DSYOM Chapter 61

Mathematics is a subject that requires meticulous analysis. In the stereotype, a mathematician’s journey should have been thorough, planned, and compared in many ways, just like the Cadillac owned by Bian Cheng that was 30% off.

However, after the trip to Las Vegas, Wen Di realized he had another side—impulsive and unpredictable.

It was like when they took the bullet train to Eerguna, checked into the hotel, and Wen Di was shocked to find a crystal chandelier hanging in the bedroom, a familiar marble bathtub in the bathroom, a living room that seemed capable of hosting 12 guests at the same time, and outside the study, there was a 360-degree panoramic terrace with a spectacular view of the city.

“Why did you book such a big room?” Wen Di leaned on the terrace railing, looking at the quiet Genhe River in the night, squinting comfortably while feeling sorry for the shared assets lost after marriage.

“I summarized the characteristics of the novel’s protagonist,” Bian Cheng said. “They sleep in a bedroom of 1,000 square meters every day and wake up in a 300-meter-long bed. The hotel didn’t have a room that big, but we can wake up in a 3-meter-long bed.”

Wen Di thought he might have analyzed the wrong genre of novel. But it didn’t matter, according to any novel’s setting, he should have been an executive or the CEO of a startup by now, of course, he should be staying in a presidential suite.

“What are we eating?” he asked.

“Foie gras, caviar, white truffle.”

“We are on the grassland.”

“Whole sheep feast, hand-pulled meat, large skewers of red willow.”

“Just as I imagined,” Wen Di commented.

Bian Cheng took him to a famous restaurant, located near the Eerguna Wetland Scenic Area. The restaurant featured a self-made grassland landscape, where diners could sit in a yurt and enjoy the whole sheep feast. Although the ingredients were simple, Wen Di was very satisfied with this trip.

Moreover, while the presidential suite was a waste of money, it offered a variety of options for making love. The living room, dining room, kitchen, and study all suited different novel scenarios, not to mention there was even a massage room inside.

They creatively used essential oils, hot stones, and traction beds, which led to starting the following day from noon, instead of galloping across the grassland as planned. Horseback riding was definitely out of the question.

“We can drive around,” Bian Cheng said.

They had arrived by train. Wen Di had originally thought Bian Cheng had signed them up for a tour, but when he woke up in the 1,000-square-meter (imaginary)[footnote]yep, the author wrote this (imaginary)[/footnote] bedroom and walked to the hotel entrance, he found that the only person in the rented SUV was Bian Cheng.

“I’m your private driver,” Bian Cheng said.

How could the protagonist join a tour group?

The car drove along a small path through the grassland. The grass was a vibrant green, occasionally dotted with wildflowers, like an oil painting bathed in light. White clouds merged with the horizon, floating leisurely. Occasionally, herds of cattle and sheep passed through the grass, raising their heads to look at the passing SUV, making curious sounds.

The car wasn’t moving slowly, but the scenery ahead was so vast that it created an illusion of stillness. The grassland was an endless wilderness, freezing both space and time.

“The sunset on the grassland must be beautiful,” Wen Di stuck his head out of the SUV’s sunroof, the summer breeze carrying a faint scent of grass brushing against him. He inhaled deeply, gazing at the distant skyline. “The thunderstorms on the grassland must be beautiful too.”

“However,” he added, “it seems like these two can’t appear at the same time.”

“Not necessarily,” Bian Cheng said.

Wen Di pulled his head back inside the car, looking at Bian Cheng with confusion. Bian Cheng raised his wrist to check his watch and said, “There are still two hours left.”

Wen Di asked what the two hours were for, and Bian Cheng told him to pay attention to the scenery.

After a while, the clouds on the horizon began to gather more and more, and the light gradually dimmed. Bian Cheng pulled the car over to the side of the road, with the wheels half off the grass, and turned on the hazard lights.

“Is it going to rain?” Wen Di observed the dark clouds in the distance.

“Listen,” Bian Cheng said.

The grassland was gradually enveloped by a suffocating quietness, and the sky became grey and somber.

