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Finally, just as Ye Lin turned off the lights and was about to gently lay her down on the bed, Yan Man stopped him just in time.
She braced against his shoulder. “That’s not what I meant—”
He looked down at her, warm breath brushing her cheek. “Then what do you want?”
“…Nothing!”
She turned her head to look at the baby crib beside them, carefully choosing her words. “I was just wondering… this child is definitely biologically ours, right?”
Ye Lin, still leaning over her, was speechless: “…”
“With both our genes… how could he…” She trailed off. “You didn’t secretly get plastic surgery or something, did you?”
“…”
“Babies are like that,” he said, brushing her lips with his fingers. “They’re all wrinkly when they’re just born. He’ll look better after a while.”
Taking his words to heart, she decided to have faith—Don’t give up, don’t abandon—and kept raising him until he was three.
At six months, the baby’s facial features finally started to evolve from the default newborn look and began aligning toward his father’s… and there was no going back.
By the time he was five, his handsomeness was already noticeable. At six, Yan Man took him to the park, and everyone they passed couldn’t stop complimenting him.
When she dropped him off for first grade and went to pick him up after a filming session, she saw the little boy walking out the school gate with his backpack, a line of little girls trailing behind him like ducklings.
He walked silently with a straight back, calm and composed like a little adult, heading directly toward her.
That was the moment—framed by sunset light shining through the window—that Yan Man finally recognized and fully accepted her child’s beauty.
Handsome. Very handsome. He looked exactly like a mini Ye Lin, aside from the earlobes, which he got from her. Everything else was just like Ye Lin as a child.
His name was Ye Lanxing, inspired by the poem “Xiao Changshi’s Song of the Yǐng Bó Pavilion”:
“Morning dew reflects in the bronze mirror box, at sunset stars fill the pond behind the railing.”
His personality was a blend of both parents—reserved around strangers, chatty with those he knew well.
Yan Man reached out to straighten his collar with a smile. “How was today?”
“Reciting the poem was a bit hard. Everything else was fine.”
Little Ye Lanxing held out his hand, his palm still soft and childish. “Mama, hand please.”
Yan Man took his hand and added, “Daddy’s here too, just in the car…”
Upon hearing that, Ye Lanxing suddenly stopped walking.
Yan Man looked back. “What’s wrong?”
He pursed his lips. “If Daddy’s here, I can’t hold hands with Mama anymore.”
Just then, the sound of a car door locking came from nearby.
Ye Lin got out of the driver’s seat and walked over, lifting the little one up in one arm.
Lanxing’s hand naturally slipped out of Yan Man’s.
Ye Lin: “You’re a big boy now. Still need your mom to hold your hand?”
The boy pouted slightly. Yan Man couldn’t help but smile and raise an eyebrow.
Ye Lin: “What?”
“Nothing,” she smiled. “Just thinking, your son really knows you well.”
The golden sunset stretched long shadows beneath their feet.
Lanxing squirmed in his dad’s arms and turned to reason with him.
“Daddy.”
“Hmm?”
Lanxing, well-trained in the art of communication by his mother, spoke in a very serious yet still childish voice:
“Look at Mama’s hand, just hanging there, all empty, no one holding it. She must feel so sad.”
“…”
“Hmm,” Ye Lin nodded as if convinced, switching the boy to his other arm. Then he reached down with his free hand and took Yan Man’s hand. “Now it’s fine, right?”
Ye Lanxing: ???
The boy puffed up his cheeks, blushing, and finally burst out, “That’s not what I meant!”
Ye Lin raised an eyebrow. “Then what did you mean?”
The little guy grew more and more frustrated. After a long pause, he huffed, “Daddy, you’re too selfish. Every time I want to hold Mama’s hand, you don’t let me. My teacher says we should learn to share.”
“I share everything with you,” Ye Lin replied calmly. “You can have whatever you want.”
“Not your wife.”
Yan Man: “…”
She turned to Ye Lin. “Do you think he even understands what you’re saying right now?”
