A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 088 – Gift

“Is That a Son You’re Giving to Me?”

He thought Sheng Wang must have snuck over to the rented apartment, only to be met with thin air when he opened the door. Still, there were more items in the house now, there was a carpet on the windowsill, along with two cushions. There was an additional beanbag couch that allowed for complete paralysis in a corner of the living room. A basketball rack was pasted on the wall, and there were still a few unopened packages by the entrance hall.

Jiang Tian opened up the package — they consisted of pairs of mugs, slippers, toothbrushes, towels and stuff. Regardless if they owned these items already, all of them were newly purchased nonetheless, completely demonstrating the generous wealth and excitement of a young master.
He placed the items neatly, one by one, and then stuffed the drinks inside the fridge. He also tossed the empty cardboard boxes in the dustbin downstairs, and made a phone call to Sheng Wang.

“Where are you?” Jiang Tian asked.
Sheng Wang likely heard the honks coming from the passing by electric scooters, and there was a trace of mirth that suggested he got his way in his voice. “You’re at the north gate?”
Jiang Tian did not want to admit that he had failed in his capture plan, and only grunted unwillingly after a while.
“I left after collecting a few packages.”
“I could tell.” Jiang Tian walked out of the residential area, and as he looked at the on-going traffic, he switched his phone from speaker mode to earpiece. “Where are you now?”

There seemed to be someone around Sheng Wang. He asked someone something in a low voice, and sent Jiang Tian his location. “It’s a little far, you wanna come?”
“Mn, wait for me,” Jiang Tian said.

Someone would usually be obnoxious about showing off anything and everything right before him. With this abnormal state of his, the way getting anything more than ambiguous words out of him was harder than squeezing out the last bit of toothpaste, his methods like laying out a trap for him, it was clear that he wanted to lure him towards that direction. If he still couldn’t tell by now, then he should be kicked out from being his boyfriend.

Sheng Wang’s location was indeed slightly far, all the way at the university town at the outskirts of the suburbs. He had to transfer twice on the train, and it took an hour to go all the way there. Jiang Tian could not figure what exactly was the gift that had to be prepared there.

After midnight today would be January 27th, his birthday. Even an idiot would know what exactly was the young master being all busy over. However, in order to cooperate with the intended effect of surprise the other person was going for, he could only deign himself to temporarily lower his intelligence, and pretend that he was an idiot.
A little stupid, sure, but he’s happy to.

Jiang Tian initially thought that it would be some store or a restaurant, but he arrived to discover that the place was a small building next to the university dormitories. Sheng Wang guided him via voice messages. “Come up to the second floor, third room on the left. The one that says activity room on it.”

Jiang Tian went up the stairs, and saw a wooden sign hanging on the door. The words “Please knock before entering, thank you for your cooperation.” were written on it.
He was slightly mystified, and raised his hand to knock twice nonetheless.

The door opened from the inside. The person he had been searching for an entire afternoon was standing right there, holding up a tiny little thing as though he was presenting a treasure. His eyes were curved as he said to him, “Ge, lemme show you a precious thing.”
The tiny thing in his hands was extremely cooperative, and let out a sharp little cry.

It was a kitten.
The moment he saw it, Jiang Tian was suddenly a little lost in thought — it looked too similar to the one who was at Wu Tong Wai years ago, it even had the exact same extra stripes by its left ear.

For those few seconds, he nearly thought the cat named “Leader” had come to scam him once more, after 12 entire years passed.

Sheng Wang presented the cat towards Jiang Tian, saying, “I’ve already asked, we can pet it. Just that it’s a little young, so don’t use too much strength.”

Jiang Tian was frozen for a while, and kind of did not know where to even start.
It had been years, yet he still had the same reaction towards seeing a tiny baby kitten like this, he did not progress at all. It was Sheng Wang who lightly kicked his shoes and he finally then lifted his hand, scratching the kitten’s ear. The tiny creature immediately closed its eyes, and purred with a “huluhulu”.

“You came all the way here just to pet a cat?” Jiang Tian’s voice was low as his hands were sunken in the kitten’s soft fur, his fingertips touching Sheng Wang’s.
“I came to get the adoption papers. I just finished filling up and signing the form, so it belongs to us in name now,” Sheng Wang lifted his chin at the direction behind him.

There were a lot of cat beds and cat towers in the activity room, bowls of food and water in the corner. Three older female cats were basking under the sun where the lighting was better, kittens of all patterns flopped on their bellies. It was obvious that they weren’t of the same litter.

An office table was placed next to the window, a stack of forms was by the edge of the table. Sheng Wang was referring to that.

