Chapter 466: Another son?

Chapter 466 -79 – Another son?

Fan Xui’s irritated expression disappeared the instant his gaze landed on Chen.

He froze.

The two of them stared at each other across the road.

Chen couldn’t move.

Fan Xui’s face had gone completely blank.

“Chen?”

Chen’s chest tightened.

“Dad.”

Fan Xui took one step forward, then stopped.

His eyes moved over Chen from head to toe as though something wasn’t adding up.

And, to be fair, Chen understood why.

The son Fan Xui remembered had been slightly shorter than him, lean and slim enough that his father had occasionally complained he needed to eat more. The man standing in front of him now was taller by several centimeters, his shoulders broad and heavily muscled beneath his wet shirt. His arms had grown thicker, his face sharper, and there was an entirely different weight to the way he carried himself.

Months of surviving outside had changed him.

Fan Xui stared.

Then stared some more.

“How…” His eyes narrowed as they traveled over Chen again. “How are you…”

Chen almost laughed, though the pressure in his chest made it impossible.

Fan Xui stepped closer.

“You’re taller than me.”

Of all the things his father could have said, that was what came out.

Chen’s eyes suddenly burned.

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“No.” Fan Xui sounded genuinely confused now. He reached Chen and stared directly into his face as though checking whether someone had somehow replaced his son. “But you weren’t this tall.”

“I grew.”

“You were already an adult.”

Chen opened his mouth.

Nothing useful came out.

Fan Xui’s gaze dropped to Chen’s shoulders, then his arms.

“And what happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were skinny.”

“I wasn’t skinny.”

“You were.”

Skyy, standing beside him with the little girl now holding tightly to his hand, made a suspicious choking sound.

Chen glanced at him.

Skyy immediately looked elsewhere.

This was not the reunion Chen had imagined.

Fan Xui was still staring at him in disbelief, but slowly the confusion in his face began to crack.

His eyes reddened.

Chen saw it happen.

The irritation disappeared first. Then the disbelief.

What remained underneath was something Chen hadn’t seen on his father’s face since he was a child.

Fear.

Fan Xui reached out and gripped Chen’s arm.

“Dad…”

Fan Xui pulled him forward.

Chen stiffened in surprise before his father’s arms closed around him.

The hug was hard and brief, almost desperate despite the man’s attempt to control it. Fan Xui gripped the back of Chen’s wet shirt as if he were afraid his son might disappear again if he loosened his hold.

Chen slowly closed his eyes.

For one moment, he allowed himself to stop being alert.

He didn’t check the buildings.

Didn’t listen for infected.

Didn’t calculate the nearest escape route.

He simply hugged his father back.

Fan Xui’s shoulders shook once.

Only once.

Then a gunshot cracked somewhere behind them.

Reality returned immediately.

Fan Xui pulled away and looked past Chen toward the station. “We have to move. The western checkpoint is gone.”

His gaze shifted toward Skyy.

Then toward the little girl holding Skyy’s hand.

Fan Xui frowned.

“Who’s this?”

Chen followed his gaze.

Skyy stood there soaked from head to toe, exhausted, bruised, holding a bloody metal pipe in one hand while the frightened little girl clung to the other.

Chen suddenly became very aware of how this must look.

“This is Skyy.”

Fan Xui waited.

Chen hesitated.

Skyy looked at him.

After everything they’d survived together, calling him merely a companion felt strangely wrong.

“My partner.”

Fan Xui’s eyebrows rose.

Skyy’s head whipped toward Chen.

Chen pretended not to notice.

“And the child?”

“We found her inside the station.”

Fan Xui’s expression immediately hardened. “You went through the station?”

“We came through the railway tunnels.”

“You came through the—”

A soldier ran toward them before Fan Xui could finish.

“Commander! The eastern side of the platform has been breached. They’re coming through the service tunnels too.”

Fan Xui’s entire demeanor changed.

The father disappeared, replaced instantly by the commander Chen had seen when he first emerged from the station.

“How many?”

“Too many to hold here.”

“Then stop trying to hold it. Pull everyone behind the inner barricade and abandon the vehicles we can’t move. Nobody stays behind for equipment.”

“Yes, sir.”

The soldier ran off.

Fan Xui turned back to Chen.

There were a thousand questions in his eyes.

Chen had just as many.

Neither of them had time to ask a single one.

Fan Xui grabbed Chen’s shoulder.

“Stay close to me.”

Chen almost smiled.

His father still thought he needed protecting.

“All right.”

Fan Xui gave him one last disbelieving look, apparently still struggling with the fact that he now had to look slightly upward to meet his son’s eyes.

Then his gaze dropped to Chen’s muscular arms again.

Chen sighed.

“Dad.”

“What?”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“You disappeared looking like my son and came back looking like you eat people for breakfast.”

Skyy made that choking noise again.

This time Chen knew he was laughing.

Chen glared at him.

Skyy bit his lip and turned away, but his shoulders were already shaking.

Even Fan Xui’s mouth twitched.

Then another explosion sounded from the direction of the station, and the small moment disappeared.

Fan Xui raised his rifle.

“Move!”

They ran toward the inner barricade together.

Chen kept Skyy beside him while Fan Xui led them through the retreating soldiers. The little girl clung tightly to Skyy’s hand, struggling to keep up until Chen finally scooped her into his arms again.

Ahead of them stood the walls of City S.

After everything Chen had crossed to get here, he could finally see them.

More importantly, his father was alive.

Chen watched Fan Xui running several steps ahead of him, shouting orders to his men, and something that had been wound painfully tight inside his chest for months finally loosened.

He had found one of them.

One member of his family was alive.

For now, that was enough.