ABMSI Chapter 67
by Suxxi“I like you.”
As soon as the words landed, several reporters around them instinctively covered their mouths, and the cameraman lugging the giant camera rushed forward to get a close-up of Fu Duqiu.
Inside the viewfinder, the Alpha looked gently at the Omega in front of him. After saying those words, his eyes stayed quietly on Duan Wei, giving him room, not pressing him.
But Duan Wei just stared at him, utterly dumbfounded. The shock hit him like someone telling him he’d been living in reality all along, and everything he’d assumed before was just his imagination. He opened his mouth to speak, but the reporters finally sensed the complexity of the situation and quickly said with a polite smile, “Sorry to intrude— we’ll stop here!”
Then the whole group moved swiftly, packing up their equipment at lightning speed. What they had just filmed was more than enough for an episode.
Still frozen in shock, Duan Wei watched Fu Duqiu say softly, “Wait a minute,” and then stride over to catch up with the reporters, speaking politely with them.
He was too far to hear what they were saying. Just when he began debating whether he should run for his life while he still had the chance, Fu Duqiu came back and said, “I talked to them. They won’t include that part in the broadcast. Don’t worry.”
“….”
Duan Wei pressed his lips together, then slowly nodded. If that segment really aired, his situation with Fu Duqiu would no longer just be gossip in their high school— it would go public.
He cleared his throat, sat back down, and secretly cursed Peng Yan for taking ages just to buy milk tea.
But Fu Duqiu clearly wasn’t planning to give him any breathing room. He sat across from him, eyes calmly locked onto him. “What do you think?”
“What?” Duan Wei blinked. “What do I think about what?”
“What I just said,” Fu Duqiu replied. “I like—”
“Wait wait wait—” Duan Wei threw up a hand, cutting him off.
He stared at Fu Duqiu, looking half desperate, half disbelieving, and asked, “You’re joking, right?”
Fu Duqiu frowned slightly, voice dropping low. “Do you think I’m joking?”
The seriousness in his eyes instantly smothered whatever courage Duan Wei was trying to muster. Fu Duqiu looked more sincere than ever— intense and steady. Not the face of a man teasing.
So that left only one explanation.
He must have hallucinated it.
With impressive imaginative logic, Duan Wei even gave himself a mental thumbs-up. He said to Fu Duqiu, “Aren’t you actually into… you know, someone else?”
“You think I like who? Xu Jianian?”
“Isn’t it her?” Duan Wei asked as though it were the most obvious thing ever. “You said the person you liked was someone I know really well. That has to be Xu Jianian, right?”
Fu Duqiu was momentarily stunned, then let out a helpless laugh, his tone much softer. “Someone you know really well. Why didn’t you think of Peng Yan?”
“….” With those words, Duan Wei’s brain instantly conjured a horrific image of Peng Yan and Fu Duqiu together, and a wave of goosebumps crashed over him. Yet he still tried to hold his ground, muttering, “If you want a gay A-A romance, that’s… not impossible.”
“Doesn’t matter. It depends on you.”
“Huh?” Duan Wei looked up, confused.
Fu Duqiu’s eyes were steady, the lights making his expression even softer than usual. He explained, “If you’re an A, we’ll be A-A. If you’re a B, we’ll be A-B. If you’re an O, we’ll be A-O.”
Once he finished, Duan Wei just sat there, dumbstruck. His mouth opened, then closed. He shook his head wildly and looked away.
The fountain music changed. He recognized the melody of “Small Happiness”— gentle piano notes, sweet and bittersweet, the water dancing with them.
The Alpha across from him kept his gaze fixed, wind softly pushing his fringe aside. The moment looked like it belonged in a painting— all warm, all gentle.
But after wrestling with himself for what felt like forever, Duan Wei finally shattered the painted moment.
“…I’m sorry.”
Fu Duqiu didn’t look too surprised, like he had braced himself. But even so, his eyes dimmed noticeably. He stared at Duan Wei’s hand on the table for a long while, then said quietly, “I wasn’t planning to tell you this soon. But you made things way too obvious today. So I had to make myself even clearer.”
He paused, then added, surprisingly calm, “You don’t have to answer right now.”
Hearing that, Duan Wei wanted to travel back in time and slap himself for all the stupid things he’d done tonight. Who could’ve predicted the plot would go sideways like this? The male lead falls for the supporting male? A romance novel turning into BL??
So Duan Wei asked, “Why do you even like me?”
The question landed, and the smooth-talking Fu Duqiu choked for a moment. After a long pause, he said, “…I’ve liked you for a long time.”
“…We’ve only known each other for half a year. How long could that possibly be?” Duan Wei looked completely lost.
