It had been nighttime when Zhao Sheng moved into the faculty apartment yesterday. This morning he had rushed back to his dormitory to move his belongings, so he hadn’t yet had a chance to look closely at the faculty housing.
Now, with all his luggage carried to the entrance, he finally realized just how pleasant the living environment was in Capital University’s faculty apartments.
A great lawn stretched out in front of the buildings. Sprinklers resembling bamboo-copter toys watered the fresh green grass, their sprays forming circular rainbows in the sunshine. Leafy trees and shrubs were arranged naturally and attractively throughout the landscaping.
It was fresh and delightful. Squirrels occasionally streaked across the lawn like little sprites, their tails raised like enormous chainsaws. One darted past, then another, then a third… Goodness, they were fat.
Suddenly, something as plump as a piglet appeared. An overweight cat sprang nimbly half a meter up a tree, scrambled back down like a maniac, then raced to another tree and climbed that one instead.
The older students helping carry the luggage cried out.
“Aww! So cute!”
“Isn’t that Duzai? I haven’t seen him in ages. So this is where he’s been hanging out.”
Duzai was a stray cat that had lived on campus for almost eight years. He was a university veteran; by seniority alone, he ought to be working on his doctorate by now.
Zhao Sheng had no interest in a cat that had earned its doctorate without pain or effort. His gaze remained fixed on a patch of lawn in the distance.
If my brother were here, he’d definitely be interested in that grass.
* * *
Bzz… bzz…
The center console might as well have had a hornet’s nest embedded in it. Steering right with one hand, Fang Peizhi glanced at the phone that wouldn’t stop vibrating. The name on the screen darkened his mood immediately.
Especially when he’d only just dealt with a deliberate accident scam.
He sighed, picked up the phone, and answered.
“Hello, Peizhi? Have you arrived yet?” The middle-aged woman’s voice was warm and affectionate.
Fang Peizhi felt uncomfortable and moved the phone away from his ear. “Not yet,” he answered curtly.
“Yuanyuan’s already there. Whatever you do, don’t be late.”
“I promise you and Yuanyuan will get along.”
Fang Peizhi said nothing. The voice on the phone made him deeply uneasy, stirring an instinctive resistance. He tossed the phone back onto the console and kept driving.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Peizhi, why aren’t you saying anything?”
When no answer came, the well-dressed woman realized he was angry.
After all, the arranged date had sprung up so suddenly that Fang Peizhi hadn’t found out about it until just an hour before he was supposed to meet the woman.
“Mom didn’t tell you ahead of time because I was afraid you wouldn’t go.”
“You’re already twenty-eight and you don’t even have a partner. Don’t blame me, Peizhi. I’m just worried about you.”
Twenty-eight this year, thirty next year, and thirty-five before you knew it!
By Fang Peizhi’s age, even unmarried people were bringing girlfriends home to meet their families. Yet he had never brought home so much as a hint of a girlfriend.
She had arranged plenty of dates before, and none had led anywhere. At first he’d at least humored her by meeting the women. Eventually, he stopped showing up at all.
This time, she had concealed the arrangement until just before the agreed time, knowing that Fang Peizhi’s manners and upbringing would prevent him from standing someone up.
But the feeling of being manipulated was nauseating, as though sour liquid were rising through his stomach and every internal organ.
The lady continued her feeble explanation. “I’m worried you’re lonely without someone who really understands you. Having a companion is always better than being alone.”
Fang Peizhi: “I’m perfectly happy living on my own.”
His mother: “It’s different when there are two of you. You’ll understand once you’re married.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Judging by his tone, his mother knew this date was ninety percent likely to go nowhere. She spoke with great earnestness. “Peizhi, why are you so unwilling to find someone?”
Without hesitation, Fang Peizhi replied, “I made a terrible vow when I applied for my doctorate.”
“…”
“How could you make a vow like that? Oh, those things don’t count!”
When people desperately hoped for an uncertain outcome, they sometimes made solemn vows as if a promise could guarantee success.
It wouldn’t have been strange for Fang Peizhi to make such a vow.
People who studied themselves half-mad were all like that.
Unwilling to endure any more of the same circular nonsense, Fang Peizhi ended the call.
As for the terrible vow he’d supposedly made when applying for his doctorate…
He hadn’t made any such vow at all.
