Chapter 23: Dark-Skinned Rugged Honest Man 23

Jiang Rang only regarded his encounter with Chen Yanyu in the hospital corridor as a chance mishap.

The young man had just received the devastating news of his father’s condition, leaving him like a block of wood cut off from all emotion, unable even to muster a normal reaction to the world around him.

Not a single word from Chen Yanyu had registered in his ears.

So when, the next morning, the haggard youth pulled open the door to his room after a knock and found Chen Yanyu standing there—hair neatly combed, impeccably dressed in a suit, the picture of refined elegance, cradling a massive bouquet of flowers—he froze on the spot.

Perhaps the beta’s shock and confusion were too obvious, for the man slowly lifted a finger to adjust his slipping glasses and said in a warm tone, “Mr. Jiang, forgive my presumption, but after running into you yesterday, I went to speak with my brother’s attending physician. By chance, I overheard some doctors nearby discussing your father…”

Chen Yanyu curved his lips into a smile. “Mr. Jiang, you did save my brother’s life in the end. No matter what, I had to come offer my condolences.”

Jiang Rang said nothing—or rather, he had no intention of drawing this man into his family matters.

But he’d apparently lingered too long in the doorway, for Hang Liu inside grew curious. His fiancé, dressed in a white shirt and black pants with refined, handsome features and blue-and-white slippers on his feet, padded over and asked softly, “A-Rang? Who’s at the door? Why not invite them in to talk…”

His voice grew softer and softer until it died away completely in his throat. Hang Liu’s gentle words evaporated the moment he saw the elegant alpha holding flowers in his arms, gazing at his fiancé with a smile playing on his lips.

The smile on the young man’s face turned increasingly strained. He stepped forward on instinct, draping one arm around the beta’s in an intimate embrace and leaning against his shoulder like a bird nestling into its perch. In a soft murmur, he asked, “A-Rang, who’s this?”

Jiang Rang parted his lips, but under the man’s amused, half-lidded gaze, even a simple introduction stuck in his throat.

Chen Yanyu’s eyes drifted to the beta at the tall youth’s side, whose expression darkened by the second, and his own lips curved into a warm, springlike smile.

As if clarifying—yet deliberately inviting misunderstanding—he said, “In a sense, Mr. Jiang and I are bound by fate. My surname is Chen; my given name is Yanyu. Feel free to just call me Yanyu.”

Hang Liu’s fingertips dug deep into his palms. He seemed to draw a steadying breath before managing to hold onto his facade of gentle virtue. With forced softness, he replied, “We couldn’t possibly. A-Rang and I may have grown up in a small town, but we know a thing or two about city manners. Mr. Chen, you’re clearly a man of talent and breeding—you must be even more well-versed in such things, right?”

Chen Yanyu’s narrow eyes narrowed a fraction further. He knew full well who lay at the heart of this brewing storm; there was no point wasting words on this jealous, small-minded beta.

The refined man spared the beta only a faint glance before smiling solely at Jiang Rang, the one who mattered. “Mr. Jiang, does this mean you’re not going to let me in?”

Jiang Rang truly hadn’t wanted to let him in from the start. Yet another voice slithered into his mind all the same.

A voice like gu.

“Don’t you want to save your dad anymore?”

“What’s the point of being honest your whole life? Can honesty pay the bills?”

“He’s loaded, and you—you poor bastard—need money more than anything. You dare offend him?”

The bizarre thoughts coiled like massive serpents, writhing as they oozed venom, seeking to swallow his sanity whole.

Amid the turmoil, Jiang Rang fell silent for a long moment. In the end, he compromised, giving Hang Liu’s hand a light pat on the back and stepping aside with the young man at his side, head bowed.

The man entered with a smile, as if the outcome had been a foregone conclusion, strolling in as casually as if he owned the place.

He placed the bouquet on the pale nightstand beside the bed, then—to everyone’s surprise—did little else. The earlier tension dissolved like ash in the wind. He behaved like any sincere visitor, offering a few standard words of comfort before departing without fanfare.

In that instant, everyone else’s lingering suspicions felt like nothing more than laughable remnants of excessive pride.

