Working hard to build up a backlog
[Dark, brooding, devoted director gong x Two-faced, scheming assistant shou]
[The gong is chaste; the shou is not. Age-gap romance, one-on-one. The shou is eight years older than the gong, and the child is the gong's.]
By the age of 32, Zhou Zhou had always lived by one principle: when there's a problem, solve the problem, never yourself.
After a stupid student became obsessed with him and dragged him down, ending his teaching career? No problem. He could start his own business.
An omega who couldn't react to an alpha's pheromones? No problem. He could find an obedient beta to marry.
...Wanting a child, only to discover that his beta husband was infertile? No problem! Humanity had the miracle of modern medicine!
Even after his husband died by suicide over his debts and his company went bankrupt, destroying years of hard work in the span of a year, Zhou Zhou picked himself up as soon as he and his five-year-old son settled into an apartment block and sent out over a hundred resumes.
But what should he do when the boss at the company he's applying to turns out to be the problem student who was obsessed with him and whom he once beat up?
...It's not a big deal. If he could just swallow his pride, the other man might give him a job out of regard for their history.
Even so, Zhou Zhou couldn't help reflecting on how hard it was to guard against life's twists and turns.
For instance, ten years ago, when he was furious enough to slap that problem student over and over at the school gate for kissing him by force and refusing to listen to reason, he never imagined that ten years later he'd be trembling as he climbed into bed with Jiang Tianlan, now a handsome young man, even though he'd thought he'd never find an alpha who was compatible with him.
*
After his parents died in a shipwreck, Jiang Tianlan was like a battered ball, kicked from one relative to another until he ended up in an orphanage.
The fall from a highly educated family into orphanhood made him increasingly ill-tempered, and he eventually developed severe psychogenic mutism. Having learned the truth about human nature at a young age, he never looked anyone in the eye. Not even the new teacher.
The new teacher was a quiet, beautiful omega, attentive and warm to everyone, with an easy charm. Everyone either liked him or envied him.
Jiang Tianlan was the one who hated him.
He hated his face, hated his pretenses, and hated how smelling his pheromones had caused him to present early.
Especially when he accidentally caught the teacher, usually so refined and elegant, smoking on the rooftop and grinning at him shamelessly, a silver earring gleaming in the sunlight.
He swore that one day, he would make the teacher his.
So he chose to have surgery on his own glands.
Note:
Old-school, over-the-top angst. After the shou discovers the truth about the child's biological father, he'll run away. There will be a second and third male love interest, as well as a side couple, but they won't get much page time.
Theme: Be true to yourself and keep your feet on the ground.
