A few days later, at Huzhou Medical School, a boy was crying bitterly inside Xie Qingcheng's office.
"Waahhh, Professor Xie, I was wrong! I was really wrong! I'm heartless! I'm unworthy of being human! I betrayed your trust, betrayed the party and the country's expectations of me. I'll never skip class again, waaaah…"
Xie Qingcheng sat in front of his desk, his fountain pen skimming over the paper as he made a check mark on the list of names. "All right. You may leave," he said without even lifting his gaze.
The boy left, still sobbing.
Xie Qingcheng had plenty of ways to deal with problematic students. That clinical medicine major may have strutted in all high and mighty, but he left with tears streaming down his face. On his way out, he bowed several times to Xie Qingcheng and promised, in a voice choked with sobs, that he would turn over a new leaf and behave properly, that he would never skip class again; even if he were to do so, it wouldn't be Professor Xie's class.
Xie Qingcheng closed his notebook and steepled his fingers before himself.
All the problematic male students with questionable attitudes toward studying had already promised him that they'd straighten themselves out in the future. Unless He Yu was able to get all the female students on the list on board as well, he really would end up losing this round.
Sitting straight-backed in his office chair, Xie Qingcheng felt that victory was near, and thus began to placidly ponder how he'd go about training the defeated little xueba.
After some time considering his options, his thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing.
"Hello?"
"Professor Xie, it's me."
The caller was a female student, a first-year forensic science major. Like He Yu, she was also a xueba. Though she appeared on the list of people that He Yu needed to talk to, she was one of Xie Qingcheng's most disciplined students.
Xie Qingcheng had deliberately put her name on the list.
As an impassive woman who studied cadavers more than Dior and Chanel, she was specially exempted from attending class for no other reason than that this lofty ice queen could learn the course material much faster through self-study.
An academic goddess like this was usually rather unsociable. She rarely interacted with her classmates and didn't always listen to what her professors had to say, but she greatly respected Xie Qingcheng.
The first reason was because Xie Qingcheng was at the top of his profession and could engender the xueba's appreciation for those stronger than her. The second was because the school rejected her application when she first applied for independent study and only relented after Xie Qingcheng fought for her by saying that an institution should teach students according to their aptitude. Therefore, she held strong gratitude for his efforts on her behalf.
"Professor Xie, the boy named He Yu came looking for me."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't try to convince me right away to focus on studying. He said that you sent him to me so that we could have a heartfelt conversation, and then he arranged to have coffee with me tomorrow."
"You can go, but don't listen to him."
"I know. You can count on me," the female xueba said. "But Professor Xie, he's from Huzhou University next door, not our medical school. How did you meet him? Is he your relative?"
"He's the son of a close acquaintance," Xie Qingcheng said. "His father helped me out in the past, so I teach his son a lesson now and then when he runs into problems."
It happened to be the truth too. If not for He Jiwei, Xie Qingcheng might not have looked after He Yu for so long.
"Oh." The xueba didn't ask any more questions. "In that case, leave it to me. I won't let you down. I'm off to study now. Goodbye."
Xie Qingcheng ended the call and tossed his phone into his pocket before packing up his teaching materials and returning to his dorm.
Of course, Xie Qingcheng knew that He Yu wasn't someone who was easy to deal with. He looked on with the cool eye of a bystander as those distracted girls returned to class one after another, the number ticking up one by one. By Thursday, all eleven girls on the list except for the female xueba had remorsefully adjusted their behavior and come back for lectures.
The female xueba was the last holdout.
On Thursday evening, she came to ask Xie Qingcheng for help with a workbook problem. Afterward, he asked, "Has He Yu spoken to you yet?"
"He has." The neat and competent girl with her hair pulled up in a ponytail responded. "We met up twice this past week and had afternoon tea both times."
But after saying this, she hesitated briefly before adding, "But he…he didn't talk to me about skipping class or anything like that. He really did just take me out to walk around and have a heart-to-heart."
Xie Qingcheng frowned slightly.
It was already Thursday, yet He Yu still hadn't talked about the matter at hand?
There were three more days before the week was over. What exactly was He Yu planning?
While he was lost in thought, the girl xueba coughed quietly. "Professor Xie?"
"Hm?" He lifted his gaze and glanced at her distractedly with dispassionate eyes.
"I have a question I'd like to ask you."
