Wei Ying hadn’t cried so loudly for a long time. He didn’t know how long he had been crying.
He could only feel that Lan Zhan had been holding him firmly, patting him on the back softly, and crying with him patiently.
He cried until he was choking and couldn’t breath well, and his tears were too dry to come out.
Lan Zhan held his shoulders, kissed him gently on his eyes that were completely red and swollen, and said in a warm voice.
“Don’t cry. Let’s have a cake and make a wish together.”
Wei Ying forcefully opened his sore and stinging eyes, looked straight at Lan Zhan and found that Lan Zhan’s eyes were also red.
He sobbed in the ups and downs of his chest and nodded.
Lan Zhan looked at Wei Ying’s eyes. Those beautiful eyes were wet from crying. The eyelashes were glued into small clusters because of the tears, and the dark pupils gleamed with a subtle light after being moistened with tears.
He couldn’t resist kissing Wei Ying again at the corner of his eyes, holding his wrist and pulling him up from the carpet in a half hug.
Wei Ying was obediently held by Lan Zhan and walked to the bathroom.
After Lan Zhan dampened the towel with hot water and wrung out, he carefully wiped his face and eyes.
At that moment, like a child, Wei Ying closed his eyes and raised his face slightly, feeling the touch of Lan Zhan’s fingers through the soft and moist towel, and occasionally sobbed intermittently.
After that, Lan Zhan led him to the dining room and handed him a full glass of warm water.
He took the glass of water with both hands and drank, and the intermittent sniffle got better after drinking.
It was already past zero, and the neon light outside the floor-to-ceiling windows had already dimmed a lot, only the heavy snow was flying unconsciously.
The two teenagers held hands and returned to the carpet next to the floor-to-ceiling windows to sit side by side.
In fact, they both had a lot of questions to ask each other, but at the moment they just tacitly and quietly snuggled.
Wei Ying hugged his legs and rested his chin on his knees, watching Lan Zhan take out the cardboard box containing candles from under the coffee table and carefully insert them one by one on the cake.
He looked at Lan Zhan’s profile, and then at Lan Zhan’s fingers inserting candles, his head was empty because he had been crying for too long, but his eyes were full, as if filled with the light of the newly washed sky.
Seventeen colorful candles were inserted on the cake.
Lan Zhan took out the lighter he had prepared earlier and asked Wei Ying softly, “Want to light the candles yourself?”
Wei Ying shook his head and said in a dumb voice, “I want to see you light them.”
He used to be at a classmate’s birthday party and saw their closest relatives lighting the candles on the cake.
Lan Zhan said “okay” and used a lighter to light the seventeen candles one after another.
The warm yellow candlelight lit up in clusters, swaying in the pupils of the two.
He turned the floor lamp off on the side, and this corner and the two figures together swayed in the orange candlelight.
“Close your eyes and make a wish.” Lan Zhan’s voice was low and soft, turning his face to look at Wei Ying, his long, drooping eyelashes were softly embraced by light and shadow.
Wei Ying looked at Lan Zhan in a daze.
It took a while before he slowly moved his eyes to the cake and candles, and then looked at the candles out of focus, as if thinking of something, his eyes suddenly became wet again.
Lan Zhan’s heart was aching and soft, and he asked in a very soft voice: “What’s wrong?”
Wei Ying shook his head, just squeezed Lan Zhan’s hand, and then closed his eyes in the light of the jumping candle.
Dear mother, how are you doing in heaven?
Can you bless your child once more?
Bless me and Lan Zhan with a lifetime of peace and prosperity.
Bless our holding hands so it will never be separated.
Wei Ying opened his eyes and saw the melting candle flame swaying on the seventeen candles.
Obviously it was such a faint light, but it seemed to illuminate all the past seventeen years.
He turned his head to look at Lan Zhan, revealing a smile.
Lan Zhan looked at him intently, and with a smile on the corners of his mouth, he asked him, “Have you made a wish?”
Wei Ying nodded his head and held Lan Zhan’s hand without letting go as he said, “Let’s blow out the candles together.”
“Okay.”
The two heads approached the cake together, and the seventeen clusters of candlelights were extinguished in the flickering and beating, like a sigh on a winter night.
