Chapter 17#

Chapter 17#

Regarding the question of whether Tan Xiao was hard to chase, the conclusion is truly hard to say.

He had certainly had experiences of girls showing interest in him, but he always dodged them quickly. Sometimes the girl might not even have had that intention but just found him interesting and wanted to play with him; he would still flee immediately to nip it in the bud, thinking Didi was too slow and wishing he could take a plane to run faster.

But as for whether any boys had ever had that kind of intention toward him, he didn’t know himself. He felt there probably hadn’t been… maybe.

Before today, he hadn’t thought that a “pioneer” and “fashionable” thing like homosexuality could have any connection with him.

Despite Dr. Tan’s young age, his concepts in some areas were a bit old-fashioned and stiff.

He avoided emotional entanglements with girls because he knew he couldn’t give them any commitment or future. In the end, they would only part ways, merely causing others unnecessary heartbreak and leaving only regret in his own life.

With normal psychological and physical development, a positive and cheerful personality, and the desire to make friends with people he found interesting—Tan Xiao was a very normal, sunny twenty-four-year-old college student. To say he never had the impulse for romance was simply impossible.

Especially during the winter and summer vacations after he became an adult, he had a sufficient reason to participate in social practice and apply what he had learned, no longer needing to go to Europe to receive an education for an old capitalist family. But without the constant company of classmates during the holidays, he occasionally felt lonely and would yearn for a person he loved to keep him company.

He had a particular favorite charming actress. When he went out and met a very beautiful or elegant girl, he couldn’t help but look at her a few more times. He was full of curiosity about the opposite sex. Around the age of eighteen, he even loved watching idol dramas. Even now, he still loves observing the young couples around him, trying to alleviate his own occasionally occurring youthful restlessness by watching others fall in love.

Not long ago, he was also very interested in the story of Zhang Xingchuan and the “white moonlight.” If his friendship tree with Zhang Xingchuan had grown normally and vigorously, given their current level of familiarity, he could have asked Zhang Xingchuan openly what kind of story it actually was.

How did a good friendship turn into something like this?

Tan Xiao truly couldn’t figure out at which point it had “soured” (changed nature).

This probably couldn’t be blamed on someone else’s “illogical theories” polluting his spirit. Just looking at his own foolish appearance, where he’s so happy to see Zhang Xingchuan that he loses his sense of direction—he’s clearly fallen in, and quite deeply at that.

That night, he tossed and turned in his dorm, unable to sleep, starting to reflect on how many unintelligent things he had done throughout the evening.

Zhang Xingchuan drank the water from his mug, and he stupidly pursed his lips there.

Tell me, why did you purse your lips? Truly stupid, right?

And then, he was kissed by Zhang Xingchuan.

Wait, what?

Tan Xiao sat up with a start. Was he kissed?

How was his memory a bit patchy?

Zhang Xingchuan had also returned home and seriously replied to a few emails. It was past twelve before he prepared to sleep.

He turned off the lights. Five minutes later, he turned them back on.

This… seemed a bit too exciting.

Tan Xiao, in his dorm, got out of bed and poured a glass of water to drink. His favorite mug was that one; Zhang Xingchuan had also used it to drink water that evening.

Tan Xiao held the mug, turning it around and around to observe it, and his face started turning red again.

Did that count as a kiss? Probably not, just lips touching briefly.

How could there be such a “useless” guy as him in the world? A mere touch of the lips stimulated him as if he had drunk fake liquor, so much so that he could actually black out. He wasn’t even very clear how Zhang Xingchuan had left afterward.

Zhang Xingchuan, of course, had left with his two 1.2-meter-long legs.

At that time, the atmosphere had been built up, and his subsequent behavior was natural; he just kissed Tan Xiao naturally like that.

Who knew Tan Xiao would retreat several steps, covering his mouth with one hand, his two pitch-black pupils about to pop out of their sockets from staring? The blush already on his face instantly spread to his neck. If conditions allowed, his short hair would have all stood on end, just like a stressed small animal.

Zhang Xingchuan was actually startled by this reaction. He quickly realized: he had never been kissed.

Zhang Xingchuan hadn’t had such intimate actions with others either, but this was just lips touching briefly. Although kissing Tan Xiao also made him very happy, it wasn’t enough to stir up any inner stormy waves.

That kiss was pure instinct. Tan Xiao’s reaction at the time was too cute; it would have been unreasonable not to kiss him.

Tan Xiao was truly very fair-skinned. After being kissed, his face turned red, and the red spread down his neck, all the way into his crew-neck T-shirt. When fair-skinned people blush, they actually look pinkish—it’s a very… delicious look.

Zhang Xingchuan turned on the lights. He liked keeping them on; he even “competed” (worked hard) on this. Sometimes, when he was bored, he would even have an imaginary race, not knowing who he was competing against, but anyway, he would sometimes time himself.

Tan Xiao drank the water, sitting at his desk in a daze, and gradually felt a bit annoyed.

No, how was this different from Zhu Bajie eating the Ginseng Fruit? He hadn’t even savored the taste.

If you’re going to kiss, do it properly. Why just kiss once and then run away?

No, this wave deserves a huge point deduction—deduct them all.

After returning from the bathroom, Zhang Xingchuan successfully fell asleep.

This time, of course, he didn’t time himself. The CEO was already very happy, possibly the happiest he’s ever been.

Dr. Tan was still on his “gap,” waiting for thesis feedback. However, his daily routine was very regular; he ate breakfast on time and would go for a morning run when the weather was good.

Today he woke up exceptionally late because he only managed to fall asleep with difficulty near 4 AM.

