Chapter 80 - 80 - Fang's Reputation Hits Rock Bottom

The next morning, after Ren went off to Sirocco's new office and Fang went to join his schoolmates for the day, Steward Paul and Jules took the human shaped Sylvia and the three furballs out shopping. The initial plan was for Steward Paul to take Sylvia shopping while Jules would stay at home with the furballs, but Snow, Smoke and Shadow kicked up such a fuss that the two men had no option but to take them along.

Ren had also shown Sylvia in her snake form to Steward Paul and asked him to get things needed for the snake to live at home, too. Jules, too had seen a glimpse of the snake in the morning and then Ren had declared that the snake would be going with him to work. Fortunately, the snake was small as well as shy, and liked to wrap itself around Ren's forearm under his coat and remain more or less invisible. It would probably be a disaster if Ren carried out the snake openly...humans weren't as friendly to snakes as they were to cats and dogs.

Jules was as curious as Steward Paul about the identity of the baby girl who looked exactly like Fang. She looked a few months old at most...so... Fang had fathered a child at...sixteen? Maybe even fifteen...?! From Ren's short speech last night, Steward Paul had deduced that the child's mother was dead...and perhaps that's why the child had been sent to Fang...? Ren and Fang were clearly reluctant to talk about the origin of the baby...and it somehow seemed that liked the infant more than Fang did...and they had been reluctant to take the baby back to Cosmopolis with Fang. Did Fang dislike the child?

Fang was barely more than a child himself...so could the mother of the child have been a teenager as well? And how could Fang not have known about the child at all...or could it be that he had known and knowingly discarded the child...? Steward Paul and Jules didn't know the details of Fang's sordid and tragic past, but they had a general idea. Could it be that the child was an unwelcome result of one of those awful experiences of Fang...? The young boy had certainly suffered and had every right to resent those villains... but passing on that resentment to an innocent child...that would be terrible, wouldn't it? Especially since Ren seemed to be very fond of the baby already...

And Ren already had his hands full with looking after the furballs every alternate week... presumably the little snake Ren had shown him last night would be joining the three furballs. If they added a human baby to the mix...how could one man - the busy CEO of a multinational company, no less - possibly look after five babies?! And human babies were far more of a handful than the others!

Thus, at the moment, Steward Paul and Jules weren't as admiring of Fang as they normally were. Still, they hoped that Fang would be able to overcome his past and accept the little girl...after all, her paternity was all too clear to see.

The odd bunch of three humans and three furballs went shopping. They picked up stuff for the snake first (and some toys and treats for the fur babies as well) and then went to a shop stuff for human babies.

As luck would have it, they ran into some of Fang's schoolmates and some officers in the government of Sand Country - all of whom were familiar with Fang and Ren!

"Heavens, that baby looks just like Fang!" someone exclaimed loudly, drawing the attention of several people.

"Aren't those two puppies and the kitten familiar?"

"Aren't they CEO Ren's fur babies? He's very protective of them!"

"But look at the baby!"

"She's clearly Fang's!"

"I never imagined Fang could be so wild...not even an adult yet...and already has a baby?!"

"Is CEO Ren taking care of the baby for Fang? Isn't that his staff?"

"Where's the baby's mother, I wonder?"

"Maybe Fang ditched her when CEO Ren showed an interest in him...?" some jealous person murmured.

Actually, there were a lot of people who were jealous of Fang and how much CEO Ren doted on him...and gossip about high profile people always spread like wildfire.

Steward Paul and Jules were cautious as staff members of an elite family and quite adept at dealing with difficult situations...and so, with hardly any need to discuss, Jules immediately took Sylvia and the furballs and went to their car to wait while Steward Paul quickly finished the required shopping. Still, they weren't professionals, after all, and several pictures of Sylvia had already been secretly taken before they realised it.

A few hours later, Ren received a forwarded article from Pax with the headline "Heartless Teenage Dad Abandoned Mother and Child to Win Rich Man's Heart?" and with a throbbing headache, called Pax.

"What the hell is this?!" he demanded. "Who's publishing this nonsense about my Fang?!"

"Everyone. All media houses except the two associated with Sirocco are promoting this bit of news," Pax said tiredly. "Who's the child, Ren? And why does she look exactly like Fang?"

Ren rubbed his temples and explained what had happened last night to Pax, who was quite shocked. And then Pax for really, really angry - if this idiot couple had even the slightest sense, they would have been smart enough to inform him beforehand, and by now Pax would have already taken care of such a thing - in fact, such a thing may not have happened at all if Pax had known about it earlier!

"Why on earth did you let the child out without speaking with me first?!" Pax scolded. "Now I'm going to have to work twice as much to fix this!"

"You can have twice the bonus," Ren said carelessly. "Or thrice, even. Just make sure that Fang doesn't get to know about this at all."

"It's probably a bit too late for that," came a dry voice from the door, and Ren looked looked up at the pale face of his beloved Fang.