“Happy birthday.”
Lan Zhan whispered to Wei Ying again.
After speaking, he leaned his head over.
There was still heavy snow outside the window, and every roof was covered with snow-white dreams.
The two teenagers in front of the window sat next to each other, kissing each other in the light and interlaced breath, like snowflakes falling into the middle of the lake, the early cherry blossoms all over the embankment, hot and lingering in the silent place.
In the end, Wei Ying only ate a small piece of this cake, because Lan Zhan said that eating too many sweets in the middle of the night was bad for his health.
Together with Lan Zhan, he posted the photo taken in the evening on the next page of the album, and solemnly wrote “17” under the photo with a pen.
It was a little too late after it was over.
Wei Ying took a bath slowly in the bathroom of the master bedroom.
When he came out, he saw Lan Zhan sitting on the bed in his pajamas, looking down at his phone, apparently having taken a shower in the other bathroom as well.
Wei Ying looked at Lan Zhan’s smoky-gray pajamas several times with his two red and swollen eyes. He put on his slippers and walked to the bed, took it off and climbed to Lan Zhan’s side, pretending to ask naturally:
“Where do I sleep?”
Lan Zhan put down his phone when he saw him coming out, hugged his waist and put him on his lap. Looking up at him slightly, he said, “There is only one bedroom prepared here.”
Wei Ying sat with his legs apart on Lan Zhan’s lap. He wrapped his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck and looked at the other pillow next to him, not noticing the word “prepared”.
He asked with a blush on his face.
“Then what are the other two rooms?” He saw two other rooms with the door closed.
It was almost two o’clock, Lan Zhan thought for a while before he said to Wei Ying: “I will show you now.”
Wei Ying nodded quickly, he had been curious for a long time. He followed Lan Zhan towards the outside of the bedroom.
The first room opened by Lan Zhan was a piano room.
Wei Ying followed and walked to the black grand piano in the center of the room and circled around the piano, wanting to open the lid but resisted, and only asked.
“Do you practice piano every day?”
Lan Zhan said: “No, I practice it once in a while.”
He lifted the lid and played a small string of notes on the keys with his right hand, and asked Wei Ying, “What do you want to hear?”
Wei Ying thought for a while and then said, “The Birthday song.”
Lan Zhan then really sat down and played a song “Happy Birthday”, but he temporarily added a lot of adaptations, a familiar and simple tune became complex and pleasant to the ear.
Wei Ying sat beside Lan Zhan and watched his bony fingers play an almost brand new piece of music on the black and white piano keys.
“This is a completely new piece, it needs a new name.”
After Lan Zhan finished playing, Wei Ying tilted his head to think, his fingers randomly pressing a note on the keys.
Lan Zhan withdrew his hands and looked at him, saying, “It’s called ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. Wei Ying’.”
Wei Ying remembered the song “Wuji” and was very satisfied with the name. The corners of his mouth lifted up in a smile and he said, “Okay, thank you, Mr. Lan Zhan.”
Two of them walked out of the piano room, Wei Ying followed Lan Zhan to the next and last room. He asked curiously, “Is this room a study or a bedroom?”
Lan Zhan didn’t answer him and opened the door directly.
He raised his eyes to look at it, but stood frozen at the door, with nothing in his mind.
It was a spacious studio with floor-to-ceiling windows on the whole surface to ensure sufficient daylight.
There were three easels of different sizes in the room, large workbenches, drawing boards, lighting lamps, molds, interlining cloth… a lot of paints, brushes, drawing paper and other drawing tools had been put in the tall cabinet, and almost everything about painting was readily available.
On one side of the wall hung a gouache painting of a clear stream at a mountain col with peach blossoms flowing, once named by his small mind as ‘Creek full of forest flower’.
Wei Ying’s eyes trembled, as if fireworks and neon lights all over the world were flashing in front of his eyes.
He looked dumbfounded for a while before suddenly turning around and reaching out to hug Lan Zhan’s waist, burying his forehead in his shoulder, rubbing it back and forth lightly, causing his hair to be messy.
