What's Wrong with This Alpha? - Chapter 67

Chapter 67 – Cute

“Are you even human, Sheng Yunze?!” Duan Yi protested as he was dragged away.

After the Monday flag-raising ceremony, the two had pretended to be broken up for a week. But on Friday afternoon after school, Sheng Yunze selectively forgot about their “breakup” and hauled Duan Yi out of class for a unilateral date.

Duan Yi continued to wail, “We’re over! We broke up! Our youthful romance died the night you didn’t warn me Old He was on the windowsill! I advise you not to harass me further, or I’ll sue you! Don’t think I won’t report your early romance! If you push me too far, my husband and I will take you down with us!”

“Oh.”

Sheng Yunze’s one-word response was devastatingly effective.

Duan Yi straightened up, dusted off his backpack, and draped himself over Sheng Yunze’s arm. “I’m hungry.”

Sheng Yunze found his posture oddly coquettish, wondering where he’d picked up such a mannerism.

“Are you still breaking up with me?”

Duan Yi clung bonelessly to him. “Let’s get back together for now. I’ll give you a trial period. Once your internship is over, you’ll be officially reinstated at my command.”

“You’re quite experienced at this, aren’t you?” Sheng Yunze said sarcastically. “How many others have you ‘reinstated’?”

Duan Yi immediately sensed danger. “It’s almost Chinese New Year,” he said sternly. “Why bring this up now?”

“There are still eleven days until Chinese New Year,” Sheng Yunze replied coolly.

“The final exams are only five days away,” Duan Yi said. “I think we should be at home, studying day and night.”

Sheng Yunze scoffed inwardly, What kind of beam? A second-floor beam would send you straight to reincarnation.

Duan Yi: ……

He tugged at his backpack, straightened up, and stopped clinging to Sheng Yunze’s arm.

Sheng Yunze felt a surge of irritation. We were just hugging so nicely. Why stop just because I said a few words? What a drama queen.

“I just remembered a new store opened in in77,” Duan Yi said. “Want to check it out?”

“No. Why would I?” Sheng Yunze replied.

“We’re on a date, aren’t we? Put some effort into it, boyfriend,” Duan Yi said, tugging Sheng Yunze forward.

Their posture was rather amusing. Sheng Yunze deliberately dragged his feet, leaning back slightly and walking with nonchalant ease. Duan Yi, on the other hand, pulled earnestly, gripping Sheng Yunze’s hand with enthusiasm as he tried to lead him to the new store.

They looked just like any other couple in the shopping mall, except Sheng Yunze was noticeably more handsome.

in77 was packed with influencers taking photos every weekend. Beautiful Omegas’ eyes kept landing on Sheng Yunze, their gazes curious and lingering.

When Sheng Yunze first went on a date with Duan Yi, he dressed to the nines, practically draping himself in RMB.

Now, he was less ostentatious, but he still secretly wore his best outfit under his school uniform since noon. The moment school ended, he shed the uniform, creating the illusion of effortless style.

A master of natural charm, his “no-makeup makeup” was a lethal weapon against straight men.

Before they even reached the restaurant, two or three Omegas—both male and female—approached Sheng Yunze for his contact information.

He turned them all down with a variety of excuses: “I don’t have a phone,” “I’m studying,” “Write me a letter if it’s important,” “I have a boyfriend already.”

Duan Yi felt a twinge of jealousy. He knew Sheng Yunze’s face was popular, but it still stung.

Standing beside a towering 1.86-meter hunk with looks that rivaled movie stars—who also happened to be his boyfriend—Duan Yi couldn’t help but draw attention.

The envious gazes from surrounding girls and Omegas threatened to inflate his ego.

A secret sense of superiority and vanity bloomed within him.

He’s so desirable, yet he chose me. That proves I’m even more charming.

Duan Yi remembered that even after Sheng Yunze got married, his romantic entanglements never ceased. He attracted admirers everywhere, from Omega leaders to beautiful colleagues, and even had people approach Duan Yi directly, urging him to divorce Sheng Yunze. As if! They had married in college—a classic “from school uniforms to wedding gowns” romance straight out of a drama.

Having seen so many absurd situations, Duan Yi had grown accustomed to it.

While Duan Yi remained calm, Sheng Yunze was far from it.

“Why aren’t you jealous?” Sheng Yunze pinched his cheek.

“You didn’t agree to anything, so why would I be jealous?” Duan Yi replied sincerely.

Sheng Yunze’s gaze sharpened. “Are you implying I’m cheating?”

Duan Yi silently groaned, Stop overthinking things…

They continued walking and passed a baby store.

Duan Yi glanced at it, and Sheng Yunze immediately noticed.

