It really was enough—they were just here to eat, not to trash the place!
As the waitress placed the extra chair next to the window couple’s seat, in that instant, Bai Ying felt a deep empathy with her—a speechless frustration shared by all contractors facing outrageous clients, laced with a hint of the bitterness of being forced into compromising positions. But clients always pushed further, and Qin Juanshu and Yun Ze started acting up again.
Neither would sit in that extra chair.
Bai Ying: “I’ll sit there, I’ll sit, okay?”
Without waiting for them to respond, Bai Ying plopped down in the extra chair himself.
Qin Juanshu and Yun Ze had no choice but to sit facing each other with dark expressions.
Ignoring the two of them, Bai Ying took the menu from the waitress and softly said thanks. The prices on every dish nearly made his heart stop. Calculating in terms of his own salary—one month’s pay, two months’, half a year’s… Bai Ying felt like he couldn’t breathe.
He could almost hear money flowing away like water. Though he surely wouldn’t have to pay, the thought of one meal costing so much still twisted his heart like a knife. He flipped the menu front to back, back to front, and finally, with trembling little hands, ordered the signature cream soup.
Yun Ze added from the side, “Stew the vegetables in the soup a bit softer. Little Ying doesn’t like food that requires much chewing.”
Bai Ying looked at Yun Ze in surprise.
Swallowing food whole was a snake’s instinct. Though he’d learned to chew like a human afterward, he still preferred gulping things down. This habit had been most pronounced in his childhood, and he hadn’t expected Yun Ze to remember after all these years.
Ever since learning that Yun Ze was the “Little Xun” who had accompanied and protected him as a child, Bai Ying had felt a sense of unreality—how had his childhood playmate turned into a domineering CEO upon reuniting? But at this moment, that unreality faded a bit.
Bai Ying softly hummed in agreement with Yun Ze’s words.
Qin Juanshu stared at the menu, but his attention wasn’t on it at all. He noted down what Yun Ze said about Bai Ying while growing irritated at how their shared childhood history suddenly brought them closer.
Wasn’t Bai Ying an orphan? How exactly had he met Yunxin Group’s young master as a child?
Qin Juanshu’s question was exactly Bai Ying’s own, though what he didn’t understand was how his little friend had become the son of the chairman of the neighboring building’s massive corporation.
When the food arrived, Bai Ying couldn’t help but ask, “Little Xun, is the chairman of Yunxin Group the one who adopted you back then?”
Yun Ze shook his head. “No, I’ve always been their child. Back then, they found me and brought me back.”
It was actually a past filled with intrigue and coincidences.
On Yun Ze’s third birthday banquet at Yun Family Manor, the Yun Family’s enemies bribed a servant at the manor and quietly abducted him. The enemies wanted the entire Yun Family to suffer, including this innocent child. They sold Yun Ze to a impoverished, isolated village. The buyers beat him mercilessly, trying to make him forget his past and acknowledge them as his parents.
But Yun Ze was stubborn to his core. Even as such a young child, he refused to yield until he was beaten speechless, with half his hearing lost in one ear. One day two years later, when the buyers weren’t watching, Yun Ze quietly slipped onto a villager’s three-wheeled cargo cart heading out. Near the highway, he jumped off. He waited patiently in the roadside grass until an open-top truck stopped, the driver got out to relieve himself, and he climbed aboard to hide.
Yun Ze didn’t know where the truck was going; he only knew he had to escape, far away to a place those scum couldn’t find.
He switched vehicles several more times this way and was finally caught when the last one stopped in Shen City.
The driver nearly lost his soul pulling a filthy little child out from the cargo pile.
Yun Ze, abducted from Shen City, had circled back to Shen City after all that.
But by then, he had forgotten everything—his original name, where he’d lived, what his birth parents were called. Abducted at just three years old and beaten for two more, what could he remember? Yun Ze only remembered his birthday because he’d been looking forward to it the day before, only to fall into hell the next.
“Maybe his parents abandoned him because he couldn’t speak?” the police who took him in speculated.
At that time, the Yun Family had been following leads searching for Yun Ze in another province, never imagining he’d returned to Shen City. The disabilities from the beatings made him look all too much like an abandoned child, and his convoluted escape route was hard to trace. With all these coincidences piling up, the police who couldn’t find his family sent him to an orphanage on the outskirts of Shen City.
The very same one that had taken in Bai Ying.
“It’s like that… Those people were too despicable!” After hearing Yun Ze’s account, Bai Ying couldn’t help but say indignantly. Even though Yun Ze had omitted many details, it was easy to imagine the nightmare he had endured after falling into the hands of those buyers.
“It’s all in the past. Those people have already received the punishment they deserved.” It was impossible not to care after suffering so much pain, but when his last enemy—one of the human traffickers—was executed, Yun Ze finally let go of everything from the past. Now, he only felt sorry toward Bai Ying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t find you back then. After my parents found me, they took me abroad for treatment for several years before I could hear things and make some sounds. I asked them to look for you, but…”
Yun Ze’s expression was a bit awkward.
Bai Ying guessed the reason he hadn’t been found and laughed. “Because you couldn’t write my name!”
Yun Ze had been retrieved before Bai Ying turned seven. It was embarrassing to admit, but the orphanage hadn’t placed much emphasis on education back then, especially for disabled children like them. Before elementary school, many kids were illiterate. The teachers didn’t even use surnames when calling the children, and orphanage kids all had random surnames. For two little mutes like them, it was even less likely they’d know each other’s family names.
“There was another reason.” Yun Ze said helplessly. “Because I always thought you were a girl…”
So when he asked his parents to search, they looked for several girls named Xiao Ying, Xiao Ying, or Xiao Ying, but never found a boy named Xiao Ying.
“A girl?” Qin Juanshu couldn’t help but interject.
“Yeah, because the orphanage was short on boys’ clothes. The teacher said I was pretty, so when I was little, she had me wear skirts with the other girls!” Bai Ying said quite candidly.
He truly had no aversion to women’s clothing and sincerely believed there was nothing wrong with androgynous kids mixing outfits.
However, the other two men thought about what it would be like if the current Bai Ying wore women’s clothing…
It was too stimulating to dwell on.
Yun Ze cleared his throat lightly. “Later on, that orphanage closed down, so it became even harder to find.”
“Yeah, the old orphanage was too rundown, and Dean Mama was getting on in years, so it shut down. The remaining kids, including me, were sent to different orphanages.” Bai Ying recalled. “But at the time, all the orphanages in the city received a large donation. I managed to finish high school thanks to that donation. Was it you?”
Yun Ze said guiltily, “That was all I could do.”
“That’s already a lot.” Bai Ying chugged a big gulp of juice and hugged his cup with a sigh. “Xiao Xun, it was so great that your parents found you… No, I should call you Yun Ze now.”
“You can call me like you did before.” Yun Ze looked at Bai Ying gently. Before the abduction, he had reportedly been an outgoing and lively child, but after those events, though his physical wounds healed, the scars on his heart remained forever. Yun Ze knew outsiders saw him as aloof and withdrawn, only softening slightly around his parents. But he believed there was still some gentleness in his heart—it was just reserved for one person.
That person was like a bright full moon in the sky. From the moment they met, the gentle moonlight had soothed him, easing the fear, hatred, and loathing toward the world that had built up during his escapes across multiple places.
Even in the days after they parted, the memory of that “girl” in her dusty gray skirt seemed to cheer him on, supporting him until he regained the hearing and voice the doctors said might never fully recover.
But without him by his side, his heart always felt empty, like there was a hole in his life.
Fortunately, after so many years, Yun Ze had finally found his round, clumsy, and adorable moon.
