The airport bustled with people coming and going, snippets of conversation and the sound of rolling luggage mingled with announcements, while electronic screens updated in real-time. Every moment witnessed farewells and reunions.

Originally, Cen Sen’s appearance seemed to put a period on this farewell scene—Ji Mingshu slowly withdrew from his embrace, and Cen Yang tactfully prepared to make his exit.

But suddenly, with a “plop,” several unidentified objects mysteriously fell from Ji Mingshu’s pocket.

Cen Yang was the first to react, helping to pick them up. He glanced at them while holding them, his expression quite interesting.

Cen Sen didn’t care what they were and coldly snatched them, lowering his eyes to look.

Then both men simultaneously turned to Ji Mingshu.

Ji Mingshu: “…”

The air was probably silent for dozens of seconds. Again, it was Cen Yang who reacted first. He coughed lightly and said warmly, “Congratulations.”

Ji Mingshu tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and pressed her lips together.

Although pregnancy wasn’t something shameful, having pregnancy tests fall out like this was embarrassingly suffocating.

She pretended to casually glance at Cen Sen, only to find him staring at her without blinking.

Wanting only to quickly end this awkward farewell, she took small steps toward him, took his arm, cleared her throat, and said to Cen Yang, “Well, you still need to go through security and customs, so you’d better go in early. We won’t see you off any further. Let’s meet again when we visit America next time.”

Cen Yang nodded, not saying anything more, just waving goodbye.

At the airport, earlier flights continued to arrive, and planes continued to take off with roaring sounds.

After Cen Yang left, Cen Sen asked, “You sneaked out today just to buy these?”

“I wasn’t sneaking around,” Ji Mingshu awkwardly changed the subject. “By the way, how did you come here? Weren’t you supposed to discuss that investment today? Did it go well?”

Cen Sen: “The contract has been signed.”

“That’s good.” She sighed in 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 explanation, “Well… I threw up this morning, right? Then Gu Kaiyang and Jiang Chun said I might be pregnant, so I thought I’d buy these to check. I couldn’t very well go to the hospital alone, could I?”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Weren’t you negotiating a contract? I was planning to test first, then have you accompany me to the hospital for a check-up.”

Cen Sen remained silent for a moment, not pursuing the topic further. “I’ve already arranged for Zhao Yang to set up a pregnancy check-up. We’ll go now.”

It was arranged so quickly?

But she hadn’t seen him make any calls.

A question mark slowly formed in Ji Mingshu’s mind.

Following Cen Sen to the car, she felt a bit confused and a bit nervous.

Some people tend to talk more when nervous, and Ji Mingshu was one of those. After getting in the car, she kept chattering, recounting everything that had happened since receiving Cen Yang’s farewell call.

When she got to the part about their phone conversation, she found it a bit amusing. “By the way, why were you so nervous on the phone? You two were so strange. You didn’t think Cen Yang would kidnap me, did you? What kind of thinking…”

“What if he did?”

Cen Sen suddenly interrupted.

Ji Mingshu: “…?”

Cen Sen looked in the rearview mirror at the Passat carrying his bodyguards following behind, his voice revealing little emotion.

“When he was still with the Cen family, he was kidnapped. At that time, the Cen family had just learned about his background and was willing to give up in the face of huge ransom demands.”

“He’s harbored resentment toward the Cen family all these years, so I couldn’t rule out the possibility that after losing all his bargaining chips, he might kidnap you for revenge.”

Cen Yang was kidnapped?

When did that happen?

Ji Mingshu couldn’t process this for a long while.

But Cen Sen had already looked away, concluding in a calm voice, “Fortunately, he still has some sense.”

Actually, he had originally not wanted to tell Ji Mingshu about these old matters from the dusty archives, but Ji Mingshu had been too well-protected and had never witnessed the evil and coldness of human nature firsthand.

If today, Cen Yang hadn’t truly decided to say goodbye to the past, but instead wanted to exact one final revenge on the Cen family regardless of the consequences, he could have easily lured Ji Mingshu away with just one phone call, playing on their past connection.

Even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand chance of such a mutual destruction where no one would come out unscathed, it was hard for him to maintain control when he thought about it.

After processing this, Ji Mingshu felt no fear or alarm, only surprise. “I never knew about this. Why did they want to give up on him back then?”

Cen Sen lowered his eyes and said indifferently, “You know too little about the Cen family.”

So she didn’t know that they were inherently cold-hearted.