Oddly, Sheng Yunze didn’t say anything. They silently walked past the store.

But it didn’t end there. This street seemed to be a cluster of children’s shops.

After the baby store came a children’s clothing store.

Duan Yi finally stopped and asked, “Why do you keep looking inside?”

Sheng Yunze stubbornly denied it. “You were the one who looked first.”

“I’m just browsing,” Duan Yi said.

“Oh,” Sheng Yunze replied awkwardly. “Then I’ll just browse too.”

They stood at the entrance, neither moving.

After a moment, Duan Yi couldn’t resist suggesting, “How about we just casually step inside and take a look?”

Sheng Yunze: ……

“…Alright.”

And so, they “casually” went inside to browse.

Duan Yi couldn’t understand Sheng Yunze’s fascination with the children’s store. He had neither younger siblings—Sheng Yunxi didn’t count, she was already grown up—nor any children of his own. Sure, parallel universes might exist, but not here.

As high school students walking into a maternity and infant store, they immediately drew attention.

The saleswoman, slightly embarrassed, asked, “Are you… looking for a gift?”

Duan Yi stiffened. “We’re just browsing.”

He quickly turned and picked up a cool black-and-white outfit. The price tag shocked him—over four hundred yuan for such a small piece of fabric.

Duan Yi touched the material. Sheng Yunze asked curiously, “What do you think?” He’d never seen children’s clothes up close before.

It was a casual question, but Duan Yi actually had an opinion. “The fabric’s not good. It’ll make a kid itch.” After a moment, he added, “And it doesn’t have a hood.”

Sheng Ming loved hooded clothes. He thought wearing a hood was cool.

Duan Yi had been gently probing his son for a while, but the shy boy stubbornly refused to answer.

Thinking about it now, he couldn’t help but smile.

“I like clothes with hoods,” he said, hanging the child’s outfit back on the rack.

After the smile faded, a pang of sadness struck him.

“No point looking anymore. It’s useless to buy it anyway.”

Sheng Yunze, standing beside him, clearly saw the shifting expressions on Duan Yi’s face.

Why is he sad?

Did something cross his mind?

“What do you mean it’s useless?” Sheng Yunze snatched the outfit off the rack. “We’ll save it for later.”

Duan Yi: “…Huh?”

Sheng Yunze: “Are you planning to break up with me? Or marry another man?”

Duan Yi’s face flushed crimson. “I haven’t thought about that.”

Sheng Yunze made the decision for him. “Good. I’m buying this. We’ll save it for our son.” He added with typical straight-man domineering words, “You’ll give birth to him.”

Duan Yi’s face turned even redder. =口=!

School beauty, please watch your words in public!

As if remembering something else, Sheng Yunze’s body stiffened slightly. He turned to the saleswoman. “Get two of the same.”

The saleswoman glanced at him, surprised that someone so young was already a father. “Do you have two children at home?” she asked.

“Mm,” Sheng Yunze replied, unfazed by Duan Yi’s thunderstruck expression. “Twins.”

Duan Yi felt like he’d been struck by lightning, stammering, “W-what twins?”

Holy shit? he panicked inwardly. How does he know about the twins?

Then he remembered: Wait, didn’t I mention Sheng Ming and Sheng Xi at the beginning of the semester?

But that was just once! he thought. How could he remember that so clearly?

Once his mind started racing, Duan Yi couldn’t stop it.

Does he remember me talking about parallel universes?

That’s such a ridiculous idea. No one would believe that, right…?

Sheng Yunze spoke up in time. “My sister and I are twins. Our descendants have a high probability of having twins too.”

Duan Yi replied absentmindedly, “Oh, right.”

“Are you blowing me off?” Sheng Yunze asked.

Duan Yi snapped back to attention. “No! What blowing off? I’m not blowing you off… Right, twins… What were we talking about? Oh yeah, I’ll have them! I’ll have twins for you!”

Sheng Yunze turned his head away, then back, and said, “Could you stop flirting with me in public?”

Duan Yi: …

He slowly processed Sheng Yunze’s words and finally breathed a sigh of relief. So it’s a genetic thing. Leave it to a genius like him to know that.

Outside the store, Duan Yi was still scrutinizing the two outfits. “These styles are trendy now, but what if they’re outdated by the time your son is born?”

He was the type to never learn from his mistakes. As he spoke, he immediately gave himself away, blurting out, “Little Xi would never wear them. He’s so picky—getting him into outdated clothes would be harder than climbing Mount Everest.”

Sheng Yunze asked calmly, “What about his brother?”

Duan Yi, oblivious to the trap, replied, “He wouldn’t wear them either. Clothes aren’t like fine wine—there aren’t any ’82 vintage outfits, are there?”

