Chapter 345 - Processing everything

Chapter 345: Chapter 345 - Processing everything

Muchen didn’t move.

For a long moment he just sat there, shoulders wrapped in the blanket, staring at Yunfeng like he had grown a second head. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, and no sound came out.

Yunfeng let him have the silence. He had expected this. He had spent the whole day expecting this.

Muchen finally found his voice, and it came out thin. "You’re... from the future."

"Yes."

"The future."

"Yes."

Muchen blinked slowly, then shook his head as if to clear water from his ears. "Okay. Okay, start from the beginning. Actually from the beginning."

Yunfeng drew his knees up onto the bed and folded his arms over them. The blanket shifted between them. He looked at the wall instead of at Muchen’s face, because this part was easier to say when he wasn’t being watched.

"In the future, I live with my family. Normal life. It’s been quiet for years by then, so people forget how bad it used to be. I had a job, a room of my own, a mother who nagged me about eating properly." His mouth twitched. "Then one day I got taken."

"Taken?"

"Kidnapped. Straight off the street." He pressed his thumb into his palm. "There were people running organ operations by then. Clean setup. They knock you out, take what they want, sew you back up, dump you somewhere. They don’t care if you live. Most people don’t."

Muchen’s hand twitched toward him. "Yunfeng—"

"I died." Yunfeng said it plainly. "That’s the short version. They cut me open, took my organs, and I didn’t wake up. Except I did. Just not in my own body. I woke up here. In this one."

The room went very quiet.

Muchen’s mouth fell open. It stayed open.

"And that’s not even the part that took me longest to figure out," Yunfeng went on, his voice flat now, tired. "When I first woke up here, I thought I was still an omega. That’s what I was in the future. So I did the math wrong. I thought the pregnancy was mine, that I’d carried it, that it was somehow the reason I got taken in the first place. I panicked over it for weeks." He huffed a humorless laugh. "Turns out I was an alpha all along. This body is. Always was."

Muchen’s mouth was still hanging open.

"So this is not your real family," he finally managed.

Yunfeng shook his head.

"The weird part," he said, "is that everyone in my family here looks the same. Same faces, same names, same everything. It’s like the future just repeated them. But my mother—" He paused, brow drawing together. "Her name is different. Everyone else lined up. Not her."

Muchen waited.

"When I was little, my mother used to tell us a story. She said she named us kids after the legendary twins from the past. The ones who beat back the zombies and founded a colony. She thought it was a nice story to pass down." Yunfeng’s frown deepened, the pieces clicking together in his head as he said them out loud for the first time. "Now that I think about it... I think she meant me. Me and Hana. We’re the twins."

He looked at Muchen and, weirdly, smiled. A small, crooked thing.

"So. Any questions."

Muchen stared at him for three full seconds.

Then he burst out, "You’re from the future where the zombie apocalypse is over?"

"Yes."

"There’s a cure?"

"Yes. We find one. The dead stop coming back." Yunfeng shrugged one shoulder. "But the alphas and omegas stay. So do the ordinary people. And we still have powers. That part doesn’t go away."

Muchen brought both hands up and pressed them against his own face. He sat like that, muffled and motionless, for a long stretch. When he lowered them, his expression was somewhere between wonder and total collapse.

"Powers," he echoed.

"Powers."

"Like the ones we have."

"Like the ones we have."

Muchen’s eyes went wide and unfocused, tracking something Yunfeng couldn’t see. He was clearly trying to fit a whole new world into the one he already had, and the seams were showing.

Finally he looked back at Yunfeng, and his voice was small.

"You died."

"I died."

"And you came back."

"I came back. In someone else’s body. In someone else’s family. With someone else’s name." Yunfeng’s smile faded. "Muchen, the person you fell for isn’t even the original owner of this face."

Muchen was quiet for a beat. Then he reached out and took Yunfeng’s hand.

"I don’t care about the face," he said. "I care about the person in it."

Yunfeng’s throat went tight. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed to hear that until it was said.

"Do you believe me?" he asked.

Muchen let out a long breath. "Honestly? Half of me thinks you’re insane." He squeezed Yunfeng’s hand. "The other half remembers the food. The weapons. The way you knew things." He looked up. "The future, huh."

"The future."

"And we win."

"We win. It just takes a long time."

Muchen nodded slowly, absorbing it. Then, because he was Muchen, he asked the practical question.

"Does anyone else know? Jai? Hana? Your mom?"

Yunfeng’s fingers tightened around his.

"Not yet."

Muchen was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly.

"I won’t say anything. Not until you’re ready."

Yunfeng’s shoulders dropped, the tension he’d been carrying all day finally loosening. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed those words until they were out.

"Thank you," he murmured.

"Don’t thank me yet." Muchen bumped his shoulder lightly. "You still owe me a real explanation about the food and the weapons. And the twins thing. And the powers."

"I’ll tell you everything. Piece by piece."

"yeah." Muchen yawned, exhaustion finally catching up to him. "I think we should sleep. And tomorrow, you should figure out who else you’re telling."

Yunfeng watched him settle back against the pillows, eyes already drooping.

"Yeah," he whispered. "Tomorrow I’ll do that."