Lan Zhan was itchy when he was rubbed and let out a low laugh.
Through the thin pajamas, he could feel the slight vibration of his chest. He asked him, “Do you know where you are sleeping now?”
Wei Ying let out an “en”, and after being quiet for a while, he raised his head and stared at Lan Zhan and said:
“You don’t forget what I said. When I make a lot of money in the future, I want to buy a big house with a yard. At that time, you must live in the house I bought.”
Lan Zhan rubbed the back of his head and said, “Okay, I’ll listen to you.”
Wei Ying walked around the painting room a few times before he reluctantly followed Lan Zhan back to the master bedroom, and when he saw the big bed again, the little embarrassment came back.
He never expected that he could live with Lan Zhan and sleep together so soon.
“Do you recognize the bed when you sleep?”
When Wei Ying heard Lan Zhan ask himself, he hurriedly answered: “No, I don’t.”
He had slept on a straw-padded bed and a broken wooden bed in a ten-person room. This was the first time he had slept in such a big and soft bed, and he had an urge to roll around on the bed.
Wei Ying thought so, so he did. He took off his slippers and climbed into bed, rolling around on the bed, from here to there and back again, but then rolled into Lan Zhan’s arms.
Lan Zhan took him by the waist, looked at him in amusement and kissed him gently on the forehead before saying: “Go to bed early, it’s late.”
Wei Ying was quiet in Lan Zhan’s arms for a while, but still couldn’t resist asking the question he always wanted to ask:
“How did you know?”
Knowing what went without saying.
Lan Zhan turned sideways and turned off the light.
The bedroom was plunged into darkness, then he covered with the quilt and held Wei Ying in his arms again.
He only gave a rough idea of hiring people to investigate Lotus Pillar Bay, omitting the details of what that old woman said and what happened to Wei Zhuliu.
Wei Ying listened to Lan Zhan in a daze.
Thinking of the previous incident where Lan Zhan recognized him through his handwriting, the more he felt that Lan Zhan was so smart and perceptive that it was scary.
“Why didn’t you say it all along?” Lan Zhan asked him in a calm tone.
Wei Ying hesitated for a moment and finally only said, “I promised my… foster mother that I would not tell the truth until I became an adult.”
But in fact, he didn’t take Yu Ziyuan’s begging to heart.
Only he knew the real reason.
Lan Zhan’s arms around Wei Ying’s hands suddenly clenched.
Fortunately, it was dark in the bedroom. They couldn’t see each other’s expressions.
Lan Zhan was silent for a while, suppressing his ups and downs, before saying in a deep voice:
“She is not qualified to ask this from you, and you do not have to keep your word.”
Wei Ying let out an “en” and said, “So, I was going to tell you, but I didn’t expect you to know first.”
He was getting sleepy, his eyelids were fighting, and at the same time, he was still excited and wanted to continue talking to Lan Zhan.
At this moment, Lan Zhan kissed him gently on his forehead again and said softly, “Go to sleep, good night.”
Wei Ying hooked his neck and kissed Lan Zhan gently on his forehead, and said in a daze, “Good night, but I can’t seem to sleep.”
Despite saying that, maybe he was tired of crying, or maybe the secret was finally relieved, but Wei Ying fell asleep in less than 10 minutes.
And instead, Lan Zhan didn’t fall asleep.
He opened his eyes in the dark, listening to Wei Ying’s shallow breathing, his expression was almost gloomy.
He said that he would take Wei Ying to his home, but he knew that his home was not just a few blood related people living under one roof.
He would definitely let Wei Ying recognize his family, but could Wei Ying truly return to that so-called new family? How would he get along with the relatives whom he had never lived with for seventeen years?
The family members themselves were at odds with each other, and Jiang Cheng, who had been raised for more than ten years, was also sandwiched between them.
Would Wei Ying’s sensitive character be hurt and wronged in this new family during the adjustment period?
He had to think carefully, but he was after all an outsider to the Sanren family and Jiang family, not qualified to say anything.
So he must first give Wei Ying a home and give him an eternal retreat.
He even thought that if those relatives could not accept Wei Ying well.
Then he would be happy to be Wei Ying’s only family member.
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