Killing Marriage [ABO] - Chapter 14
Chapter 14; Flesh and Bl00d
“Because you, too, want to kill this damned marriage.”
After grinding his teeth and saying this, Zhang Qingyuan completely abandoned all caution.
“Captain Ren, from the first time I saw you give a speech, I knew you were one of us.”
His lips twisted into a pained smile. “We want to attack this idiotic big data forced-matching marriage system and make all these matched marriages fall apart.”
“Are you insane?”
Even Ren Zhong couldn’t hide his shock.
“Insane?” Zhang Qingyuan actually laughed, his body trembling. “Won’t we go insane if we’re forced into marriage with a gun to our heads?”
He had thrown caution to the wind, his face flushed. “Captain, ask yourself, do you want to be married? To be inexplicably matched by the system with someone you’ve never met and be a slave to a family for life—do you want that?”
Ren Zhong remained silent.
“If you don’t want it, does anyone else?” Zhang Qingyuan challenged him. “Any Omega over sixteen, as soon as their glands mature, is forced to get married. Sixteen years old, sixteen! How old is that? How is this any different from the old days?”
Ren Zhong’s attitude remained cold. “You’re an Alpha, a beneficiary of the system. What do you have to complain about? As someone born with privileges and favored by the rules, you have no reason to give up the benefits you receive.”
He still suspected the man in front of him was mostly putting on an act.
“I’m an Alpha, but I’m also a human being!”
Zhang Qingyuan was trembling, whether from pain or intense emotion, it was unclear.
“I had a very good Omega classmate in middle and high school who was a figure skater. He trained so hard, pouring his bl00d, sweat, and tears into overcoming the challenges of puberty. He said he wanted to bring glory to the country and stand on the highest podium.”
Zhang Qingyuan’s eyes turned red. “But after he finally stabilized his form and successfully mastered a difficult technical move, what awaited him wasn’t the glory of the rink, but a marriage-matching notification. He never stepped on the ice again after that.”
“Guess what he looked like the next time I saw him?” Zhang Qingyuan’s eyes were empty. “He had collapsed on his way to the hospital, his pants soaked in bl00d. Because he was going to a surgery and couldn’t care for the children, his Alpha husband was verbally abusing him over the phone.”
The reason he needed to go to the hospital was because his husband had inserted a foreign object into his reproductive cavity and then shattered it inside. The sharp fragments had cut his cavity, causing him to bleed non-stop. He had to have surgery to remove the object and repair the cavity.
“He bled with every step he took to the hospital.”
Zhang Qingyuan’s lips trembled.
“Not a single taxi driver was willing to take him, afraid his bl00d would stain the seats. His husband hadn’t given him any money, so he didn’t dare call an ambulance and had to walk step by step. If I hadn’t given him a ride, he wouldn’t have even made it to the hospital.”
The once dashing, graceful, and muscular genius athlete in Zhang Qingyuan’s memory no longer existed. He had given birth twice in three years, the second time to twins, and the frequent pregnancies and nursing had drained his spirit and his life.
Zhang Qingyuan hadn’t even recognized him when he helped him into the car.
“He wasn’t allowed to have s3x for thirty days after his surgery. The hospital gave him a medical certificate, and even the regulatory center approved his leave. But that animal he was matched with assaulted him again on the third day after his surgery!”
The infection from the post-operative wound caused him to permanently lose his reproductive cavity and part of his intestines.
Zhang Qingyuan’s pained hands were tightly clenched. “I have flesh and bl00d too! I have a heart!”
“What about you, Captain?”
He looked up at Ren Zhong, his eyes glistening.
“If you hadn’t been accepted into the military academy at fifteen, hadn’t joined the special forces at eighteen, hadn’t participated in special border missions at twenty… if those things that allowed you to file for delays hadn’t happened, where would you be now?”
Ren Zhong lowered his eyes.
He was thinking.
Zhang Qingyuan seized the moment. “All the effort you’ve put in, Captain, wasn’t it all to delay this shackles that would destroy every possibility for your future, to have them be put on you a little bit later, and then a little bit later still?”
After a long silence, Ren Zhong spoke.
“I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t agree with your methods.”
His wheelchair rolled back slightly, easing his grip on Zhang Qingyuan. “You can achieve your goals through more legal and rational means, instead of…”
“That’ll be too late!” Zhang Qingyuan almost screamed.
He struggled to sit up in his rage but was forced to slump back against the wall from the pain. A breath caught in his chest, and he began to cough violently.
“For the past twenty years, the forced-matching policy has been revised and changed again and again, and each time, it gets worse! Despite public opposition, the marriage regulatory center was still established, and getting a divorce became even harder. This year, even abortion has become illegal!”
Zhang Qingyuan coughed twice, then forcefully held back the coughs.
“How long do you want to wait? Until you’ve had three or four children for your matched partner, lost your health, your military rank, and your prime years for your career? And then the marriage policy is finally abolished by a vote? What good would that do?!”
To destroy forced matching through “righteous” channels, you could only wait.
Wait for a strong public backlash, for layers of approval processes, for repeated debates at national conferences, and for the despair after repeated failures.
“It’s like that writer said. If you say a room is too dark and you want to open a window, you’ll never be approved. Only by demanding to tear down the roof, making them scared and panicked, can you force them to be willing to open a window.”
Zhang Qingyuan, his strength completely spent, slumped against the wall in defeat.
“I don’t want to be a generation destined to be sacrificed. I don’t.”
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
“Captain Ren, I know a soldier’s duty is to obey orders, to be the state’s enforcer of violence. You’ve always stood on the side of a soldier, defending the country. But what about you? What about your will as an individual, as ‘Ren Zhong’?”
He asked, “Ren Zhong, has there never been a moment in your life when you wanted to fight for yourself?”
“How could there not be?” Ren Zhong’s voice rose. “Everything I’ve done since my glands matured at sixteen has been a rebellion against this goddamn matched marriage.”
Zhang Qingyuan sneered. “But you were still forced to marry me, weren’t you? You still chose someone you’d never met to be your husband, and you still have to perform for the camera, for the ‘AI idiot,’ making it look like I’m giving you a great time, right?”
THUMP!
Ren Zhong’s wheelchair moved forward. He grabbed Zhang Qingyuan’s collar, lifted him, and slammed him against the wall. “Zhang Qingyuan, you’re a smart man. You should know that provoking me is meaningless to you.”
“Why is it meaningless?”
Zhang Qingyuan narrowed his eyes, looking at Ren Zhong’s muscled, veined arm. “Your strength comes from your anger. The more you’re filled with rage, the more you want to smash the rules that bind you, to beat down those who want to tell you what to do. Isn’t that right?”
He looked at Ren Zhong and said calmly and slowly, “Even a cornered rabbit will bite. You, Ren Zhong, are a man of iron will. How can you not even have the strength to kill a matched marriage?”