When the Student Becomes the Fiancé

“We broke up.”

He said it as calmly as possible.

“Just broke up at noon.”

He hoped his calmness would give his mother a hint.

That something like “breaking up” could just be treated as a trivial matter and dissipate on the spot.

In reality, his wish failed yet again.

With a “pssh” as the water sprayed like a celestial maiden scattering flowers, he heard a joyful shriek.

Madam Li Junbi threw the hose aside, grabbed her son’s hands with both of hers, and asked with undisguised delight, “Really? You’re not lying to me? You and that little boy—your little ex-boyfriend—broke up? You’re not just trying to make me happy, right?”

Wu Qie: “……”

Staring into those eyes filled with anticipation, Wu Qie suddenly felt a confusion he had never known before—

With Madam Li acting like this, how exactly had she managed to navigate the Jiang City socialite circle so smoothly all year long?

Facts proved that some premonitions really did come true only when they were bad.

These days, being a good person didn’t necessarily bring good karma.

But a Hongmen Banquet?

That was very real and unavoidable.

After returning to his room to shower and change, Wu Qie went downstairs and saw an unfamiliar Bentley parked in the yard.

Only then did he realize there were guests tonight.

In the living room sat a young man in casual wear.

He looked much younger than Wu Qie’s father, Wu Wenxiong, probably just over thirty.

The man was extremely handsome, with a sharply defined jawline, sword-like brows, and starry eyes.

Even sitting on a soft sofa, his posture was impeccable.

At a glance, he was clearly no ordinary person.

Despite the age gap between him and Wu Wenxiong, the two chatted without any generational awkwardness.

When Wu Qie came downstairs, they were discussing the progress of a dock development project.

Hearing footsteps, Wu Wenxiong turned around, waved casually at Wu Qie, and said, “This is Uncle Zhao. Call him uncle.”

With that opening line, Wu Qie felt like he’d turned into a three-year-old.

Facing a man who was at most a little over thirty, he really couldn’t bring himself to say “uncle.”

The other man laughed first and smoothly said that since he wasn’t much older than Wu Qie’s younger brother, being called uncle would mess up the generational order.

“…Ge.”

“A-Qie has grown up.”

Wu Qie waited for a moment, thinking that with this kind of tone, there should be some red envelope involved.

There wasn’t.

He found an empty sofa and sat down, the one adjacent to the young man.

As he sat, Wu Qie caught a faint woody scent like rain-soaked dark timber drifting into his nose.

He’d vaguely smelled it upon entering the living room and had initially thought it was perfume.

Now, it seemed more likely to be the Alpha pheromones of the man in front of him.

Wu Qie was a Beta.

To him, pheromones were just faint scents with no further information attached.

Whether Alpha or Omega, to a Beta, they were merely—

Humans wearing different perfumes.

He didn’t dwell on it.

Listening to his father and the man talk for a while, Wu Qie finally realized that this “ge” was the “Old Zhao” his parents often mentioned.

The Zhao and Wu families had been friends for generations, with no grudges between them.

Before the founding of the nation, Wu Qie’s great-grandfather had even carried the Zhao family patriarch out of a trench on his crippled leg—

A bond forged in blood and iron.

Over the past century, as the domestic situation changed, the Wu family’s ancestral business remained inland, dealing in tobacco and minerals.

The Zhao family relocated to Jiang City and put down roots there.

After a hundred years, the Zhao clan had become a ship-owning dynasty known to all.

In recent years, perhaps due to a downturn in fortune, just like real estate, tobacco and mining had become harder and harder to manage.

The Wu family began branching into import-export trade.

With help from the Zhao family in Jiang City, the Wu family managed to avoid detours entirely.

While peers struggled to survive, the Wu family’s recent financial reports were actually looking up.

Wu Qie, a postgraduate who studied abroad and returned, had been able to parachute straight into Hongtie Middle School in Jiang City.

Aside from his respectable résumé, the human connections involved likely owed a great deal to the man in front of him.