Only after Chen Yanyu had gone did Jiang Rang seem to shatter like a clay idol whose mask had finally cracked. Extreme unease and agitation twisted across his usually steady features.

He appeared to fumble awkwardly for a way to explain his connection to the visitor to his fiancé—though it felt more like shame at his own spineless yielding, which had dragged Hang Liu into the dirt as well.

A ferocious blaze scorched through his chest, searing his very organs.

The young man’s fingers clenched tight, his pale lips chapped and split with dark cracks from dryness. Dark shadows deepened beneath his eyes. Exhaustion, agony, and self-loathing all etched themselves onto the body that had once been sturdy and vital but now teetered on the brink of collapse.

“A Liu.” His lips trembled as he fought to steady his breathing. “Maybe we should just break up.”

Beta mustered a miserable smile, his dazed gaze locked on the deathly pale hospital bed and the father lying comatose upon it, emaciated almost beyond recognition.

In a voice soft and gentle, he said, “I still have a few tens of thousands on hand. I’ve thought it through—I’ll leave some for you. Dad… he can’t be saved anymore. I can’t drag you down with me.”

“A Liu, you still have such a bright future ahead of you.”

From beginning to end, Jiang Rang never dared to glance at the young man even once.

“Jiang Rang!” The sharp, ear-splitting cry erupted right beside him.

“You spineless coward! Is this all it takes? I’ve been caring for your dad all this time without a single whine of hardship or exhaustion, and now you think a few tens of thousands will send me packing?”

Jiang Rang stared blankly at the young man before him—face flushed crimson with rage, eyes brimming with hot tears—as the torrent of scolding rained down. “What do you take me for, huh? I’m your future wife! And this is how you treat me? One setback, and you try to shove me out the door?”

Tears welled up in Jiang Rang’s eyes amid his panic. He yearned to pull the devastated young man into his arms, but fear held him back, leaving him to murmur apologies like a broken record.

Hang Liu swiped the tears from his face and gritted his teeth, snarling, “Sorry doesn’t fix a damn thing! It’s just money we’re short on, right? We’ll go earn it—no matter how grueling or exhausting. We’ll make it work in the end.”

“There won’t be an end,” Jiang Rang choked out, his voice quivering as sobs overtook him.

Sorrow and despair filled the young man’s dark, downcast eyes. In a whisper, he said, “There won’t be an end, A Liu. To keep Dad alive… it’d take millions.”

The astronomical sum struck them like a thunderbolt, leaving both reeling in dizziness.

Hang Liu bit his lip, his eyes reddening to the point of swelling.

