My Queen, My Rules - 92
Extra: Sparrow’s Cub-Raising Diary (1)
When Ji Mingshu was nearing the end of her second trimester, Jiang Chun and Tang Zhizhou got married.
They held two wedding ceremonies, one by the Aegean Sea, where they chartered a private plane to bring only their closest family and friends. The other was at Junyi Huazhang in the Imperial Capital, an extravagant and grand affair attended by a glittering crowd of distinguished guests.
The Tang family spent a full year preparing for the two weddings. They alone had four custom wedding gowns made for Jiang Chun, and their affection and regard for their daughter-in-law could hardly have been more obvious.
Even more than a month after the wedding banquet, people in their circle were still taking the occasional bitter jab at her. Nothing more than the usual: Jiang Chun was ridiculously lucky. Somehow, a nouveau riche girl like her, whom even Yan Yu had refused, actually managed to marry into the Tang family.
Ji Mingshu asked, "Did you two sign one of those?"
Jiang Chun tilted her head. "Sign what?"
"A prenuptial agreement." Gu Kaiyang sat nearby with one leg crossed over the other, flipping through Ji Mingshu's maternity magazine as she casually supplied the answer.
Jiang Chun shook her head. "No. There wasn't really anything for us to put in an agreement."
She finished a serving of pudding, then reached for another piece of light cheesecake from the table.
Ji Mingshu thought about it and figured that did make sense. Then she watched Jiang Chun demolish another piece of cake in less than a minute. With an expression of utter disbelief, she rolled up the magazine in her hand and tapped Jiang Chun on the head. "Can you stop eating already?"
"I starved myself for three whole months just to fit into that wedding dress! What's wrong with eating some cake now?"
Jiang Chun shot her a baffled sidelong look, her face practically screaming: My husband doesn't even care, so why are you sticking your nose into this?
Ji Mingshu shot back righteously, "You call this 'some'? Is that even how you use the word? You've eaten four slices of cake in less than half an hour. Why don't you just start a mukbang channel?"
Jiang Chun was rendered speechless.
Gu Kaiyang looked up and gave a soft scoff. "Don't mind her. She's just miserable herself right now and determined to make the two of us miserable with her."
Ji Mingshu's death stare shot straight over to Gu Kaiyang. "How come you weren't this quick with your mouth when you went to those matchmaking mixers?"
Ever since Jiang Chun had joined the ranks of married women, the two of them had become particularly enthusiastic about finding Gu Kaiyang a suitable match. They had even badgered her into attending several matchmaking mixers. Unfortunately, after her stint on that dating reality show, Gu Kaiyang seemed to have lost whatever interest she once had in romance. She devoted herself wholeheartedly to her career, and whenever she attended one of those mixers, she barely said a word.
The dating show had brought her a huge following of young female fans. Her Weibo following had already surpassed Ji Mingshu's and was charging toward five million. On top of that, as an editor by profession, she had her own ideas about running a Weibo account. She had built herself into a fashionable modern-woman persona centered on independence and financial freedom, and once her income began tying in with social media, it shot up at astonishing speed.
This time, she merely shrugged. She couldn't be bothered arguing with a pregnant woman, and instead exchanged a knowing look with Jiang Chun.
Actually, Gu Kaiyang had hit the nail on the head. Ji Mingshu really had been miserable lately.
After attending Jiang Chun's wedding, Cen Sen had forcibly put an end to all of Ji Mingshu's work and every one of her recreational activities.
If she wanted to leave the house, the bodyguards refused and the driver wouldn't take her. She had to wait until Cen Sen had time to accompany her personally. Most of the time, all she could do was waste away the hours in their utterly ordinary luxury mansion.
Jiang Chun might very well have had a grudge against her. To celebrate her pregnancy, she had cheerfully sent Ji Mingshu a little robot designed by Tang Zhizhou.
The little robot was adorable and rather cute, but it was also a walking, talking Tang Monk. It followed Ji Mingshu everywhere, humming away as it reminded her to drink water, reminded her to get up and walk around, reminded her to go outside, look at the flowers and grass, and breathe some fresh air...
