At the beginning of the following month, the renovation of Feiyang Company was essentially complete, and the newly hired employees had all reported for duty.

Zhu Yun and Li Xun registered their marriage in the middle of the month.

Li Xun, the top scholar, had no family to speak of and no one to inform — only Fu Yizhuo. Fu Yizhuo was so moved he would have wept to the heavens. He took three days off from teaching and went to consult a fortune teller for an auspicious date. They ended up with the twentieth of the following month, which felt slightly delayed, but Zhu Yun was busy training new employees at the time anyway, and figured the next month was fine.

Soon, however, her mother discovered that the household registration book had disappeared from the house. One phone call from her was enough to send Zhu Yun racing to the Civil Affairs Bureau with Li Xun in tow. Li Xun had transferred his household registration to the city when he started university, which made it conveniently straightforward for them to “carry out their mission.”

The entire registration process had nothing romantic about it — it could be summed up in a single word: rushed. Zhu Yun turned off all her communication devices, cutting herself off from the outside world, terrified that her mother would somehow swoop in and derail things halfway through.

There were quite a few other couples registering that day. The couple ahead of them were very young; the soon-to-be husband was carefully filming every tile on the floor of the Civil Affairs Bureau with a video camera, while the soon-to-be wife was frantically taking selfies with her phone.

After waiting for ages with no sign of them finishing, Zhu Yun said quietly: “Would you mind — could we switch numbers? You can keep shooting while we go ahead?”

The soon-to-be wife’s false lashes were long enough to be fans, fluttering as she looked at Zhu Yun.

“What’s the rush? A day like this is meant to be savored slowly,” she said, pulling her soon-to-be husband — who was still filming floor tiles — close to her side. “Right, sweetheart?”

The soon-to-be husband, with a look of honeyed adoration: “Of course.”

Zhu Yun: “……”

Li Xun leaned against the wall nearby, laughing. Zhu Yun glanced at him. He said: “Don’t be nervous. Even if your mother comes looking, it’ll take her at least seven or eight hours. She’ll definitely go to the office first — if she does, Dong Siyang will hold her off.”

The soon-to-be wife in front of them heard Li Xun’s voice and leaned over to whisper to Zhu Yun: “Your husband is so handsome.”

Zhu Yun agreed: “He really is.”

The soon-to-be wife: “But why are you two dressed like that?”

It had been a last-minute decision to come register, and neither of them had prepared at all. Zhu Yun was wearing her usual office clothes from the employee training session; Li Xun was even more casual — a grey button-down shirt and black trousers, rumpled and creased.

The soon-to-be wife looked Li Xun over alongside Zhu Yun, then murmured: “He’s still so handsome even dressed like that…”

Indeed, Zhu Yun thought with quiet pride. He’s handsome in anything.

Li Xun caught her eye and gave a subtle smile. Zhu Yun thought: he’s even more handsome in nothing at all.

After dawdling through the entire morning, Zhu Yun and Li Xun finally completed their registration just before the Civil Affairs Bureau broke for lunch. They took photos in front of the tacky red wall. The photographer kept telling them to smile. By the end, Zhu Yun’s mouth had gone stiff from holding the expression. The photographer straightened up and frowned: “Sir, when I said smile, I meant smile — not sneer. Do you have some kind of grievance with me?”

Zhu Yun hastily smoothed things over: “No grievance, none at all — he’s just not used to it.” She nudged Li Xun, and he managed to produce a strained approximation of a smile. The photographer snapped the shot.

The printed photo looked like two fools grinning. Li Xun didn’t even glance at it — he handed it straight to Zhu Yun.

As they left the Civil Affairs Bureau and walked toward the parking garage, the two of them were quiet the whole way. There had been nothing but urgency until now, and it was only as they slowed down that Zhu Yun guessed Li Xun was doing what she was — still letting it all sink in.

In the car, Zhu Yun buckled her seatbelt and said: “Does this count as a whirlwind marriage?”

Li Xun said flatly: “Whirlwind nothing. It’s been ten years.”

Golden autumn, September — the season of new school terms.

