Keztranslations

Chapter 29

When he returned home that night, he found that both of his sons had run away. Tong Li Qin wasn’t too worried about Tong Yang, but he called Tong Yan.

    After a few rings, Tong Yan picked up, his voice sounded a little low at first, seemingly hurried: “Dad?”

    Tong Li Qin: “Tong Tong.”

     Before he could ask, Tong Yan said: “I’m at Zhuo Xiang Ming’s house. I told Secretary Li I was leaving this morning, he didn’t tell you?”

    He was told, but he only heard that Tong Yan left to find Zhuo Xiang Ming. At that time, he thought that, at the most, he’d eat something then come back home. He didn’t expect Tong Yan to not return at night.

    “It was early morning, I thought you’d come back at night.”

    “Oh ……” Tong Yan explained, “I’m not coming back today. My exam results will come out tomorrow morning, then I have to go to school in the evening to review them.”

    His words were true, but it didn’t really count as a reason for why he wasn’t returning home.

    Before he got married, he studied in that international academy from middle school to high school for five years without any delay. If he needed to go to school tomorrow from somewhere, he’d stay in this slightly closer region tonight.

    However, Tong Li Qin just hummed, apparently accepting this explanation.

    Tong Yan was slightly out of breath, Tong Li Qin asked: “Did you run to pick up the phone? What’s so urgent?”

    Tong Yan: “I was downstairs, I didn’t hear it at first.”

    “You’re so big already, learn to be less careless.” Tong Li Qin said, “Is Zhuo Xiang Ming home?”

    Tong Yan: “Yes!”

    Tong Li Qin asked, seemingly casually: “What are you guys doing?”

    Tong Yan: “I’m building Lego, I’ll send you a picture after I finish it. Zhuo Xiang Ming …. He got called away while he was watching TV. He’s in his study now, do you need him for something?”  

    “No, Dad was just asking. Is he very busy?”

    “He’s very busy, he didn’t even get a chance to eat his peeled grapefruit. I ate a little myself, I guess he’ll eat the rest tomorrow.” Tong Yan leaned against the wall, apparently speaking about a common routine.

    Hearing these words, in Tong Li Qin’s ears, it seemed like Tong Yan was in a proactive vs indifferent relationship. After running back, he still had to find something to entertain himself, and Zhuo Xiang Ming was still busy, probably, the two couldn’t even exchange a few words.

    But in reality, while Zhuo Xiang Ming watched TV or talked on the phone, Tong Yan was always in his embrace. He held the cell phone in one hand and Tong Yan in the other. Afterwards, he picked up a Lego brick, tried to fit it in, found that it was incorrect, and threw it back, the mess he made eliciting several fierce glares from Tong Yan. Now, he was forwarding documents in the study room, and Tong Yan’s pile of Legos had already been relocated inside.

    “Okay … then be good, don’t distract him from his work.” But no matter what he thought, he didn’t bring it up to Tong Yan. Tong Li Qin admitted that he couldn’t say anything. He was afraid of saying something wrong and hurting Tong Yan’s self-esteem, so he could only urge.

    Tong Yan promised: “I know, Dad.”

    “Have you felt sick recently?”

    “No.” Tong Yan said, “I went to the hospital after the sports meet. I now have average sensitivity, it’s basically good.”

    A person’s physical condition wasn’t constant, average sensitivity was already very close to the normal range, compared to Tong Yan’s previous condition, it was indeed basically good.

    When Tong Li Qin heard this, he was very pleasantly surprised: “When was the sports meet? Why didn’t you tell Dad about the checkup?”

    Tong Yan smiled slightly: “Two days ago … Today’s Saturday, I called to tell you about it on Wednesday, but you must not have heard it, since you didn’t answer.”

    ” Ah …” Tong Li Qin was a little embarrassed, “I probably didn’t hear it.”

    Tong Yan didn’t ask him, even if you didn’t hear it ring, you must’ve seen the missed call afterwards, so why didn’t you call back?

    He’d gotten used to this kind of thing since childhood. At that time, Tong Yan was very young, so he wasn’t very sensible. Whenever Tong Yang went wild and didn’t return home, he’d call Tong Li Qin. To say nothing of the repeated calls he made to complain about Tong Yang “Not playing with me”, “Not taking me along”, in addition to, “Dad, when are you coming home”, and so on.