Throughout the drive to the hospital, Ji Mingshu was still processing the fact that Cen Yang had once been kidnapped. With this distraction, her earlier nervousness had completely disappeared. Even at the hospital, after the examination while waiting for results, she was still somewhat lost in thought, half wondering if she was pregnant, half thinking about the Cen family’s past.

While waiting for the test results, Cen Sen was on the phone, listening to Zhou Jiaheng’s real-time work progress report.

His expression remained as calm as ever, but as he looked at the door of the waiting room, he became distracted. 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 waiting room.

“Mr. Cen, Mrs. Cen, congratulations.”

The head nurse handed over the test report with a smile.

Cen Sen took it and glanced at it, and Ji Mingshu also leaned over to look.

Both of their minds went blank simultaneously when they heard the word “congratulations.” Looking at the test report was just an instinctive reaction—those numbers were incomprehensible, no matter how they looked at them.

A full half-minute of blankness passed before they heard the head nurse explaining the precautions for early pregnancy.

One remained quiet, saying nothing; the other listened to her instructions and nodded faintly.

Seeing their reactions, the head nurse thought to herself: People who have seen the world are different, remaining so calm and composed even when learning about a pregnancy.

After the head nurse left the waiting room, there was a moment of silence.

Ji Mingshu returned from her mental wandering and tugged at Cen Sen’s sleeve. “I, I’m pregnant.”

Cen Sen’s fingertips twitched, but he said nothing, only slowly turning to embrace her.

Ji Mingshu thought she had been mentally prepared for pregnancy, but when she heard the news, it felt like a dream—unreal, yet somewhat magical.

She also reached out to hug Cen Sen back, but after a while, she felt he was too silent. Half-coquettishly and half-dissatisfied, she looked up and asked, “Why aren’t you saying anything? Weren’t you the one who said you wanted a baby? Aren’t you happy that I’m pregnant?”

Cen Sen pressed his forehead against hers, looking into her eyes, and after a long while finally said in a low, hoarse voice, “I am very happy.”

Ji Mingshu glanced back to make sure no one was coming in, then suddenly lifted the hem of her shirt, revealing her flat, tender little belly, and unreasonably demanded, “Then kiss your baby to prove you’re really happy, that you like him.”

Cen Sen remained silent for a moment, then helped her to sit on the sofa. He supported himself on the edge of the sofa and slowly bent down to place a kiss on her little belly.

Ji Mingshu couldn’t help but curl the corners of her lips, proactively stood up to hug him, and added her command, “But after the baby is born, you still have to like me the most!”

Cen Sen responded with a “Mm,” ruffled her hair, and promised in a low voice, “I like you the most.”

The head nurse remembered she hadn’t given them a pregnancy check-up manual, and was about to knock on the door when she overheard the sappy conversation inside.

“…”

Sorry to disturb.

Upon first learning about the pregnancy, neither Ji Mingshu nor Cen Sen felt it was real. On their way home, they discussed it and decided not to tell their parents for now.

For Cen Sen, it was because he already had a limited emotional connection with his family and didn’t feel the need to inform them immediately.

For Ji Mingshu, it was because she had been deeply influenced by the hidden pregnancy plots in palace dramas, feeling that it shouldn’t be widely announced during the first three months.

After returning home, they were still in a state of surreal floating. Although they tried to behave normally, they were both deeply affected by the pregnancy.

Ji Mingshu watched a TV series but had no idea what had happened after finishing an episode. Cen Sen cooked a dish, turning green pepper with meat into red pepper with green pepper, and even added salt twice.

That night, after showering and lying in bed, he was reading a book while she was on her phone. Ji Mingshu’s mind wasn’t really on her phone, but seeing Cen Sen focused on his book, she didn’t know how to start a conversation.

She glanced at him, then glanced again after ten minutes.

Suddenly, as if discovering a new continent, she snatched Cen Sen’s e-reader, questioning him with a hint of smugness like she’d caught him red-handed: “Only turned one page in ten minutes, what are you reading?”

Cen Sen pressed his brow bone and admitted, “Thinking about the baby.”

Ji Mingshu lay down on his lap. “Me too.”

“Oh?”

Ji Mingshu sighed, feeling a bit melancholic. “It still feels… very unreal. I’m not even mature enough myself, and suddenly I have to raise a child. And my mother didn’t take care of me when I was little, so I don’t even know how a mother should treat children.”

Cen Sen stroked her hair, lost in thought, not responding.

Ji Mingshu suddenly raised her hand to poke his Adam’s apple, hesitantly asking a question she had been curious about for a long time but had never asked.

