The airport bustled with a constant flow of people. The air was a mix of fragmented conversations, the rumbling of suitcase wheels, and broadcast announcements. Electronic screens updated in real-time, staging partings and reunions every single moment.
Cen Sen's arrival should have brought this farewell to a close. Ji Mingshu slowly pulled away from his embrace, and Cen Yang tactfully prepared to make his exit.
But suddenly, with a soft clatter, several unidentified objects fell out of Ji Mingshu's pocket.
Cen Yang was the first to react, helping to pick them up. He glanced at them as he did, and his expression became rather interesting.
Cen Sen, without bothering to see what they were, coolly snatched them away and lowered his eyes to look.
Then, both men looked at Ji Mingshu in unison.
Ji Mingshu: "..."
The air fell silent for what felt like a dozen seconds. It was again Cen Yang who broke the silence. He cleared his throat and said gently, "Congratulations."
Ji Mingshu tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then bit her lip.
Although being pregnant wasn't some shameful secret, having pregnancy tests fall out like that was embarrassing to the point of suffocation.
She pretended to casually glance at Cen Sen, only to find him staring at her without blinking.
All she wanted was to quickly end this additionally awkward farewell. She took a few small steps over to him, looped her arm through his, cleared her throat, and said to Cen Yang, "Um, you still have to go through security and customs. You should probably head in now. We won't see you off any further. We'll meet up next time we're in the States."
Cen Yang nodded and didn't say much more, just waving goodbye.
At the airport, earlier flights were constantly arriving, and planes were constantly taking off into the distance with a roar.
After Cen Yang left, Cen Sen asked, "You snuck out today just to buy these?"
"I wasn't sneaking around," Ji Mingshu said, unnaturally changing the subject. "Right, why did you come? Weren't you supposed to be discussing that investment today? Did it go well?"
Cen Sen: "The contract is already signed."
"That's good." She breathed a sigh of relief.
Cen Sen: "You still haven't answered my question."
"What?"
Cen Sen lowered his gaze, glancing at the pregnancy tests.
Ji Mingshu paused, organizing her words to explain. "It's just... I threw up this morning, right? Then Gu Kaiyang and Jiang Chun said I might be pregnant, so I wanted to buy these to check. It wouldn't be right for me to go to the hospital alone, would it?"
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
"Weren't you busy with the contract? I was planning to get the results first and then have you accompany me to the hospital for a check-up."
Cen Sen was quiet for a moment, not dwelling on the topic. "I've already had Zhao Yang arrange a prenatal check-up. We're going now."
He arranged it that quickly?
But she hadn't seen him make any calls.
A question mark slowly formed in Ji Mingshu's mind.
After getting into the car with Cen Sen, she felt a little dazed and a little nervous.
Some people tend to talk a lot when they get nervous, and Ji Mingshu was one of them. After getting in the car, she chattered nonstop, recounting everything that had happened since she received Cen Yang's farewell call.
When she got to the part about their phone call, she found it a bit funny. "Right, why were you so nervous on the phone just now? You two are so strange. You didn't really think Cen Yang was going to kidnap me, did you? What kind of logic is that..."
"What if he was?"
Cen Sen suddenly interrupted.
Ji Mingshu: "...?"
Cen Sen looked at the Passat carrying his bodyguards in the rearview mirror, his voice betraying little emotion.
"He was kidnapped once, back when he was still with the Cen family. That was right when the family found out about his true parentage. Faced with a huge ransom, they wanted to give up on him."
"He's held a grudge against the Cen family all these years, so I couldn't rule out the possibility that, after losing all his leverage, he might kidnap you to exact his revenge."
Cen Yang was kidnapped?
When did that happen?
Ji Mingshu couldn't process it for a long moment.
Cen Sen had already looked away, concluding in a level voice, "Fortunately, he still has some sense."
He hadn't originally wanted to tell Ji Mingshu about these dusty old matters, but she had been too well-protected, never having witnessed the evil and coldness of human nature firsthand.
If Cen Yang today hadn't truly come to terms with things and decided to wave goodbye to the past, but had instead wanted to take one last, reckless shot at revenge against the Cen family, he could have easily lured Ji Mingshu away with a single phone call, banking on their bit of old friendship.
Even if the possibility of such a mutually destructive outcome was one in ten thousand, the thought of it made it difficult for him to maintain his self-control.
After digesting this, Ji Mingshu felt no lingering fear or shock, only surprise. "How come I never knew about this? Why did they want to abandon him back then?"
Cen Sen lowered his eyes and said flatly, "You know too little about the Cen family."
And so, you don't know that they are inherently cold to the bone.
