[Hatred Value Activation Warning]
by M1zushiSong Zhenyan was quite helpless regarding the hospital’s rule that a guardian had to be contacted to accompany the child.
Even though he patiently explained twice that the child’s parents were currently in emergency surgery and that he was not the kid’s relative, he was still entrusted with the child’s care by a doctor who was too busy to even hear him out.
This was the dirty, whimpering child he had carried back from the heavy rain.
He seemed to have found trouble for himself; perhaps he should have listened to the system’s advice to just complete the mission and not meddle in others’ affairs.
07:13. Song Zhenyan raised his hand to glance at his wristwatch. He had already watched over this child for an entire night.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been washing up at this moment, then heading out punctually at 7:30 for a half-hour morning workout.
But now… he lowered his eyes to the small hand that was clutching his finger. Its owner, despite having been given a sedative, had been sobbing restlessly throughout the night. Even for someone as emotionally detached as him, he was too embarrassed to pull his hand away.
Moreover, not long ago, the child had cried out for him for a long time, calling him “Uncle” and begging him not to leave him all alone, saying that he was very scared.
At that moment, the child’s eyes had been very bright.
They were a deep, deep blue, brimming with tears. It wasn’t like an abyss, but more like the ocean.
Very clear and pure.
Song Zhenyan stared at the pale, pitiful child for two seconds. In truth, he had already been observing him out of boredom for most of the night.
In the past, his colleagues had always said he was emotionally distant and cold, like a machine that only knew how to do research. He usually didn’t agree, but now, looking at this child, he suddenly felt that perhaps he was the ignorant one and that his understanding of the creature known as “human being” was still lacking.
Otherwise, how could a tiny little thing like this, who would cry and call him “Uncle,” have become the kind of antisocial psychopath from the dream?
Song Zhenyan couldn’t figure it out, but considering that he would have frequent contact with this specimen in the future, he considered establishing a special research project.
Research subject: Tong Jiannian.
Song Zhenyan’s research subject slowly awoke after sleeping for fourteen hours. Like all children upon waking, he first rubbed his eyes, then began to look for something to eat.
However, his instinct to find food lasted only three seconds before he suddenly burst into a loud wail.
“…” Song Zhenyan attempted to talk with him, “What do you want to eat?”
“I want Papa, waaaah, Papa!”
Song Zhenyan’s left hand, which the boy was clutching, stiffened for a moment. After a moment of bewilderment, he chose to press the call button by the bed.
The books said that a crying human baby was an extremely troublesome thing.
This was a problem Song Zhenyan was certainly not equipped to solve; therefore, he had to call for the doctor’s help.
When the doctor arrived, the child saw that it wasn’t his fathers and he cried even more heart-wrenchingly.
Helpless, Song Zhenyan could only step away, leaning back against a nearby window to watch.
It rained all night and the sky cleared up a little in the morning, the sun shining slightly warm on his back.
Amidst the noisy and chaotic surroundings, he just watched as a group of doctors took care of the child. In that instant, he suddenly felt that this child was also quite simple. Perhaps, just maybe, there was still hope for him.
After a nurse helplessly administered another sedative shot, Song Zhenyan was led out by the doctor.
“What is your relationship with Tong Jiannian?”
The name was somewhat unfamiliar to Song Zhenyan, but he answered quickly, “Not close.”
“……” The doctor flipped through the medical records back and forth, then looked up at Song Zhenyan through his thick lenses. “Then why were you the one who sent him here?”
“I picked him up on the way,” Song Zhenyan added. “There was an emergency car accident at the third speed limit sign on Nanguan Bridge.”
“…….” The man’s calmness made the doctor feel as if he was the one who was abnormal. The bad news he had been preparing to tactfully deliver was now stated directly. “I’m sorry to inform you that after twelve hours of exhaustive rescue efforts, Tong Xize and He Weidu have completely lost all vital signs.”
The two names were unfamiliar, but Song Zhenyan knew they were Tong Jiannian’s fathers.
