Archive of Our Own ^beta

I presented to Alpha when I was almost eighteen.

Unsurprisingly, my dad, Vegas, was an Alpha after all, and Pete, who gave birth to me, was also an Alpha before the secondary presentation to an Omega.

I didn't feel anything unusual during the presentation, just felt like I had a fever during my study.

Fortunately, our head teacher was an experienced one, and he took me directly to the presentation isolation room and gave me a shot. There was no trouble in the whole process, and I even caught up with the English class in the afternoon after I got checked out from the hospital.

But uncle Porsche was worried, "Is eighteen too early?" he asked.

"It's not too early," I replied. "Modern people are so well nourished. Many of my classmates were presented when they were sixteen or seventeen."

He stopped talking with his brows furrowed tightly. I knew he wasn't trying to discuss teenage physiological development with me.

Seeing that the atmosphere got a bit tense, uncle Kinn interrupted and tried to change the topic: "So what do you want as a gift for your eighteenth birthday?"

Uncle Tankun complained next to me: "The older you get, the more rigid you become. How can you directly ask people what they want."

"I'm open to anything," I shrugged, "anything that is expensive will do, the more the better."

Everyone laughed, and then fell silent one after another.

The atmosphere started to get weird again. Uncle Porsche finally couldn't stand it, he hesitated and said, "This year's letter...it’s at your Uncle Chan's place, not with me."

"I know," I said, "I asked him the other day, and he said he'll send it to me."

The letter was written to me by Pete, one letter every year since my second birthday.

In fact, I was really curious how he managed to take time out of his busy schedule to write letters.

Of course, no one can answer me.

I was just a little over one year old when Pete left, the age when I was just beginning to use "Pete" in a sentence.

It was early spring, cool but sunny, and Pete put me on a sweater knitted by my great-grandmother. I ran all over the yard to avoid the carrots on the dinner plate, shouting,

"I don't eat carrots. Pete eats carrots. Pete is a glutton."

I made Pete laugh. He gave up feeding me and started eating his own lunch.

After running two laps, I got tired and went back to Pete to watch him eat curry.

"Venice wants to try curry?

I nod. He took a small spoon and scooped a little bit to feed me.

I vomited out in no time.

"Carrots!" I yelled, then burst into tears because my sweater was soiled.

That was one of the few direct memories of my time with Pete.

Unfortunately, Pete's face is blurred in my mind. All I remember is that his hair was dyed blond by the afternoon sunshine, and the touching of his rough finger wiped the curry off my face.

As for "dimples on the cheeks" and "smile with crescent eyes", most of them were told to me by uncle Porsche.

This made it difficult for me to complete the homework assigned by the teacher to draw my parents when I was in kindergarten.

That night I drew Vegas in ten minutes and then spent the night drawing Pete, listening to my uncle Tankun and others telling stories.

When I handed it in the next day, the teacher pointed at the little man with blond hair and big eyes and asked me, "Is this Venice?"

"No," I said, "this is Pete."

"Oh, this is Venice's parent. How is he as tall as Venice?"

I didn't answer.

Then the teacher pointed to the pattern next to him and asked,

"Are these birds and flowers raised by Pete?"

"No. The bird is Pete, and the flower is Pete. The sun is Pete, too."

I didn't make a fool of myself, I drew it carefully after listening to uncle Arm and uncle Pol.

Because I didn't know how to draw an angel at that time, otherwise there would be one more angel in that picture.

The most important thing is that Pete also said that the passing birds and the roses in the yard can be regarded as him.

He said that in the first letter he wrote to me.

"Did Venice eat anything new and delicious recently? Missing me a little bit?

When I was a child, a little older than Venice, I would miss my mother very much. But my mother couldn't come back, so I learned a trick: treat the big tree in the yard as my mother, and tell her everything I want to say.

I would tell the tree that I was tired from practicing boxing today, but tomorrow I can go to my grandmother's house and eat a delicious omelet.

If Venice misses me, you can do the same. You can talk to the birds in the yard and the roses that your dad planted. You know, I can actually hear you, although I don't seem to be by your side, I am actually sitting on the back of the bird or in the flowers, always with Venice. "

I didn't know all the words at that time, the letter was read to me by uncle Porsche, and he read it many times.

Pete gave all sixteen letters to Porsche, he thought Porsche might be the only one who could resist opening the envelope when he saw "For my sweetheart Venice" on the envelope. Pete was right.

It wasn't until I stopped asking "so why can't I see Pete in the flowers" and started doing what Pete told me, that Porsche solemnly helped me put the letters in my favorite chocolate box.

Holding the big box, I raised my head and asked Porsche, "So Pete has gone far away. That's what my teacher told me when I asked her."