Ye Lin looked down at her, eyes catching a glint of the setting sun.
“Education starts young.”
“…”
________________________________________
That evening, Yan Man sat on the edge of the bed, reading a bedtime story to the little one. Ye Lin had just finished showering and stepped out of the bathroom.
Not only was his acting top-notch, but his body management was also elite-level in the industry. With only a towel slung around his waist, the deep V-line of his abs subtly pointed downward.
Yan Man’s gaze lingered on his nose for a few seconds before she turned away to look at Ye Lanxing.
He really looked too much like him—a replica. Yan Man sighed inwardly.
She reached out and couldn’t resist pinching the little bun’s still-chubby cheeks.
“You really inherited your dad’s good genes, growing up to be this handsome.”
Before the little guy could say anything, Ye Lin—still shirtless—noticed them whispering and walked over. “What are you talking about?”
“I said your son’s handsome.”
Seeing his slightly furrowed brows, Yan Man was shocked. “I’m not allowed to compliment him? Complimenting him is basically complimenting you!”
He threw a white towel over his head and rubbed it around a bit, his damp hair clinging to his skin.
“Then just compliment me directly. That counts as complimenting him too.”
The scent of his body wash, mixed with his natural scent, lingered and filled the space around them.
While the two were talking, little Ye Lanxing had already obediently straightened the quilt and lay down without making a fuss.
Ye Lin noticed right away and walked over to the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Little one, version 2.0: “Going to sleep, Daddy.”
“Don’t you have your own room?”
“I saw… a lot of other kids also sleep with their mom. I want to too.” He blinked.
Ye Lin leaned down. “Our bed is too small. It can only fit two people.”
The child had a brainwave. “Then Daddy, you go sleep in my room.”
Ye Lin: ?
That line of logic was too wild. Yan Man couldn’t hold back her laughter.
Ye Lin knelt by the bed and lightly touched her earlobe.
“What are you laughing at, hmm?”
“He really is our son,” Yan Man said proudly. “Don’t you think he’s got great speaking skills?”
“…”
After a ten-minute negotiation, little Ye Lanxing, using his dad’s irresistibly cute face and his mom’s persuasive speech skills, successfully secured a spot on the big bed.
Ye Lin dried his hair and changed into pajamas before lifting the quilt and getting into…
…the dead center of the bed.
The little one blinked, then pointed at the other side. “Daddy, why are you in the middle, blocking me from Mommy?”
“To separate you two,” Ye Lin said with a straight face. “Men and women shouldn’t have physical contact.”
Ye Lanxing: “Then why can you sleep with Mommy?”
“That’s different. I’m her husband.”
The child let out a soft “Oh,” then said, “Then I want to be her husband too.”
“….”
Ye Lin squinted. “You dare.”
“Alright, alright,” Yan Man tugged at him. “He’s just a kid. Why are you taking it so seriously?”
Not even a few minutes passed before the child tried crawling over again.
The end result, of course, was him being ruthlessly placed back in position by his dad.
The room dimmed with the lights off, cloaked in darkness. Only the sounds of the night outside stirred faintly through the windows.
Yan Man wasn’t too sleepy yet and started chatting with him in a low voice.
She was easily amused and soon laughed at something they were talking about. Before long, a little head slowly crept up to Ye Lin’s shoulder.
Ye Lanxing: “Mommy, what are you two talking about?”
Ye Lin turned and gently pushed him back down again.
“Stay out of grown-ups’ business.”
Little Ye Lanxing: “…”
—
At the end of the month, Ye Lin went on a work trip.
Yan Man happened to be on vacation at home, and during her free time, she occasionally helped the little one with homework.
Actually, Ye Lanxing inherited both his parents’ intelligence. Yan Man and Ye Lin had both been top students, and their son was consistently first in his grade.
—But he had a severe subject bias.
His language (Chinese) grades were actually decent, but the moment he encountered ancient poems or memorization tasks, his brain turned into a battlefield.