Zhu Yun started the car.

Ten years.

When they were almost back to the office, Zhu Yun turned her phone back on. The moment it powered up, messages flooded in all at once. Dong Siyang relayed news from the front lines — her mother had, as expected, turned up at the entrance to Feiyang.

Zhu Yun didn’t want her mother to run into Li Xun — especially not at the office. She didn’t want him to be made uncomfortable in any form.

She said to him: “I’ll take my mother somewhere else. Come back to the office after we’ve gone.” Seeing that Li Xun seemed about to say something, she said gently: “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

Zhu Yun called her mother and brought her to a teahouse in the shopping center across the street.

Her mother had rushed over and traveled all day. She said not a word upon seeing Zhu Yun — she grabbed her by the arm and started pulling her toward the exit.

“I can’t manage you anymore. Come home with me right now. You’re not going anywhere until this is resolved!”

Zhu Yun could tell her mother was truly enraged — otherwise she would never make a scene in public like this. She was stronger than her mother, but she didn’t dare pull too hard. She looked around and said: “Mom. People are watching.”

Those words made her mother rein herself in slightly. Her mother cared about appearances — Zhu Yun knew that.

“Where is the household registration book?”

Zhu Yun held it out, and her mother snatched it back.

Zhu Yun: “Mom, everything else — you can ask me for anything else. But not this.”

Her mother gripped the household registration book with white-knuckled intensity. “You’ve got some nerve, Zhu Yun. Tell me — what did you do with that registration book?”

Zhu Yun: “I got married.”

Her mother was silent for a full half-minute. Then she raised her hand and slapped Zhu Yun across the face.

It was the first time in Zhu Yun’s entire life that her mother had ever struck her.

“Zhu Yun. Our family cannot afford to lose face like this. If you don’t leave him — then don’t bother coming home.”

In the days that followed, Zhu Yun received calls from many relatives, all urging her to come back. Exhausted by the endless back-and-forth, she repeated the same words over and over again.

“It’ll be better soon. Once this passes it’ll be fine. I’ll talk to my mother again once she’s calmed down.”

The new house wasn’t finished renovating yet, and the apartment Zhu Yun had previously rented had already been vacated. She was temporarily staying in a hotel. Li Xun had moved out of Hou Ning’s place and was staying at the hotel with her.

Though they had been enthusiastically discussing “having children,” during that period they did not spend every night in passion. Their pace of life slowed considerably — just as Li Xun himself had said, marriage to him was simply a long, unhurried love affair. They fell into the habit of sleeping in each other’s arms, the warmth of a beloved body drawing out the tenderness in every night.

Jili Company officially listed on the stock market at the end of September.

At the time, Zhu Yun and Li Xun had just finished dinner and were walking back to the hotel. At the intersection, they saw the news on the advertising billboard. In the footage, Fang Zhijing led Jili’s employees in exuberant celebration. Wu Mengxing was visible in the frame, but Gao Jianhong was nowhere to be seen.

Zhu Yun: “I heard Gao Jianhong went abroad to recuperate.”

Li Xun smiled slightly, not particularly concerned, and draped his arm over her shoulder as they crossed the road at an easy stroll.

In October, Zhu Yun found out she was pregnant.

This genuinely caught them both off guard.

They had already registered, and both of them had settled into a more stable rhythm. Zhu Yun had been planning to think about children the following year or the year after — this year, she needed to put all her energy into preparing for the Huajiang Investment bid. Li Xun seemed to be of the same mind. After registering their marriage, they had both been taking precautions.

Zhu Yun stood outside the hospital holding the test results, turning things over in a daze. The baby was roughly three months along. Working backward through the timeline, it would have been conceived just after they’d made up — in that period right before their registration, when Li Xun acted without thinking and would pull her anywhere, a keepsake from a period of unconstrained celebration.

That evening, this somewhat unreliable new husband returned home after a full day of meetings at the company, then held another meeting with his new wife. The meeting was extremely concise — barely ten minutes total. Two seconds to decide to keep the baby; two minutes to discuss moving into the new house; the remainder of the time devoted to planning out the next year’s work schedule.