Porsche said stiffly, "Yes."

"That's weird," I said. "My teacher doesn't know Pete. How did she know Pete was far away?"

Porsche didn't say anything, and I continued, "She also said, I may not be able to see Pete for a long, long time. How long is a long, long time, the day after tomorrow? When Vegas comes back, Pete will come back too, right?"

Porsche still didn't speak, he just trembled, crouched down, and hold me in his arms.

The day after tomorrow, Pete didn't come back.
When Vegas came back home, Pete didn't come back.

I read the letters he wrote to me several times and talked to flowers and birds in the yard for more than 600 days, but Pete still didn't come back.

One day I suddenly realized, that a long, long time means that he will not come back.

Because he died a month after feeding me the curry, shot by someone who didn't know if it was the Italian mafia or Japanese yakuza.

A week after he died, uncle Kinn snatched Pete's rotting corpse from Vegas, put him in clean clothes to cover the hole in his chest, and buried him underground in Chumphon.

Except for the seventeen letters to me and a sentence to Vegas, Pete didn't seem to have left anything.

I didn't know and didn't care what Pete left for Vegas at that time, I only cared about my letters.

When I was four years old, Porsche took me to Chumphon.

But I didn't want to go to Pete's grave, I sat on the steps of my great-grandmother's house and spat: "I want Pete's letter! I want Pete's letter!"

"But you only received his third letter a few days ago, didn't you? We agreed, one every year."

"I want Pete's letter!"

"Venice, I know you miss him. Aren't we going to see him now? You can tell him anything you want."

"I want! Pete's! Letter!"

Porsche didn't understand, what's the point of talking to the stone with Pete's name engraved on it, like talking to flowers and birds, and never getting a response.

But he deserved to be someone Pete trusted.

He just stood there, watching me cry and fainted without taking out the fourth letter, not even at night when I had a fever. He just read the first three letters Pete wrote over and over to calm me down.

Later I thought about it. I was not that difficult at that time, I just cried a few times.

Talking about being difficult, it has to be Vegas.

Everyone thought Vegas would die along with Pete the day after Pete's body was found, but he didn't.

He locked himself in the room with Pete's body, listening over and over to the voice message Pete sent him before he died.

When uncle Kinn and uncle Kim tried to break the door, they were ready to take some bullets, but once again, to everyone's surprise, Vegas let go after hearing uncle Tankun shout, "Don't you want him to rest forever?", let someone take Pete's body away.

The ritual for Pete's funeral lasted seven days. Vegas passed out on the third day because he hadn't eaten or slept for several days.

When he woke up, uncle Porsche came over and said only one thing: "You either listened to what Pete said, or I'll shoot you right now."

I didn't know how Vegas reacted at that time, but he got busy after he was discharged from the hospital and sent Pete's coffin back to Chumphon.

He was busy with company business.

And he was busy killing the Italian mafia and Japanese yakuza, too.

It didn't make a difference to me, he was also busy when Pete was still around.

But the strange thing was that after Pete died, Vegas didn't come home less often.

Although I hardly see him, sometimes I could hear Vegas and uncle Macau talking at night. I would mumble, "Vegas?", then went back to sleep without waiting for a response.

I woke up in the morning to hear uncle Macau say that Vegas did come back and went out early again.

I usually went with an "oh".

It didn't matter.

My nanny was in charge of my diet and daily life, uncle Tankun and uncle Porsche would take me out for fun, and uncle Macau companied me at night, so it really didn't matter if Vegas was there or not.

It's only around the time of my birthday that things might make a difference.

I remembered uncle Kinn saying that three days after my second birthday, he opened the door early in the morning and found Vegas squatting at the door of his room with blood all over his body.

"Is Porsche there? I know Pete gave all the letters to him for safekeeping, I want to read the first one, just the first one."

Uncle Kinn replied impatiently that the letter had been given to me and asked him to clean up himself first.

I woke up that day seeing Vegas with a funny bandage on his arm, silently staring at me.

I had to give him the chocolate box that I stuffed in the pillowcase and threatened him to return it to me after reading it because I couldn't sleep at night without it.

Vegas read that one-page letter all day, and that night when I was about to complain to my uncles, he finally returned the letter to me.

He looked at me holding the box and asked, "Venice...would you like to sleep together tonight? ……With dad?"

I widened my eyes and shook my head, but shortly after thinking about it, I thought it was okay. Uncle Macau's eyes widened even bigger than mine.

It was actually not much different from spending the night with uncle Macau.

However, when uncle Tankun found out, he sighed,

"Macau is really reckless, he's even not afraid that Vegas will strangle the child in the middle of the night and then shoot himself."

I didn't understand why uncle Tankun said that.

