After Unbinding the Simp System, I'm Targeted by the Villain - Chapter 12

“Duan Haixiang, get out here! I work myself to the bone every day to support this family, and you? You go behind my back to gamble and end up neck-deep in debt!”

“If you have a shred of conscience left, open this door! Sell that old house of yours to pay the debt, or else we’re going to the Civil Affairs Bureau tomorrow to get a divorce!”

Duan Huaijin had just reached the front door. Before he could even open it, he heard Lin Mei furiously pounding on the bedroom door inside.

Except for his hair and his injured arm, Duan Huaijin was soaked to the bone. As he changed out of his dripping socks and shoes at the entrance, he heard a loud bang as Duan Haixiang threw the bedroom door open.

“He told you, didn’t he?” Duan Haixiang stared at Lin Mei, his chest heaving. Seeing Duan Huaijin return, he immediately redirected his fury, shouting, “Duan Huaijin! Didn’t I tell you not to say a word?!”

“Enough! You’re old enough to do the deed but too cowardly to face the consequences, so you try to pin it on the kid? The debt collectors called me directly!!! Duan Haixiang, we’ve been married all these years; how did I never realize you were so ‘capable’? Gambling behind my back!”

Duan Haixiang was instantly rendered speechless. Two days ago, the debt collectors had said they could give him more time, and that Duan Huaijin would help him pay. Why would they turn around and call Lin Mei?

Lin Mei’s eyes were bloodshot. “Anyway, you ran up these debts; they have nothing to do with me. You either sell your family’s old house, or we divorce and you leave this house with nothing!”

“But if the old house is sold, where will my mother live?”

“Our life is over anyway, I don’t care where your mother lives!”

“Lin Mei! You won’t even support your mother-in-law? You’re completely heartless and unfilial!”

Crash—!

The tissue box from the dining table was hurled violently against the doorframe, narrowly missing Duan Haixiang’s head.

“You have the nerve to talk to me about filial piety? Why don’t you ask whose fault all of this is!”

Duan Huaijin grabbed a towel from his room and walked into the bathroom, turning a blind eye to the family feud.

Duan Haixiang was weak-willed by nature. Combined with the fact that he was in the wrong, Lin Mei’s roar instantly deflated his spirit, and he retreated back into the bedroom, not daring to come out.

A moment later, the sound of smashing came from the dining room. Lin Mei threw almost everything she could get her hands on, yet her rage remained unquenched.

When she first got married, she ran off to be a maid for a wealthy family to earn money. After giving birth, she took a desperate risk to swap the babies so her son could have a better life. Later, she found ways to establish contact with her biological son. These were all schemes she had painstakingly devised; that useless coward Duan Haixiang hadn’t helped one bit.

Outside, the rain continued to pour, but Lin Mei couldn’t stand being in the same space as Duan Haixiang. She grabbed an umbrella and slammed the front door so hard the entire hallway shook.

Duan Huaijin leaned against the bathroom door, quietly listening to the end of the show.

The gambling debts Duan Haixiang owed were the kind with compounding interest. They weren’t much initially, but because he couldn’t fill the hole in time, they now totaled several hundred thousand. The small amount of money Zhang Hanzhou sent Lin Mei every month wouldn’t be enough. Lin Mei was likely heading out now to find an opportunity to meet with Zhang Hanzhou.

Duan Huaijin took off his soaked shirt. He was about to hand-wash it along with Yu Chucheng’s jacket, but when he reached into the jacket pocket, he felt the ring box—the same one he had seen in the clinic earlier.

“…”

Duan Huaijin opened the box with one hand, looking expressionlessly at the exquisite men’s ring inside.

The design was seemingly simple, but the craftsmanship was meticulous. The grooves were set with sparkling diamonds, and there was even a line of text engraved on the inside:

Amor et Fidelitas. (Love and Loyalty.)

It was clear how much heart the person who commissioned this ring had put into it.

Duan Huaijin gripped the ring, no ripples appearing in his deep, dark eyes, though his knuckles turned slightly white.

Hao Jia…

He repeated the name in his mind.

In his past life, to make Zhang Hanzhou lose everything, he intended to steal away Hao Jia, the person Zhang Hanzhou loved.

But he had spent a long time scheming for that theft. He seized the family inheritance Zhang Hanzhou was meant to receive; he stripped Zhang Hanzhou of his status in Kyoto. By the end, he had nearly driven Zhang Hanzhou into a corner, yet he was the only one unable to erase Hao Jia from the man’s side. The two of them were like magnets, stuck together.

By the end of his pursuit, he didn’t even understand what made Hao Jia worth all that effort.

Just as he now didn’t understand what made Hao Jia worth Yu Chucheng’s devoted love—willing to press his “warm face against a cold butt” without hesitation.

Click.

Duan Huaijin snapped the lid shut and tossed the box aside like a piece of trash.