On the way to the hospital, Ji Mingshu was preoccupied with the fact that Cen Yang had once been kidnapped. With this to distract her, all her earlier nervousness vanished without a trace. Even while waiting for the results after her examination, she was still somewhat lost in thought, half wondering if she was pregnant, and half thinking about the Cen family's past.
While they waited, Cen Sen was on the phone, listening to Zhou Jiaheng's real-time work progress report.
His expression was as placid as ever, but as he looked at the door of the lounge, his mind unconsciously drifted. Zhou Jiaheng had to call his name twice before he refocused his attention.
The head nurse personally delivered Ji Mingshu's test results to the lounge.
"Mr. Cen, Mrs. Cen, congratulations."
The head nurse handed over the report with a beaming smile.
Cen Sen took it and scanned it, and Ji Mingshu leaned in to look as well.
In truth, the moment they heard the word "congratulations," both their minds had gone blank. Looking at the report was merely an instinctive reaction; they couldn't make sense of the figures no matter how hard they looked.
After a full half-minute of blankness, they finally registered the head nurse's instructions on early pregnancy precautions.
One remained silent and still, while the other listened to her instructions and nodded faintly.
Seeing their reactions, the head nurse secretly thought to herself: People who have seen the world are really different. They're so composed and calm even when they find out they're pregnant.
After the head nurse left the lounge, a silence fell.
Ji Mingshu returned from her daze and tugged on Cen Sen's sleeve. "I... I'm really pregnant."
Cen Sen's fingertips twitched. He didn't speak, only turning slowly to pull her into his arms.
Ji Mingshu had thought she was mentally prepared for pregnancy, but hearing the news for real felt like a dream—surreal, yet wonderful.
She wrapped her arms around Cen Sen in return, but after a moment, she felt he was being too quiet. She looked up, half-coaxing and half-displeased, and asked, "Why aren't you saying anything? Weren't you the one who wanted a baby? Are you not happy that I'm pregnant?"
Cen Sen pressed his forehead against hers, gazing into her eyes. After a long moment, he said in a low, husky voice, "I'm very happy."
Ji Mingshu glanced back to make sure no one was coming in, then suddenly and secretively lifted the hem of her shirt, revealing her flat, fair belly. She said unreasonably, "Then kiss your baby to prove that you're really happy and that you really like him."
Cen Sen paused for a moment, then helped her sit down on the sofa. He really did brace his hands on the edge of the sofa, lean down slowly, and press a kiss to her belly.
Ji Mingshu couldn't help the corners of her lips from curling up. She stood up on her own and hugged him, adding a command, "But after the baby is born, you still have to like me the most!"
Cen Sen hummed in agreement, ruffling her hair and promising in a low voice, "I'll like you the most."
The head nurse remembered she hadn't given them the pregnancy guide booklet and came back to deliver it. But as she stood at the door about to knock, she heard the sappy conversation from inside.
"..."
My apologies for the intrusion.
Having just found out about the pregnancy, neither Ji Mingshu nor Cen Sen felt it was quite real. On the way home, they discussed it and decided not to tell their parents for the time being.
Cen Sen felt it wasn't necessary to inform them immediately, as his emotional connection with his family was limited.
Ji Mingshu, on the other hand, was heavily influenced by the "hiding the pregnancy" plotlines in palace dramas and felt that they shouldn't make a big fuss and let everyone know in the first three months.
After returning home, the two of them remained in a surreal, floating state. Although they tried to act normal, they were both deeply affected by the pregnancy.
Ji Mingshu watched a drama, but after a whole episode, she had no idea what it was about. Cen Sen cooked a dish, turning stir-fried pork with green peppers into stir-fried green peppers with red peppers, and he added salt twice.
That night, after showering and lying in bed, one was playing on their phone and the other was reading. Ji Mingshu's mind wasn't on her phone at all, but seeing Cen Sen engrossed in his book, she didn't know how to start a conversation.
She glanced at him, then glanced again ten minutes later.
Suddenly, as if she had made a great discovery, she snatched Cen Sen's e-reader and questioned him with the smugness of someone who had caught him red-handed, "You only turned one page in ten minutes. What are you reading?"
Cen Sen pressed his brow and admitted, "I was thinking about the baby."
Ji Mingshu lay down with her head on his lap. "Me too."
"Hm?"
Ji Mingshu sighed, a little melancholic. "It just still feels... so unreal. I'm not even mature myself, and suddenly I have to raise a child. Besides, my mom never took care of me when I was little. I don't even know how a mother is supposed to be with a child."
Cen Sen stroked her hair, lost in his own thoughts, and didn't reply.