Although I didn't have the experience of riding on the shoulder of my dad, like other children, I had no experience of being beaten and scolded by him as well, so I was not afraid of him.

"Vegas was just a little weird", I thought, "my dad was just a little weird."

The change happened when I was about to enter elementary school.

That night, uncle Tankun and I were watching a TV show together. Suddenly I realized that I was the only one in the room, I didn't know when did uncle Takun leave. I turned down the volume and heard the noise downstairs.

Then I went downstairs and saw the crowd standing in the living room.

Vegas was standing on the rug in the center of the living room, pulling a man by the hair with one hand and holding the gun to the man's temple with the other.

Actually, I should call that person granduncle, but Vegas never let me call him that, he just let me call him "Mr. Korn".

I have never seen Korn so embarrassed, pinned to the ground with a bruised face.

He was shouting: "I didn't know those Italians would actually shoot. Pete he..."

Vegas's eyes were red and he punched him again, "You didn't know? No, you just didn't care. Stop struggling, I never thought that a person like you would be afraid."

Korn spat out the blood in his mouth and smiled suddenly,

"You know what? He's just a dog that was no longer faithful and wanted to run away. It's a shame that he died, I mean, after all, I have raised him for so long.

What I didn't expect is that he was so smart to figure out I was going to use him to threaten you. But so what? Even if he knows it, he had to hand you over and help me deal with those people anyway, no matter he's alive or dead."

I looked around, uncle Kinn, uncle Kim, and uncle Tankun were all standing there, but none of them pointed their guns at Vegas.

Korn laughed louder. "Now, Vegas, you can kill me. You won, but so what?"

He looked at Vegas, and then at me standing on the stairs.

When Vegas pulled the trigger, uncle Tankun stood in front of me and covered my ears with his hands.

I looked up and saw his face full of tears in silence.

Vegas came home with me that day, I stood at the door of the bathroom watching him slowly wipe the blood off his face and then washed his hands.

"Want to eat instant noodles?" He asked me.

I shook my head, then nodded again.

So he cooked two bowls of instant noodles. I ate half a bowl and he ate the rest.

That night I experienced insomnia for the first time in my life. For a moment, I remembered uncle Tankun saying "strangle the child", and then the faces of many people flashed in my mind.

Well, my dad killed his uncle, I guessed my uncles wouldn't let me go to their house again.

But he didn't strangle me, at least he didn't put his hands on my neck before I fell asleep.

He laid down with his back to me, after a while, he rustled something out of his pajama pocket.

He's listening to the voice message Pete left him, again.

I knew.

I'd love to get those letters out of my box too, but the lights were off. Fortunately, I remembered everything, every single word. So I forced myself not to think about anything else and started to recall the letters Pete wrote to me.

"...I learned to ride a bike on the beach. It's not the kind of bike with extra small wheels that are specially designed for children, it's a big bike with big wheels. At first, I always fell, luckily the sand was soft, and it didn't hurt at all. But there might be little crabs laughing at me. So I ran to pick a large banana leaf, folded a box, grabbed all the little crabs, and put them in the box.

I mean, how could they laugh at me, right? But ah, when I rode back after a lap, those little crabs had already run away. Fine, I just had to pick more banana leaves and go back to ask my grandmother to make more yummy yellow sticky rice..."

Vegas was still asleep when I woke up the next day.

He's been idle since that night, and I didn't mind that.

This family's father-son relationship was so strange, like two weeks after Korn's death, I was able to go in and out of my uncle's house and watch TV with him again.

Vegas usually didn't do anything else except drive me to and from school and sleep. If he couldn't fall asleep, he would lie on the bed with his eyes closed.

I knew he was thinking about Pete.

But when I was home, he insisted that I stay in the same room with him.

It was alright, I did my homework, he slept, and we never communicated.

Maybe because he slept too much and had a headache, he would occasionally get up to find painkillers.

I listened to him keep making noises behind my back, and I said, "Dad, can you please be quiet."

He ignored me, found the medicine, poured water, and after taking the medicine, he stopped just for a few minutes before he started to make noise again.

I had no idea where did he find a book about palmistry, and he insisted on seeing my hand.

My hands were not half as big as they are now. I was so annoyed that finally I showed him my right hand and continued to do my homework with my left.

Vegas squeezed my hand, flipped through the book with interest, and analyzed aloud how I would be in the future according to what was in the book.

I was like, "oh really? That's good", but I didn't really listen.

In the end, he patted me on the palm and shouted,

"Oops Venice, you are gonna be a rich man with a long life!"

He really sounded like a charlatan, and he was wearing half-rolled old pajama pants, with a shaggy beard he hadn't shaved for days, which just made him even less convincing.

