What It Means To Be King

Chapter 69: Spilt Wine Over Countertops

A/N: Starting from a few chapters ago, chapter names have started to make no sense, and y'all can ignore it. This chapter is also a special chapter because of the number, filled with my gift of suffering for all of y'all because I'm a sadist. 

Hatt was feeding his cat a can of premium tuna when his phone rang. Looking at the time, he made a wild guess of who it could be, and sighed as he went over to pick it up, not bothering to even look at the name written. He had two numbers, one for work and other for personal contacts so that it would be easier to swipe reject call for work numbers during ungodly hours. 

Recently, the urge to buy a third one, to replace all his personal contact into was unusually strong, because a certain someone had been far too relentless. 

"I believe it's 5 am currently in Beijing, Wenzhou." He stated, with the silent question that followed, 'Why the hell are you up at 5 am when you're already an adult?'

"It's a perfect time to be awake." The man answered, with the confidence that could rival a politician, as if he wasn't spouting some sort of bullshit from between his cursed lips. Somewhere in the background, a muffled grumble could be heard, which Hatt took as Yanya's voice. That, and Wenzhou sounded like he was seconds away from losing his sanity. Which says a lot.

The muffled voice grumbled again, this time with a tone of violence that Hatt would respect any day. 

"What Hatt means is that hypothetically speaking, an adult does not typically have classes, and therefore should have no reason to wake up before dawn." Wenzhou answered the voice placatingly, then directed another question over the phone, as if for confirmation, "That's what you were implying, correct?" 

Ahh, based on the slightly wary tone in his voice, Hatt could feel a thin line between safety and danger here. Never mind that Yanya was already a temperamental person, the time itself could be one of the major factors that could contribute to a woman's fury. Even through a phone, no sane man would be bold enough to provoke her, not if they valued their lives.

"....Precisely, yes." 

"And it is right to assume then, if one has a son that's five years old and currently sick, there would be every reason for a parent to be awake by 5 am, for reasons like, say, meeting the said son's needs such answering as his wails of grief?" 

Edgy.

Hatt never understood Wenzhou's need to say everything in English in such fashion, but he had commented before, as a journalist, genuinely, that he liked that about him. To his dismay, the man never dropped the habit to the point where Hatt realized that that must've been the way his father had once trained him before. Still, in instances like this one, it only served to make Hatt feel like a fool he completely wasn't. 

Once, Hatt and Evan were so used to be tied in the first and second place for every single subject and course they took. Once, it hardly mattered who else were below them, struggling to catch up with their two monstrous peers. Once, they had thought that scoring in tests and assignments meant they were the best among their peers simply because numbers proved it. It bore some proof, to an extent, but it took some effort by their professor to make them see that everyone in the Economics course was equally, if not a little unique in their own ways, monstrous.