Who's the Puppy? - Chapter 1

The old man of the Jiang family nearly croaked.

His sworn enemy wheeled himself up to the bedside and delivered a cryptic announcement: “All three of your sons are gay.”

That scared Dad right up off his deathbed. One phone call summoned the lot of us to the hospital, where he issued a decree.

“Whichever of you three gets married and has a child first gets the family fortune.”

I laughed.

There were three Jiang brothers. The eldest, Jiang Chenye, was everything an heir ought to be. Unfortunately, he was adopted. The second, Jiang Mingkai, was the spitting image of Dad. Unfortunately, he was a shameless playboy.

And me, Jiang Yunsheng? Where to begin?

I took after Mom in looks and sexual orientation. When I was younger and knew no better, I’d even set my sights on my eldest brother.

So Dad’s declaration sounded like an incentive, but it was really a warning for Mingkai. The rest of us were just there to listen.

Chenye left the ward first. I took my eyes off his retreating back, waited a minute, then went outside.

At the hospital’s smoking shelter, I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Mingkai followed me in.

“Well, well. Our Dr. Jiang’s learned to smoke?”

I lifted my eyes. “What do you want?”

He raised an eyebrow, his tone casual. “You have to help me. We can’t let the Jiang fortune fall into an outsider’s hands.”

“You could just mend your ways.”

Mingkai clicked his tongue and frowned. “You don’t get it. Jiang Chenye’s a freak. Running his own company like a dream wasn’t enough—he had to turn the family group into a roaring success too. He makes me look useless. If you were Dad, would you hand the group over to someone useless?”

I stared at him. For the first time in ages, I had no words.

Deep in his own reasoning, he grew graver by the second. “At this point, all I can do is make sure Dad has no choice.”

“Oh?” I supplied the expected response.

He lowered his voice. “Yunsheng, help me make Dad completely turn against Jiang Chenye. What do you say?”

I tapped a cigarette out of the pack and put it between my lips without answering. Mingkai snatched it away.

“Jiang Yunsheng! If I get the group, I can give you half. If Jiang Chenye gets it, we’ll both be kicked out. Get that through your head!”

I tapped out another cigarette and put it between my lips. “I’m busy.”

He gritted his teeth. “So you won’t help? Then I’ll tell him your secret!”

My hand paused as I went to light up. I glanced at him and gave a soft laugh. “Go on. Get a megaphone and shout it in his ear, preferably.”

“You—!”

Speechless with fury, Mingkai stormed off.

I laughed, leaned against the glass wall, and tipped my head back to exhale a stream of smoke.

I wasn’t bluffing. Jiang Chenye had practically raised me. He knew more about the peculiarities of my body than anyone.

When Dad was nearly forty, he’d gone to a fortune-teller and been told he was destined to have no sons.

The man suggested a way around it: adopt a child whose fate included brothers and sisters.

So Dad adopted my eldest brother from an orphanage at five and named him Jiang Chenye.

A year later, Mingkai was born. Dad was delighted. Chenye began to turn invisible in the Jiang household.

Three years after that, I was born. This time, Dad couldn’t bring himself to be happy.

Because my body was neither fully male nor fully female.

He couldn’t very well blame Mom, and he certainly wouldn’t blame himself. Then he remembered why he’d adopted Chenye in the first place. This younger brother with an in-between body was part of the fate Chenye had brought with him too.

My birth made Chenye redundant.

By then, Dad’s assets exceeded a hundred million, yet somehow he couldn’t afford a single set of properly fitting clothes for Chenye. Whenever anyone asked, he’d smile and say it was his way of teaching the boy.

At twelve or thirteen, when a boy’s pride is at its most vulnerable, Chenye wore a school uniform washed nearly white and sneakers with the soles coming unstuck.

Our parents deliberately ignored him. Mingkai played tricks on him all the time. And I was the worst—I wouldn’t even let him sleep in peace.

I wanted him to hold me, feed me, bathe me. I’d give him cookies I’d bitten into and candy I’d already licked. I always had to be right beside him, and he had to soothe me to sleep.

He’d go back to school smelling of a little kid’s milk and get laughed at by his classmates.

More than once, Jiang Chenye told me with a cold face, “Jiang Yunsheng, I hate you.”

But I had no shame. More than once, I told him, “Brother, I like you so much.”