I supposed Vegas would have been bothering me for a longer time if I hadn't found those empty pill packs in the trash bin.

Uncle Macau sent him to the hospital for gastric lavage, and the doctor suggested that he stay in the hospital for observation.

It was uncle Tankun who insisted that there’s no need to stay in the hospital, just send him to Chumphon.

When we went to Chumphon, uncle Macau didn't dare to bring any medicines.

Since there was no medicine, Vegas then became obsessed with diving.

Maybe it's because my great grandmother once said that Pete's biggest regret before he left home for Bangkok was that he didn't fully learn to dive.

Anyway, he got obsessed to stuck in that crossover space of life and death, with no gravity, no sound.

It was fine at first, he usually came out after two or three hours in the water. But one day he didn't come home, uncle Macau was so anxious.

In the end, it was my great-grandfather who brought back my unconscious dad. My great-grandmother read the scriptures for half a night before Vegas woke up.

He didn't let Vegas say anything, but kept saying "it's good, as long as you wake up, as long as you are alive."

Later my great grandmother went to the kitchen to make us food, and I sat beside the bed, looked at Vegas, and asked him,

"Dad, do you want to die?"

"When I was underwater...I saw Pete."

I shook my head.

My dad was really weird.

I knew it when I was three years old that Pete wasn't really in the flowers, and my dad still didn't understand this when he was almost thirty.

Whether he understood it or not, he still couldn't face the tears of my great-grandparents and uncle Macau.

He could only mumble "I'm sorry" while eating yellow curry.

I didn't know if he said it to my great-grandfather who had to get into the water to save him at such an old age, or to my great-grandmother who had to make dinner for him at late night.

After the diving coma, he did not cause more trouble for a short time and I was happy about it, at least he was not lying in bed all day.

He was initially reluctant to let me go back to Bangkok and kept telling me how much Pete longed to grow up in Chumphon as a child.

I had been listening to him talking about Pete, early from I was still in a morning daze, to the moon rose above the treetops.

At first, I was happy to listen to him, but then I found out that he was talking over and over again about the things Pete had already told me in the letters, so I asked him, "Do you have any other stories about Pete?"

Vegas was stunned, he stood there faltering and didn't know what to say.

Just as I was about to leave feeling boring, Vegas started to talk.

"Don't! Yes, yes! Pete... when he was pregnant with you, he became a picky eater. Before, he would be satisfied as long as there were rice, meat, and some simple snacks. Since he found out he was pregnant, he stopped eating rice."

"Then what did he eat?"

"Sometimes he wanted to have bread, and sometimes he wanted to eat rice cakes."

Vegas gradually fell into memory, with a calm and gentle expression on his face,

"One morning, I woke up and found that he woke earlier than me, I asked him what happened. He looked aggrieved and told me that he wanted to eat chestnuts."

"And then?"

“Then I told him to wake me up directly if he wants to eat anything in the future. I went out to find chestnuts for him. But that was summer, how could I find chestnuts, so I just…”

I was fascinated by the story.

But in the end, I told him that I had to go back to Bangkok or I would go to school in Chumphon. I need to go to school. Pete wrote in the letters that he hoped I can make more friends at school.

He thought about it and sent me back to Bangkok the next day.

He himself stayed in Chumphon for a long time, during which he didn't call me, and didn't show up until my birthday was coming.

After I learned to read, my birthday was always like this, every year uncle Porsche would hand me a letter on that day.

Normally I would read it to myself several times before showing it to Vegas, and then we would read it to each other.

Whenever he saw that I wasn't doing my homework or watching TV, he would come over and sit down beside me, so I went and took out my box and opened the letter again.

Those days were probably the time when we talked the most, albeit repetitively.

When I was in middle school, I started taking physiology classes. I just learned that after Alpha and Omega are widowed, the permanent psychic bonds between them would disappear. So Vegas still needed to get through the heat cycle.

But after Pete died, Vegas never had anyone else with him.

He also didn't use pheromone inhibitors and just locked himself in a room every time he was in the heat cycle.

I hadn't presented yet, so I couldn't smell the red wine scent that filled the hallway.

But I'm my dad's child anyway, so I could feel something more or less.

Sometimes I put my ear to his door and I could hear him crying through the planks.

"So Pete's scent was always orange before and after his second presentation?" I asked uncle Porsche.

He was surprised, "Yeah, the scent hadn't changed. Didn't Vegas tell you that?"

I shook my head. Vegas wouldn't tell me this.

No wonder he wouldn't eat anything else except for the box of oranges that he had put in his room every time he was in the heat cycle.

Vegas was indeed ill, but unfortunately, the only medicine that can cure him began to rot in the soil as early as ten years ago.

