A Mom at Twenty: My Son Is from Five Years in the Future - Chapter 3

When Shen Shu messaged me asking for condoms for him and his latest bedmate, I sprang straight off the hard bunk in my dorm.

Photos of his exploits were already threatening to fill every byte on my six-hundred-yuan knockoff phone, but I couldn’t pass up evidence this good.

Grandpa was stubborn. Profit came first—that was our family’s creed.

As far as they were concerned, a loveless marriage was a trivial sacrifice if it strengthened the family fortune.

They wouldn’t readily change their minds until I had enough proof that their handpicked prospective husbands were trash.

And since I’d enjoyed my family’s wealth, I did owe them a certain degree of obedience.

What I hadn’t expected was a bouncy little dumpling of a child crashing into me like a truck outside the hotel.

He called me Mommy over and over in a sticky-sweet, aggrieved voice. Tears shone in his black eyes as he tipped up his round chin and asked whether I didn’t want him anymore.

The way he tried to be brave while looking so hurt melted my heart.

Didn’t the country want us to have children?

Well, I wanted this one.

But I was a law-abiding citizen. I assumed he’d mistaken me for someone else.

Then he hurriedly pulled a longevity-lock pendant out from beneath his barely visible little neck.

The jade was warm. Its finely carved patterns of good fortune and long life spoke of considerable value.

I checked the details carefully.

It was mine.

I’d been sickly as a child, so my elders had an inherited piece of white jade carved into a lock-shaped pendant and blessed by a spiritual master.

After growing up, I’d decided it was embarrassingly childish and shut it away in a safe, never to see daylight again.

All right, then.

No need to ask which color sack the child would prefer to be carried off in.

I looked down and studied his little face. There really was a resemblance to me around his eyes and brows.

Something dinged in my brain. I hurriedly left my delivery at reception, scooped up the chubby little boy, and took him home.

To hell with Young Master Shen. Young Master Wen could piss off too.

Make way for the ultimate old-money heir—the richest man’s great-grandson, Young Master Fang himself.

The expedited DNA parentage test came back the next day.

The result didn’t surprise me.

What did surprise me was his father.

How could it be Zhou Suijing?

One look at his face and I’d say, “Holy shit, my dream man.”

But mention the name Zhou Suijing, and everyone at University A said, “Holy shit, a genius.”

He was the boy from a remote mountain village whose near-perfect entrance-exam score had two of Beijing’s top universities fighting over him.

Poor, aloof, reserved. The more impoverished the man, the more outrageous the face.

It would’ve been even better if he hadn’t shared a dorm with Shen Shu and the others.

Once I’d untangled those connections, my heart lurched.

What a mess.

How was I supposed to tell him, as the girlfriend of two of his roommates, “Zhou Suijing, we have a child together”?

We could genuinely put together a whole mahjong table now.

I looked down at little Fang Xianzhou.

His soft pink lips were parted in a grin, his round face bright with excitement at the prospect of seeing his father.

His short legs churned madly to keep up with me. Instinctively, I slowed down and adopted a serious tone.

“Zaizai, when we see your daddy…let’s both show a little restraint, okay?”

“What’s restraint?”

“It means you pretend you can’t talk until Mommy says you can.”

I needed to prepare Zhou Suijing first.

I’d heard that our famously handsome work-study student was so busy he was rarely seen.

At an age when he was too poor to look after himself, he’d just acquired a money-devouring creature out of nowhere.

He couldn’t even afford a rope to hang himself with.

Even his enemies would start a fundraiser.

Zaizai didn’t know what restraint meant. Nor did he know that his abrupt arrival might be about to deliver a thunderous, bone-crushing blow to his impoverished father.

He simply tipped up his round little face and kept those petal-soft lips chattering.

“Why?”

“Mommy, why aren’t we talking to Daddy?”

I was just about to explain patiently when a sugary voice came from behind me.

“Fang Zhiyou—”

My expression stiffened. I turned.

Shen Shu strolled down the passage with his arm around Ji Qingrou.

A rakish rich boy and a sexy, sultry woman walking together.

For some reason, it gave me the same thrill as being about to click into an adults-only website.

Ooh. Hot.

I raised my phone.