Song Zhenyan remembered the state the two were in ” before death “, their bodies were pressed together as much as possible, protecting the child in their arms and trying to mitigate the violent impact of the car’s front hitting the guardrail.
Under such circumstances, even in his own world, there would have been no chance of survival.
Fortunately, the child they had wanted to protect only suffered some minor injuries and psychological shock.
Before, Song Zhenyan hadn’t quite understood why the protagonist had such a high hatred value, but now he perhaps understood a little.
His fathers loved him very much and were willing to protect him with their lives. A child raised with love had clear and kind eyes.
After a slight hesitation, Song Zhenyan discussed it with the doctor. “Can we temporarily keep this news from Tong… that child?”
He was not yet familiar with the script and was unacquainted with the child’s name.
“Of course.” Although the doctor thought to himself, Didn’t you say you didn’t know them?, it was after all devastating news. Anyone would be as tactful as possible in withholding it. Moreover, the child had no other relatives they could contact besides his parents.
The doctor briefly explained the situation to Song Zhenyan and informed him that since he was the one who brought them in, he would have to trouble him to look after Tong Jiannian until the police could recover the data from the victim’s phone.
This “trouble” would, many years later, still give Song Zhenyan a conditioned headache whenever he heard someone call him “Uncle.”
Tong Jiannian is very good at crying
Although every time he cried he muttered, “Tongtong must be brave, Tongtong must not cry.”
But he still cried every day. He cried in his sleep, and he cried when he woke up.
He cried when he woke up and didn’t see his fathers, and when Song Zhenyan was gone, he cried even harder
He also tried telling himself white lies, such as his fathers were just a little sick and would come back if he stopped crying and fussing.
But it was no use.
In Tong Jiannian’s own logic, if he behaved well for more than an hour and his fathers didn’t appear, it meant they didn’t want him anymore.
This left Song Zhenyan very helpless. And very unfortunately, the primary emergency contact that the police exported from Tong Xize’s phone was “Song Zhenyan”..
This forced Song Zhenyan to stay here and take care of the noisy puppy so as not to expose his identity as the “murderer” too quickly.
Before this, Song Zhenyan had once believed that a minor, fatal error appearing near the end of a long-term experiment was the most troublesome thing he could have encountered in his life.
But now, it was clear he had underestimated the complexity of life.
He had underestimated even more the complexity of human beings.
He couldn’t understand how a puppy only a few dozen centimeters tall could cry so much and wouldn’t listen to a word he said.
What was even more frustrating was that as Tong Jiannian gradually let his guard down towards him, he began to become extremely dependent on him.
In the original book’s setting, Tong Jiannian had grown up in a practically isolated environment due to his health and he hardly ever interacted with anyone other than his fathers.
Now that his fathers were gone, the only one he could rely on was Song Zhenyan.
Song Zhenyan could understand this, but he didn’t understand why the child was always trying to burrow into his arms, wanting to be held.
It was only after a few days, when Tong Jiannian was nestled in his arms sleeping, that he would take Song Zhenyan’s large hand and place it on his own back, then whisper, “I want pats.”
Only then did Song Zhenyan suddenly recall that when he carried him out of the rain, he had gently patted his back to soothe him and help him calm down.
Before that, Song Zhenyan had only known this as one of the few pieces of “parenting” common sense he possessed, but he had never expected it would make the child develop a dependency.
Song Zhenyan, who had dabbled in psychology, naturally understood that the child was in a state of extreme anxiety, and as the “savior” who had carried him out in the first place, he was naturally the boy’s greatest emotional anchor now.
He had previously asked the system about the protagonist’s hatred value and received the reply that it had not yet been triggered.
Therefore, Song Zhenyan did his best to avoid causing the child too much negative emotional impact, so as not to trigger his hatred value.
He could only control the frequency of his outings, trying to keep them as regular as possible, to prevent Tong Jiannian from always crying and searching the entire hospital room for him. Except for necessary changes of clothes and washing up, he spent almost every day in the hospital room watching the child.