After the physiology class, I stopped my teacher and asked her about secondary presentation.

"In the case of secondary presentation...there may be many reasons. In most cases, they have suffered some physical or psychological damage. Of course, there are special cases, and there are people who are born with the secondary presentation."

The teacher's answer was vague, but I did not continue to ask. In fact, I also had a hunch that my parents indeed had an unpleasant history.

Vegas wouldn't tell me those things, uncle Tankun and uncle Porsche were not very happy to tell me about it and of course, they didn't know much.

I asked many times before I found out that Pete ran away from Vegas when he found out that he was pregnant with me, and returned to uncle Tankun with injuries all over his body.

"So he didn't really want me," I said to uncle Porsche while stuffing carrot salad into my mouth.

"No, Venice, no. Pete loved you and your dad very much. You see, he chose your dad afterward. It was his own choice, no one forced him.

But when he chose Vegas......did that equal he also chose me?

Or did he choose Vegas because of me?

I didn’t understand.

I saw pictures of Omegas in my physiology class when they were pregnant. Their abdomens were inflated like big balloons, and they looked even more bizarre with the skinny limbs.

I knew Pete didn't feel like eating anything and vomited all the time when he was pregnant with me.

I knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep in the middle of the night because of sudden labor pains.

I knew that he cried for weeks because of his swollen face and legs.

In the end, Vegas planted a yard of flowers for him and promised to postpone the wedding to coax him.

But I could never touch the wound on the side of Pete's abdomen ask him if it hurts, and then ask him if he was happy when he gave birth to me, like other children.

All I could do was read Pete's letters a few more times and told myself over and over again to take Porsche's word for it.

In the fall of the second semester, something unexpected happened:

I was kidnapped.

The kidnappers and people who kidnapped Pete at that time had some connection, and they took me immediately when I got off the school bus.

When I woke up, I found myself hanging in an abandoned factory, and my first reaction was:

“Damn it! This happened on the first time that I took the school bus, and I can never take the school bus for the rest of my life."

Then I started to guess whether uncle Kim sent someone first or uncle Porsche found me first.

It couldn't be my dad anyway, he hadn't been the mafia boss for so many years, he was out of the business, It would be useless for him to come anyway, thinking of this, I even wanted to laugh a little.

I assume Pete had been through like this at that time. He was hanged, whipped, questioned, and finally shot to death. If I could die like him, it would actually not be so bad.

But I didn't die, and no one even showed up to beat me. I was just hung up and starved for a while.

Before I fainted, I heard a lot of voices, all of which were familiar, but I couldn't tell if it was uncle Porsche, uncle Kim, or maybe my dad.

I didn't suffer any injuries except for a scratched wrist, but I was still in the hospital for a week. Because I had a high fever for three days, I was trapped in a dream, and no one could wake me up.

To be precise, it was a memory.

When I was still talking to roses, I once met a bird in the yard, I couldn't name the species. His left wing was injured. As soon as I got close to him, he tried to flap his wings but still couldn't fly.

It took me some effort to catch him since I couldn't find a cage, so I took a rope and tied it to his right foot, and then called the Doctor to treat his injuries.

When I was looking for worms to feed the bird, my dad, who was supposed to be at the company suddenly came back for no reason.

I waved my hand to him saying hi, but he didn't go back to the house, he just stood behind me and looked at me and the bird.

"What are you doing?" His voice sounded odd, between angry and sad.

"Saving him."

"Then why are you tying him up?" he suddenly shouted, startling me.

"He'll run if he's not tied."

"He can't run. He won't run!" He crouched down to untie the rope from the bird's leg.

"What are you doing!" I was also anxious, "He is injured, and if he runs away, he may die!"

As soon as Vegas heard this, he let go and watched me feed the bird.

"You can't keep him," he said suddenly.

"I never said that I want to raise him."

"You can't keep him or he's going to die," Vegas whispered, almost like a curse.

"He won't die! And I won't raise him either!" I got angry, pushed him away, and went back to the room.

Turned out when I woke up the next day, I found that the bird was gone but the rope was still there.

I suspected that it was Vegas who release the bird, but I couldn't get in touch with him, I looked up at the sky and saw no bird.

I was worried that the bird had not survived his injuries, so I began to check the lawn inch by inch to see if there were any new small slopes on the lawn.

I kept looking......

That was exactly the moment Vegas finally woke me up from this dream, he said,

"Venice, as long as you wake up, I'll show you Pete's picture."

Then I woke up, with anger.

I had only seen pictures of Pete when I went to Chumphon, from a child with a bowl cut into a youth with a bowl cut. Too bad the records from the great-grandparents stopped when Pete came to Bangkok after high school.

Pete only took one photo while working at uncle Tankun's house.

