Commander Lu: There is so much that needs to be done. I must sort this all out in my head first. Cannot sleep.

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The saying, "hundreds of emotions flooding in together[1]," was too flimsy a description to be used for this moment. Lu Yanchen had much that he was unable to say. He did not have a way with words and was unable to accurately express what he was feeling in his heart.

The kitchen lights did not have a high wattage but they felt like the blazing sun broiling his back and made his throat feel parched. In a low voice, he asked, "How do you know?"

Gui Xiao's lower lip was tucked lightly between her teeth, and her hands were behind her back as she tried to restrain her bashfulness. "Tested with a home pregnancy test. I haven't gone to the hospital yet."

Jumbled feelings that he could not decipher surged up in his heart, wave upon wave, causing his chest to feel tight. Completely without warning, he pulled her into his arms, inquiring, "Are you feeling unwell at all?"

"No." She blushed. "Probably it's too early right now… Things just started, maybe?"

"How did you realize it?"

"… My mom called me and said that she dreamed I was having a baby. I counted up the days and then went and did the test." Now that Gui Xiao thought about it, she felt it really was remarkable. "Probably it's the mother-daughter connection, how she can even dream about that."

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Were it not for her mother's teasing, she would not have even detected it.

That was because her period had always been irregular since she was young, and there actually was no fixed day when it would come.

Ever since she was a child, her overall health had never been very good, and as a result, from the time she started getting her period, it had always come twice a month and had never been normal.

As far back as she could remember, the one rare time period that she had had a normal menstrual cycle was when she and Lu Yanchen were dating.

This was particularly so in the month that they had had their first kiss. For the first time ever, her period had come late. Back in that era, she didn't know as much. Though she clearly knew that kissing should not make you pregnant, her heart had still been in her throat and she had thought, oh G.o.d, what if? What if she of all people did get pregnant after kissing? Later on, they had broken up. Her periods went back to being twice a month, and she once more fell into the complicated mode of over and over nursing her health and improving her body's wellness. Later when she was in university, she and her roommates had chatted about their respective first loves, and Gui Xiao had aired this embarra.s.sing experience of hers. Those several girls had discussed it and surmised that being in a relations.h.i.+p helps estrogen balance.

The girls had even been worried for Gui Xiao. If such irregular periods weren't conducive to getting pregnant in the future, that would be quite problematic.

She had not expected, though, that she would get pregnant so easily. Lu Chen was honestly all-capable.

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The night she saw the pregnancy test results she had wanted to call him, but she could not let all the people at the base who were doing communication monitoring listen to the two of them discuss pregnancy stuff. And so, she had suffered in waiting until now. Earlier, when he just arrived back at home, she had already wanted to tell him, but feeling anxious, she had not known how she should begin the conversation.

Lu Chen, right here, in my belly, there's a baby. Yours…

It was as if the day before was still that summer day that was so hot it made people feel testy, and she was still not yet sixteen years old. The entire way facing into the breeze produced by the electric fans, she had stepped into the billiards hall, made her way between pool table after pool table, and turned into the small room furthest inside. At the time, every ruffian in town who had made a bit of a name for himself was there. Lu Yanchen, his arm resting on the windowsill, had thrown a sideways glance at her while he smoked a cigarette.

And then the next day, she was pregnant with his baby…

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Lu Yanchen's brain would not rest. He was thinking about the various things that needed to be prepared in the next while, many things, from the whole process of marriage between himself and Gui Xiao, to the process for completing all the official procedures that began with having the child and ended with getting the child into the hukou booklet, to, as well, the preparation work needed for the ten months of pregnancy… The threads of thought at this moment were not very clear. He felt that he would not be able to sleep tonight. He needed to sort those out at once.

Seeing he was once again not speaking, Gui Xiao snuck a look at him. "Happy?"

Her question brought out a chuckle from him.

"I don't see any excitement from you, and you haven't done anything that shows any sort of reaction…"

Usually when he saw those unconcealable little expressions on her face, he would know what it was that she wanted. So, he did not waste any words. Circling her into his embrace, he brought his head down and kissed her. However, he had just taken her lips between his when he remembered that he had had a few puffs from a cigarette just a short time ago, and he wanted to go rinse his mouth out. Gui Xiao, though, was displeased. "Hey, who does that? Finish kissing before you go cook."

That tone of voice was exactly the same as the one she had used when they were young.

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That evening, Qin Xiaonan felt he was going to grow a sty[2].