Sheng Yunze countered, “Fashion is cyclical.”

Duan Yi scoffed. “Save that line for your sons. If either of them willingly wears outdated clothes, I’ll change my name to yours.”

Sheng Yunze said, “Oh.”

Then he asked, “How old is he?”

Duan Yi answered, “He was born on December 25th. He’ll turn five at the end of this year…”

He froze.

Sheng Yunze pressed, “What’s wrong?”

Duan Yi’s knees buckled, and he nearly collapsed.

Sheng Yunze swiftly steadied him. Duan Yi belatedly realized he had no memories of Sheng Ming and Sheng Xi as older children.

Something was wrong.

This shouldn’t be happening.

Duan Yi’s memories were shattered like fragments in his mind, making it increasingly difficult to recall anything from that parallel world.

He clearly remembered living there for over a decade, so why did his memories abruptly end when Sheng Ming and Sheng Xi were five years old?

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t conjure even a single scene from the years that followed.

Sheng Yunze, concerned, asked, “Are you feeling unwell?”

“…No,” Duan Yi replied, a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Just low blood sugar.”

Sheng Yunze frowned, told Duan Yi to wait, and went to buy him a cup of hot chocolate milk tea.

Duan Yi cradled the warm cup in both hands as he drank. After finishing it, his condition improved slightly, and his pallor faded.

Sheng Yunze’s intuition told him it was more than just low blood sugar, but he knew Duan Yi would never reveal anything if asked directly.

By lunchtime, Duan Yi had fully recovered.

He had a remarkable ability: when faced with something he couldn’t understand, he simply stopped thinking about it. When confronted with a task he didn’t want to do, he simply didn’t do it.

He was a master of graceful retreat, a first-class expert in backing down.

This laid-back approach made Duan Yi’s life remarkably simple.

They ate lunch at a newly opened restaurant that Duan Yi had enthusiastically recommended.

After finishing their meal, Duan Yi and Sheng Yunze noticed a new shop next door using flashy marketing tactics to attract young customers. As they stepped outside, Duan Yi was stopped by a staff member. He assumed it was a request to scan a QR code and add them on WeChat, but instead, they asked if he wanted to participate in an activity.

Duan Yi was genuinely full and bored, so he dragged Sheng Yunze into the neighboring shop.

The staff member immediately recognized them as a couple and enthusiastically introduced a trendy item: a time capsule.

Sheng Yunze scoffed, “I don’t see what’s so trendy about it.”

Duan Yi covered his mouth and smiled apologetically at the staff member. “He’s just like that. Don’t take it personally.”

As the name suggests, a time capsule involves placing items you deem important into a capsule, to be retrieved ten or twenty years later.

Initially, time capsules were buried in the ground. However, this method proved unsafe and unsanitary. What if an earthquake or tectonic shift destroyed them?

Thus, commercial chains specializing in time capsule storage emerged—though not all focused solely on this service.

In today’s rapidly developing economy, young people who have satisfied their material needs crave a sense of ritual in their lives.

Time capsules capitalize on this desire for novelty, nostalgia, and inexplicable rituals, making them immensely popular in China in recent years.

The time capsule trend was particularly popular among high school students.

“I heard Hao Shanshan and Jiang Wangshu came here to bury one,” Duan Yi said, stroking his chin.

Sheng Yunze casually asked, “What did they put in?”

Duan Yi rolled his eyes. “Hao Shanshan put in her unfinished third-year physics homework from last week. She wants her future daughter to inherit her legacy and finally solve the physics problem her mom couldn’t crack back in the day.”

“As for Jiang Wangshu…” Duan Yi shrugged. “Nothing he puts in would surprise me. He put in a sample of the air from Second High School, planning to study air pollution levels ten years from now.”

Sheng Yunze: …

Duan Yi picked up a pen. “What are you going to put in?”

Sheng Yunze casually tossed the two sets of children’s clothes he had just bought into the time capsule. “These should do.”

Duan Yi scribbled furiously on a piece of paper. Sheng Yunze leaned over. “What are you writing?”

Duan Yi shielded the paper with his arm. “You can’t see! This is for future you. You’ll read it in ten years!”

“No way, I want to see now!” Sheng Yunze lunged for the paper. “What if you’re writing something mean about me? Am I supposed to wait ten years to get roasted?”

Duan Yi: =口=!

“That’s impossible!”

Unable to snatch the note, Sheng Yunze decided to give Duan Yi a taste of his own medicine. He grabbed a pen and began writing.

Now it was Duan Yi’s turn to be curious about what Sheng Yunze was writing.

“I’m not showing you,” Sheng Yunze said.