Bodyguards do not need to take pictures, just one photo is enough for identification, face recognition, and funeral photos.

Uncle Tankun cried regrettably and told me when he was drunk that he bought so many projectors and TVs, but never thought of buying a camera, yet he was unwilling to give me Pete's ID photo, he said it was ominous

He didn't know that when I was nine years old, I went to Pete's grave and captured the posthumous picture on the tombstone, then photoshopped it into colored, and I printed it, put it together with the letters.

That picture was unique because Pete had blonde hair.

I always felt that since Pete was reluctant to take pictures when he was pregnant, and he was busy taking pictures of me after giving birth to me, it was normal for Vegas to have no pictures of him.

But I didn't expect him to have pictures of Pete, more than one.

I was lying on the hospital bed, and Vegas gently handed to me these pictures, about a dozen of them.

"That's all?"

"That's all." He touched his nose.

I didn't have the strength to debunk him so I just started to look through the pictures.

The young man with the blonde bowl cut in my memory turned into a black-haired man with dimples. He stood at the door of uncle Tankun's house, holding ice cream in his right hand, smiling and talking to uncle Porsche, who pointed and frowned at the cigarette in Pete's left hand.

"You took candid shots of him," I said.

"Yes," Vegas admitted quickly.

Most of the pictures were taken secretly. That covert camera lens recorded Pete's sweaty hair when he fell asleep, the way he looked at the roses in the yard, and the way he hugged me by the cradle.

I knew Vegas had cropped that photo because I could only see half of Pete's face, his bare shoulders, and his arms outstretched towards me.

Vegas wouldn't let me see the complete one anyway, so I didn't bother to ask, I just said, "Can I make them an album? Put it in the living room so you and I can browse it."

He nodded and warned again, "just don't tell your uncles."

On my birthday in middle school sophomore year, I got the letter in the morning as usual and gave it to Vegas after reading it.

He was cooking curry in the kitchen.

When he saw me coming with the letter, he quickly wiped his hands on his apron and leaned against the edge of the countertop to read it.

At first, his reaction was similar to before, just his normal soft look.

When he read the third page, he suddenly became excited for some reason, his hands began to tremble uncontrollably, and his eyes were inexplicably red.

"I want this letter," he said.

"What?" I didn't understand what he meant.

"I want this letter, I want to keep it."

I was sitting at the dining table, and I stood up slowly after hearing him say this.

In that letter, there was a sentence Pete wrote to him.

"...alas, I don't know if I have eaten too much ice cream recently, my teeth hurt a little. Venice, you should have finished growing permanent teeth now, so you need to pay more attention to your dental health. Vegas, if you see this, remember to take Venice to the dentist regularly. You should also have regular check-ups yourself... " 

I looked at Vegas, "No." I said.

"Just this letter, just this one," he almost implored, "or just this page."

"No."

I reached for the letter, but Vegas wouldn't let go.

The curry in the pot had started to boil, but no one cared.

Then I shouted, "Pete wrote it to me!"

I didn't know which of us started to pull it first, but that piece of paper suddenly fell apart.

A small piece floated towards the stove, and Vegas hurried to get it. That piece was fine, but he accidentally overturned the pot on the stove, and the hot curry splashed his leg.

He didn't care about the burns on his body, he just put the piece on the table.

"We can...we can still put the pieces together, they are not dirted yet...they are not..."

He muttered nervously, then looked up at me, with his eyes full of tears.

I stared at him blankly, still unable to say the word "OK".

"Venice, Venice, please." Vegas finally wailed,

"He wrote you so many letters, but he left me nothing but that sentence."

When uncle Macau came in, Vegas knelt on the curry spilled on the floor, with his head in his arms. He was wearing a ridiculous pink apron, blisters all over his legs, tears and snot on his face.

I was standing by the table, stunned, when my uncle and the bodyguard pulled him away. It was the first time I saw someone cry so sadly, so hysterically.

Looking back on it now, I should have talked him back harshly.

Did he leave you nothing? He left almost all his love to you.

But I was really frightened at the time. I knew my dad was crazy, but I didn't expect him to be this crazy.

In the end, I went to the nanny for a mop, cleaned up the mess myself, and went back to the room with the pieces, carefully sticking them together.

I thought about it all night, then decided to give that page to him. I put it on the bedside before he woke up after taking the tranquilizer shot, so I didn't see him elated.

But I knew later he sewed an inner pocket in all of his clothes for that letter that was sealed in a clear plastic bag.

After that day, Vegas seemed to really make up his mind to play the role of a good father. He gradually stopped saying incomprehensible words and started to cook for me every day.

I didn't expect the letter to work so well, but no matter how good it was, I wouldn't give him more.