Suddenly, a bright light flashed across the horizon. The thunder first rumbled in the distance, then gradually grew louder, turning into a deafening roar. Immediately after, lightning repeatedly tore across the sky, drawing dazzling flashes on the thick clouds. Each time it flashed, the scattered flowers on the grassland briefly lit up for a moment, only to fall back into the dimness.

The wind grew stronger and stronger. The grass swayed in the wind, as if cheering for the rain that was about to come. Then, the rain poured down in torrents, like a waterfall, as if trying to fill every gap between the sky and the earth. The cattle and sheep had already been herded back by their owners, leaving only them in the car, like a lone boat in the storm.

The thunderstorm on the grassland carried a terrifying beauty.

Then, Bian Cheng took out his phone, opened a stock app, and handed it to Wen Di.

Wen Di was somewhat puzzled. “I don’t manage finances.”

Bian Cheng pointed to the company name at the top of the screen. Wen Di took a closer look and let out an ‘Ah.’

It was his ex-boyfriend’s company listed on Nasdaq.

Wen Di tightly shut his eyes and pushed the phone away. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Make a wish,” Bian Cheng said, “and when I give the signal, open your eyes.”

“Ah?”

Wen Di listened to the continuous sound of rain, filled with confusion, and silently cursed in his heart. Then Bian Cheng said, “Open your eyes.”

Wen Di opened his eyes, and the company’s stock price curve chart came into view. The green line trembled and plummeted at an astonishing speed.

He snatched the phone and stared at the screen in disbelief.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Bian Cheng said. “You’re the protagonist of this world and everything you want can come true.”

Wen Di watched as the stock price fell from 120 at opening to 100, rapidly approaching 80, and suddenly burst into joyous laughter.

Of course, he knew there were no miracles in the world. The weather forecast had predicted brief thunderstorms for the day, and He Wenxuan’s company had likely issued some announcement about discovering severe defects in its latest product, requiring a global recall. His husband wasn’t a god, just someone skilled at gathering information.

But in that fleeting moment, he was willing to believe that everything was the realization of his inner wishes. In their second escape from reality, he was the protagonist, the center of everyone and everything.

The torrential rain turned into a gentle drizzle.

“I really liked rainy days when I was a kid,” Wen Di said. “Listening to the sound of rain at night while falling asleep felt very cozy.”

“Then sleep,” Bian Cheng said as he turned on the car’s audio system.

Soft, lyrical music flowed out, blending with the sound of the rain. Before them lay an endless plain, green grass, and wildflowers. In the vast, boundless world, there were only the two of them and the never-ending raindrops.

Wen Di closed his eyes. The exhaustion from working on his thesis surged over him, and drowsiness began to take hold. He fell asleep to the sound of the rain, as if floating on the sea.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when the gentle patter of raindrops gradually ceased, and someone lightly nudged his shoulder. “The rain has stopped.”

He drowsily lifted his eyelids open, then suddenly widened his eyes.

The sun hung low on the horizon, half-hidden behind the rolling hills. The rain clouds had dissipated, leaving only a radiant halo set aflame by the sunset. In the afterglow, the grassland was bathed in a gentle golden light. Crystal-clear droplets clung to the tips of the grass and petals, sparkling faintly.

Wen Di couldn’t help but open the car door and step onto the rain-washed road.

Bian Cheng followed beside him, pointing to a small rise not far away. “Let’s go there.”

The protagonist of the world was led to the top of the hill. Bian Cheng pointed toward the horizon and said, “Look.”

A rainbow had quietly emerged, arching across the corner of the sky. Its colors were so pure and vibrant, as if they would shatter at the slightest touch.

Wen Di gazed up at this miracle in the sky, and felt a surge of emotion and awe rising in his heart.

“Now look over there,” Bian Cheng’s finger shifted slightly from the rainbow.

Wen Di gasped in amazement. There was a second rainbow. It was much dimmer than the first and hard to notice unless one looked closely.

As he admired it, Wen Di asked, “How did you spot it so easily?”

“The position of rainbows is determined by the geometric relationships of refraction and reflection,” Bian Cheng explained. “The primary rainbow typically forms an angle of about 42 degrees with the observer and the sun. The secondary rainbow forms an angle of about 51 degrees. Because it’s created by light reflecting twice inside the water droplets, the secondary rainbow’s colors are reversed compared to the primary, and its brightness is much lower.”