He was eating brunch in the canteen and met a classmate he knew. The classmate asked him, “Are you sick? It’s rare to see you so listless.”

Tan Xiao said, “No, just didn’t sleep well.”

The classmate had just started his PhD and said with both sympathy and fear, “Is the pressure before graduation this great? Even you can’t handle it?”

Tan Xiao wanted to explain it wasn’t that, but he couldn’t tell the truth, so in the end, he had to admit to being overwhelmed by academic pressure, saying, “It’s okay, I’m just a bit ‘weak’ (incompetent).”

And truly, he was quite “weak”—he couldn’t even understand his first kiss.

Zhang Xingchuan kissed with full understanding and didn’t consider this brief touch as a “first kiss.”

A true first kiss should be at a carefully chosen moment, with a full sense of ritual, and be so unforgettable that it matches his expectations for the event.

He was a bit busy today—honestly, he was busy every day—but today his busyness made him impatient. As soon as one thing was finished, how was there another? It was endless. When he got a small break, he wanted to find something to chat with Tan Xiao about, but before he could think of how to “tease” him, the next task came.

This was different from chatting with Tan Xiao usually. He now had the mentality of someone who had just started dating; every sentence he wanted to say was meant to “charm the other to death.” After dating for a long time, he’d know how hilarious this mentality was—like a male peacock chasing other birds and trying his best to spread its tail. The other birds were too lazy to pay attention to him, yet he still wanted to spread his tail, spread it, just had to spread it.

Of course, Zhang Xingchuan’s “other bird” wouldn’t be too lazy to pay attention to him; he missed him intensely. Compared to his impatience to tease, it was even more extreme.

If Tan Xiao were truly a small bird, he would have flapped his wings long ago and flown outside the window of the Wencheng CEO’s office to take a good look through the glass.

He really wanted to see what on earth the CEO was so busy with. Not even a single message all morning.

What was so great about Wencheng, with a mere market value of ten billion, to be worth being this busy?

Today was cloudy, with no sun to bask in. Tan Xiao didn’t want to wander around the campus either; it wouldn’t be good to be caught by prying tourists and have the photo posted online. With his current haggard appearance, he might even be made into a “drama series”—troubled by love, heartbroken overnight.

And isn’t it exactly being troubled by love? Tan Xiao thought, Why is dating so tiring? At the starting stage, it’s already more tiring than getting a 709 on the Gaokao.

709 was his Gaokao score. Even for a “top student,” the third year of high school was a bit tiring.

In his senior year, he had even thought about studying Computer Science because he loved playing games when he was tired of studying; he thought it would be interesting and cool to be a game programmer in the future.

But his family strongly opposed it, which surprised him.

Initially, when he wanted to stay and live in China, there were also some opposing voices from the family in Europe. They weren’t strong, he was very persistent, and the opposition eventually faded away.

He has an Asian face, black hair, and black eyes; one could say he has almost no Caucasian features at all. When he was first brought “home” as a child, the high-nosed and deep-eyed elders only looked from a distance and let a sister in a maid’s dress hold him. He was only a little thing then, couldn’t even run fast, but he could feel that he wasn’t very welcome there.

Later he returned to China, grew up in China, went to school normally, and studied. Every winter and summer vacation, he had to return “home” for two to three months to receive another kind of education: equestrianism, fencing, sailing, classical instruments, etc. In comparison, returning to China for school felt more like a holiday.

Therefore, his proposal to study Computer Science met with intense opposition, which was something he had completely not expected.

His sister, Tan Yun, personally came to China to have a deep talk with him. A computer science major could only produce pure “tools of production.” But a family like theirs had already mastered the “means of production” more than a hundred years ago. To study such a technical major was to put the cart before the horse—no different from holding gold but insisting on making it into a golden hoe to hoe the ground.

Of course, those weren’t Tan Yun’s exact words; this was a summary Tan Xiao made of the meaning she expressed in that conversation.

She could communicate normally in Chinese but didn’t know how to scold people in Chinese. She scolded Tan Xiao in German and finally made a very impatient final decision: “I can hire a hundred or a thousand Silicon Valley ‘code farmers’ with a high salary. If one of them is my own younger brother, I will lose the dignity of the next generation’s helmsman.”

Tan Xiao was born in China and essentially grew up in China, and he wasn’t at all fond of this set of capitalist logic. But he had been a bit afraid of Tan Yun since he was a child. He was only sixteen then and wasn’t persistent about what major to study. Tan Yun “threatened” him not to study Computer Science and told him to study business, so he changed his application to Finance. Tan Yun later wanted to persuade him to go to North America or Europe for school. After hearing that he had been admitted to the Finance Department at Tsinghua, the matter was dropped.

Now he was very grateful for Tan Yun’s “threat.” The study in the Finance Department was a wonderful process for him. Many business students are experiencing or will experience confusion: the closer to money, the further from human nature. Tan Xiao had already experienced this in his early childhood. As a weak child facing that family, he often felt fear. He was afraid of that astronomical level of wealth, which made every “family member” with the same surname as his have a blurred face.

Studying finance allowed him to understand the workings of the world of money systematically and scientifically, and to understand the relationship between money and people. He could stand on the shoulders of human financial development history to look down on his family. The things he used to be very afraid of were just a drop in the ocean.

He had to thank himself even more; he had also put in some effort to score 709 and successfully get into the Finance Department of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua.

If he hadn’t been admitted to Tsinghua, Tan Yun would have come to persuade him to go abroad for school, and he wouldn’t have been able to spend the happiest eight years of his life at Tsinghua.

Likewise, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet Zhang Xingchuan at the alumni forum.