“This school does cat rescues for stray cats, and people can adopt the kittens born here. Actually, there’s still four or five of the kittens with this pattern. The angle of your WeChat profile picture is too one-sided, I wasn’t exactly sure. So I asked for a few video clips, got Grandpa Ding to look at it. He said this one is the most similar, it was literally the split double of “Leader”.” After Sheng Wang said that, he looked towards him, hugging the kitten, “So, is it alike?”
Jiang Tian nodded.

“I wanted to drag you over here tomorrow at first, but the rescue society people have to go home for the new year soon, the old man helping to take care of the cats isn’t in charge of adoption too. I was scared that someone would come ahead of me if I do this too late, so I came to sign the paper today. The vice president went to photocopy some documents, I’m waiting for him here.” Sheng Wang gave a lengthy explanation.

Jiang Tian looked at him quietly. A moment later, he asked, “How long have you been searching for this?”
Stray cats are everywhere, pet shops have cats too. But to find one that was so similar down to the stripes was no different from finding a needle in a haystack. How much time and effort did this person put into this?

Sheng Wang was still rambling all over the place. “It’s fine, I have been keeping a look out before this, and later I even stole your profile picture and put out a reward for it, so it was easy to track this down.”

After he spoke, he was silent for a few seconds. He asked, “This birthday gift……do you like it?”
“I do,” Jiang Tian said.

He was actually a sentimental person; perhaps his memory was too good, he was always regretful and rueful over certain things. Just like how he always remembered how “Leader” slowly grew up, and slowly aged too. Yet, what was imprinted on his mind the deepest, was the scene of it curled up on its bed, its breathing coming to a stop.
The old man said next to his ears, “It’s already gone, don’t look anymore.”
He stubbornly squatted there for the entire day regardless.
The old man said, “Change that profile picture of yours already, wouldn’t it hurt more if you keep looking at it?”
Yet he kept this profile picture for several years.

The old man also said, the cat wouldn’t be here anymore after it aged. Yet……
See, someone has brought it back to him.

The sun hung low in the sky, hooked onto the tree branch in the far distance outside the window. The deep golden light slanted into the room, adorning a fuzzy halo around the boy holding the cat.
Jiang Tian wasn’t good with his words, he couldn’t come up with anything particularly pleasing. He looked at the kitten, his eyes lowered, and asked Sheng Wang, “Is that a son you’re giving to me?”

“Hold on.” Sheng Wang held that tiny creature with a single hand, and lifted its tail with the other, taking a serious look at the cat’s butt. “Yep, it’s a son.”
Jiang Tian looked aside, and laughter rumbled from his throat.
“The hell you’re laughing at,” Sheng Wang said, “this has to be better than dumplings now, right?”
“Yeah, much better.” Jiang Tian turned back to face him. “So whose surname is it taking after?”
Sheng Wang: “……”

The vice president came upstairs with the photocopied documents. Sheng Wang finally snapped out of his Ge’s unexpectedly shameless words. He said, “I haven’t given it a name yet, you can take your time and think. Either way, we can’t take it back for the time being.”
The vice president only heard the last line. He came over, passing the document to Sheng Wang, saying, “Yes, this kitten isn’t a month old yet, it still has to feed from the mother cat. Wait for around a month more, we’ll give it the first few shots, and we’ll get you guys to claim it when we’re done. It’s too young to be properly kept alive if you bring it back now.”

“Sure.”
“So who should I contact when it’s time?” the vice president asked.
Sheng Wang wanted to say that it wouldn’t make any difference, either way they would be coming to claim it together. However, the vice president already tapped into his WeChat QR code, and got Jiang Tian to add him as a friend.

“About that—” Sheng Wang spoke on instinct.
The vice president looked over here, visibly baffled. “What is it?”

It wasn’t anything much, really. He was only being oversensitive for a bit, and felt that adding both their WeChats wasn’t a good sign at all, as if one of them suddenly wouldn’t be able to make it or something. But it would seem weird if he actually says this out loud, so he merely smiled and waved. “It’s nothing.”

*
Jiang Tian received Zhao Xi’s voice message on the train on the way back. He asked if they are free at night to come out for a meal.
“Our flight will be departing tomorrow because we want to avoid the peak period of the two days before the last month. Isn’t your actual birthday tomorrow anyway? Your family will be celebrating for you, so Lin-zi and I wouldn’t be taking that time away from you,” Zhao Xi said.

Due to the gift, Jiang Tian was already in a good mood. He replied: Sure, my treat. Chu-ge just transferred money to me.

Supplementary class’ Chu-ge was quite the true bro, seeing that it was going to be new year soon, he paid him the salary for the first batch of courseware in advance. He even gave Jiang Tian an additional big red packet, hoping that he would put more effort after the year, and add some competition level questions in the courseware.

Jiang Tian took out a portion of the money and transferred it to Jiang Ou, saying: From Ji Huanyu.
But Jiang Ou did not reply, even when they had already exited the station at Wu Tong Wai. He was a little puzzled.

