Promise
After Gu Yilan left, Su Zesui felt the musical suddenly lost some of its charm, at least it wasn’t as captivating as before.
He absentmindedly swung his slender legs, watching the people running across the stage. When the crowd downstairs cheered and applauded, he enthusiastically raised his small hands and clapped along.
Luckily, Gu Yilan returned soon.
The man’s usual cold, handsome face remained expressionless, but Su Zesui sensed a repressed energy around him—as if his emotions were on the verge of bursting.
Su Zesui went over, hugged him, and pulled him down to sit, telling him about the parts he’d missed.
The musical was mostly tragic. When Su Zesui spoke about it, he didn’t smile, but Gu Yilan suddenly said something strange and out of nowhere: “Try to be happier from now on, okay?”
Su Zesui didn’t quite understand but nodded: “You have to be happy too, brother.”
On the way home after the musical, Gu Yilan drove and asked him: “Su Mingyu is on annual leave and will be home for the next half month. He sent you a message but you didn’t reply. Let me ask—do you want to go back?”
In the passenger seat, Su Zesui glanced at WeChat and, sure enough, saw a few unread messages from his big brother. He skimmed through them, then turned his head toward Gu Yilan.
The man’s side profile was as perfect as a sculpture—smooth, elegant lines, a slightly tense jawline sharp and defined like a blade, carrying an austere, striking presence that could make one’s heart skip a beat.
Su Zesui bit his lower lip lightly, thinking for a long moment before finally saying, “I want to be with you.”
Alongside his severe social anxiety, he also suffered from a degree of separation anxiety. Once he truly formed a bond with someone, it was hard for him to pull away. Even imagining the possibility of “parting” would make his chest tighten, his breathing shorten, and his heart ache.
Especially now, after just making up with Gu Yilan—absence having made the heart grow fonder—he was more attached to him than ever.
Gu Yilan asked, “Don’t you want to see your real brother?”
Su Zesui hesitated. “Could you… come back with me?”
Gu Yilan raised an eyebrow. “The bed in your room—is it as big as the one we sleep in at night?”
Su Zesui’s cheeks warmed at the question. Forgetting the existence of the guest room, he replied, “We can squeeze in.”
Then, with a sudden spark of inspiration, he added cleverly, “We could hug. Saves space.”
Gu Yilan only gave a noncommittal “Mm” and didn’t continue the topic, simply telling him to reply to Su Mingyu’s messages promptly.
After telling his big brother he’d think about it, Su Zesui made a new Moments post, arranging photos of the musical and a candid shot of Gu Yilan into a nine-picture collage.
[(o^^o): Watching a musical with brother—so happy! (bunny-spinning.gif)]
Less than a minute after posting, he got a like—“Liked by friend 11th Dimension”—and a message from Su Mingyu.
Su Zesui turned to look at the driver’s seat, where Gu Yilan was steering with one hand, calm and unhurried, while the other hand scrolled through his Moments feed, radiating a relaxed ease like a light breeze passing through.
Noticing his gaze, Gu Yilan set down his phone and, without looking over, said, “I’m happy too.”
. . . . .
The relaxing day after their reconciliation flew by. The next afternoon, the villa’s front door was knocked on by an uninvited guest.
Gu Yilan had already positioned himself in the living room, but let the butler open the door—less an act of respect, more as if he saw the visitors as a contagious plague to be handled with caution.
Even though he had coldly hung up earlier saying he was busy, Father Gu and Mother Gu always managed to override his words, doing as they pleased.
The moment they entered, they placed a thick stack of documents on the coffee table and pushed it toward him.
Gu Yilan lounged lazily on the sofa, long legs casually crossed, one arm draped over the armrest, fingers idly tracing its edge, his gaze unfocused on some distant point.
He didn’t spare a single glance for the documents that had taken so much effort to prepare.
“What? After everything we said over the phone, you’re still not willing?” Mother Gu asked.
Having navigated the business world for years, her words were light but carried weight, instantly framing Gu Yilan as nothing more than an unreasonable young man.
Father Gu sighed. “Alright, you two just need to go through the formalities. We’ll take care of the child from now on. Satisfied?”
Gu Yilan tapped his fingers lightly on the armrest, showing no reaction to their condescending tone. Instead, he calmly countered, swiftly reclaiming control: “And how do you know he wants you to raise him?”
Father Gu froze, finding his son’s words absurd. “What orphan wouldn’t want to be adopted? And our Gu family is famous in A City—who wouldn’t want to cling to us? Being born into wealth and status is a blessing earned over lifetimes.”
Gu Yilan gave a short laugh. “Is that so?”
Something in that laugh made Father Gu’s scalp prickle. He frowned. “We’ve offered you wealth and power far beyond a normal family’s reach. You’ve enjoyed all the benefits, but now you want to walk away with no responsibility? Ungrateful, that’s what you are.”
Gu Yilan paused for a moment. “No one ever asked if I wanted those benefits.”
Father Gu let out a disbelieving laugh. “You don’t honestly think poor families have lots of love, do you? Let me tell you—most ordinary households have neither money nor love. They spend their lives struggling, achieving nothing. If you end up like that, you’ll regret it.”
Gu Yilan replied, “Not everyone cares about your money or power. Your standards are the ones society has imposed on you.”
Mother Gu, holding back her irritated husband, tried a softer approach. “Then what is it you want?”
Gu Yilan pressed his lips together. “I want nothing. I just want a normal life—for as long as I can live it.”
