PLT | Chapter 42

Give You a Little Sweetness

After the first two rounds of competition ended, the tense battle segment finally passed. Next came the relatively more relaxed “free roam,” where each group of parents would separately take their child around the amusement park to experience whatever attractions they liked.

So the moment the teams dispersed, Xiao Bingtang dragged them straight toward the carousel.

Zhou Chenyu bent down and asked him with a smile, “Can we have a little ambition?”

Xiao Bingtang tipped up his face to look at him. “I want Shifu to hold me while I ride.”

Zhou Chenyu asked him, “If Shifu holds you while you ride, then what about Xiao Yan-gege?”

Xiao Bingtang looked at Zhou Chenyu, then looked at Yan Chao. After a moment, he proposed in his crisp little voice, “Then… after Shifu holds me for one ride, he can hold Xiao Yan-gege for one too.”

Yan Chao: “……”

He raised the instant camera the production team had given them. “Gege won’t fight you for the seat. I’ll just be responsible for taking pictures of you two, okay?”

Zhou Chenyu had long since been so amused by Xiao Bingtang that his face was wreathed in smiles. At this moment, still laughing, he scooped the child up from the ground in one motion. “Xiao Yan-gege dislikes Shifu and won’t let Shifu hold him.”

Yan Chao: “……”

Zhou Chenyu took Xiao Bingtang onto one of the carousel horses. The instant the power came on, the enormous rotating pavilion burst into dazzling light, and against the early evening sky, it looked especially resplendent.

As the carousel rose and fell, slowly circling around, Zhou Chenyu sat behind Xiao Bingtang, smiling with carefree abandon, like a child with not a single worry in the world.

Under the influence of that clean, limpid smile, even the corners of Yan Chao’s mouth unconsciously curved up along with it.

He was staring in a daze when he heard Zhou Chenyu shout to him, “Xiao Yan-gege, what are you standing there dumbly for? Hurry up and take a picture of us!”

Called out like that all of a sudden, Yan Chao was flustered for a moment. He instinctively raised the camera and rapidly pressed the button several times. Only after pressing it did he realize he was holding an instant camera, and the one and only photo he had taken was already printing.

He carefully picked up the sheet of photo paper. The outlines of one big and one small figure slowly emerged on it. Fortunately, Zhou Chenyu’s handsome face, bright with spring breeze and satisfaction, was so outrageously good-looking that even a candid shot of him came out beautiful. Xiao Bingtang was tucked in his arms, his big eyes bright and lively, smiling just as radiantly and spiritedly.

Staring at the photo in his hand, Yan Chao could not help thinking that childish as Zhou Chenyu was, he truly was the kind of person children were born to like.

If one day he became a father himself, then his child would surely cling to him too.

But if the child took after him, their personality would probably be mischievous beyond belief. When that time came, who knew whether Zhou Chenyu would also one day transform into a stern father.

In xiangsheng families like the Zhou family, where quyi was passed down generation after generation, the continuation of the family line was always taken very seriously. So most of them married young and had children early. Zhou Chenyu was already twenty-five this year, and there still was not even the shadow of a girlfriend, which already counted as fairly late. In another two years, his family would probably start collectively urging him to get married.

Thinking of this, for some reason Yan Chao suddenly felt a strange heaviness settle in his chest.

He was still immersed in his hazy train of thought when he saw that the two childish ghosts had somehow already come down from the carousel, and Zhou Chenyu was leisurely studying him.

When Zhou Chenyu saw Yan Chao look over, he teased, “I’ve noticed you’ve been zoning out all the time lately. What, in spring heat?”

Yan Chao said irritably, “You think I’m like you?”

Zhou Chenyu was still smiling as he craned his head to look at the instant photo in Yan Chao’s hand.

Yan Chao froze slightly, then instinctively hid the photo behind his back. “You’re not allowed to look.”

Zhou Chenyu froze for a moment too, then reached out to snatch it. “Why not?”

For a moment, Yan Chao could not bear to give him the photo. As if driven by some unseen force, he raised his hand high above his head, and Zhou Chenyu immediately stretched up to reach for it.

Unfortunately, he was not as tall as Yan Chao, and his arms were not as long either. Even standing on tiptoe, he still could not grab the photo in Yan Chao’s hand.

A little exasperated, he suddenly grabbed Yan Chao’s wrist tightly instead, and that in turn made Yan Chao go still.

Before Yan Chao could react, a cameraman responsible for taking stills on set sprang out from who knew where and swiftly pressed the shutter twice. Then he broke into an honest grin. “Good thing I got it! You two teachers are so dedicated, huh? Even without the camera rolling, you’re acting like you’re in an idol drama.”

Xiao Bingtang tugged at the hem of Yan Chao’s shirt and said pitifully, “Xiao Yan-gege is bullying Shifu again. Last time at kindergarten, one of the boys in our class bullied the class flower the same way.”

Yan Chao: “……”

Zhou Chenyu looked at the cameraman, then at Xiao Bingtang, and let out a snort of laughter.

Almost instantly, Yan Chao imagined how the CP fans would react when they saw this elementary-school romance… bah, this mode of getting along between the two of them.