After the meeting, they went through their simple bedtime routines, and Li Xun pulled Zhu Yun close from behind. Both of them were a little excited, and they lay awake for a long time. Li Xun’s palm rested against Zhu Yun’s stomach, warm, stroking absent-mindedly and gently.

“What does it feel like to be pregnant?” he asked from above her head.

Zhu Yun said honestly: “Truthfully — nothing. No change at all.” She twisted around to look at him. “What if the doctor made a mistake?”

Li Xun looked down at her. “I think that’s unlikely.”

Zhu Yun turned the thought over a bit longer, then said: “But I really feel like nothing’s changed at all.” Then, as if to prove it, she pulled herself free from his arms and lay flat on her back.

“Watch — I can still do sit-ups.”

She clasped her hands behind her head and knocked out seven or eight reps, then looked back at him.

“See!”

Li Xun stared at her with a blank expression, and gave a cold laugh: “Who said nothing’s changed. You’ve gone completely foolish.”

Zhu Yun: “……”

Li Xun raised one hand, and she nestled back beside him. After a long while, she asked quietly: “Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”

Li Xun: “Boy.”

Zhu Yun deliberately needled him: “There are reports that men who spend all day in front of computers are affected by radiation, and most of them end up having girls.”

Li Xun gave her stomach a pinch.

They fell quiet. Zhu Yun could feel the breathing of the person behind her growing slow and long — he was drifting off — but she herself wasn’t the slightest bit sleepy. She asked: “Do you want a boy?”

Li Xun gave a drowsy hum of acknowledgment.

Zhu Yun: “You don’t like girls?”

Li Xun’s eyelids were fighting to stay open.

“Boys are easier to raise.”

“……”

Li Xun’s eyes had already closed. His voice came faintly, barely there: “Girls are too delicate. I wouldn’t know how to raise one properly. We’ll have the first one be a boy, get some practice, then have a girl.”

Zhu Yun laughed. “Listen to you, as if you have any control over it.”

He seemed to smile faintly again — and then gradually fell asleep.

Zhu Yun watched him quietly in the moonlight.

His mother had left him when she was thirty. His sister had died even younger, taken in her twenties. These losses had cast deep shadows over him. In his experience, women really were too fragile.

Zhu Yun’s hand slipped tenderly behind his neck and pulled him close. Perhaps it was the new life taking root inside her — in the stillness of deep night, she felt a maternal tenderness she had never known before.

Li Xun slept deeply and peacefully.

They kept the pregnancy quiet. Within the company, only Dong Siyang was told. Dong Siyang’s reaction was a surprised: “Look at you two — pretty efficient.”

With Dong Siyang holding things together, Li Xun was under considerably less pressure. Zhu Yun thought this arrangement was actually for the best. In the past, Li Xun had always tried to take everything on himself — which wore him thin and limited him in every direction. Now, with the CTO position carved out as a separate role, he could devote himself entirely to the technical side of things and lay a solid foundation for the company’s systems going forward.

Zhu Yun continued going into the office every day as usual. It wasn’t until the baby was more than five months along that anyone in the company started to notice.

One day Zhang Fang was staring across the room at Zhu Yun as she worked, and he said to Zhao Teng: “Has our Team Leader Zhu been putting on a little weight lately?”

Zhao Teng looked over too. “I don’t think so — her arms and legs look the same… but, hmm… her belly does look a little bigger.”

The two exchanged a look, each immediately reading the other’s mind.

They went to Zhu Yun afterward to confirm their suspicions. When the truth came out, they were utterly stunned.

They’d known about Li Xun and Zhu Yun’s relationship since her mother had once come to the office, but they hadn’t known the two had already registered their marriage. And now, a sudden leap forward — with the baby nearly six months along — how could they not be astonished?

They immediately began forbidding Zhu Yun from doing any work at all. Zhu Yun kept insisting she was perfectly fine, but the whole company treated her like a protected species. At that point, Dong Siyang spoke up: time to go home and rest for the baby.