I spent a whole year imitating Pete's handwriting. At 0:00 on my birthday, I went to uncle Porsche to ask for the letter, and after reading it, I copied one myself.

If Vegas still asks me for the letter, I would give him the fake one.

But he didn't come to me for it, as if one page was enough to satisfy him for a long time.

I brought my girlfriend home when I was sixteen.

Her name was Wendy, and by then she had presented to an Omega.

"When I fell in love with her, I only knew her name was Wendy, and I didn't know or care that she's an Omega," I said.

The reason that I like her was also very simple, she was the only one I was willing to share with and who was willing to listen to all the stories Pete wrote to me.

My uncles came over one after another, rubbed my head, saying that Wendy was nice.

Vegas didn't say anything, just cut a few roses from the yard for Wendy to take home when she was leaving.

Everything was starting to look good.

But I had a hunch in my heart that it wasn't.

On the eve of high school graduation, the school organized a parent-child camping campaign, and I asked Vegas if he wanted to go.

He straightened up from the couch, "camping," he said, "can I go? I have never camped."

"Why not?" I said, "as long as we buy a tent and some equipment. "

He came over to watch me add items to the shopping cart with great interest, and asked me to buy more instant noodles while watching.

He was excited like a child the night before camping, and I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom to find him still squatting in the living room to check what to bring.

I rushed him back to his room to sleep and warned him not to be late the next afternoon.

Next day, I stood at the school gate waiting for him, but he didn't show up.

The teachers and classmates took the bus and left first. I couldn’t get through to Vegas’s phone, so I kept calling, and waited alone from noon to the evening.

When I finally gave up and went home, I got a call saying my dad was in the police station.

The reason was horribly absurd. He quarreled with a child in the temple, and then got into a fight with the child's father.

It was already dark when uncle Macau and I picked him up.

l sat on the passenger seat and said nothing, while Vegas was shouting in the car,

"Do you know what that kid said? He said that when a person dies, he only decomposes, and he said it's really stupid for me to ask monks about afterlife! "

Uncle Macau comforted him in a low voice: "That kid doesn't understand, just ignore him."

Didn't that kid understand? I thought to myself, although he was still at the age that the most important thing was being wrapped in his mother's arms and asking for candy, he actually knew everything.

By the time we entered the house, my uncles were all there, and Vegas was still shouting, making a lot of noise.

When he saw the camping bag on my shoulder, though he was still scolding that kid, but subconsciously reached out to take the heavy backpack.

I shook his hand away.

"Screw you, Vegas," I finally said. "The kid was right, Pete is dead, rotten!"

I threw my bag on the ground and stared into his eyes:

"If I could choose, I wouldn't want him to die either.
If I could choose, I would like Pete to be by my side, not you."

There should be a voice in my head stopping me from this, but I didn't hear it, I just instinctively chose to say the words that would hurt him the most,

"Perhaps Pete's greatest misfortune was knowing you.
And my greatest misfortune was him giving birth to me!"

Dead silence all around, and I was the only one standing there, gasping for breath.

Vegas seemed to be frozen, and it took a long time for him to move.

He didn't seem to know what kind of expression to put on but a little dumbfounded. He scratched his head and crouched down to pack my camping bag.

In fact, he was not packing my bag. He just unzipped it and zipped it over and over again, after a while he began to dig out whatever was in the bag, then hurriedly grabbed them and went back to the room.

It was uncle Tankun who approached me first, and he was already choked up.

"Venice, I used to think everything would be fine if Pete didn't fall in love with Vegas. But after all these years, I've found that none of us get to say that."

Uncle Macau covered his face with his hand and cried, "Venice, not even you."

After everyone's mood stabilized a little, uncle Macau asked me to sit down on the couch.

He took out his phone and asked me, "Do you know what message Pete left to Vegas before he died?"

I shook my head.

He clicked on a voice message and let me listen to it myself.

An unfamiliar voice came from the phone.

I haven't heard that person speak for a long, long time, but oddly, I just can imagine what he was like when he spoke.

He must have tried hard to take a deep breath and forced a smile when there was no one watching.

"Vegas," Pete said, "I hope you can try to be a good father to Venice and give him something neither of us ever had, okay? Vegas......"

The voice was cut off here. Pete should have something more to say, but he's running out of time.

So this was the voice message that Vegas listened to hundreds of times in the middle of the night, just a few seconds.

"So he's not crazy," I said.

"What?" My uncle didn't hear me.

Turned out my dad wasn't crazy.

I always thought he was crazy, but he wasn't.

He was dead.

The day Pete died, he died too.

This voice message had become the only thing that could affect him, reminded him to open his eyes in the morning, to eat, and to spend countless days and nights raising their child without Pete.