Zhao Guipu.

Zhao Guipu truly was a benefactor to the family.

Wu Qie was always polite toward elders.

During dinner, he sat quietly at the table without making a sound, even though everyone emphasized it was just an ordinary family meal.

He scooped up a spoonful of tofu and half-listened to the elders discussing business.

Just as he put a piece of golden tofu into his mouth, Madam Li Junbi’s voice descended like a message from the heavens.

“Oh right, let me tell you some good news. My boy broke up with his Omega boyfriend today!”

For a moment, Wu Qie thought there was something wrong with his ears.

With a mouthful of hot tofu, he lifted his head in a daze.

He had no idea how the topic had gone from “stricter inspections of smuggled goods on cargo ships” to this absurd corner.

“Huh? Why didn’t I hear about this before—”

“I forgot. Saying it now is the same.”

“…It was that Omega? What happened, did he dump our boy?”

“Probably. You know your son. He doesn’t exactly have the mouth to initiate a breakup.”

“So, A-Qie broke up with his little boyfriend?”

Zhao Guipu didn’t use many filler words.

Despite his youth, when he spoke, the aura of someone in power was unmistakable.

He carried a calm, oppressive presence that was hard to describe.

The moment he spoke, the happily chatting couple naturally fell silent and turned to include him in the conversation.

“Old Zhao, isn’t this just fate?”

Madam Li grew more animated as she spoke.

“Yesterday you suddenly brought up wanting to become in-laws, and it kept my Old Wu tossing and turning all night. He kept saying he could never bring himself to break up a young couple by force—and look at this! Today our boy broke up on his own. Isn’t this destiny written in the stars?”

Wu Qie felt the man in front of him turn his head.

Under the dining room lights, those excessively deep, dark eyes landed on his face.

Zhao Guipu let out a soft laugh.

“It is indeed a coincidence.”

Wu Qie swallowed the food in his mouth, his head full of question marks.

Yet no one at the table paid him any attention.

The elders chatted enthusiastically about something utterly outrageous—

About Wu Qie having a fiancé.

Him.

Wu Qie.

Having a fiancé.

The bowl in his hands felt as distant and unreal as a grain of sand floating in the universe.

He himself seemed to have turned into a pair of chopsticks, a side plate, or a decorative vase at the table.

Wu Qie did manage to squeeze in a question—“What fiancé?”—but no one responded.

After a long while, Zhao Guipu finally turned back to him and asked gently, “A-Qie, how have the past two months of teaching at Hongtie Middle School been? Are you used to it?”

Wu Qie didn’t understand why he brought this up and could only nod obediently.

Zhao Guipu nodded in return and set down his chopsticks.

“My younger brother also studies at Hongtie. He differentiated into an Alpha in his first year of high school.

I’ve always said that after differentiation he didn’t seem to amount to much, but now I think differentiating was a good thing.”

Wu Qie: “Huh?”

Zhao Guipu: “He can take care of you.”

Wu Qie: “What?”

Zhao Guipu: “If you run into any difficulties at school in the future, go to him for help. He’s an Alpha.

He should naturally take good care of people… Rather than taking care of random cats and dogs that wander over, it’s better for him to take care of his own fiancé.”

Wu Qie: “Huh? What?”

Madam Li chimed in, “Old Zhao, you’ve said all this without even introducing your brother’s name. How is our boy supposed to meet his fiancé and receive his care?”

Zhao Guipu said, “His name is Zhao Shu.”

Wu Qie: “?”

Zhao Guipu repeated the name.

“Zhao Shu. I hear he’s quite famous at school. A-Qie, you’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”

Wu Qie: “I guess.”

Wu Qie: “……”

Wu Qie: “He’s a student in my class.”

Are you feeling even a hint of absurdity now?

Zhao Guipu nodded slowly.

“In the future, he’ll have another identity. Not just your student, but also your fiancé.”

Wu Qie: “……”

Alright.

Looks like they didn’t feel it at all.