    Tong Yan was a child with no responsibilities, and Tong Li Qin was an adult with many. After being badgered by Tong Yan many times, he slowly started picking up less and less of his calls. In any case, they had a nanny and servants, if there was an incident, he’d be informed.

    Ignoring and ignoring became second nature. Tong Yan always picked up when he called, so there was nothing to worry about.

    “Go to bed early.” Tong Yan said.

    “Okay, okay.” Tong Li Qin said, “Tell Dad when your test results come out.”

    Hanging up, Tong Yan plugged the phone back onto the charger and left the room, running back in a few moments later. He pulled the medical examination report out from the drawer and snapped a picture, forwarding it to Tong Li Qin as requested, then he left to search for the robot he’d barely started building, the one Zhuo Xiang Ming had captured.

    Who knew where Zhuo Xiang Ming hid it away, but after searching for a long time, Tong Yan couldn’t find it, and the study room wasn’t the sort of room he could wantonly turn over. Helpless, he could only kiss up to Zhuo Xiang Ming again. Zhuo Xiang Ming claimed to be busy with work. After Tong Yan sat on his lap for no less than five minutes, he finally pulled the little robot out from under his office chair.

    On the other side, Tong Li Qin was restless.

    Facing the big empty house, he finally realized that, following Tong Yang’s footsteps, Tong Yan had also grown up. The day he gave up custody of Tong Yan, he should’ve understood. Although it happened silently, Tong Yan really had grown up.

    The Tong family villa was no longer his only paradise to explore, and the dark attic could no longer make him cry fearful tears. The child who originally cried for soothing parental pheromones would forever stay in the past, he wouldn’t wait for him to return home day after day. A child grew up very slowly, and very quickly. Family-bonding shouldn’t be put off, just in case you’re unable to seize the moment. At that time, he didn’t provide it, and now, he couldn’t provide it the same way.

    Tong Yan awkwardly grew up, theoretically, he didn’t suffer any evil, but the father and son didn’t have much shared nostalgic memories.

    He was always thinking “later”, then one month passed, then one year passed, until eventually, Tong Yan also wanted to leave this “nest” and go out on his own.

    He’d fallen in love with an alpha, and his father and older brother were no longer the source of all the warmth he expected. But, judging by Tong Yan’s personality, he was unlikely to be the one in control of the relationship. It was his habit to invest love before receiving it, if the other side refused to respond, would he still be left waiting day after day?

    For some reason, this kind of imagery was apparently unbearable for Tong Li Qin. He’d routinely treated Tong Yan that way for more than ten years, but at this moment, applying this behavior to an outsider, only then did he realize how unreasonable it was.

    Soft hopes shouldn’t be dashed by anyone. Tong Yan’s love was always wholehearted, you could completely feel his love for you, his trust and hope in you wouldn’t be diminished by repeated unreliability. It was as if he was born to love, as if he was born with limitless love.

    But this wasn’t a justification to ignore his love.

    It didn’t logically make sense, the love was ignored, because the one giving it had more than enough love to spare?

    Tong Li Qin felt regret, but that regret was quite vague. It seemed that the model was emerging, but soon disappeared.

    However, Tong Yan’s behavior of running back to Zhuo Xiang Ming’s house, too impatient to wait for Sunday, completely confirmed Tong Li Qin’s theory of him being in unrequited love with Zhuo Xiang Ming.

    After getting married, for the first few weeks, he constantly looked forward to Friday, and he had to be dragged away when the weekend ended. Looking at him now, what idiot would believe that he wasn’t in love.

    Tong Li Qin was worried, but he had no place to share his worries. Tong Yang was out of the question, and it was inappropriate to share such things with his subordinates. As for a familiar female friend, there was unexpectedly one—Lin Yue Hua, Tong Yan’s nominal mother-in-law.

    However, if he thought about it, Tong Li Qin felt that it also wasn’t appropriate to have this talk with her.

    After all, when they got connected to each other by marriage, neither family were hurrying to make a fake play real. Tong Yan was young, nearly ten years younger than Zhuo Xiang Ming. It may be assumed that it was not only their side that was reluctant, the Zhuo family probably also felt that the two would not last.