For instance, at that moment, during dictation—
Yan Man called out an idiom: “Mǎn tóu dà hàn (covered in sweat).”
Ye Lanxing quickly and confidently wrote it out.
Yan Man glanced down and saw four bold characters: 满头大汉 (literally: “a head full of big men”).
She fell silent. “A head full of big men—can you even carry that?”
“….”
Yan Man decided to lower the difficulty, thinking of something simpler: “Cháng cháng jiǔ jiǔ (lasting a long time).”
What she got in return was: 尝尝酒酒 (literally: “taste some wine”).
For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she should be speechless or impressed that he wrote the character for “wine” correctly.
Yan Man pointed to the paper. “You craving a drink or something?”
…
After two mishaps, she decided to switch to poetry.
She asked, “The line ‘The window frames the snow of the western mountain for a thousand years’ —what comes next?”
The child pondered for a while. “Don’t let the nomads cross Yin Mountain?”
Yan Man was no longer surprised. She nodded. “That’s some powerful snow you’ve got there.”
He pursed his lips, looking kind of proud.
“Thanks, Mommy.”
Yan Man: “Other people’s snow just decorates scenery. Yours fights battles.”
“….”
“Let your dad teach you,” Yan Man sighed dramatically. “I still want to live a few more years.”
Not long after, Yan Man’s phone rang. It was Simon calling. She got up and stepped outside the study to take the call.
That left Ye Lanxing sitting there deep in thought. Finally, he decided to follow Mommy’s advice and pulled out his own phone to call the contact saved as “Daddy.”
—
Meanwhile, in a broadcast studio.
Ye Lin’s live interview was mid-way through when Bi Tan, holding a buzzing phone, hesitated.
Finally, under the host’s prompting gaze, Bi Tan walked onto the stage and handed the persistently ringing phone to Ye Lin. “Looks like your son is calling.”
Ye Lin usually never answered personal calls during work, but this time he was worried something might have happened.
“He never calls me like this.”
The host, sensing a juicy moment, quickly said, “No worries, your son’s important! Go ahead and take it—what if something’s wrong?”
Ye Lin stared at the screen for a few seconds and only answered when the ringtone was nearly done.
Right after that, a soft, sticky voice came from the other end—
“Daddy TAT.”
The already lively livestream studio instantly exploded like a dam breaking, as a flood of bullet comments surged forth.
【Is that the little one? Is that the little one!!】
【Aaaaah that sweet yet cool voice, with a touch of grievance—who wouldn’t fall for it?!】
【I’m stealing the son now!】
While the viewers were busy taking screenshots and recording clips, little Ye Lanxing continued on the call: “I think I made Mommy mad.”
“I didn’t mean to… she asked me, but today I was kinda…”
“Mhm,” Ye Lin responded casually, then asked, “What did Mommy get mad about?”
Ye Lanxing: ?
【Ye Lin: Stop talking already, who cares about you—what happened to my wife?! Tell me now!】
Rustling sounds came from the other end, and Ye Lin continued, “Where is she now? Did she storm off? How mad is she?”
The little one got angry: “Daddy, you don’t care about me at all!”
“I do,” Ye Lin replied calmly. “If I understand your mommy, isn’t that basically the same as understanding you?”
Ye Lanxing thought about it and realized… it kind of made sense?
But the Ye-Yan (Ye Lin x Yan Man) shippers in the livestream weren’t fooled:
【Gaslighting! Absolute gaslighting!】
【That’s the wife he spent forever chasing, little one, don’t mess this up!】
The little guy continued, “She asked me to do my writing homework. I didn’t do very well. She said she wants you to teach me because she still wants to live a couple more years.”
【LMAO that’s exactly something Man would say】
Ye Lin had just opened his mouth when a faint female voice could be heard from the other side of the mic.
“You really called your dad? Isn’t he working right now?”
Ye Lin: “Give the phone to Mommy.”
The great phone handover ceremony was completed, and Yan Man picked up: “Hello? Aren’t you working?”