The jet-black Maybach, gleaming like an armored warrior on a battlefield, rolled into a parking space. Fang Peizhi checked his messages, then got out and entered the designated restaurant ten minutes before the agreed time.
The woman he was meeting was Lin Juexiao, nicknamed Yuanyuan, the daughter of the owner of a prominent domestic investment bank. Frank and easygoing by nature, she was twenty-six, had recently returned from studying abroad, and was now working in an entry-level position at her family’s company.
If you wanted to understand an industry quickly, you had to build a solid foundation.
Lin Juexiao had none of a spoiled heiress’s airs, partly because of how she’d been raised. She attended public schools as a child and earned her master’s degree at Oxford through her own efforts. Until she went overseas, she believed her family was only just scraping the bottom rung of the middle class. Then one day in London, scrolling through her phone while chewing miserably on some foul-smelling pork, she happened across an old Forbes rich list. Her father was on it.
What?!
Now that she was back in China, she worked herself to the bone every day and ate lunch at whatever little restaurant near the office charged thirty or forty yuan a head.
Young people weren’t fond of blind dates. Being set up meant being arranged and controlled, the exact opposite of the freedom youth was supposed to bring.
Lin Juexiao had been forced to come by her family as well. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have chosen an ordinary lunchtime restaurant for the meeting.
People were marrying and having children later these days, and some weren’t doing either at all. Why were her parents in such a rush to find her someone? She was only twenty-six and fresh out of school. Her life had barely begun!
There was another reason she was so resistant. Her friends came from all over, from every kind of family. Plenty had been pushed into arranged dates, and more than a few had shown her pictures of the prospects their families selected.
After seeing those photos, Lin Juexiao had been stunned into silence for a very long time.
A very, very long time.
Didn’t those parents realize that if their children married these people, they’d actually have to kiss them?
Just because the parents weren’t the ones doing the kissing, did they have to torture their children like this?!
And in the popular imagination, only men who had already been rejected by the general population of women ended up on the blind-date market.
So her friends’ prospective dates had been a parade of increasingly bizarre specimens.
One friend had said, I couldn’t even dare to die while dating him. What if I had to relive the relationship in the moments before death?
What a miserable fate.
Lin Juexiao was inwardly suffering too, with no idea what her own date would be like.
Her family had insisted she come. Her father claimed the man’s qualifications were an opportunity not to be missed.
She had rolled her eyes. “Then why don’t you date him?”
Her dad: “Let’s not get into that.”
But he’d thumped his chest and sworn that this man was the highest quality prospect imaginable.
Stirring the juice in her glass, Lin Juexiao gave a cold little laugh. Highest quality? How high could his quality possibly be? Higher than premium-quality protein?
“Sir, how many in your party? What would you like to eat?”
Someone entered the restaurant. Lin Juexiao looked up and saw a devastatingly handsome man, the sort who instantly captured everyone’s attention and made it impossible to look away.
Everyone who saw him seemed to grow intoxicated, only to think with absolute sincerity, Holy crap, he’s handsome.
He was not only good-looking; his build and height were extraordinary as well.
An intuition told her that this man was her blind date.
Holy crap! Dad! You weren’t kidding!
I have to date this one. If I don’t, I’ve wasted my life. If I have to relive the date twice in my dying flashbacks, that’s a twofold return on investment.
Despite how easy it was to be dazzled by his appearance and physique, Lin Juexiao didn’t let his looks override her reason.
With his face, he ought to have been in enormous demand. If a man like that had ended up on the blind-date market, surely he had some flaw ordinary people couldn’t bear!
He was like the one shared bicycle left at a subway entrance during morning rush hour.
Soon, Fang Peizhi looked toward her table and walked over.
With every step that brought him closer, Lin Juexiao’s resolve crumbled a little further.
He was devastatingly handsome.
The moment their eyes met, she lost control of what was going through her head.
“Hello. Are you Miss Lin?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Fang Peizhi froze.
Lin Juexiao bit her lip in regret. Damn it, I said what I was thinking out loud! Will he think I’m too easy to win over now?
Then a sudden sound cut through the moment, rescuing Lin Juexiao from her predicament.
Slurrrrrp!
An abrupt, thunderous noise rang out, drawing Fang Peizhi’s attention before he knew it.
Zhao Buxi was sitting with his mouth stuffed full, still sucking in a noodle. Fang Peizhi’s gaze focused on his face.
“You.”