    Thus, he couldn’t even help Tong Yan with his first relationship, probably, he could only provide Tong Yan a shelter to escape to after being wounded.

    The aloof alpha who’d lived as a bachelor for many years was being troubled by his little son’s obvious tendency to love early. After reading and re-reading the examination report sent by Tong Yan, he fell asleep after drinking a glass of wine.

    Unexpectedly, Tong Yan hadn’t sensed anything at all, and he was very contented staying in Zhuo Xiang Ming’s two-story house.

    One was eighteen, and the other was twenty-seven, neither were children, but after putting on a horror movie, a game of “you poke me, I push you” was started. Playing around until past midnight, Tong Yan felt sleepy, and headed to bed.

    Zhuo Xiang Ming walked Tong Yan to his room and followed him in. Tong Yan crawled into bed and closed his eyes, presumably going to sleep. Zhuo Xiang Ming stood by his bedside, looking at him for a moment, before turning off the bedside lamp. But, when he turned to leave, Tong Yan softly called out to him: “Brother.”

    “Yeah?”

    Tong Yan: “When can we sleep together?”

    Zhuo Xiang Ming was startled by this question. He turned around and sat down next to Tong Yan. Tong Yan’s eyes were still closed, but he shifted back to make room for him.

    “Do you want to sleep together?” Zhuo Xiang Ming asked.

    Tong Yan: “I don’t know … but aren’t we dating? We’re also married, but we still sleep separately, it seems a little weird.”

    The out-of-order romance really puzzled Tong Yan, he could understand his feelings for Zhuo Xiang Ming, but he couldn’t control the pace. Fortunately, Zhuo Xiang Ming was more than trustworthy enough, he was willing to follow Zhuo Xiang Ming’s pace, “Can we sleep together?”

    Zhuo Xiang Ming felt that he was simply in a race against time to the ruin of his reputation.

    The form Tong Yan brought back needed to be filled out by two people over the weekend. The form was Tong Yan’s evaluation of his guardian, where he undoubtedly wrote down mature, steady, solemn, conscientious, and provides a sense of security.

    He wrote a bucketload of kind words, but except for solemn and conscientious, the only words Zhuo Xiang Ming could barely feel he was worthy of, he thought that the rest were all fallacious.

    Recently, not only had he been completely unstable, since hugging became something they openly did, his mentality changed drastically, not to mention the unbanning of kisses. Now, he often thought about how to make this boy cry, where’s the “providing a sense of security”?

    Zhuo Xiang Ming worked hard to convince himself that the “sleep” Tong Yan was talking about was just sleeping, not the dirty things in his head.

    However, Tong Yan added, “Aren’t my pheromones back to normal? I don’t know when my second estrus will come but… I checked, umm …” He was still embarrassed, covering his face with the quilt, “The encyclopedia said, umm … it doesn’t require estrus, n-normally … is fine too …”

    Zhuo Xiang Ming asked in a calm voice: “You checked, what did you check?”

    Tong Yan didn’t speak, only holding his phone out to him.

    “Can you make love before estrus?”

    Tong Yan had bookmarked a reply from a certified doctor: Sexual behavior and estrus do not have an indispensable relationship, but omegas still need to take protective measures during the process to avoid injury or. …

    Scrolling down, there were several more search records:

    “Can you be marked during an unstable estrus?”

    “Can you make love during an unstable estrus?”

    ……..

    He couldn’t say it out loud, but his encyclopedia searches were quite blunt.

    Looking at the search time, it was around eleven o’clock this morning, in other words, the time when he’d thought that Tong Yan had run away because of the kiss, but in fact, he was not afraid, and had returned to their home.

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T/N:

proactive vs indifferent relationship- one side is enthusiastic, and the other side is not

Family-bonding shouldn’t be put off, just in case you’re unable to seize the moment– 家人之间的陪伴耗不过等待，如果当下没能抓住, if you’re wondering why there was no update yesterday, it’s cause of this sentence. It’s completely confusing, and I’m just guessing this translation. I think there’s a typo in there, and that’s why it’s so weird, but I can’t be certain.