Hmm, why does it feel like I'm in water, and it's warm? It's so dark. Where am I? Mo Fan thought to himself as he sensed the environment he could touch.
At that moment, a rather shrill female voice rang out, "Hu Yitong, time to eat!"
"Coming, coming."
...
After listening for a while and taking in the sensations of his surroundings, Mo Fan formed a bold hypothesis: he had likely been reborn into a fetus in *Home with Kids*.
There was no bizarre experience; Mo Fan had simply woken up one normal day to find himself here. Fortunately, having been beaten down by society, he was capable of handling situations calmly. Otherwise, he might have raised a ruckus right inside Liu Mei's belly.
In his past life, Mo Fan was an orphan. According to the director mother, he was abandoned right at the orphanage gates the moment he was born, so he had never seen his biological parents.
The orphanage didn't have much funding, and it was already a blessing if the children could eat their fill every day. Mo Fan was very smart, and knowing he had nothing, he always worked extremely hard.
At sixteen, Mo Fan was the top scorer in the college entrance examination for Qinghai Province and chose the Computer Science Department at Tsinghua University. After graduation, he became nothing more than a high-end corporate wage slave.
He was only around thirty in his previous life, constantly busy with work and never even having a romance, so he had no lingering attachments. He possessed the serene acceptance of "wherever you are, be at peace with it."
Having figured out his current situation, Mo Fan set his mind at ease. He stretched his limbs, obediently acting like a baby in the womb, and waited for the day of the ten-month pregnancy to reach term and be born.
...
"Ugh, why is something squeezing me?" As his body felt the relentless pressure, a novice mother's cry of pain came from outside. "Hu Yitong, hurry! I'm about to give birth. Grab the things and let's go to the hospital."
"Coming, coming!"
Hearing this situation, Mo Fan finally realized that this was a contraction. "I'm going to be born!" he thought, looking forward with some anticipation to life after coming out.
Hu Yitong dragged the suitcase out of the bedroom with a panicked look on his face, hurriedly reaching out one hand to support Liu Mei as she cried out in pain, and walked toward the outside.
"Call a cab! Hurry up and call a cab!" Liu Mei gripped Hu Yitong's arm tightly with both hands, and whenever the pain became unbearable, she would continuously slap him.
Hu Yitong felt half his arm go numb from the beating. Wearing a miserable expression, he could only think: *Why isn't this cab here yet?*
"It's coming, it's coming!" Seeing a taxi, Hu Yitong joyfully helped Liu Mei inside. The taxi driver, seeing the impending birth, panicked a bit as well, hurriedly getting out of the car to help load the suitcase into the trunk.
The driver urged them to fasten their seatbelts and stepped on the gas. You have to hand it to an old driver—he drove both fast and steady.
Sitting in the back seat, Liu Mei alternated between crying out in pain and chewing Hu Yitong out: "It's all your fault! To save a few bucks, you insisted on not letting me check into the hospital early. You kept saying we could wait a few more days, that it wasn't urgent."
"Not urgent? Not urgent my ass! I'm about to give birth right here at home..."
Seeing Liu Mei in agonizing pain, Hu Yitong swallowed hard and kept his mouth shut without arguing back, repeating only a single word: "Yes, yes, yes." Feeling the excruciating pain in his arm, his face turned purple. She pinched damn hard!
Finally, they managed to reach the hospital. After getting Liu Mei into the delivery room, Hu Yitong looked at the closed door, massaged his arm that had finally escaped purgatory, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and let out a long breath. "It's finally over."
He slumped onto a chair in the corridor, rested for a good while, and then pulled over the delivery bag left beside him. He dug his phone out of his pants pocket and called his mother-in-law so she could hurry over and take care of Liu Mei.
"Hello, Mom? It's me, Hu Yitong. Liu Mei is going to give birth; she's at the hospital right now. You should hurry over and take a look... Okay, I know."
Then he found his parents' phone number and dialed it to share the good news that Liu Mei was giving birth.
With that done, he collapsed into the chair to wait for his wife and child to come out.
Inside the delivery room, Mo Fan also knew he was about to be born. Wanting to spare his mother in this lifetime a bit of suffering, his little body smoothly slid down the birth canal, guided by the force of the contractions.
"Almost there! Push a little harder, it's almost out!" the midwife encouraged the mother while monitoring the progress of labor.
"Alright, it's out!" At the midwife's announcement of good news, Liu Mei let out a breath of relief. She tilted her head to look at the newborn baby beside her, sweat-drenched hair clinging to her face, a smile curling up the corners of her mouth.
Feeling the texture of the swaddling clothes, Mo Fan tried hard to open his eyes. After struggling for a long time, he gave up. Oh well, starting over meant his IQ was gone anyway—what could a newborn baby possibly see? Might as well sleep.
"He is so good-looking, my precious little grandson!" Liu Mei's mother lowered her head, gazing intently at the newly born infant with a face full of adoration.
Hu Yitong had only glanced at his son when he first came out—he was all wrinkled like a little old man. Hearing his mother-in-law shower him with such praise, he didn't dare argue, but couldn't help stealing another peek. *Very good, still ugly.*
He opened the millet porridge his mother-in-law had cooked for Liu Mei, sat down beside her, and fed her spoonful by spoonful.
"Have you picked a name for the child?" Liu Mei's mother sat right next to her precious grandson, asking the couple without raising her head.
Liu Mei couldn't stand Hu Yitong's dawdling nature. Leaning against the bed, she snatched the lunchbox away and drank it spoonful by spoonful. Hearing her mother's question, she replied, "I picked one myself. We'll call him Hu Fan."
Having just woken up from a nap, Mo Fan heard his new name right as he opened his eyes. It felt quite fateful—a single-character given name, Fan, though his surname had changed. In this lifetime, his surname was Hu. Hu Fan. He smacked his lips. That was fine too.
"Oh, Grandma's precious grandson is awake! Did you hear your name? From now on, we're called Fanfan, aren't we? Fanfan."
Grandma had sharp eyes and noticed Hu Fan opening his eyes. She spoke to her precious grandson with pleasant surprise, not caring whether he could understand or not.
Faced with such an enthusiastic grandma, Hu Fan couldn't open his mouth to reply, so he could only grin as best as he could with his toothless little mouth, looking as if he were telling Grandma how much he liked it.
Seeing her mother acting as if she had all the grandchildren in the world she could ever want, Liu Mei curved the corners of her mouth, and a smile broke through her usually stern expression.