Ji Mingshu suddenly reached up and poked his Adam's apple, hesitantly raising a question she had always been curious about but had never asked.
"Um, I want to know, your mother, I mean your biological one... have you ever met her?"
"Once."
The emotion in Cen Sen's eyes was unreadable.
Ji Mingshu: "I saw her many times when I was little, too. But then suddenly, she disappeared along with Cen Yang."
In the past, Ji Mingshu wasn't one to pry. For one, she wasn't curious, and for another, she didn't want to get involved. For a long time, she had consciously adhered to the principles of a marriage alliance, proactively giving each other their own personal space.
She never asked why he and Cen Yang were switched at birth, never investigated why her proper mother-in-law had completely vanished, and never asked what had been on Cen Sen's mind all these years.
But tonight, she suddenly felt an impulse to walk completely into Cen Sen's past.
This impulse had been brewing since she noticed his polite but distant relationship with the Cen family. It culminated today when he said in the car, "You know too little about the Cen family." She had a sudden realization: she had given Cen Yang a lot of sympathy, but she had never deeply considered why Cen Sen, who clearly had a family, lived with a sense of loneliness as if he had disowned all his relatives.
Cen Sen's fingers toyed with the ends of her hair, and he was silent for a long time before answering her question. "She passed away a long time ago."
Cen Sen's biological mother came from a prestigious family. Before marrying Cen Yuanchao, she was engaged to her childhood sweetheart, but he died in a car accident before they could marry.
When Cen Yang was very young, she discovered he wasn't Cen Yuanchao's child. However, it never occurred to her that he wasn't her child either. She subconsciously assumed he was conceived with her childhood sweetheart before her marriage, so she did everything she could to hide it from the entire Cen family.
It could be said that it was all thanks to her that Cen Yang's identity wasn't exposed until he was seven or eight.
She never forgot her childhood sweetheart, and she poured all her heart and soul into Cen Yang.
Later, Cen Yuanchao accidentally discovered that Cen Yang's blood type didn't match either of theirs. He secretly had two paternity tests done. When the results came out, he followed the trail and quickly traced it back to the An family.
Back then, the An family was also a scholarly family in the capital. They had given birth in the same hospital as the Cen family, and a careless nurse had switched the two babies.
After his daughter-in-law, Chen Biqing, gave birth, the old master of the An family retired due to some sensitive issues. The entire family moved to Star City, and their lives gradually became quiet and ordinary.
What followed was Cen Yuanchao confirming Cen Sen's identity and wanting to bring him back.
Cen Yuanchao had originally been firm about keeping Cen Yang and raising him as well. But after learning about the baby swap, his wife had an inexplicable breakdown. The reason for her breakdown wasn't the swap, but the fact that the child she had cherished with all her heart was not the fruit of her love, as she had believed.
Cen Yuanchao was furious when he learned the truth, and his anger extended to Cen Yang, breeding a sense of disgust. When Cen Yang was kidnapped, he ignored the kidnappers' threats to kill the hostage and directly called the police. Fortunately, Cen Yang was lucky and was rescued by the police.
Later still, Cen Sen issued an ultimatum: it was either him or Cen Yang. Cen Yuanchao took the opportunity to send Cen Yang back to the An family.
From then on, Cen Sen's biological mother fell into a deep depression. When he returned to the Cen family, they met once. The look she gave him was not just that of a stranger, but was even tinged with disgust.
At that time, she and Cen Yuanchao had already begun divorce proceedings. The day after Cen Sen returned to the Cen family, she left without a shred of reluctance.
The Cen family's official story was that she had gone abroad to study with Cen Yang. The following year, she died of an illness. Her ashes were buried in the West Suburb Cemetery. From then on, like Cen Yang, she became a taboo topic in the Cen family.
Outside, a light rain pattered. The floor lamp cast a warm yellow glow. Cen Sen's voice was flat and low, and as he told the story, it sounded as if it had nothing to do with him.
After he finished, Ji Mingshu was unable to come back to her senses for a long time.
So, that was the full story.
She had seen his biological mother when she was a child, but back then, she was still Cen Yang's mother.
In her memory, she was a gentle, serene, and well-mannered woman. She never would have thought she could be so cold to her own biological child, not even saying a single word during their one and only meeting.
For some reason, the thought of that gentle aunt from her childhood looking at Cen Sen with disgust made her feel an intense ache in her heart.
The room was quiet for a long time. She suddenly hugged Cen Sen's waist, then sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck, pecking his lips once, twice, three times.
"Hubby, don't be sad. The baby and I will be good to you from now on."
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