Hua: I will try to update everyday since i have a lot of free time recently ≧◡≦
Chapter 18: Contract
Xie Yu clutched the campus card, cursing the original owner ten thousand times.
When he transmigrated, the original owner and Shen Ci had already signed a contract. Xie Yu naturally assumed the money was in place, but he didn’t realize that the original owner only provided the hospital quota; he didn’t give any money at all!
Shen Ci, the contract partner of Jiangcheng’s top second-generation rich heir, dressed in luxury brand haute couture, with earrings costing hundreds of thousands, yet his campus card had less than a hundred yuan, forcing him to gnaw on steamed buns with vegetables in the cafeteria?
Xie Yu pinched two fingers together, easily pulling the campus card from Shen Ci’s hand, and pressed him into the chair: “Don’t move, I’ll do it.”
He walked to the manual service counter diagonally opposite the cafeteria and handed over the card: “Hello, how much is the maximum I can top up on a campus card?”
The aunt looked up at him: “Ten thousand yuan[mfn]1393.67 USD[/mfn].”
Xie Yu pushed his credit card forward: “Then top up ten thousand.”
All his assets, including the car and luxury goods the original owner didn’t use, had been converted into cash and transferred to an overseas account by Xu Qingshan. Now, all his expenses were paid with a credit card.
According to the plot design, it wouldn’t be long before Xie Yuanshan discovered his son’s investment in a mental hospital and angrily suspended all his cards. He might as well use them while he still could.
The cafeteria aunt had clearly never seen such a large top-up at once. She paused slightly: “Are you sure you want to top up ten thousand?”
Xie Yu nodded: “Yes.”
The card was placed on the POS machine, and Xie Yu entered his password. Based on the freshly loaded balance on the meal card, Shen Ci would have to eat grilled fish for a hundred meals straight to finish it.
He returned to the grilled fish counter, ordered, and then sat opposite Shen Ci. Shen Ci nervously clutched the card: “How much did you top up?”
Xie Yu didn’t stop eating: “Not much, very little.”
Shen Ci breathed a slight sigh of relief: “Thank you.”
In fact, according to the contract, Xie Yu only needed to secure that medical quota; everything else was outside the scope of the contract. Shen Ci in the original novel never asked for money either; he had a strange insistence on this matter, whether it was integrity or stubbornness. He was unwilling to owe too many favors.
But now, it was different from the original text. He had a secret thought, as if this way, the differences between him and Xie Yu weren’t so many, the distance wasn’t so far, and they could be a little closer, and then a little closer.
The grilled fish was spicy. Shen Ci preferred light flavors and didn’t eat much, but Xie Yu ate quite happily.
It had been a very long time since he had eaten in a campus cafeteria.
After they finished their meal, Xie Yu looked around at the glass curtain wall. Outside the wall were large swathes of ginkgo leaves: “Assistant Shen, would you show me around A University?”
His high school grades weren’t good, but he had a soft spot for good students and good schools. A University was Jiangcheng’s premier top-tier institution, and it had even been recognized as the most beautiful campus in the country for multiple consecutive years. Xie Yu was somewhat interested.
Shen Ci naturally said, “Okay.”
They went downstairs together, walked side by side along the Ginkgo Avenue, passed by flower beds with clivia and wintersweet, and strolled past the school’s artificial lake and Lover’s Slope. Through the dense tree canopy, they saw couples kissing on a bridge.
Behind the campus, there was a commercial street running north to south, where restaurant owners kept their fires burning, bustling with people.
Xie Yu and Shen Ci walked along the commercial street, encountering many young couples. Some, like them, wore matching scarves, some walked hand-in-hand, and others shared a single cup of milk tea with two straws.
Shen Ci’s gaze fell on the milk tea. Han Yunyun often drank this; it wasn’t cheap, costing over ten yuan a cup, and she would place it on her desk. Shen Ci had never been interested in tasting it.