"Go ahead." Xie Qingcheng had already picked up the fountain pen that he'd used to solve the previous problem from the table.
But he put the cap back on the pen upon hearing her question. What she wanted to know had absolutely nothing to do with learning.
"Um, is He Yu from the 1001 screenwriting and directing class at Huzhou University?"
Only a man as staunchly masculine as Xie Qingcheng would be oblivious enough to feminine fancy to fail to understand the reason behind her question. He frowned and sized up the formidable girl before him. Why was she asking him this?
He nodded stiffly. "Yes. What about it?"
"Nothing much," she answered firmly. She spread out her notebook and diverted her teacher's attention with her studies. "Professor Xie, these are the questions related to your field that I've collected over the course of this week. Please help me answer them."
Sunday came in the blink of an eye.
The female xueba sent him a message. "Professor Xie, are you free tonight? I've spent all day thinking and come to a realization about something. Can I discuss it with you?"
Thus, Xie Qingcheng arrived at the door of his office at the agreed upon time of 6:30 p.m.
His office was at the very end of a winding hallway in Teaching Building 5. As he made his way down the long corridor, he completely failed to recognize the female student standing next to the handrail near his office.
Upon arriving at the door to his office, he began to dig for his keys to open the door without acknowledging the girl's presence. Even when she opened her mouth and called out, "Professor Xie!" his first reaction wasn't to glance at this young lady, but rather, to look around in an attempt to find that student with her straight, unstyled hair who was always in T-shirts and jeans that he'd arranged to meet.
"…Professor Xie, I'm over here."
Xie Qingcheng turned around and froze.
After a moment, he subconsciously took a step backward, hitting his head on the aluminum security door of his office with a loud bang. Gasping sharply in pain, he touched a hand to his head and narrowed his eyes.
"Professor! Are you okay?"
"…I'm fine."
His hitting his head was indeed fine, but the appearance of the girl before him posed a much bigger problem.
The female xueba looked nothing like her usual self.
She had let her hair down from its customary ponytail and had a stylist blow it out. Her face was carefully made up, and she wore a gauzy, pure white dress. Her slim legs looked as if they'd been carved from jade, forming pin-straight lines that ended in a pair of black satin heels. Those high heels had silver buckles and straps that looped around her delicate ankles, setting off the nude-pink of her toenails.
Xie Qingcheng had to confirm it several times before he finally concluded beyond any doubt that this wasn't an impostor but the genuine article.
His headache suddenly intensified as he began to feel a faint sense of foreboding.
The female xueba wasted no time in bluntly revealing her reason for requesting their meeting. "Professor Xie, um, I came here to tell you that I went out with He Yu again. This time, he talked to me about returning to class, but he also told me about the agreement between you two."
Xie Qingcheng was speechless.
"Professor Xie, I respect you a lot, but I don't think it's good to take advantage of someone when they're in a difficult position. It's not something a teacher should do."
Xie Qingcheng's hand, which was about to grab the key and open the door, came to a stop. "…What did He Yu say to you?"
"He told me everything. He said his declaration of love ended in failure, so you wanted him to train more and gave him some extremely difficult challenges."
Xie Qingcheng lifted his hand to run his slender fingers through his bangs. His neat coif ended up tousled and messy; several dark strands tumbled back down over his eyes.
He stared at her through his disheveled hair with his coldly incisive peach-blossom eyes. Then, with a click of his tongue, he looked away and said, "It's not as simple as you think."
After a pause, he continued, "Forget it. You may leave."
But she didn't leave. She stared at him intensely with the tenacity of a true xueba. "Laoshi, you have to put yourself in He Yu's shoes and stop making things difficult for him at this time. Also, I really think that you're the one in the wrong here. I hope you can apologize to He Yu in the future when the opportunity arises."
In the ensuing silence, a thought occurred to Xie Qingcheng: He Yu used his blood toxin on her, didn't he?
Xie Qingcheng's expression cooled. Beneath his messy fringe, his eyes were piercingly sharp. "I asked you to leave. Do you understand me?"
"I do. But before I leave, I wanted to be honest with you, Professor. I've already told He Yu about our private agreement."
Xie Qingcheng was at a loss for words.
"I had no choice. He was sincere to me, and I didn't want to lie to him either. The fact that you put me down on his list so that you'd win—I really couldn't keep it a secret for you any longer."