Okay, fine, whatever, that while eating, those two were actually arm in arm. And fine, whatever, that when Gui Xiao was eating the Big Plate Chicken and had started sweating, she, after taking a napkin and dabbing at her forehead, had gone and touched the back of Lu Yanchen's hand. But, gee, Lu Yanchen even turned his hand over, took her hand into his palm, and stroked and played with it…

When the kebabs were ready, they had to have a kiss. When they were tidying away the dishes, they had to have a kiss. When he went into the kitchen to wash some fruit, they still had to have one!

At some time past ten o'clock, Lu Yanchen managed to cajole Gui Xiao into going to bed. After opening up his laptop and staring at it for several hours in the study, Lu Yanchen stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and went all the way to the underground parking garage, where he leaned against the side of Gui Xiao's car and had a smoke. The light in the garage had a relatively low wattage so was not very bright. His eyes fixed on that little white spot inside it that was the source of the illumination.

Truly unable to sleep, he pulled out the mechanic's tools from the back trunk, s.h.i.+fted the car out from the parking s.p.a.ce by a few inches, and began checking for any minor problems. Since middle school, he had been like this; any time things were rough or frustrating or when he was restless and there was something weighing on his mind, he would deal with his feelings by fixing vehicles. Now, that had become a habit. On the steppe, back when he was still deputy commander, he had frequently gone over to the combat and tactical vehicles support unit. At first, the people would merely have him help out here and there when they were doing vehicle maintenance work. It was not until later that they discovered this Deputy Commander Lu was actually a skilled master of this. So, whenever he was not out on a.s.signment, every few days he would be invited over to delve with everyone into the repair and day-to-day maintenance of all the various types of vehicles. Were it not for the fact that he was deputy commander of a squadron and there was no way he could be poached, the vehicles support unit would have nabbed him over a long time ago.

Some time after four in the morning, the community compound's two security guards still felt uneasy after looking over the surveillance video feed, so they wandered over there and asked Lu Yanchen what he was doing. Before coming over, the security guards had observed him in the surveillance video for a long time. From what they could see, he did not look like a car thief. He had been there taking things apart and fixing and doing stuff for more than an hour already. But, to not sleep and just fix your car in the middle of the night was something they honestly had never seen before.

As it turned out, they truly had come across a "unique person."

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One of the security guards had previously spent two years as a conscript soldier, and when he saw Lu Yanchen's physique and the way he carried himself, he had already felt that he and Lu Yanchen should be similar types of people. After exchanging a few words, he discovered that they really were. Since there was nothing going on right now on night s.h.i.+ft anyway, this security guard chatted with Lu Yanchen until daybreak. When Lu Yanchen went home, he took a shower in the downstairs bathroom, then went and poured into a pot the beans that he had soaked in water prior to heading out the door in the middle of the night. He planned on making laba porridge[3]; this porridge was nutritious.

It should be ready just in time for her to eat when she woke up.

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Gui Xiao had already asked around in advance. The gynecology department of any hospital could make this sort of pregnancy diagnosis, as nothing could go wrong with the results anyway. Once the pregnancy was confirmed, they could then carefully choose a hospital and its obstetrics department and get ready to have a baby.

However, not trusting what she had heard by word of mouth, that morning she went to the best Tier-3 hospital[4]. It was packed with people, and it took a long time for her to be called up for her turn. The result, though, was that she was informed by the doctor that ultrasounds were being booked out into the next month already…

"They might as well just wait and schedule it when I've had the baby…" Gui Xiao did not know whether she should be annoyed or amused at this. Wholly conceding defeat, she moved her battle site to a Tier-2 hospital. Only four women were there, two younger and two older, waiting in the hallway to get an ultrasound.

To her surprise, no one else arrived after her, even after she had gone in. Inside, two doctors were conversing casually.

Gui Xiao lay down in extreme nervousness. Next, a cool, slippery gel was spread over her belly. The mask-clad female doctor's eyes were solemn, and she only continuously tapped away on the keyboard, recording things into the computer. No hints or clues could be determined from watching her…

"Doctor? Am I pregnant? Is it okay? Is it an ectopic pregnancy? Is there a fetal heartbeat?" Lightly pulling in a breath, Gui Xiao asked about every single bad situation that one could find on the Internet.

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✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻

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There was no one out in the hallway aside from him.

Lu Yanchen leafed through the instruction manual in his hand that was for the latest EOD robot. After reading through the same single line of words more than ten times, he still had not processed what he was reading. Right now, he was similar to someone who has just started learning English. The person recognizes every single letter, but what does it spell when the letters are put together? No idea.

All of a sudden, there was the sound of light, hurried footsteps.

Gui Xiao turned out of the door of the ultrasound room and raised the ultrasound results sheet in front of his face. "Hurry and have a look!"

Due to the reading-up that he had done the night before, he was able to approximately understand what the terminology written on that white paper meant. However, he really could not discern anything in that black-and-white picture that was printed on there… He could only see, beneath Gui Xiao's finger, a shadow. Still too small.

