Chapter 104: Yangyang Felt Wronged

As soon as they got home, the little one darted beneath the covers and curled himself up tightly in the very center of the blanket.

He buried his face in the soft mattress, his bottom stuck up high, trembling like a wet quail.

Chang Yu was a little speechless at the sight. He tapped the tiny lump huddled in the middle of the bed, only to find that Yangyang was shaking even harder.

"Eh? Could Yangyang be frightened?" Chang Yu stroked his rough, dry chin, quietly making a guess.

It was the first time he had ever seen Yangyang this scared. In his memory, Yangyang had always been a very brave and bold five-year-old.

Back then, even when faced with that salmon so enormous it could go toe-to-toe with a whale, Yangyang had not been afraid.

So how had one cup of tea at Katerina's turned him into this?

Could it be that he had met his natural enemy?

"So terrifying!" Yangyang's faint, trembling voice came from under the blanket. "That woman is too terrifying. She is practically the nemesis of all our medicinal herbs!"

Chang Yu: ...

Thinking back on Katerina's meticulous figure, weighing each herb with a tiny scale and dropping the measured ingredients into the health pot, her back as aloof as ever, Chang Yu had to admit that Yangyang's fear made sense.

That woman was not only the bane of the herb that grew around the yellow root, but the bane of all medicinal ingredients under heaven.

"Chang Yu, Chang Yu, let me ask you something," Yangyang said in a voice full of hope, like a lonely and fragile child left behind. "If Katerina insists on using me to brew tea, what would you do?"

When he asked that, Yangyang dearly hoped Chang Yu would stand firm and loyal at his side, opposing the cruel rule of the Demon Queen Katerina.

He very much wanted Chang Yu to reach an understanding with him on the matter of Katerina.

After all... Chang Yu was the closest person to him in this world.

Chang Yu frowned. Yangyang's question seemed a little hard to answer.

On one side was his own son; on the other, the woman he loved most.

It seemed... no matter which side he chose, it would be difficult to decide.

After pondering for a long time, Chang Yu finally replied, "How about... you just submit to her?"

"Get lost! You heartless traitor!" Yangyang instantly performed a leap of faith, sprang out from under the covers, and bounced on the bed like a rubber ball, leaping so high it nearly hit the ceiling.

"I knew you'd say that! I knew it!"

"Open your eyes and look carefully. She's an outsider! An outsider!"

"I'm your own son! Your own son!"

"It's one thing if you don't stand with me, but why must you stand with her?"

"What's so great about women? They're all mountain tigers, sugar-coated bullets meant to undermine the revolutionary will of the proletariat, rotten pig knuckles that corrupt people's hearts!"

By the end, Yangyang could no longer bear the grievance in his heart and burst into tears at once.

"Wahhh... I don't believe in women anymore!"

"I don't want kisses, hugs, or being lifted high high anymore!"

"I hate Katerina! I hate Xia Lin! I even hate the nurse sister!"

...

That night, Yangyang had a terrible nightmare.

He dreamed that Katerina cut him into tiny pieces, minced him up, and brewed him into a medicinal drink.

And that little rascal Chang Yu not only failed to avenge him, but happily produced his treasured bulk white liquor and a large glass jar.

He even insisted on using him to soak liquor, scaring Yangyang half to death.

"No! Don't!"

"This is murder! This is a crime!"

The next morning, when Yangyang opened his sleepy eyes again, he found the world hazy and unfamiliar.

He had once thought this world was warm and gentle.

Cruelty and malice seemed naturally alien to it.

It was only after he met Katerina that he discovered the world was in fact cold and merciless.

It turned out the truly terrifying things were not those mad scientists from the disaster response bureau who were always thinking of slicing him up for study.

It was... that mixed-race beauty living downstairs.

After a whole night of nightmares, Yangyang finally grasped the true meaning of life.

With a face full of melancholy, he rolled over and thought alone about the direction of his future.

Then... all at once, the space beneath him went empty, and he dropped onto the icy floor.

"What happened?" Yangyang sat up, bracing himself on his sore body, and looked around in bewilderment.

Surveying the surroundings that were at once familiar and strange, he felt hollow inside, utterly without a sense of security.

"Isn't this the living room? How did I end up sleeping here?" Yangyang asked in confusion, rising to his feet and looking toward where he had fallen from.

