Honey Stewed Squid

Gun leaned back in his chair, his legs kicked up on the edge of the desk and his face surly as he leafed through page after page of their reports… The office was crammed full with the several dozen people, some standing, some crouching, some leaning against the wall, and all waiting for their leader’s instructions.

With a loud rustle, the stack of papers was tossed onto the bed. “First thing tomorrow, we’re flying to Guangzhou.”

……

Long live Leader!

This group, who had managed to dodge a bullet, did not delay for even half a second, and all of them immediately jumped up, wedging themselves against one another  another to try to get out of this office first.

The one who managed to slip himself out first, 97, grabbed grunt by the arm. “Eh? Eh? Leader has an injury on his head.”

grunt gave a wicked smirk. “Didn’t we all hear it last night? He was exerting himself too hard. Smacked into it.”

Everyone…

Only demo did not understand, and tugging on Dt’s arm, he asked, “Huh, what was that? Captain? What did Leader smack into?”

Dt’s eyes glanced calmly at him, and he gave a factual answer. “The wall.”

“He hit the wall?” demo seemed to feel an unexplainable pain in his forehead as well, and he gave it a rub. “What for?”

“To feel good,” grunt snickered, and then, with quick steps, he darted out of there…

The man still in the office grabbed the folder that was on the desk, and with a whoosh, hurled it out the room.

Several seconds passed.

Folder in hand, Dt strolled back in leisurely and tossed it onto the sofa for him. “I forgot to tell you just now. You didn’t answer your phone yesterday, so Auntie called me. She wants you to bring that antique necklace that you helped her bid on back to Granddad. The money for it will be transferred into your account next month.”

……

Gun did not say a single word. With the back of his hand facing outward, he gave a wave.

Dt turned around and left.

* * * * *

Lovelorn again…

When Tong Nian, her eyes swollen, came down from upstairs, her dearest mother covertly pulled her over to the side. “Nian Nian?”

“Mm?” She lifted her head forlornly.

“Why were you crying just now? You guys broke up?” Her dearest mother made a reasonable conjecture.

“Mm… Broke up.” As she mumbled this reply, her nose began to tingle and two teardrops tumbled down.

A warm embrace encircled her protectively. Stirred by this demonstration of familial love, Tong Nian fell into another state of extreme misery, so she did not notice her dearest mother, beaming in delight, give a wink and raise her brows at her dearest father, who coincidentally was walking by and saw this scene. The message: See? I told you so. They really did break up.

Her parents exchanged expressions of relief.

This week was the first week of the start of a new school term.

Gathering her things, she returned to school. An hour in the administrative building got all of the registration procedures for starting a new term out of the way. When she stepped out, she happened to bump into the teacher in the university who was in charge of the ACM-ICPC, and seeing her, he immediately beckoned to her. “Last night, I called you several times, but your phone was shut off every time. I was afraid you’d forgotten about today’s exam.”

Exam? She was bewildered.

Aaaah!

She’d forgotten!

It was the school-wide recruitment examination to select the university’s ACM-ICPC team.

Each year, the university would send one team to participate in this particular competition, and the team would consist of three people who would collaborate together. Although it was called an international collegiate programming contest, the contestants did not necessarily major in computer science. For example, she, herself did not. Nor did they even necessarily belong to the Faculty of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, such as one of her teammates from the previous year’s contest, who had been from the Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering.

As a result, the team was formed after a tryout in the form of a standardized examination, and there were no limitations on a candidate’s field of study.

And the monitors of the examination were the teacher who led the team and also all the former key team members who had once participated in an ACM-ICPC.

But she had actually… forgotten all about this…

Still holding her student identity card, which had just been revalidated a moment ago, she followed the teacher into a lecture theatre in Teaching Building No. 1. The examination had already begun. Most of the candidates were first or second year students, and as they stared at the three problems on the examination paper, they basically all had the same expression on their faces: stumped.

Hence, some of the boys who were unable to answer the problems simply sprawled themselves on their desks, playing with their pencils while also studying these senior schoolmates of theirs who had competed last year and the year before. Then, gradually, the attention of all these exam candidates converged to rest on the one and only girl who was present—Tong Nian. This was especially so since this female, senior schoolmate also looked as if she had just cried through the entire night and was especially dejected.

With her chin propped on her hand, she sat behind the podium, her eyes watching the students below…

Her entire mind, however, was still filled with what happened last night and the dialogue with him this morning.

“Tong Nian?” Beside her, there was a voice, gently calling her. “Would you be able to step out for a bit?”

She turned around. It was her team captain, Zheng Hui. “Captain? Is there something the matter?”

The grown boy cast a glance at her swollen eyes, frowning slightly as he nodded. “Mm. There’s something.”

She replied with an “oh, okay,” stood up from her chair, and followed him outside. Zheng Hui walked out of the lecture theatre, and then shoving his hands into his pants pockets, he lowered his head to talk to her. “What… did you do over the winter break?