Wen Di smacked his lips twice, feeling that it made perfect sense. Who said one couldn’t calculate refraction angles under the vast grassland and romantic sunset?

“If we go see the aurora, stargaze, or look at flowers in the future, are you also going to talk about math?” he asked.

“Many flower arrangements follow the Fibonacci sequence,” Bian Cheng said. “For example, the seed patterns of sunflowers.”

Wen Di looked at him and nodded: “Alright, everything is related to math. Is there a formula for love too?”

“That’s a bit extreme,” Bian Cheng said.

“Oh.”

“However,” Bian Cheng continued, “if we had to compare love to a mathematical formula, it would be a quintic equation that satisfies the conditions of a contraction mapping.”

This was the same person who just thought he understood the meaning of ‘extreme’, Wen Di thought.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You know I didn’t understand two-thirds of that ba?”

He didn’t mean for Bian Cheng to explain, but the other party still started speaking.

“You’ve learned quadratic equations ba,” Bian Cheng said. “In this kind of equation, there is a formula for finding the roots. As long as you know the coefficients of the equation and plug them into the formula, you can calculate the solution to the equation.”

“En,” Wen Di said. “I know that.”

“Linear equations, quadratic equations, cubic equations, and quartic equations all have formulas for finding roots,” Bian Cheng said. “But for equations of degree five or higher, there aren’t any. Quintic equations that satisfy the contraction mapping condition are no exception.”

Wen Di was completely puzzled. “Oh.”

“But,” Bian Cheng continued, “it has a unique solution.”

You don’t know where that solution is; even if you know all the coefficients, there’s no fixed formula to find it. However, you know it exists. It is unique, and it is the intersection point that exclusively belongs to this lonely curve in the vast number field.

“Luckily,” Bian Cheng said, “I’ve found it.”

Wen Di looked at him. It took him a moment to realize what had just happened.

“Wait,” Wen Di said. “Are you confessing to me?”

“No,” Bian Cheng said. “I’m proposing to you.”

And so, on this rain-washed grassland, under the gradually fading sunset, and beneath one bright and one dim rainbow, the person before him knelt on one knee.

In his hand was a simple ring—platinum, silver-toned, with a Koch snowflake pattern engraved so subtly it could only be noticed only if one looked closely.

“Will you marry me?”

Wen Di looked at him for a long time before breaking into a smile.

Perhaps the world was still beautiful. Even an ultimate tone-deaf person, emotionally stunted, a singularity of human existence, a garbage sorting fanatic, and a 1.26-dimensional creature in a three-dimensional world could find that unique solution.

Two people from two countries would find themselves in a small bar, brought together by the opening line of a song.

“You had me at hello.”

 

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The author has something to say:
The main text story here!

I, I, I must emphasize that the qualifier ‘satisfying the contraction mapping condition’ in front of the quintic equation is indispensable. Without certain conditions being met, a quintic equation might have more than one solution (and the tone of the story would immediately take a strange turn).

1. This work has been signed for simplified Chinese publication, with pre-orders likely starting in late November. You can follow updates on Weibo~

2. A new pre-order project has been opened for pre-collection: ‘Survival Diary of a College Teacher’. This work is similar in style to this one with academic anecdotes + talking at cross purposes + getting married first and falling in love later (yes, I decided to go back to my comfort zone for a while)

 

T/N: I’m sorry but when I read the part when thunder and rain hits the grassland, I have Rocket Girls’ 飒小姐 (sa xiojie) /extraordinary girl on my mind lol because the mv is literally the grassland with thunder. Anyway, I actually have read Survival Diary of a College Teacher but only a few chapters. It’s quite good, but I’m like the ML in the story, I don’t understand half of what the MC is saying most of the time. I probably need a long weekend to read and focus on the story hahaha

Apparently the title is from Romeo and Juliet??? So many people quoting this but I cannot find the corresponding original line

Also, please support the author and buy the chapters if you can! If you need help on buying/topup/creating account, let me know. I’ll gladly help you!