“Childish!” Duan Yi retorted.

After a moment, he couldn’t resist and tugged at Sheng Yunze’s sleeve. “Just let me peek.”

“Trade me yours,” Sheng Yunze replied.

Duan Yi’s enthusiasm deflated again. Sheng Yunze raised an eyebrow. “Did you write something you’re ashamed of? Can’t even let me glance at it?”

Seeing Duan Yi’s obvious disappointment, Sheng Yunze relented and generously showed him his note.

Duan Yi’s eyes widened in surprise.

The note contained no love confessions, only two scientific laws.

Sheng Yunze looked smug. “Little Pig Duan, do you know what these are?”

Of course I do, Duan Yi thought. Aren’t these the three fundamental laws of astronomy you yourself proposed? They were even included in the mandatory physics textbook for junior and senior high school, on page 15, line 20 of Chapter 4.

“In this era, you’re the only one who could achieve something like this, Sheng Yunze.”

But Sheng Yunze was only seventeen, and he had only two of his three major laws. The third one probably wasn’t something he’d figured out in high school.

Moreover, Duan Yi had seen the complete version. The two laws Sheng Yunze currently possessed were still incomplete, lacking practical application and even containing some flawed reasoning.

Yet Duan Yi knew that in just a few years—less than a decade—Sheng Yunze’s name would be revered by everyone.

“Aren’t you missing one?” Duan Yi hinted tactfully.

Sheng Yunze looked momentarily surprised, then his expression returned to normal. “Yeah, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Duan Yi’s eyes sparkled with admiration. “The fact that you’ve even conceived of this is incredible!”

Perhaps Duan Yi’s admiration was too intense, making Sheng Yunze feel both pleased and slightly embarrassed. “It might not even be correct,” he said.

Duan Yi nodded vigorously. “You’re definitely right!”

Sheng Yunze gave him a blank, rabbit-like stare, his cheeks flushing slightly. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

Duan Yi insisted, “I’m not flattering you. You’re genuinely amazing.”

Sheng Yunze fixed Duan Yi with a steady gaze.

Duan Yi’s eyes sparkled like a puppy’s, practically twinkling with stars.

What man wouldn’t relish being blindly adored by his crush? Seventeen-year-old Sheng Yunze’s vanity swelled with satisfaction.

He boldly declared, “I can write the third rule right now.”

“Wow…” Duan Yi breathed.

He nearly blurted out, “My husband is so cool!” but caught himself just in time.

Sheng Yunze focused intently on writing on the scrap of paper.

Duan Yi sat beside him, watching.

Fang Yun had once told him, “If you think a man is handsome, cool, or swoon-worthy, there’s still hope for you. But if you find him cute, you’re doomed.”

She explained that seeing a man as “cute” meant you’d developed a natural tolerance and maternal affection for him. Once he became “cute” in your eyes, nothing he did would cross your boundaries, and everything he did would seem bearable.

He already found Sheng Yunze incredibly cute.

Even when he wasn’t being aloof, he was adorable.

Sometimes, when he miscalculated a problem and casually flipped to the answer key as if nothing had happened, that was cute too.

His dislike for carrots and celery? Adorable.

His fascination with the astrological calculations popular among young girls? Adorable.

Even when he proudly showed off his “research” on astronomical laws like a grade-schooler, it was adorable.

His daily efforts to maintain his cool without slipping up? Adorable.

Even when he did slip up? Still adorable.

Duan Yi’s gaze was too intense. Sheng Yunze turned his head. “Why are you staring at me? Don’t you dare be infatuated.”

Duan Yi shook his head. “I’m not infatuated.”

Sheng Yunze retorted, “Then you’re not allowed to not be infatuated.”

Duan Yi’s directness caught him off guard. “I’m really not infatuated. I just want to look at you. I really like you.”

Sheng Yunze’s pen paused. Duan Yi leaned across the desk, the hairstyle he’d spent ages perfecting before leaving the house now completely undone by the six- or seven-level northwest wind.

He was earnest, honest, and endearingly straightforward. “I don’t know why I like you so much. I just feel like I’ll like you even more tomorrow than I do today.”

Sheng Yunze’s ears flushed crimson. “Oh.”

He didn’t know what to say in response to Duan Yi. His heart was pounding so loudly that his ears were ringing and his head was buzzing, leaving him unable to think straight.

“Then just keep liking me,” Sheng Yunze blurted out.

Duan Yi nodded. “Okay.”

After a moment’s thought, he coolly replied, “I’ll keep liking you too.”

As if trying to one-up him, and feeling that “liking” wasn’t strong enough, the seventeen-year-old boy promised, “I’ll always love you.”