That night I cooked a bowl of instant noodles and kept knocking on Vegas's door until he opened the door and stood at the door to finish the bowl of noodles.

But I didn't say "sorry" in the end.

On my eighteenth birthday, I woke up very early, and after eating the noodles Vegas cooked, I stood at the door waiting for the postman.

When I received the mail, I understood why Pete didn't leave this year's letter to uncle Porsche. Inside the mail, there was a USB flash drive.

So It was a video letter.

I went back to my room and closed the curtains, couldn't help but got chills, and it took me quite a while to insert the USB flash drive into the computer.

There was no password, just one video file inside.

I took a deep breath and tried to smile to greet the seventeenth letter from Pete.

The first person who appeared on the screen was Vegas. He was supposed to be adjusting the setting for camera, and after a few seconds he left the frame, revealing Pete sitting on the couch behind him.

"I don't understand, you spend every day with Venice, why do you want to make him a video?" Vegas walked up to Pete.

"Oh, don't you think this is very meaningful? Hey——you promised me not to peek, come on, it's time for you to go, go to work." Pete handed him the briefcase on the couch.

Vegas took the bag, leaned down and kissed Pete before leaving.

After confirming that Vegas had left the room, Pete looked at the camera and started talking.

He first greeted somewhat cautiously:

"Hello, Venice.

You should have been eighteen years old when you watched this video. I wonder if you've had a good time all these years, and how are you getting along with your dad?

As you should already know, I'm recording this for you because I'm sensing something... bad.

After being pregnant with you, I made up my mind to keep Vegas and Macau far from this circle. But I was naive, Khun Korn won't let your dad go, and he won't let you go. "

He looked out the window where there was faint laughter, and his face was full of worry.

"There has been a lot of people stalking us recently, they are really afraid of us running away." He lowered his head and smiled bitterly.

"How can I escape, my grandmother is still on the island.”

"Well, but things may not turn that bad in the end, right? Maybe I'm watching this video with you right now, and you're going to be laughing at me.

But...Venice, whether I'm with you or not at this time, I want you to remember what I'm about to say:

I used to always wonder, will I have a child of my own, and if I have a child, what kind of person should I make him become?

I knew the answer the first time I saw you.

My Venice, you don't need to be a big hero, I just want you to grow from a cute little baby to a healthy and happy person.

So if you don't like carrots, then don't eat them. If you present to an Alpha and you fall in love with another Alpha, be brave and embrace your love.

I hope my Venice will be happy with a sunny day or having a tasty meal, will love the feeling of walking down the streets on a rainy day, will smile when meeting a star or a puppy.

I hope Venice can receive and give a lot of happiness.

In my life, there are many happy moments, like when I knew that I was pregnant with you, when I saw you for the first time, and when you called my name for the first time.

Venice, my baby, please don't doubt that every day I love you more than the day before."

Pete was in tears when he said this. He slowly got closer to the camera, put his forehead on the camera, and said the last paragraph:

"So, baby, no matter what happens, don't be afraid.

If your dad wants to do something, please...don't stop him. I know you will miss him, but I...I will miss him too.

I'm sorry, Venice.

I love you, my baby. "

I rested my forehead against the cold computer screen as he did.

Some old memories suddenly flushed back. I remembered that when I was just learning to walk, I always fell and cried when I fell. Uncle Tankun would laugh at me and said I was not like Pete's kid at all.

Pete would come over, pick me up, pat the grass off my body, press his soft forehead against mine, and said, "What's wrong with crying, it's OK to cry if it hurts. But, Venice, don't be afraid. "

Vegas was watching a movie with Wendy when I walked out of the room, an old animated movie.

He was completely a middle-aged man, he fell asleep while watching TV sometimes.

I walked up to him and sat down by him, looking at the wrinkles on his face.

He was nothing like the Vegas in the video, I thought.

"Dad." I called him.

"Huh?" He responded to me in a daze, I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or not.

And he said, "The guitar belongs to Hector."

"Yeah, it was Hector's guitar," I said.

"You might want to check Pete's video message. You don't need to confirm anything with me after watching it. After all, you still owe him a wedding."

Vegas died a week after I turned eighteen.

He just didn't open his eyes in the morning for no reason.

On the day of his funeral, the sky was so blue that it was not like Bangkok, but Chumphon.

The yard was full of the fragrance of roses that he planted.

He was lying in an uncovered wooden coffin, a pale corpse, but unprecedentedly handsome.

Wendy stood beside me in a long blue dress. We were probably the only two people who didn't wear black at the funeral. She hold my hand gently.

I was ready to ask the band to play a lively song, then put a bunch of roses on my dad's chest and tell him:

“Happy wedding day.”