Worst of all, it came with a high-definition surveillance function. Under the perfectly legitimate excuse of wanting to stay in constant contact with her, Cen Sen used the gift from her best friend to keep tabs on her.
If she spent too long playing on her phone or watching television and Cen Sen happened to notice, his voice would suddenly come through the robot with a reminder. "Mingshu, get up and move around for a bit."
At first, she would put on a deliberately defiant, ‘Not listening, not listening, you're just a tortoise preaching scripture’ attitude. Cen Sen never said much in response. He simply blocked the signal the next day, leaving her to become a beautiful and lonely pregnant woman stranded on the island in the middle of the lake.
Later, she even entertained the thought of throwing the thing into Mingshui Lake and making sure it could never be found again. But then she remembered that when boredom drove her crazy, she could use it to preach back at Cen Sen and annoy him in return, so she reluctantly suppressed the idea.
"Cen Sen, are you there? What time are you coming home today?"
After finishing a variety show and deciding she was bored, Ji Mingshu glanced at the little robot.
Cen Sen's voice soon came through. "I'll be late today. There's another video conference."
Ji Mingshu said, "You're being so unfair. You won't keep me company, and you won't even let me go outside!"
Cen Sen said, "I'll come home and keep you company once I get through these next few days. Be good."
Ji Mingshu compromised and sweetly asked, "Then I want your little pork ribs for dinner tonight."
Cen Sen paused briefly. "All right. I'll make them when I get home. Eat something first."
"Mm. Give me a kiss."
Ignoring Zhou Jiaheng's knock on the door, Cen Sen's voice dropped slightly. "Mm. Kiss."
Cen Sen kept his word. With only a month left until Ji Mingshu's due date, he moved his office home so he could spend more time with her. All his business trips were handed over to other senior executives, and apart from necessary meetings and social engagements, he rarely appeared in public on business.
Under Cen Sen's meticulous supervision, Ji Mingshu safely gave birth three days ahead of her due date.
Whether it was to prevent the mistakes of more than twenty years ago from happening again or for some other reason, the hospital had arranged a full lockdown well in advance. On the day she gave birth, more than a dozen members of both the Ji and Cen families came to the hospital, all anxiously waiting for the little baby's arrival.
Fortunately, the delivery went relatively smoothly.
A baby boy, weighing six pounds and six ounces.
Although they had deliberately chosen not to find out the baby's sex beforehand, and the Cen family had shown no particular preference or expectation, the hopes of a prestigious family regarding its heir hardly needed to be spoken aloud. When they learned it was a boy, both families secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Actually, Ji Mingshu and Cen Sen had discussed the baby's sex before this. At first, Ji Mingshu had assumed Cen Sen would say something like, "As long as you're the one who gives birth to them, I'll love them." But after thinking for a moment, Cen Sen said, "I'd prefer a boy. If our first child is a boy, he can protect his little sister later."
"...?"
He did have a point. She herself had rather enjoyed being protected by her older male cousins when she was little. But still...
"Who said we're having a second child? The first one hasn't even been born yet. Aren't you thinking a little too far ahead?"
Cen Sen had answered with remarkable calm. "Life is like a game of chess. Once you've made one move, naturally you should already be looking ten moves ahead."
He had even taken out the little notebook he'd once used to write down his dating plans and shown it to Ji Mingshu. "I wrote down some plans during my breaks. They're not very complete yet. When I have time, I'll make proper ones."
Ji Mingshu suspiciously took the notebook and skimmed a few pages. The plan was every bit as meticulous as President Cen's usual style. Everything was neatly categorized into one, two, three, four, and if transferred to a computer, it would have made a beautiful planning spreadsheet.
For a moment, she genuinely couldn't decide whether to feel happy for the baby or mourn for them. Their father had casually written out a twenty-page life plan for them, covering ages three through eighteen, during his spare time. There were even several branching plans based on different possible interests, along with the explicit rule that they weren't allowed to date until they were eighteen.
