Don’t go easy on me today. Let’s play a good game. If I win, you’ll sleep on the same bed with me today,” he said, smiling. After saying this, he licked the corner of his lips.

Before the game had even started, the person who had just said to make the game more serious was no longer serious.

Lu Yang stared at the corner of Chen Yuchuan’s mouth and took two steps toward him. Chen Yuchuan launched another offensive, which Lu Yang easily blocked.

This time, Lu Yang didn’t go easy on Chen Yuchuan. He stopped defending blindly, and ten minutes later, Chen Yuchuan gradually fell into a disadvantage. It seemed difficult to both attack and defend.

Sweat fell into Chen Yuchuan’s eyes, stinging them. He blinked and raised his arms to wipe the sweat from his eyes.

Lu Yang didn’t continue and walked to Chen Yuchuan’s side. Chen Yuchuan lowered his head and rubbed his forehead against Lu Yang’s shoulder, wiping away the sweat. Afterward, he pressed his mouth close to Lu Yang’s ear and said, “Yang ge, you really won’t let me win? It seems that I won’t be able to sleep with you in the same room tonight?”

After saying this, he straightened up and added, “I’ll end it here this time. Next time, I’ll fight you again and maybe I’ll win.”

He was tired of fighting, so he didn’t want to continue. Instead, they headed to the lounge.

After taking a shower and changing their clothes, they saw Qi Yun walking toward them. Qi Yun had been waiting for them, and he raised his hand to greet them.

“Brother Qi.” Chen Yuchuan waved hello, and Lu Yang also said a few words of greeting.

As Qi Yun got closer, Chen Yuchuan teased, “I knew you were here today, but I didn’t dare go upstairs to find you.”

Qi Yun still had a cigarette between his fingers, and after taking a smoke, he walked to the counter and put it out on the ashtray.

After returning to them, he took out a red invitation card from his pocket and shook it in front of them. “I’ll be getting married on the eighth of the first lunar month. Here’s an invitation card. There won’t be many people there.”

Chen Yuchuan and Lu Yang were both surprised. Qi Yun had always been opposed to marriage, and now he was suddenly getting married.

Lu Yang took the invitation card from Qi Yun and looked at it. It had his and Chen Yuchuan’s name written on it, and the signed couple’s names were Qi Yun and Yang Ruo.

“Yang Ruo?” Chen Yuchuan asked.

“It’s Xiao Yang,” Qi Yun explained.

“Congratulations.” Lu Yang slipped the invitation into his pocket.

Chen Yuchuan also followed with, “Congratulations, congratulations to Brother Qi. We’ll definitely go, and I’ll have to grab your bouquet to show your and Xiao Yang’s joy.”