“I’m recording,” the man answered simply, then added, “Are you mad?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m just curious—how is it possible for a first grader to score full marks on a fifth-grade math test, but when I asked what line comes after ‘The window frames the snow of Mount Xiling,’ he said ‘We won’t let the nomads cross Yin Mountain.’”
“Ye Lin, your son would absolutely be a hero on the battlefield.”
Hearing this, Ye Lin finally relaxed and couldn’t help but chuckle.
“He’s still young.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Yan Man continued, voice turning mischievous, “With how handsome he is, worst case, he can just live off someone in the future.”
【Hahahahahahahahaha!】
As soon as he heard that, little Ye Lanxing couldn’t take it anymore.
He quickly clarified, “Mommy, I want to make it on my own!”
“I want to be excellent, just like Daddy and Mommy!”
“Alright, then first work on your handwriting—it looks like you wrote it drunk,” Yan Man said. “Otherwise, if your long-lost biological parents ever see it, they’ll think you became a monk to study cursive calligraphy.”
The livestream chat—aka the “long-lost parents”—immediately exploded in excitement:
【She mentioned us!!】
【Man!! When are you going to let us meet the little guy?!】
【I’m dying to know what the child of two absolute visuals looks like…】
________________________________________
It wasn’t long before everyone got their chance.
After that phone call, perhaps spurred by a sense of competition, little Ye put his all into studying Chinese, and his handwriting gradually improved.
After getting seven days of perfect scores on his dictation, he was granted special permission to play on the phone for an extra hour.
“But my phone’s out of battery…”
The little dumpling shook his phone with a cute case and asked, “Mommy, can I use yours?”
“Sure,” Yan Man gave him a look of permission. “It’s on the desk—you can grab it.”
Ye Lanxing already knew her unlock code, so it didn’t take long for him to access the home screen.
Yan Man watched him for a while but found it uninteresting, so she turned and headed into the bedroom, planning to review her script.
She had just sat down and barely started reading when she heard footsteps at the door.
She turned her head—it was Ye Lin, holding a freshly opened coconut.
He stuck a straw into it and asked, “Wanna drink?”
“Sure,” Yan Man took it from him casually. “Did you give some to Lanxing?”
“He’s busy playing. I’ll get him some later.”
Though it looked easy, cracking open a coconut was hard work. Some dirt had gotten on his jacket during the process. Ye Lin walked over to the wardrobe, closed the door behind him, and got ready to change.
He stood by the closet, and Yan Man, sipping coconut juice, watched him. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking about something or just zoning out. By the time she finished drinking, he still hadn’t moved.
Only then did she notice he was still wearing a thin plastic glove on his right hand.
“You actually look like a pro like this,” she teased, smiling as she walked over. “A dentist, huh?”
Ye Lin followed her gaze and looked at his own hand.
“I already washed up,” he said.
“Of course you did. How else would you open a coconut?”
She jokingly leaned in close and sat down on the drawer inside the wardrobe, just slightly lower than him.
Yan Man opened her mouth: “Perfect timing. I’ve had a toothache recently—Doctor, can you check it out for me?”
Ye Lin lowered his gaze, a veiled mist clouding his eyes. After a moment, he gently lifted her chin and replied in a low voice, “Okay, let me take a look.”
His gloved fingers slipped inside, the thin material cool to the touch. “Where is it?”
Yan Man: “Lower left, very back.”
His fingertip glided along her inner row of molars. As she spoke, she felt her tongue brushing lightly against the side of his finger, which was soon pressed down by his fingertip.
A strange, disorienting, and oddly intimate sensation.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
She started to suspect he wasn’t really checking anything, because of the slightly embarrassing feeling of it all. Her mouth had almost completely closed, her back molars gently biting down on his finger bone.
“What can you even see?”
Yan Man’s tongue root twitched slightly, trying to push his fingers out using her own strength and a bit of subtle hinting.
But it didn’t work—instead, it only provoked…
Even worse behavior.