They were both children of impoverished rural families; no one knew better than they did that a million was a fortune ordinary people like them could never touch in a lifetime.

~~~

“Mr. Jiang, the funds in your account have been depleted. The next round of treatments and surgery will require…”

The doctor in his white coat eyed the figures on his computer screen, brow furrowed as he spoke.

When the young man across from him showed no reaction for a long stretch, the doctor finally glanced up.

The once-tall beta had slimmed down drastically. Though his skin retained its healthy tan, it now conveyed a fragile pallor, as if he might shatter at any moment. His hair looked neglected for weeks, overgrown bangs draping over his eyelids and lending him a brooding, oppressive gloom.

“Mr. Jiang? Are you listening?”

Jiang Rang snapped back to awareness, fingers instinctively twisting the hem of his shirt.

Red veins threaded his eyes, dark circles heavy beneath them—he hadn’t slept in days. It took ages for the doctor’s words to register as directed at him.

“Y-Yes, I’m listening,” he rasped.

The doctor sighed, his hand pausing on the mouse. “Mr. Jiang, the medications and equipment for the upcoming treatments will cost even more. The Federation provides scant subsidies for such a rare disease. You really ought to consider your options.”

The young man fell silent, one hand pressed to his forehead as he hunched forward, murmuring, “Got it. Thank you, Doctor.”

He still refused to give up.

The doctor watched the young man’s frail back as he departed, unable to suppress a sigh.

Jiang Rang eased open the ward door. He hadn’t eaten properly in ages; hunger clawed at his stomach, yet he couldn’t swallow a morsel.

A Liu had tried forcing him, but nothing stayed down. Even if he managed a bite, it all came back up.

Eventually, only sour bile remained.

Hang Liu stopped pushing and instead headed to the low-rent apartment Jiang Rang had rented previously to simmer some gentle, stomach-soothing rice porridge.

Supporting his forehead, Jiang Rang moved to sink into the chair by the bed when a familiar floral scent suddenly assailed his nostrils.

He looked up on instinct. A refined, impeccably polite man sat at the bedside. Today, he sported silver-framed glasses, and as his faint smile turned their way amid wafts of fragrance, he evoked the image of a warm, jade-like gentleman.

Jiang Rang froze in place, his throat parched to a searing dryness.

“Only a few days apart, and you’ve let yourself go like this?”

Chen Yanyu spoke in a leisurely drawl, his words tinged with pity yet delivered with casual detachment.

Beta’s Adam’s apple bobbed. In that moment, a base urge to plead welled up within him.

In the depths of despair, no one can stay rational before a potential lifeline.

The young man clenched his fists white-knuckled, head bowed low. His voice came out hoarse and faint.

“Mr. Chen,” he said, “for the sake of me saving your brother… could you help me?”

Chen Yanyu lifted his gaze just a fraction, fixing it on the young man for a long moment before slowly breaking into a smile.

The man’s voice remained mild, yet it grated harshly on the ears. “Mr. Jiang, if I haven’t misremembered, the Chen Family has already given you one hundred thousand yuan—and you accepted it, didn’t you?”

“Of course, if you’re still not satisfied, the Chen Family can give you a little more. Another hundred thousand—will that be enough?”

Jiang Rang’s face drained of color in an instant. The young man’s lips trembled, the deep cracks in them seeming ready to spill endless rivers of blood.

Chen Yanyu narrowed his eyes, his long, slender gaze lifting slightly. “Still not enough?”

“Jiang Rang.” The refined man smiled. “We’re all adults here. If you want something, you have to give something in return. You know that full well, don’t you?”

For a fleeting moment, Jiang Rang felt the world spin. He stared at the man before him, a surge of violent nausea rising in his gut.

But Chen Yanyu seemed to have grown impatient with the wait. The man rose gracefully, smoothed the hem of his jacket, and inclined his head. “Since you haven’t made up your mind yet, I’ll take my leave.”

With that, he strode straight out of the hospital room.

The room fell emptily silent in his wake. Jiang Rang lifted his gaze, staring blankly at his father on the bed—the man who had suffered his entire life.

In those sharp, piercing moments, people truly do recall a lifetime of scattered fragments.

Like a fleeting montage, the young man suddenly remembered his father’s reluctant, lingering expression when he’d prepared to leave for Juecheng. He recalled digging through the battered snake-skin bag and finding those crumpled few hundred yuan bills amid the junk. And he remembered the words the gray-haired man had once said to him with a beaming smile, right at the very beginning—

“Xiao Rang, we don’t chase after riches or glory. As long as our family’s together and happy, that’s more than enough.”

Jiang Rang’s eyes abruptly reddened. He bolted toward the door like a madman.

Panting heavily, his entire face flushed with an unhealthy glow, he clamped down on the man’s arm with a death grip, his teeth grinding audibly.

The tall beta’s voice shook as he demanded, “Chen Yanyu, if I agree to your conditions, you’ll give me the money?”

Chen Yanyu’s cool wrist settled gently over the young man’s hand, where the bones felt on the verge of shattering, then slowly tightened its hold.

“Of course.” The man spoke mildly. “I’m a businessman, after all—I always keep my promises. Starting today, your father’s treatment costs are on me. Naturally, you’ll need to get your strength back too. I don’t like seeing you like this, half-dead and listless.”

The man suddenly let out a soft, amused hum, as if struck by a thought. “Oh, right—that Mr. Hang is your fiancé, isn’t he?”

“Don’t let him find out about our little arrangement.”

Chen Yanyu curved his lips into a smirk. He drew a sleek black room key card edged in gold from his suit pocket and pressed it slowly into the young man’s trembling palm.

“Wait for me to contact you.”