“Um, I want to know, your mother, I mean your biological one… have you ever met her?”

“Once.”

Cen Sen’s eyes revealed unreadable emotions.

Ji Mingshu: “I saw her many times when I was little, but suddenly, she disappeared along with Cen Yang.”

In the past, Ji Mingshu wasn’t one to dig too deeply, first. She wasn’t curious, and second, because she didn’t want to get involved. For a very long time, she had conscientiously adhered to the principles of a family marriage alliance, actively leaving space for each other that belonged solely to themselves.

She never asked why he and Cen Yang had been swapped at birth, never investigated why her formal mother-in-law had completely vanished, and never even asked what Cen Sen had been thinking all these years.

But tonight, she suddenly felt an urge to completely enter Cen Sen’s past.

This urge had been brewing since she noticed his polite but distant relationship with his family, and today when he said in the car “you don’t know enough about the Cen family,” she suddenly realized that she had given Cen Yang a lot of sympathy, but had never really thought deeply about why Cen Sen, who had a family, lived with a sense of loneliness as if he was estranged from everyone.

Cen Sen’s fingertips twirled the ends of her hair, and after a long silence, he finally answered her question, “She passed away long ago.”

Cen Sen’s biological mother came from a prestigious family. Before marrying Cen Yuanchao, she had been engaged to her childhood sweetheart, but he died in a car accident before they could marry.

When Cen Yang was very young, she discovered that he wasn’t Cen Yuanchao’s child, but she never thought that he wasn’t her child either. She instinctively assumed he was conceived with her childhood sweetheart before marriage, so she tried every means to hide this from the entire Cen family.

It was to her credit that Cen Yang’s identity remained hidden until he was seven or eight years old.

She had always been unable to forget her childhood sweetheart, pouring all her devotion into Cen Yang.

Later, Cen Yuanchao accidentally discovered that Cen Yang’s blood type did not match either his or his wife’s, and secretly did two paternity tests. After the results came out, he traced the thread and quickly found the An family.

Back then, the An family was also scholarly in the capital, coincidentally giving birth at the same hospital as the Cen family. Due to a careless nurse, the two families’ babies were swapped.

After the birth of his daughter-in-law Chen Biqing, the An family’s patriarch retired due to some sensitive issues, and the whole family moved to Xingcheng, gradually returning to a peaceful life.

Later, Cen Yuanchao confirmed Cen Sen’s identity and wanted to bring him back.

Cen Yuanchao had originally been determined to keep and raise Cen Yang as well, but after learning about the baby swap, his wife inexplicably broke down. The reason for her breakdown wasn’t the swap itself, but that the child she had wholeheartedly nurtured wasn’t the fruit of love she had believed it to be.

Cen Yuanchao was furious when he learned the truth, and even developed a sense of disgust toward Cen Yang. When Cen Yang was kidnapped, he ignored the kidnappers’ threats to kill the hostage and reported it to the police. Fortunately, Cen Yang was lucky and was indeed rescued by the police.

Later, Cen Sen proposed that it was either him or Cen Yang, and Cen Yuanchao took the opportunity to send Cen Yang back to the An family.

Cen Sen’s biological mother never recovered from this. When he returned to the Cen family, they met once, and the way she looked at him wasn’t just with unfamiliarity, but also with disgust.

By then, she had already started divorce proceedings with Cen Yuanchao. The day after Cen Sen returned to the Cen family, she left without any attachment.

The Cen family only announced to the outside world that she had accompanied Cen Yang to study abroad. The following year, she passed away from illness, and her ashes were buried in the Western Suburbs Cemetery. From then on, like Cen Yang, she became a taboo subject in the Cen family.

Outside, a light rain was falling. The floor lamp cast a warm yellow glow. Cen Sen’s voice was flat and low, and the entire story from his lips sounded completely detached.

After listening, Ji Mingshu remained lost in thought for a long time.

So that was the complete version of the story.

She had also seen his biological mother when she was little, though at that time, she was still Cen Yang’s mother.

In her memory, she was a gentle, refined, and cultured woman. She never imagined she could be so cold toward her biological child, not even speaking a word during their only meeting.

For some reason, whenever she thought about how that gentle aunt from her childhood had looked at Cen Sen with disgust, she felt sad.

The room was silent for a long time. Suddenly, she hugged Cen Sen’s waist, then raised herself to embrace his neck, and lightly pecked his lips once, twice, three times.

“Husband, don’t be sad. The baby and I will be good to you in the future.”