He had thought this was only delaying his experiments and workout schedule, but a week later, the system, which had been silent for a long time, suddenly appeared and reminded him that the next plot point would appear in three hours: Tong Jiannian’s uncle would appear, announce the terrible news of his parents’ death, and take him away.
Song Zhenyan specifically spent some exchange coins to get some data about Tong Jiannian’s uncle and extracted some useful information:
Xie Nanchuan was an omega, Tong Xize’s younger brother and an illegitimate son of the Tong family. On the surface, he was gentle, polite, and knew his place. But because of his parents’ long-term contempt for his gender, he deeply hated his alpha brother.
Song Zhenyan closed the interface. He wasn’t yet very clear on the specific rules of this omegaverse-based class system in this world, but based on the limited information he had gathered these past few days, he could simply summarize it as:
Alphas naturally possessed superior physical abilities and social status. They could impregnate other genders but could not get pregnant themselves. They were equivalent to elite men in the real world.
Betas did not have pheromones, were divided into male and female, and were basically no different from ordinary people in the real world, making up the vast majority of this world’s population.
Omegas were naturally weak. In terms of both physical constitution and social status, they belonged to a class that needed protection. Both males and females had the ability to bear children.
Song Zhenyan did not delve deeper into other knowledge about pheromones, marking, and the like. He just wanted to use this information to deduce Xie Nanchuan’s motives.
According to the setting, in this world, omegas, who are always protected, had no inheritance rights.
So it wasn’t hard to explain Xie Nanchuan’s upcoming actions in the plot: take Tong Jiannian home, control him, and then, after he turned 18, erode his inheritance rights.
“Uncle.” A soft call interrupted the thoughtful Song Zhenyan. He looked down at the child who was pulling on his sleeve.
Tong Jiannian had calmed down a bit these past few days, and the frequency of his crying had noticeably decreased. He only asked for his fathers when he woke up in the morning and when he went to sleep at night.
Now he was tilting his head up, his big eyes still slightly red and swollen. His brows were furrowed as if he were very troubled. He tugged on Song Zhenyan, then pointed to his puzzle and asked for help, “Uncle, the kitty’s ear is missing.”
Although Song Zhenyan was always cool and distant, Tong Jiannian’s dependence on and trust in him grew with each passing day. He wouldn’t let any other nurse or doctor play with his little toys; only Song Zhenyan was allowed to touch them.
Song Zhenyan glanced at the boy’s left hand, which was in a cast, and then at the masterpiece he had struggled to create with just one hand.
He clearly had poor spatial awareness and it was all jumbled together.
It wasn’t just the cat’s ear that was missing; he had even mistaken the tail for whiskers and stuck it onto the cat’s face.
“……” Song Zhenyan quickly helped him reassemble it correctly. Tong Jiannian happily went back to playing by himself and said that he wanted to eat the small cake that his uncle bought last time for dinner.
Song Zhenyan raised his hand to check the time. There was still an hour and forty minutes until Xie Nanchuan’s arrival, so he should be able to make it back from the cake shop.
Song Zhenyan gave Tong Jiannian another new puzzle and told him not to run around.
Then, he drove to the city to buy him a small cake.
Song Zhenyan did not consider this to be a sign of reluctance to part, because his own emotional intelligence has always been low.
He had simply concluded through rational analysis that Tong Jiannian would very likely learn the truth about his fathers’ deaths soon.
He hoped the small cake could mitigate some of the ‘hatred value’ that was very likely to suddenly surge.
Just as he expected, as soon as Song Zhenyan returned to the doorway of the hospital room, he heard the sounds of more than one person talking, interspersed with the sound of crying.
It wasn’t like the hoarse screaming and shouting from the day before, but a suppressed and desperate weeping, like that of some small, dying animal.
At the same time, a sharp, piercing alarm blared in Song Zhenyan’s ear—
[Hatred Value Activation Warning]
(Author’s Note: The character “真” is not a typo; it was deliberately written this way to distinguish the original owner from Professor Song~)