Of course, as the meticulous old father he was, Cen Sen naturally considered naming the baby another responsibility he could not shirk.
In the Cen family genealogy, boys of this generation were given a single-character name associated with stone, while girls were given a single-character name associated with jade. He had chosen the baby's names long ago. The girl's name would be Zhuo, the boy's Yan. A gentleman should be upright and refined, like jade, like inkstone.
Just as Cen Sen had wished, the first to be born was baby Cen Yan.
Once the baby was born, everyone automatically started calling him "Yan-bao." Ji Mingshu, however, took one look at his wrinkly, slightly yellowish little face, which looked less than pristine, and stubbornly insisted on calling him "Little Grub."
Cen Sen corrected her several times, but Ji Mingshu refused to change. She even made a habit of asking:
"Is Little Grub asleep?"
"Did Little Grub go swimming?"
"Did Little Grub drink his milk?"
"Is Little Grub crying?"
Perhaps to express his dissatisfaction with the name his mother had bestowed upon him, Little Grub Yan-bao grew cleaner and fairer with every passing day. There was a hint of Cen Sen's cool severity between his brows, but when he smiled, he was impossibly cute, almost as if Ji Mingshu had been carved into a miniature version of himself. His eyes were clear and bright, like two glossy crystal grapes.
And with the nannies at home changing his outfits countless times a day, keeping him immaculate and looking neat at all times. The word "grubby" had less and less to do with him.
But his mother had gotten so used to calling him that and couldn't bring herself to stop overnight. Ji Mingshu's two uncles heard her and lectured her twice, but even they couldn't get her to change.
Actually, during Little Grub Yan-bao's first year, life for Ji Mingshu and Cen Sen didn't undergo any earth-shattering changes. Neither of them had developed much awareness of themselves as parents yet, and most of the time, the baby was looked after by the several nannies at home.
After her postpartum confinement, Ji Mingshu gradually began preparing to establish her own design studio. She would set aside a few hours every day to spend time with Yan-bao, but most of the time, she simply had the nannies bring him over so she could play with him for a while.
She also took all sorts of ridiculous photos of herself putting her feet right under Yan-bao's nose, holding a chicken leg up to his mouth, placing Yan-bao on the display shelves in her dressing room, and so on. Then would slap captions onto them such as "Mommy's little feet smell so good," "Want a bite? You don't have teeth,” and "Clearance sale, one yuan each," and send them to the girls' group chat. There, she would shamelessly try to brainwash the two childless women, Gu Kaiyang and Jiang Chun, with her grand philosophy: if a baby wasn't born for the purpose of being played with, then what was the point?
Compared with her, Cen Sen, although he didn't have much time to spend with Yan-bao, at least seemed somewhat more responsible whenever he did.
He would feed Yan-bao his milk, feed him baby food, carry him outside for walks, play with his little toys, and so on.
Every time Ji Mingshu saw Cen Sen doing these things, she found the contrast strangely jarring, and even a little hilarious.
That was because whenever Cen Sen did these things, he looked exactly like a CEO operating under executive logic, a stern father who seemed to be training an employee on what he ought to be doing and when.
When Yan-bao was three months old, he still couldn't roll over, so Cen Sen postponed an entire day's worth of business and stayed home to practice with him.
But no matter how patiently he coached him, Yan-bao remained completely motionless and spectacularly uncooperative.
After watching Cen Sen patiently practice with him for a while, Ji Mingshu saw the heavy pressure gathering around him and nearly died laughing. She always felt that Cen Sen was about to turn coldly to Yan-bao and say, "If you behaved like this at the company, you'd be at the bottom of the performance rankings and HR would have recommended your dismissal ages ago. You can't even roll over. How do you expect to be my son?"
Perhaps sensing his CEO father's earnest expectations, Yan-bao may have lost the early lead in the milestones of rolling over at three months, sitting at six, and crawling at nine, but he made a spectacular comeback in the last two. He not only caught up and overtook the others in sitting and crawling, he even started calling for "Papa" at ten months.
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