“You—!” Father Gu was even angrier than before, so furious he nearly stood up.
“When you were little, I took the time to teach you—step by step—how to set goals and achieve them. And you? You’ve turned into some kind of nihilist. Do you think withdrawing from the world makes you superior, while we’re just shallow money-chasers? Let me tell you, self-actualization is the highest tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but your so-called ideals are only admired by adolescent daydreamers.”
Instead of being provoked, Gu Yilan chuckled, mocking lightly, “Then I must still be stuck at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid.”
Like punching a pillow, Father Gu felt both powerless and frustrated. He said curtly, “Where’s Su Zesui? Bring him down so we can settle this. Let him see if there’s any child he likes.”
“He’s not home,” Gu Yilan said.
Mother Gu took out her phone. “Aside from going to school with you, he barely leaves his room. And now you’re telling me he’s not even home?”
She pulled up the surveillance page, but was met with a pitch-black screen and a line of glaring red text:
[Sorry, you currently do not have permission to view this site.]
“What exactly are you trying to do, Gu Yilan?” Mother Gu’s tone sharpened as she sat up straight.
She tossed her phone onto the coffee table, the screen clearly visible to all three of them.
Gu Yilan smiled faintly. “I don’t intend to keep negotiating. Whatever judgments and plans you make for my life at home—whether I know about them or not—doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
“You don’t seriously think crippling yourself like this will make us cut ties with Su Zesui, do you? I have contact information for his entire family. Marriage alliances, raising heirs—that’s the duty of people like you born into wealth. One way or another, I’ll make him agree. I might even get him to talk you around…”
Gu Yilan’s lips curled in a dangerous smirk, cutting her off mid-sentence. “I can get a divorce.”
Father Gu and Mother Gu froze, staring at their son in disbelief. “Are you having one of your episodes again?”
. . . . .
Su Zesui had overslept his afternoon nap.
It seemed Mr. Gu had turned off his alarm.
Rubbing his still-drowsy eyes, he slipped on his little white bunny slippers and was about to push open the bedroom door to find Gu Yilan.
But as he sleepily reached the spiral staircase, he heard the tense, gunpowder-laced exchange from downstairs.
His body tensed, but the moment he heard Gu Yilan’s lazy drawl, he relaxed again.
Lightly, he tiptoed down a couple of steps and hid at the landing, quietly eavesdropping on the conversation below.
“Why must you blow this out of proportion?” came a middle-aged woman’s voice—most likely Mother Gu.
“If you agree to this, your father and I can give ground on other matters. Don’t you like racing? Sign the adoption papers, and I’ll help you get your club membership ID reinstated.”
Biting his fingertip, Su Zesui sank into his thoughts, his lashes casting faint shadows on his cheeks.
——So Mr. Gu quit his beloved racing club… because his parents disapproved?
He didn’t understand.
In his eyes, Mr. Gu handled everything with effortless control, exuding a natural dominance and oppressive presence that came from long years at the top—a man who should never be caged by his parents or by anyone.
But Gu Yilan’s next words confused him even more—
“It’s fine. I don’t like racing; I’m just addicted to the feeling it gives me. I’ve found a better substitute now.”
“Chasing thrills—cheap pleasure,” Father Gu scoffed.
Gu Yilan corrected with a smile, “Not the thrill of flirting with death online, it’s the sensation of almost dying.”
Silence fell downstairs. Su Zesui mulled over the words, unable to make sense of them, so he simply committed them to memory.
After a long pause, Mother Gu said, “What’s gotten into you? Your father and I have been so tolerant of you—can’t you think of us for once? All for the sake of some inexplicable promise, you’ve been stubbornly burying yourself in physics for so long. Wasting your time in that lab day after day, and we let it slide. What more do you want?”
——A promise…
Su Zesui mentally noted the word.
“I’ve been meaning to ask—what exactly did you promise, and to whom? Who is this person? What’s your relationship? Is he the one who led you astray, made you this… reckless?”
Su Zesui wanted to know too, his ears straining for the answer.
But to his disappointment, Gu Yilan clearly had no intention of answering. His patience with his parents gone, he abruptly ended the discussion, setting it for three days later, and “escorted” them out of the villa—without even offering them a drink of water.
Once they were gone, Su Zesui stood up, stretched his tingling legs, and trotted down the spiral staircase toward the living room.
On the sofa, the man’s upright back was like a steady mountain—silent, radiating invisible strength and pressure, yet somehow offering a sense of shelter from the wind and rain.
Su Zesui scampered up to him—only to stop dead in his tracks. “Brother… you… you’re bleeding!”
Gu Yilan’s thin lips were pressed tight, but bright blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, sliding slowly down his chin. His already dark, almost feral aura now flared into something bolder, wilder—like a black hole that could swallow a person’s very will.
Su Zesui hurried to grab some tissues from the coffee table. Gu Yilan, looking unconcerned, casually wiped the blood away with his hand—but it kept gushing from his mouth, dripping onto the carpet and blooming into a shocking stain of red.
“Brother, what’s wrong with you?” Su Zesui frantically shoved the tissues into the man’s hand.
——What had Mr. Gu been talking about with his parents just now? Did he have a terminal illness? Was he refusing treatment, so his parents had come to persuade him? No, no, no…
Su Zesui’s mind was in chaos, his hands and feet at a loss.
Gu Yilan didn’t answer his question. Instead, he said softly, “Suisui, promise me—go home.”