It was a white sofa with blue patterns, with a pillow and a blanket on it.

Feeling beneath the bedding, he could still detect the lingering warmth of his own little body.

Well, that settled it: he had indeed just been sleeping on the sofa.

But last night he had clearly been sleeping with Chang Yu in the bedroom. So how had he woken up somewhere else?

He did not even have time to put on his slippers. Barefoot, he ran into the bedroom to find out what was going on.

To his surprise, he found Chang Yu sleeping soundly in bed beneath a thick blanket.

"Chang Yu, why was I sleeping in the living room?" Yangyang yanked the blanket off him and shook him awake.

"Oh, you seemed to have a nightmare yesterday. You were making such a fuss, flailing around and coming at me all wild-eyed that I couldn't sleep."

"So, to stop you from disturbing me, I simply carried you to the sofa in the living room..."

Chang Yu clung to the blanket with all four limbs like an octopus.

Yangyang: ???

"Seriously?" Yangyang laughed in exasperation. "Is that how you take care of a child? How can you bear to throw your own kid onto the sofa to sleep?"

"What was I supposed to do?" Chang Yu muttered groggily. "It can't be that I go sleep on the sofa myself, can it?"

"After thinking it over, I figured you'd better endure the grievance. After all, the one who feels bad is you, not me."

"Are you even fit to be a parent?" Yangyang puffed up his cheeks into a bun face.

"Other people's parents would rather sleep on the sofa themselves than let their children suffer the slightest bit."

"How did it become that, in our house, the parents can't bear any grievance, and all the grievance is left for the child?"

Chang Yu was annoyed awake by his racket early in the morning, and with one casual swat to the back of the neck he shoved him aside.

"If you're so jealous of other people's parents, then go live with someone else. Maybe their family isn't even as good as mine."

As soon as Yangyang heard that, he got anxious. His fiery temper shot up like a rocket, and his face reddened with anger.

He was mainly furious because the balance felt wrong: children in other families were treated like treasures, so why was he treated like a blade of grass?

The difference was far too great!

Just as he was wondering whether he should wait until Chang Yu fell asleep and give him a flying kick from the yellow root to vent his hatred, he suddenly remembered something. The fire of revenge that had only just been lit was snuffed out by his own hand after burning for a single second.

He let out a long breath, forced himself to calm down, and then put on what he believed was a warm and kind stiff smile.

"Um... Chang Yu," Yangyang said slowly, "do you still remember how we said you'd pay the cable TV fee for me?"

"Anyway, you don't have anything to do today, and you don't need to go around fighting monsters like Ultraman. Why don't you just take me to pay the TV fee?"

At the moment, Yangyang was doing his utmost to restrain his anger.

There was no helping it. In this life, who could go on without bowing their head now and then?

Who told him he needed something from another person?

Cable television came before all else!

"Tch..." Chang Yu was pestered to the point his head hurt. "What cable TV? I think you're the cable TV!"

"But if there's no cable TV, how am I supposed to live?" Yangyang felt ignored, and the gap in his heart grew a little too large.

"Quit bugging me while I'm trying to sleep. I said we're not doing it, and we're not doing it. Keep nagging me and I'll beat you to death."

Chang Yu was truly angered, feeling that his child was far too lacking in common sense.

Did he, Chang, have it easy?

Every day he was busy going all over the world to fight monsters, and if he wasn't careful he might even get beaten into a cripple by one. He was really saving the world while risking his life.

At long last, when he had a rare chance to slack off and indulge in a bit of lazy morning sleep, he still had to be tormented by his own cub until he couldn't sleep in peace.

Ah, how exhausting.

Ignoring Yangyang's antics, Chang Yu very sensibly pulled the blanket over his head and paid no attention whatsoever to the boy's cries, no matter how earthshaking they became.

"Bah! What a thing to be!" Yangyang spat a mouthful of sour cabbage old phlegm at Chang Yu and stalked off muttering curses.

After taking only a few steps, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him, and he stopped short.

Tiptoeing back to Chang Yu's side, he picked up the phone Chang Yu had left by the bed and quietly slipped out of the bedroom.

Once in the living room, he unlocked the screen and found Little Li's number in the contacts, then dialed it.

"Hello, hello, does the commander need me for something?" Little Li's deeply magnetic voice came through the phone.