“Huh? Winter break?” She paused vacantly. What really could she have done? She had spent it all waiting for him to come back from the United States. “Oh, I just ate and drank a lot.”

“That day… I passed by the community compound where your home is.” Beneath the boy’s black-framed glasses, those eyes gazed straight at her. “I had actually originally wanted to go see you…”

“Huh? Which day?” she asked.

The person across from her cleared his throat. “It should have been February 14… or maybe the fifteenth.”

“Oh.” She earnestly searched through her mind. “So before the Spring Festival[1] [Lunar New Year period]? Good thing you didn’t go looking for me. At the time, I was in another city participating in an anime expo.” And I was with him… At that time, I was still with him…

Her gaze was drifting and drifting around, and her eyes could not help reddening.

The boy in front of her was truly taken aback, and he swallowed all the things he had wanted to say. But thinking about it, he found he was not willing to give up. Graduation was approaching quickly… When he truly left the school, there would be even less excuses for him to interact with her. He needed to seize this opportunity!

Unspeaking, she stood at the entrance of the teaching building and stared out at the students who were coming and going on their bicycles or on foot, as well as the occasional car that would drive by. This boy, the team captain who had led a team to take second runner-up in the ACM-ICPC world finals and also the idol of all the computer science students in the university, was standing before her, unable to form what he really wanted to say into words.

What is he doing right now?

Will he… be forced to go on a blind date with some person again? …

Thinking this, her eyes grew even more red.

Her nose was tingling, and lowering her head, she forcefully pressed her fingers to it. Don’t you cry, Tong Nian.

In her blurry gaze, even the red ground looked somewhat as if it was swaying. She could only look down and dig in her bag with all her might for some tissue. Where’d it go? Hurry up and appear, hurry up and appear…

A pair of black skate shoes was drawing nearer and nearer… until it stopped in front of her.

?

Unconsciously, she lifted her head.

In that instant, it was as if the entire sky had lit up brilliantly.

And so, in this way, she suddenly seemed to tumble into that pair of slightly narrowed, extremely displeased, extremely irritated, extremely impatient, and also extremely… gorgeous eyes. Especially after he saw her tears, he seemed even more cross. He swept a look over that boy standing beside her, whose hands were behind his back and even seemed to be grasping something, before bringing his gaze back to her. “What are you crying about?”

……

Was she dreaming?

She answered densely, “I’m not… crying about anything…”

He grew even more riled. Pulling off one side of his headphones, he glanced at that boy who was half a head shorter than him. “You messed with her?”

“N-no,” the boy stammered. Who was this? One of her relatives? Or her older brother? Or… Question marks filled the boy’s mind, and he was somewhat flustered. “You’re mistaken—”

A cold indifferent glance. Simply too penetrating.

The boy almost bit his own tongue. “I’m, I’m her schoolmate. We were in a programming contest together.”

With his height advantage, Gun could clearly see that the thing the boy was holding in his hand was a very small gift box. Unexpectedly, his lips curved up. “Oh? ACM?” Wasn’t that the programming contest or whatever that Dt once mentioned?

“Yes, yes, the ACM-ICPC.” Confidence immediately flooded the boy, and he was about to officially introduce himself.

“Were you competing against that guy?” Gun lifted his chin slightly to point at a person who was standing by the car parked at the teaching building’s entrance. At the base of those steps not far away, Dt stood, exceedingly bored, for all the girls who were coming and going to peek at…

……

That was—

“The world champion from two years ago? …”

The boy could not believe his own eyes. Th-that year, that year, the team captain for the championship-winning team had indeed looked like an ethnic Chinese. He had been with two blonde-haired boys. But, the entire time, he had spoken English, and he was of Norwegian nationality…

Champion? For the first time, Gun felt that Little Bai was quite commendable.

“Lost to him? No big deal.” With a half-smile, he gave a firm pat on the boy’s shoulder. “Kids need to know how to be good losers.”

The boy stood unmoving, dumbstruck. That pat left him feeling like a leaf in the wind: in a state of chaos.

Paying no more attention to this miscellaneous person, he bent at the waist and asked the girl who was in front and still staring foolishly at him, “Do you still have classes?”

“No…” With a blank look, she shook her head.

There was something going thump, thump, pounding away with all its might.

It was in her chest.

“Since you have no classes, then come out and hang out with us.” As he spoke, he slid his hands into his pants pocket and began to languidly amble away from the teaching building. “You’ll be back before nine.” Moving opposite to the flow of the crowd, he brushed his way through the students who were streaming into the building, about to head to class.

So tall was his build. So eye-catching.

Tong Nian remained stupefied in that same spot until he halted and looked back at her.

Immediately, she snapped awake and slowly, ever so slowly, followed after him with a blush colouring her cheeks.