This little traitor didn't even forget to give Xie Qingcheng a courteous bow at the end of her speech.
"Please forgive me."
As the last syllable fell from her lips, the young girl turned around and strode gracefully away in her heels. There was even a little sashaying spring in her step that Xie Qingcheng had never seen in all the time he'd known her.
Xie Qingcheng felt a raging headache beginning to build, but he didn't want to argue with the female student. So, he merely gritted his teeth and growled in a low voice, "He…Yu…"
A shadow moved.
The sound of footsteps came from somewhere nearby.
And then, he appeared.
"Professor Xie, you were looking for me?"
Xie Qingcheng suddenly raised his head, his hair becoming even messier as his gaze zeroed in on the direction of that voice.
A tall boy stood with his hands in his pockets and a backpack slung over one shoulder. His expression was calm and indifferent, and beneath the smooth expanse of his exposed forehead, a pair of disdainful almond eyes looked out from under lowered lashes and a mouth curved in a nearly imperceptible smile.
He Yu had been hiding behind a large gothic pillar at the end of the corridor this whole time. Neither Xie Qingcheng nor the female xueba knew he had been watching.
When the girl had been vigorously fighting injustice on his behalf, when Xie Qingcheng had been scolded so thoroughly by this student that he couldn't get in a word edgewise, He Yu had actually been leaning there with his hands casually thrust into his pockets, listening from behind that damned gothic pillar that was large enough to require three people to encircle it.
Was he even fucking human?
With an ashen face and a glare that could kill, Xie Qingcheng said, "You—"
"Oh, you can't blame me." He Yu raised his hand and made a shushing motion. His slightly narrowed eyes took on a roguish quality undetectable to anyone but Xie Qingcheng.
He gave Xie Qingcheng a once over, then laughed coldly. "You got someone to help plot against me first, teaming up to make sure I couldn't win. If I used similar methods against you, no one could accuse me of being petty, right?"
Xie Qingcheng didn't bother dignifying his words with a response.
He had already lost. Anything he said would just result in him losing more face.
And so, Xie Qingcheng clenched his teeth and held his tongue.
After a long silence, he finally asked, "How did you trick her? Just look at her in that getup—is that how a student is supposed to look? A halter top minidress…"
"What's wrong with it?" He Yu circled closer, closing the gap between himself and Xie Qingcheng with one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around the strap of his messenger bag. At this proximity, the only difference was that the way that He Yu lowered his lashes to look down at Xie Qingcheng became even more evident.
"Then tell me, how should a student look?"
He Yu pressed closer, like he was about to nail Xie Qingcheng through the door.
"A graphic T-shirt, jeans, , high ponytail, and no makeup?"
"Doctor Xie," he sighed. "Actually, I've wanted to tell you this for a while: I'm not the only one who's sick. You ought to get yourself checked out too. You're way too controlling. Don't you know about 'straight man cancer'? What year is it, and you still think that it's improper for a girl to wear a halter dress?"
He Yu took another step closer, bringing them nearly nose-to-nose.
Were they of opposite genders, such a distance would be dangerous in a suggestive way, but as they were both straight men, the proximity took on an aggressive and invasive quality that seeped wordlessly right into Xie Qingcheng's flesh and bones.
With He Yu looming over him, Xie Qingcheng had no choice but to lean back against the ice-cold panels of the door. The extreme discomfort of this position finally brought Xie Qingcheng to his senses. Not wanting to waste any more time with He Yu, Xie Qingcheng reached up to press a hand against his broad and sturdy chest.
"Forget it. I won't talk nonsense with you. Step aside."
Xie Qingcheng shoved He Yu back hard, then rubbed at his wrist. He lowered his arm, shot He Yu a glare, and then trudged past He Yu to leave.
"…Wait a minute, Xie Qingcheng."
After walking a few dozen meters away, He Yu turned again and leisurely called out from behind him.
Xie Qingcheng's expression was already extremely overcast, but after standing there grimly for a moment, he nevertheless turned back.
"What?" he asked, face ashen.
He Yu had pulled out his list of names from his bag at some point and was now waving it at Xie Qingcheng. "You lost this round."
But he didn't leave it at that. The degenerate stuffed the list back into his bag, then took out something covered in pink wrapping paper.
He glanced up at Xie Qingcheng with an aloof expression as he slowly tugged at the ribbon around the package. "Professor, even though you're playing a training game with me, there should be consequences when you lose too," he said, voice unhurried. "Otherwise, wouldn't that be way too boring?"