Firstly, he didn’t have a sweet tooth, and secondly, it was unnecessary to waste his limited funds on momentary enjoyment for his lips and tongue; that was something only those with abundant material wealth did.
Shen Ci was like this in his childhood too. The only small shop nearby was in a town over ten kilometers away. He had never eaten candy, never bought toys, and was even ashamed to mention them. For his family, these were “extra” things beyond basic needs. If he desired them, it was a sin of being inconsiderate to his parents.
Over the years, Shen Ci’s material desires had become extremely faint. He didn’t look, didn’t care, and didn’t want, not even having the desire to examine them. But now, as these couples walked past with their milk tea, and Shen Ci stood side by side with Xie Yu, he suddenly wanted to know what it tasted like.
This thought came out of nowhere, but once it arose, it was hard to suppress, growing wildly like weeds in his mind. As they almost reached the end of the commercial street, just two steps from exiting, Shen Ci suddenly pulled Xie Yu.
Xie Yu turned back, looking somewhat puzzled. Shen Ci’s hand, clutching his sleeve, trembled uncontrollably. He seemed like a secretively naughty child caught in the act, revealing something unspeakable piece by piece. He simply lowered his eyes, stubbornly yet hesitantly: “Xie Yu, I… I want to drink milk tea.”
For couples in love, this might just be a normal request, but Shen Ci and Xie Yu were not a couple. A fractured emotion surged within him. On one side was immense shame, as a contractual partner making an unreasonable plea, but on the other, he had a secret anticipation.
Like a faint candlelight, easily extinguished, yet secretly growing, refusing to give up.
Would Xie Yu… be willing to buy it?
Xie Yu was certainly willing to buy it; he was just a little surprised. The handsome young man in front of him seemed a bit different from the original text. With the aloof and solitary personality of Shen Ci in the original text, such a request would be impossible.
But the plot had already deviated significantly by now. Xie Yu accepted it well; after all, he only needed 60 points, and if the extra parts deviated, so be it.
Xie Yu pulled out his phone to scan the code: “I happened to want some too. What do you want to drink?”
Shen Ci was slightly stunned: “…Anything is fine.”
He was the one who made the request, but when Xie Yu fulfilled it without a second thought, he was the one left stunned.
Xie Yu: “Then I’ll order according to my taste.”
He skillfully ordered two hot drinks and handed one to Shen Ci: “Try it.”
Shen Ci raised his hand to cup the drink. The rising steam blurred his features.
The system silently emerged: “Host, don’t forget you have two lines left.”
Xie Yu hummed, then suddenly pulled Shen Ci closer, brushed aside his bangs, and slipped a finger into his scarf, caressing the back of his neck.
This was a threatening posture. The cold fingers touched the skin, causing goose bumps. Xie Yu played with the neck of the person beneath his palm like a collector admiring porcelain.
“Shen Ci,” he leaned in, mumbling his line, “come to the hotel tonight.”
Shen Ci’s fingertips trembled, and he softly said, “Okay.”
In the original text, Xie Yu purely treated Shen Ci as a tool for release, a punching bag, or a prop, summoning him whenever he felt like it. These were fragmented, minor plot points, but accumulated, they totaled a dozen or twenty instances. Xie Yu had to go through all of them before going abroad.
These small plotlines were monotonous and unremarkable, consisting mostly of blurry mosaics, with little dialogue or highlights. They were like the easy “giveaway” questions at the beginning of an exam—they didn’t take much time but were mandatory. According to the system, he just needed to muddle through them.
After the two finished shopping and all the lines were spoken, the system set off fireworks in Xie Yu’s mind: “Mission accomplished!”
Assisting a host like Xie Yu every day was exhausting for it.
Xie Yu drove back, and Shen Ci returned to the lab. Han Yunyun placed a stack of documents on his desk: “Senior Shen, this is a new project the professor just took on. He specifically named you to lead it. Please take a look.”
Shen Ci hummed and browsed through them carefully. Han Yunyun added, “This project seems quite important. The professor is just one step away from the list of Distinguished Young Scholars. I wonder if he’ll get it this year. If he does, we’ll have to change offices.”