“What is it?” Sheng Wang noticed how he had frowned as he checked his phone quite a few times.
Jiang Tian said, “My mom didn’t reply.”

Jiang Ou’s phone never left her body, she usually replied to Jiang Tian’s messages especially promptly. Usually, upon sending messages like this, he would receive a reply within a few seconds. It had been nearly an hour today, so it was honestly a little abnormal.

Sheng Wang paused in his steps.
Jiang Tian noticed the change in the expression on his face, and added, “They were both busy when I left, she probably didn’t see it.”
Sheng Wang nodded. “What were they busy over?”
Jiang Tian was silent for a few seconds. “Sending invitations.”

Said invitations weren’t actually that formal. Sheng Mingyang and Jiang Ou planned to invite everyone to a meal a day after Jiang Tian’s birthday. Before that, they already notified their friends, just that today, they would be contacting all of them again as a form of courtesy and respect.

The friends they were inviting came from all sorts of places. Some they genuinely had a deep bond with, so they couldn’t just hang up after a couple of lines, they would have to stay on and chat for a bit. As for some, they met via their jobs, and for them they could not afford to mistreat them at all, and small-talks and jokes took up quite a bit of time too.
With this and that, their entire afternoon was spent like that.

Jiang Ou had something weighing on her mind for the past few days, her spirits were a little low. She was only slightly more energetic whenever she thought of how her son’s birthday was arriving. However, it seemed that the heavens were intentionally playing a cruel trick on her — first of all, she zoned out and accidentally scalded herself while pouring water, next she accidentally broke the zip while changing clothes. In the afternoon, when she arranged for new year gifts to be sent to a few clients, she got the details mixed up.

In reality, all these came from her brooding, but it kept giving her the illusion that she was about to go through an unfortunate year. Sheng Mingyang took over the remaining few tasks, and got her to rest on the sofa for a bit.

Jiang Ou mumbled, “Maybe it’s menopause or something, I keep feeling like there’s something wrong.”
Sheng Mingyang joked with her. “I’ve never seen a menopause with such a good temper, you probably just didn’t have enough sleep for the past few days.”
Jiang Ou replied with a “Mn”, and leaned against the sofa, letting her mind rest. She rested a while before she sat back up again, replied to a few messages from her friends on WeChat, and went through her Moments while she was at it.

She only briefly went through it before she stumbled upon Du Cheng’s status, posted in the afternoon.
He said: My headache is driving me insane, I feel like I can do literally everything, even the bad ones. He matched it with a joking picture of self-mockery.

Jiang Ou frowned. She scrolled a few times in a row straight, and skipped past that status. She then said to Auntie Sun, who was busy in the kitchen, “Sun-jie, do you still have white fungus soup? I want to drink a warm one, I don’t feel quite well.”
“I do, let me serve you some.”

Auntie Sun scooped a small bowl for her. When Jiang Ou reached out to receive it, her phone suddenly vibrated.
Her eyelid twitched for some reason. She lowered her eyes to look at the screen, and Du Cheng’s WeChat profile picture had travelled from the bottom all the way to the top, next to it was the content of his message.

He said: I haven’t been able to sleep lately, I kept thinking about the past. Maybe I’ve committed too many shameful deeds, that even my death will not be smooth-sailing. I know it’s the new year, and saying these depressing things is just ruining the joy, but I don’t know if I can even make it past this new year or not. Might as well make use of how my mind is just a puddle right now, my brain being all messed up, I’ll apologise to you all in one shot.

He said: I’m a bastard, I’m a piece of shit, I’m a vile and filthy degenerate. Huanyu and I have wronged you.

The bottom of the bowl was suddenly boiling hot, Jiang Ou’s hand recoiled, and the full bowl of silver fungus soup fell onto the marble floor. With a clash, the white porcelain bowl broke into pieces, the soup splattering all over.

*
Jiang Tian initially planned to give Zhao Xi and Lin Beiting a proper farewell with this dinner. Zhao Xi also planned to blatantly point out certain things before they leave while they have alcohol, and have a light chat with these two little brothers.
Unfortunately, not everything in life will go as you please. When things happen, they often come in a hurry, with no “1-2-3” to prepare you beforehand.

Jiang Tian called Jiang Ou quite a few times as he sat at the table, and the dialing tone had rung for more than 10 times with nobody picking up. Just as he was completely bewildered, Jiang Ou replied to him on WeChat.
She said: Was Ji Huanyu really the one who has been giving money all these years?

In the end, the dinner didn’t fully happen, ending in a hurry. Jiang Ou kept refusing to pick up the phone, and Sheng Wang called Sheng Mingyang several times out of desperation. In the end, a call finally made it through.
Sheng Mingyang said, “We are at the province hospital.”

TO BE CONTINUED.