Strangely, when Fu Duqiu said that, Duan Wei suddenly felt a weird familiarity, as if he’d lived this scene before. But he quickly denied it— humans get déjà vu all the time. Science can’t explain everything.
Fu Duqiu’s eyes flickered. After hesitating a long time, he finally asked:
“You really don’t remember anything?”
“What am I supposed to remember?” Duan Wei blinked at him blankly.
While he was speaking, Duan Wei noticed the other’s mood suddenly sink—deeper, even, than when he had rejected Fu Duqiu earlier.
Seeing that, Duan Wei desperately tried to recall what he might have forgotten, what he was supposed to remember. Yet his memories were trapped within the original novel’s storyline, nothing beyond it. No matter how hard he thought, nothing came.
Fu Duqiu paused for a moment, then pulled something out from somewhere. When he opened his palm, it was a preserved leaf.
The leaf had been kept in perfect condition; a layer of transparent resin sealed its surface, like a tiny piece of amber. Seeing Duan Wei examine it, Fu Duqiu asked softly again, “Still don’t remember anything?”
“….” Duan Wei shook his head.
“I used to live in Wutong Alley. Before I turned eight.” Fu Duqiu waited, but when Duan Wei didn’t respond, he finally couldn’t hold back. “That’s when I met you.”
At that, Duan Wei’s mind cleared instantly. What Fu Duqiu was talking about wasn’t part of the original story at all—no wonder he didn’t remember.
After half a year in this world, Duan Wei had gotten used to these inexplicable extra plotlines popping up. Even so, he hadn’t expected Fu Duqiu and the original Duan Wei to have met so early.
Seeing the blank look still glued to his face, Fu Duqiu’s brows knitted.
He couldn’t have mistaken the person. The Duan Wei in front of him was the one he’d remembered all these years.
But he couldn’t understand why the other had absolutely no memory of him.
Fu Duqiu remembered the first time they met—it was in the height of summer.
Outside the window, the parasol trees cast deep, mottled shadows across the ground, each leaf polished bright by last night’s heavy rain. Sunqing City was famous for its stubbornly fickle weather—storming yesterday, clear skies today.
At the end of the alley came a boy, about seven or eight years old, walking quickly toward the main street. Behind him stood a large house that felt like a haunted mansion to him now—something he wanted nothing more than to escape from.
A man’s voice and a woman’s voice were tangled in fierce argument behind him. The boy frowned. Even though he was just a child, there was a maturity to him that didn’t belong on someone so young.
He wasn’t like most children who would panic at family fights. Instead, he seemed used to it, walking straight toward the alley entrance, though his steps were still a bit unsteady.
Near the corner of the street was an old abandoned park. The slide there was the only “sanctuary” the boy had. Thinking of it, he ran faster. When he bumped into passersby, he still whispered a tiny “sorry.”
And just then, the slide gradually came into view. Maybe because it had been abandoned so long, the surface was grimy and worn, but the little sandy area around it was still relatively clean. Hardly anyone came here to play anymore.
Except the boy.
But today, it wasn’t empty. On the clean patch of sand sat another little boy, about the same age, holding a cup and a funnel, pouring sand through it. Sand spilled all over him, but he didn’t care—playing alone happily.
The first boy’s childish territorial instinct was instantly provoked. Without thinking, he marched straight toward him—only for the other boy to suddenly turn, as though sensing him.
“Hi there.”
The boy’s voice was soft and sweet, and the tiny mole at the corner of his eye shifted under the flickering tree shadows, making the first boy freeze in place. The clouds churned overhead, breaking the sun into patches of light, the breeze brushing gently through endless leaves—simple, clean, beautiful.
The wind picked up slightly. Seeing the other boy remain silent, the little boy on the sand pouted, then stretched out the hand he had been hiding behind his back.
It was a parasol tree leaf.
Fu Duqiu’s mind returned to the present. He looked down at the preserved leaf, the faint marks on it proving how often he had touched it over the years.
“My name is Duan Wei,” the young boy’s voice echoed in his ear. “This is for you!”
The scene froze there—two little boys facing one another, the slanted sunlight stretching across the sand, the slide, the white wall… reaching somewhere far beyond sight.
Seven- or eight-year-old Fu Duqiu took the leaf. Rare for him, he actually smiled. With the sun shining straight down, every line on his face was crystal clear.
A year later, when Fu Duqiu and Qiao Ying left Sunqing City, he found the leaf tucked inside a book in their new home. Following the textbook instructions, he dripped resin onto it, little by little, trying to preserve the last hint of green.
The resin slowly covered the leaf, and with it, slowly covered his heart.
Warming it.
Author’s Note:
The little boy was the real Duan Wei. Xiao Qiu (Duqiu) has always only liked him. As for the original plot and transmigration, that will be explained later~