Besides the basic lab building, A University also had a newer one, packed with influential figures and prominent people from various departments.
But Shen Ci said, “Let’s focus on the experiment first; it has little to do with us.”
Han Yunyun nodded in agreement, behaved for two seconds, then couldn’t resist leaning over again: “Senior, what’s your boyfriend’s background, exactly?”
She had already assumed Xie Yu was Shen Ci’s boyfriend.
Shen Ci sighed slightly: “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Han Yunyun didn’t believe it: “You’re so intimate, how can he not be?”
Shen Ci: “He really isn’t.”
He and Xie Yu wore matching scarves, Xie Yu’s name was etched on his ear bone, and they had walked through A University’s commercial street and Lovers’ Lake together. Yet, they were indeed not a couple.
Xie Yu’s public status had always been single; he had never publicly declared a relationship. He Zhiyuan introduced Lin Yin as his girlfriend, but Xie Yu, when introducing him, always used his full name, only saying, “This is Assistant Shen from A University, named Shen Ci.”
Han Yunyun raised an eyebrow, assuming her senior was just trying to cover things up: “Then what is your relationship?”
Shen Ci paused slightly, tasting a bitter astringency on his tongue. He unnaturally tugged at the corner of his mouth: “Just assume what the forum says is true.”
The forum said it was a foster relationship, and indeed it was.
A foster relationship where the interpretation of the contract lay in Xie Yu’s hands, subject to termination at any time.
Han Yunyun clicked her tongue, lowering her head to fiddle with the experimental reagents in her hand: “I don’t believe it. Just now, when he pulled you away from me, I felt like he was going to beat me up.”
Shen Ci just shook his head, saying nothing.
As night fell, he once again got into the Bentley and knocked on the door of the top-floor suite.
Xie Yu, as usual, was lazily lounging on the sofa playing games. Seeing Shen Ci enter, he joked lightly, then they both washed up and lay down fully clothed.
They were clearly on the same bed, barely an arm’s length apart, yet Xie Yu simply closed his eyes to rest, his palm loosely resting on Shen Ci’s shoulder, like the most staid and proper gentleman, unwilling to cross the line.
He seemed to have no interest.
Even though Shen Ci had never been in love, he knew that one shouldn’t act this way towards someone they liked or even a favorite plaything.
Xie Yu’s preferences were no secret in their circle, and Shen Ci had heard about them. He preferred bright, soft young men, especially those who loved to laugh, cry, and act spoiled. Shen Ci’s personality was not only different from Xie Yu’s usual type but completely opposite. Compared to the streamers and celebrities Xie Yu had previously favored, Shen Ci considered himself plain and uninteresting in looks and personality. If it weren’t for the need for a convenient punching bag, he probably wouldn’t have caught Young Master Xie’s eye.
But if he didn’t like him, why did he protect him in every possible way, accommodate him repeatedly, give him gift after gift, and frequently make misleading gestures?
In the darkness, Shen Ci reached out a finger, his fingertip tentatively touching Xie Yu’s shoulder blade: “Xie Yu…”
Half-asleep, Xie Yu caught his finger in his palm: “What’s wrong?”
Shen Ci gazed at him calmly and very softly asked, “What is our relationship?”
Xie Yu was too sleepy to open his eyes, merely holding his fingertips. After a while, he understood the question and answered in a dreamlike mumble: “…Contract relationship.”
He vaguely thought that in another month, Xie Yuanshan would discover the investment problem, and Xie Yu would leave the country, not returning to China for five years. Their contract would then become void, freeing Shen Ci from his shackles.
By then, he would be free to roam the world, like a fish in a vast ocean or a bird in the open sky. The protagonist would have successfully endured the darkest period of his life, and from then on, his path would be glorious and smooth.
And he, the villain, should make his exit.
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Hmm… why does it feel like a month is going by so slow in this story? Lol.