She lowered her eyes, the tip of her nose starting to flush red.
I asked you to check my teeth—not stir up my tongue…
Finally, when she started to make muffled sounds of protest, the man finally released her soft tongue from between his fingers, slowly stroking as he pushed in… then withdrew.
And replaced his fingers with his own lips and tongue.
Yan Man couldn’t figure out how it escalated to this point.
But if she thought about it carefully, there had indeed been a bit of foreshadowing.
His breathing was slightly rushed, his lips and tongue were hot—scalding hot. Her tongue was caught between his, overwhelmed by the force and heat until she felt dizzy, like she was floating.
She had her eyes closed the whole time. But suddenly, she heard the sound of a door locking. She opened her eyes alertly—only to meet his gaze, still open.
His eyes curved—he was smiling.
But he was too close, far too close. He filled her entire field of vision. She knew he had locked the door, but all she could see was the beautiful shape of the eye bags under his eyes—so defined, raised from that sly, satisfied smile.
It felt like her heart skipped a beat from the bewitching look in his eyes.
The sound of the lock seemed to signal the beginning of the main act. Soon after, her legs were wrapped around his waist, her hands braced behind her on an unstable surface.
The wardrobe was filled with his scent. Above her head hung all kinds of suits, swaying unsteadily above. She was pulled in and out, again and again.
She tilted her head back. As she was finally pulled in completely, she felt the hem of a jacket brushing her sweaty nose. His scent filled everything, seeping into every corner.
•
After everything, Yan Man found herself holding a glass of water.
After finishing it, she remained in the wardrobe to catch her breath.
It smelled really nice in there—the scent of him, mixed with woody undertones. But now, when she breathed in deeply, that floating aroma seemed to carry a trace of something… much more suggestive.
Right above her head were the black suits that symbolized his cold, aloof image—all outfits he wore for formal occasions in front of the camera.
And her… them… just now, had done something shiver-inducing beneath all those outfits potentially seen by countless fans.
Yan Man tilted her head, just about to ask him if he’d still wear those suits, when suddenly he picked her up.
“Still in here? Don’t want to come out?” Ye Lin asked. “Do you like it that much?”
She wanted to throw the glass at him. “Who said I liked it?!”
They locked eyes. His eyebrows twitched slightly.
“I like it,” he said.
She couldn’t quite describe the feeling. She liked being direct, but sometimes, when he flirted with her in these cryptic, roundabout ways…
It was like a feather brushing over her heart—ticklish and unreachable, yet like an overinflated balloon pressing against her throat, just one poke away from bursting.
A weightless sense of satisfaction she couldn’t explain.
Yan Man climbed down from him and pulled the door open. “I’m going to shower.”
He bent down, arms wrapping around her waist. “Need me to carry you?”
She reached down to pull away. “Stop tickling me…”
As she lifted her head mid-sentence, she saw Ye Lanxing’s back—he was playing with a phone.
And in the phone’s screen, she saw her own face.
The camera was in selfie mode. The frame was wide, and while most of the screen was taken up by little Ye Lanxing, there was just enough space to clearly show her full figure—
—and Ye Lin, standing behind her.
She narrowed her eyes. “Lanxing, what are you doing?”
The boy answered obediently, “Taking selfies, Mom.”
Yan Man nodded. Remembering the bathroom was inside, she turned around to head there.
But as she turned her head, a sudden memory of the screen flashed before her—and she realized something was… off.
Does a selfie app have that kind of numeric ID in the top left corner?
He couldn’t be livestreaming… right?
Her head slowly swiveled back toward the boy. She didn’t see flying comments in the lower left corner, and just as she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, another terrifying thought surged up.
Seeing her frozen in place, Ye Lanxing turned around. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
Yan Man tried her best to keep calm. “Use your finger and… swipe the screen to the right.”
...
The boy did as told.
...
The next second, the hidden comment section reappeared.
Yan Man saw the flood of gifts and a barrage of exclamation marks flying across the screen.
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