12.6 mm   9.4 mm   14.6 mm

As Gui Xiao looked at these numbers, she used her fingers to measure out the size and then was unable to hold back a grin. "The size of a pea." Such a small baby.

Lu Yanchen gazed at that string of numbers and then accurately "sketched" out the size in his mind. For the longest time, he was unable to snap out of his daze. This continuation of their lives, this thing that was so small, would become a healthy baby… and, moreover, was his and Gui Xiao's.

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Gui Xiao pa.s.sed on all the papers to the outpatient doctor. That doctor, after seeing the ultrasound results and also taking a look at the bloodwork results, then confirmed this reality: "You checked too early, so we still can't really see anything. When you're around three months in, go to Obstetrics and do a detailed examination."

The doctor merely told her in simple words that there were no problems and she had only just conceived, so nothing could really be seen on the ultrasound. In pa.s.sing, the doctor also kindly reminded them that they needed to first get a birth approval certificate. They had to have that before a file could be set up in Obstetrics and Gui Xiao could go for regular prenatal check-ups. "Bring your marriage certificate and go to the subdistrict office to apply. As for which specific district, you can go online and look it up, or call and ask."

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." Gui Xiao listened solemnly, pretending that she already had that thing called the "marriage certificate"…

That female doctor closed up Gui Xiao's medical record file and gave it back to her.

Gui Xiao walked out, flipping through her medical records, which rustled a stack of past blood test papers that she had used but not thrown away yet. Tilting her head up to look at Lu Yanchen, she remembered something, and her cheeks flushed. "Just now, I asked that doctor about how far along I am. She said I'm more than five weeks…" After saying this, she stepped a little closer and whispered, "If you were to guess, was it when we were in the steppe? Or after we got back?"

Lu Yanchen's gaze had originally still been on her lower abdomen, a.s.sessing it and speculating where approximately the baby would be… Hearing these words, he lifted his eyelids. "Hard to say." He actually truly could not say with certainty which time it was. They had been doing it too frequently, and hence he could only approximate a timeframe.

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Gui Xiao and Lu Yanchen took the elevator downstairs.

At one end of the main hall was the cas.h.i.+er services area and pharmacy. There were more than ten payment windows in total, but only in front of one of them was there still an elderly patient paying his fees.

"Think again." Gui Xiao was still not resigned to giving up on the topic. "In the future, I want to tell him where he came into being."

Lu Yanchen was truly stumped by this question. For this kind of thing… From a man's perspective, there really would not be any sort of special feeling.

He pondered over the beginning and end of that timeframe, and then, like he was flipping through slides, he carefully ran through each time in his mind. Still, he was unable to find any clues from which he could make a determination. After a brief moment of consideration and weighing things over, he gave an answer that he was confident would make her happy: "It should be when we were out in the steppe."

The truth was, that was a wild guess.

"Really?" Sure enough, she broke into a smile. Her moist eyes glowed with joy.

That place held the most significance to her. In her life up to this point today, the one thing she most did not regret doing was going to Erenhot to find him.

Lu Yanchen took in every subtle change in her expression, replying, "Really."

He had to admit, the simplest way to put himself in a good mood was this: to make her happy.

<>Copyright of Fanatical, hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com. Translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only 

[1] 百感交集 "bai gan jiao ji." The literal translation is "a hundred emotions all crowding [the heart] together" and basically describes when a person is experiencing a myriad of different thoughts and feelings.

[2] It is often joked that when you see something that is improper or you should not see, you will grow a sty on your eye. Qin Xiaonan feels that he has witnessed too much lovey-dovey stuff between Lu Yanchen and Gui Xiao, so much so that he is going to grow a sty.

[3] 臘八粥 "la ba zhou." "La" refers to the twelfth (and last) month of the lunar year, while "ba" means "eight." Therefore, laba porridge is simply the porridge that is traditionally served on the eighth day of the last month of the lunar year. This porridge contains many different ingredients. Though the exact combination of ingredients varies with locale, it can contain various types of rice and grains, beans (green bean, red bean, white kidney bean, etc.), nuts (peanuts, chestnuts, etc.), seeds, etc.

[4] In China, public hospitals are cla.s.sified according to a three-tier system. As a broad-brush generalization, Tier-3 hospitals have a greater ability to provide quality care than Tier-2, which in turn are better than Tier-1 hospitals. (Of course, this is very general, and each tier is also further subdivided into subsidiary cla.s.ses.)

This story was translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only. All forms of reproduction, redistribution, or re-posting are not authorized. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the copy is unauthorized and has been taken without consent of the translator.

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