Embarrassed beyond words, he lowered his hand. Before Zhou Chenyu could notice, he slipped the photo into the breast pocket of his shirt. “It came out ruined. Confiscated.”

Zhou Chenyu had originally wanted to snatch it, but when he saw the cameraman start to lift the camera again eagerly, he probably also felt that publicly going for Yan Chao’s chest was not very elegant, so in the end he had no choice but to give up.

With great regret, he sighed, “I finally get to return to childhood for once, and you won’t even properly take a picture of me.”

Seeing him like this, Yan Chao felt a little bad again. “Next time, if there’s a chance, I’ll take one for you.”

“Next time?” Zhou Chenyu curled his lip. “Next time I’ll probably be here with my son.”

The expression that had only just softened on Yan Chao’s face instantly darkened again.

But Zhou Chenyu did not notice any of this. Their little group of three wandered aimlessly among the colorful attractions in the amusement park, until he suddenly stopped in front of the roller coaster.

The first thing Yan Chao did was point at the sign outside, glance at Xiao Bingtang, and remind Zhou Chenyu, “Anyone under one meter forty is not allowed to ride.”

Zhou Chenyu raised his eyes at him in bafflement. “I’m one meter eighty.”

Yan Chao: “……You want to ride it yourself?”

Zhou Chenyu: “Who says I can’t?”

Yan Chao genuinely could not understand why this person insisted on personally trying every amusement park attraction in a child-raising program.

Anyone who did not know better would think that he was the one who had brought Zhou Chenyu here to take part in the show.

Yan Chao sighed helplessly. “Then go ahead. We’ll wait here for you.”

Unexpectedly, Zhou Chenyu said, “How can that work? You have to come with me.”

Yan Chao looked incredulously at Xiao Bingtang. “Then what about the kid?”

Zhou Chenyu led Xiao Bingtang over to the cameraman, bent down, and said to him, “You stay right here next to this uncle and don’t run around. Shifu and Xiao Yan-gege will be right back down.”

Xiao Bingtang nodded very obediently, but still wore a conflicted expression on his face. After a moment, he asked in a small voice, “Shifu, are you going to ride the roller coaster? Mama said roller coasters are very scary. They fly too fast, and then little kids’ souls get hooked away.”

“Your mama really is an xiangsheng performer’s wife,” Zhou Chenyu said, unable to stop laughing as he patted Xiao Bingtang on the head. “Relax. Shifu isn’t a little kid anymore, I’m not going to lose my soul.”

Xiao Bingtang still looked at him with a worried face. Zhou Chenyu patted the cameraman on the shoulder again, signaling him to keep an eye on the child, then turned to go get on the roller coaster with Yan Chao.

Yan Chao asked with a helpless expression, “Why do I have to go with you?”

Zhou Chenyu said as if it were only natural, “The people riding roller coasters are all little couples in pairs. If it’s just me by myself, can you really bear that?”

When Yan Chao heard those words, something in his heart stirred slightly, and in the end he still agreed to go with him.

After they sat down on the roller coaster and fastened their seat belts, Yan Chao asked him, “Are you scared?”

“Please,” Zhou Chenyu said, displeased. “Who do you think I am? Would I be scared of a mere roller coaster?”

Yan Chao shot him a glance. “You’d better not start screaming wildly in a minute.”

After saying that, he still felt uneasy, and added, “If you’re scared, grab my arm.”

Zhou Chenyu said impatiently, “Do you really think your gege is that pathetic?”

Facts proved that Yan Chao really had underestimated Zhou Chenyu. Zhou Chenyu had not been wrong, he truly was not a coward.

The moment the roller coaster started, it immediately shot straight into the sky at one hundred and eighty kilometers an hour. Even someone like Yan Chao, who had always been immune to thrill rides, could not help feeling wave after wave of discomfort tightening in his chest.

Zhou Chenyu also did not shout and yell the way Yan Chao had imagined he would. He remained quiet the whole time.

The cool night wind roared past their ears. The scenery changed too quickly, so quickly that Yan Chao had no time at all to see what kind of expression the person beside him had.

The roller coaster ride did not last long. By the time the coaster slowly came to a stop on the ground, Yan Chao finally turned with lingering fear to look at the person beside him.

The person who had still been lively and bouncing just two minutes ago was now deathly pale, eyes tightly shut, sprawled stiffly in the seat.

Yan Chao’s heart clenched violently, and he immediately grabbed his arm. “Zhou Chenyu?”

No response.

In that split second, Yan Chao suddenly remembered Zhou Chenyu telling him that when he was little, he had suffered from acute pneumonia, and it had spread through his entire respiratory tract. Later, it seemed like it had even affected his cardiovascular system.

If that was the case, then had his heart function been affected too?

In an instant, Yan Chao felt all the blood in his body go cold from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.

He did not have time to think about anything at all. With incredible speed, he undid Zhou Chenyu’s seat belt, and as expected, Zhou Chenyu’s whole body collapsed bonelessly into his arms.

The movements of Yan Chao’s hands had already far outstripped the speed of his brain. He scooped Zhou Chenyu up horizontally in one motion, rushed off the roller coaster, and shouted to the cameraman, “Call an ambulance!”