* * *

Yu Chucheng took a shower as soon as he got home. Only after finishing did he realize the ring box was missing.

However, he simply assumed it had fallen onto the back seat of the car and didn’t think much of it.

After having dinner with his family, Yu Chucheng lay comfortably on the beanbag chair on the villa’s glass terrace. Listening to the heavy rain drumming against the glass, he lowered the projector screen and ate a fruit platter prepared by the housekeeper, letting out a long sigh.

“Ah, this is the life…”

Dressed in an oversized T-shirt and shorts, he swung his straight, fair legs and picked a random movie to watch.

The movie turned out to be a thriller. It opened with a multi-car pileup that ended in an immediate explosion.

Crap, what bad luck.

Yu Chucheng hurriedly switched to another one.

Come to think of it, if it hadn’t been for a car accident, he wouldn’t have transmigrated into this novel and worked so hard as a “licking dog.”

But then again, Duan Huaijin also went “offline” because of a car accident. The two of them seemed to have quite a lot of fate when it came to dying.

Yu Chucheng was amused by his own dark humor and couldn’t help but chuckle as he poked an apple into his mouth.

This time, he put on a police-and-thief flick. The premise was good, but the plot was too boring. If the protagonist didn’t have “protagonist aura,” he would have been killed by the villains several times over.

The sound of rain mixed with the movie was the perfect lullaby. Yu Chucheng grew drowsy. In his blurred state, he only heard the movie beginning to deliver its moral message at the end:

“The world is not just black and white; there are many evils hidden in corners where the sun cannot reach. But please believe that justice will always prevail over evil.”

Yu Chucheng rubbed his eyes and let out a lazy yawn.

Yeah, justice always wins. Throughout history, it’s basically always like that. As the saying goes, it’s not that there’s no retribution, it’s just that the time hasn’t come. Villains never have a good ending.

Thinking of this, Yu Chucheng’s hand stopped mid-rub. He began calculating the time in his head.

“Ten years…” Yu Chucheng murmured.

There were ten years left before Duan Huaijin went “offline” in a car accident.

Ten years wasn’t exactly long, but it wasn’t short either. When Yu Chucheng realized that Duan Huaijin wouldn’t even be thirty in ten years, his heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand.

So annoying.

Yu Chucheng turned off the projector, though he didn’t know why he was so frustrated.

Initially, when he learned the man who bit him was Duan Huaijin, he only wanted to avoid offending him or being hated by him—ideally, staying as far away as possible.

But now, whenever he thought of Duan Huaijin’s ending in the book, it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Yu Chucheng cleared his mind, staring blankly up at the pitch-black night sky. Suddenly, he caught a faint, sweet scent.

It was the scent of the blocker he’d sprayed after his shower—the peach fragrance that matched his pheromones, the one Duan Huaijin had spent most of his savings to buy.

“Sigh…” Yu Chucheng closed his eyes in resignation.

His heart wasn’t made of stone. If he didn’t know Duan Huaijin, that would be one thing, but the events of the past few days had already caused his life path to intersect with the villain’s.

Once a connection is made—even if it’s just a single thread—he didn’t want to see someone he knew die ten years later. He didn’t want to watch someone walk step by step toward a grave while he already knew the fatal outcome.

Yu Chucheng sat up abruptly and talked to himself. “Since the villain’s end is certain death, then I just need to stop Duan Huaijin from ‘blackening,’ right? But how do I stop it?”

Yu Chucheng sat motionless, thinking for over ten minutes—more seriously than when he was solving math problems for his college entrance exams.

The root cause of Duan Huaijin’s “blackening” wasn’t actually the secret of his birth; at its core, it was the psychological gap he felt after learning the truth.

As for why that gap was so massive, it was because his foster parents weren’t human. No one had ever truly been good to him since he was a child, leaving him to struggle alone in the mire of life, while the protagonist, Zhang Hanzhou, lived in luxury and was showered with love.

If Duan Huaijin’s foster parents had raised him like their own son, giving him the warmth of a family and making him a happy person to begin with, then perhaps his reaction wouldn’t have been so extreme when he found out the truth later.

Yu Chucheng practiced empathy, putting himself in Duan Huaijin’s shoes for a long time until his thoughts finally cleared.

“I’ve got it!” Yu Chucheng suddenly had a flash of inspiration. “Since Duan Huaijin lacks happiness—or ‘love’ for short—then wouldn’t finding someone to warm his heart do the trick?”

As for the candidate… Duan Huaijin was an Alpha. Naturally, to be fair, he should consult another Alpha. Ji Zhou seemed like a reliable source.

Yu Chucheng hurriedly picked up his phone and called Ji Zhou. “Hey Ji Zhou, if you were in desperate need of an Omega to accompany you and ‘warm’ you right now, what type would you want them to be?”