Xie Qingcheng stared at him in silence.
"Tell me, as a professor, a member of the older generation, and my former personal physician, how should I punish you for breaking the rules like this? What should I do to teach you a little lesson?"
You can lose a bet to someone, but you should never lose your graceful demeanor. If you were willing to place a bet, then you had to be willing to accept your losses.
"What do you want?" Xie Qingcheng asked impassively.
"What a pity, I've not decided yet," He Yu said gently. "You can just owe me for now—when I think of something, you can repay it all at once."
"All at once?"
"Mm. I think you'll lose to me again in the future."
Xie Qingcheng was finding it a challenge to control his temper. "He Yu, don't get ahead of yourself."
"I wouldn't dare." He Yu smiled. Despite his words, he very much "dared" to look Xie Qingcheng over with open provocation in his eyes. "But, you'd do well not to cheat again in the future, Professor Xie. You're not very good at it, and it's so easy for me to find out when you're up to something."
His tone was still courteous and polite.
But as he spoke, he had already torn open the pink wrapping paper to reveal a piece of chocolate, albeit a misshapen one—it didn't look like it was bought off the shelves, but rather clumsily made by some amateur.
"Didn't you ask me just now how I got through to her? Actually, it wasn't much—I just invited her out for afternoon tea twice, and then we went to a chocolate-making class today. She doesn't have many friends at school, you know. The other students all think she's weird and antisocial, but actually she's quite easy to get along with. It's just that no one really invites her along when they're going out for fun."
As he spoke, he broke off a chunk of chocolate with a snap and took the small, brown piece of cocoa butter between twin rows of pearly-white teeth before walking past Xie Qingcheng, his messenger bag slung over his shoulder.
As they brushed past each other, the schoolboy stared straight ahead, not even sparing Xie Qingcheng a glance as he sucked the chocolate into his mouth and chewed it slowly.
"So sweet."
And with that, the xueba was on his way, leaving Xie Qingcheng with the sight of his gentlemanly figure lit by the setting sun.
At that very moment, in a villa somewhere in Huzhou, under the slanting rays of twilight, a woman's high heels clicked across the bricks of the balcony. The hem of her red dress skimmed over a man's legs.
"Executive Duan." The woman sat down next to the man, cuddling up to him with a smile as she lit him a cigarette.
"Has everything in Liang Jicheng's home been destroyed?"
"It's all been cleaned up."
Duan-laoban smiled and accepted the proffered cigarette, taking a drag. The woman swept aside her cascade of long, wavy hair and leaned in for a kiss, but Duan-laoban turned his face away and sniffed at the side of her neck instead.
"How many people did you sleep with today? I can smell them on you."
"Isn't it all for you?" the woman replied lazily. "When can we go after Huzhou University? I'm tired of sleeping with the board of directors, the greasy old geezers."
"Those board members are old geezers, but Executive Huang isn't? You seem to like him quite a lot."
The woman twirled her hair flirtatiously with her fingertips. "Executive Huang's young at heart, so he's aging like a fine wine. But…" She smiled. "I like you more, Executive Duan…"
Duan-laoban lifted a finger and pressed it to her soft lips. "If you keep misbehaving like this, I'll have to speak with your Executive Huang," he cautioned mildly. "Take a guess—if he finds out, do you think he'll be mad?"
The woman stiffened slightly, then forced a smile. "I'm just teasing you. Why are you so serious?"
Duan-laoban reached up and stroked her hair with a calm expression. "Just do what you're supposed to do. After that fiasco with Cheng Kang Psychiatric Hospital, I can tell that a number of people are getting restless and impatient. Keep playing with those hamsters. Once our hackers receive the equipment they ordered from America, we'll be able to start showing those rodents who's boss."
He lifted the woman's chin and examined her face.
In a soft, slow voice, he said, "When the time comes, the technological aspects will depend on the hackers, but when it comes to cleaning up the hamster cages at Huzhou University, that will depend on you and her."
The light from the lamps illuminated the woman's delicate and lovely face.
The face of Huzhou University's instructor, Jiang Liping.
"You can be as vicious as you like." Duan-laoban stroked her cheek with his fingers. "I know you've suffered many grievances these past few years… Once we're done, you won't have to be a mole among that horde of old hamsters any longer…"