After lunch, Long Jinjing wasn’t in the mood to be with Lu Zihao. Although they made up from their fight, it didn’t mean that she was no longer upset. He wanted to drag her to the Civil Affairs Bureau just like that without any warning? Yes, she wanted to marry him even more so now than ever but his lack of consideration still hurt her.
It was like he treated marriage as nothing special comparable to running a necessary errand. He was so nonchalant that she felt he didn’t view her as someone important to him at all.
Lu Zihao didn’t force her to spend the whole day with him when she wanted to be alone for now. He headed to the gym instead to train while she reflected on all the things that happened since yesterday.
She stared at her phone. There were many missed calls and messages from Chen Fei since morning. Her finger hovered on the call button, but in the end, she didn’t call her best friend. She wasn’t ready yet to reveal her pregnancy to Chen Fei even though they were closer than real sisters.
Her best friend wouldn’t understand her current struggles and worries. Chen Fei had never fallen in love with someone or gotten pregnant before.
Long Jinjing wanted to talk to someone who could relate to what she was going through. Her younger sister, Xiulan?
“No,” she murmured, shaking her head. “Brother-in-law Liwei fell in love with Little Sister Xiulan first. They were already engaged when she got pregnant and they immediately married soon afterwards. Their relationship is almost perfect. The total opposite of what I have with Nikolai.”
She sighed, her heart feeling heavy. In many ways, she was envious of Iris’ romance with Jin Liwei. It looked so wonderful. To be honest, it was the kind of romance that she always dreamed of for herself. Not exactly like it but close to it.
Reality, however, had other ideas. She fell in love with a man like Lu Zihao. A very sexual man but not romantic at all. The sex was always amazing but a girl like her also needed some romance in her life. Not only romance but also hope for a happy ever after.
Though with how things were going, it didn’t seem that she would get her dream romance. Bacon was right. Her boyfriend and the father of her baby was a scumbag. He was dense when it came to romantic love. She should’ve already left him. Well, she already tried that before but still ended up getting back together with him and staying even after discovering his criminal background.
Why?
She loved him.
Simple as that.
She loved him so much that it hurt.
Sighing, she patted her belly and was already imagining what their baby would look like. Girl or boy—it didn’t matter. Whether the baby looked like him or her or a combination of them both, she would love the baby all the same.
She hoped that Lu Zihao could love their baby even if he still didn’t love her in the end. Of course, the best case scenario was for him to love her and their baby.
She scrolled through her contacts but couldn’t find any friends that she felt comfortable talking about what she was going through right now. Then her finger hovered one contact profile.
It took more than two minutes for her to make a decision.
Two rings and the call was picked up.
“Hello?”
Long Jinjing immediately sobbed upon hearing the female voice. She tried to be as quiet as possible, but how could the woman on the other end of the line not know that there was something wrong with her?
“Jing? Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
“Mom!”
###
Inside the mansion’s gym bathroom, a soaking wet Lu Zihao stumbled out of the shower. He leaned on the wall to maintain his balance while holding his head. Pain was pounding inside his skull.
He endured the pain for a few minutes before he felt better. There was only a dull ache throbbing in his temples now. He sighed in relief while checking every part of his body to make sure that he was fine.
While he was showering just now, Lu Zihao’s remnant popped in his mind and began chattering. This was the first time since he woke up from coma that he was able to talk to the remnant. It seemed that it took this long for the remnant to recover enough strength to converse with him.
If this was before, he would’ve felt annoyed at having to listen to the remnant’s chitter-chatter which could sometimes rival the talkative Ketchup and Dominic Chua. But worse. With Ketchup and Dominic, at least he could just tune them out, but with the remnant, he had no choice but to listen because the damn voice was speaking directly inside his fucking mind.
This time, however, he chose to listen. It was because the remnant was giving him advice on how to fix his blunder with the upset Long Jinjing. Bacon’s advice was helpful but the black cat AI was still just a child. All of Bacon’s insights came from his parents. As for the remnant, it held the experiences of the original Lu Zihao.
The original Lu Zihao might be flighty and didn’t have any serious relationships before aside from casual affairs, but he was definitely much better when it came to romancing ladies than Nikolai who was now the new Lu Zihao.
‘Sorry about that, bro,’ the remnant said. ‘Looks like we can’t do anything about this headache. But at least you’re not curling and thrashing on the floor in pain anymore, right?’
Lu Zihao, no, Nikolai grunted and made quick work of drying and clothing himself in a simple pair of jeans and plain T-shirt.
The remnant didn’t take over his body but it did something equally amazing. It showed him a series of memories of the original Lu Zihao romancing the ladies he hooked up with before, but not only that. It pulled Nikolai’s consciousness to the memories so that he felt like he was experiencing those events himself and not just watching like a spectator.
Roses. Candlelit dinners. Slow dancing under the moonlight. And so many more.
All different women.
There were no feelings of love but there was an excitement from the romantic atmosphere.
