CH 33

That fork-tongued beautiful snake villainess was right about to spit her venom onto his face. Even so, Yan Suizhi maintained the smile on his lips, taking a step back without batting an eye.

Gu Yan seemed unable to comprehend her dramatic reaction, or perhaps he did, simply that he chose to side-step the topic. “If I’m not mistaken, I only asked him to get a lift from you tomorrow morning, not to smash your car. Your worry is completely superfluous.” 

Fizz, “…”

He glanced at Fizz’s posture and expression, reminding, “The door is about to break.”

Fizz, “…”

The beautiful snake villainess rolled her eyes. She silently retracted back into the hole before properly getting out of the car. “Gu, I love you a lot when you don’t speak, but once you do, I fall in love with Ruan.” 

Yan Suizhi, “…”

He hadn’t spent much time at Southcross Law Firm, perhaps only the better part of a day. But he had already heard the same words many times over—Ms Fizz said this to practically everyone at the law firm; it might as well be a trademark greeting of hers.

“So what’s going on here? I’m not asking about anything personal, naturally. Only…” Ms Fizz’s eyes swiftly darted in a certain direction. “After all, stick-in-the-mud Hobbes stays here too.”

The person she called stick-in-the-mud Hobbes should be referring to Luke’s mentoring lawyer. Silver-haired and hawkeyed, he looked austere, shrewd, and not open to negotiation.

She gave Gu Yan a pointed look.

Yan Suizhi stood to the side diligently acting the part of a clueless rookie, but in truth he was very clear what Fizz was trying to insinuate.

Every year when internship season came around, a few law firms would face a rather embarrassing problem… None other than that it was very easy for some lawyers more loose with certain aspects of their personal lives to become involved with their interns.

Such a situation was particularly prevalent in De Carma, perhaps because the ambience here was well-suited to indulging in spring nights of debauchery. 

In the past, he himself had encountered interns who had proactively sought more intimate relations with him, and the number wasn’t low at that. Most of them had come from different schools; the ones who had actually graduated from Maze University wouldn’t be so daring.

Such situations caused him to only pick from among the thornier interns who thought everyone beneath their notice and wouldn’t lower themselves to such a position. But it was unavoidable that there were still some who flipped on their idea midway. After this happened time and time again, he straight-out stopped accepting any interns.

He wondered if Gu Yan had also refused to accept interns for the same reason.

Yan Suizhi affected an appropriate amount of cluelessness for a few seconds, then turned to Fizz as if it had suddenly dawned on him. “Ms Fizz, could you have misunderstood…” 

He paused, looking hard-pressed between laughter and tears as he continued, “The lease for my apartment has expired; they told me that I’ve become homeless as soon as I touched down. It took me half an hour of non-stop grovelling before Teacher Gu reluctantly agreed to let me stay here for two days.”

The entire passage was chock full of lies. In this universe, it was more probable that no living person had ever seen the esteemed Professor Yan ‘grovelling’.

“Isn’t that right, Teacher Gu?” Yan Suizhi arched an his eyebrow, jabbing Gu Yan with a smile.

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She paused, then exclaimed again, “I was saying how could Gu… Ruan, you also don’t look like the type… Although just by your face… pah! Good riddance, I’m still talking nonsense.” 

She rambled on and on, her thoughts leaping all over the place; in any case, Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan couldn’t clearly catch her words, either.

In the end, she simply used a normal tone to remind them with a stern expression, “It shouldn’t be an issue if it’s only for a few days, but you’d best not let Hobbes see you. You and he are the only lawyers in the firm qualified to be nominated for First-Class Lawyers this year. In terms of the calibre of cases and performance, you have an edge over him, but he’s almost twice your age and has more experience than you do. Well… you get the idea.”

The medallion of First-Class Lawyers represented the highest honour for lawyers in the interstellar alliance, and the number of spots was very limited. Every year, all the major law firms in the alliance submitted nominations for their more outstanding lawyers, but very few were actually conferred the title.

There were tens of thousands of large and small law firms across the alliance, many of which had been operational for decades, yet without a single lawyer whose nomination was successful. Even for a law firm as prestigious as Southcross, it would take three, five, or even seven years before they could produce one. 

Following this tangent, it would be unthinkable for two nominees to be conferred the title in the same year.

This also meant that between Gu Yan and Hobbes, only one had a chance of success.

One had a better portfolio, one had greater seniority; all things considered, it was effectively a tie. If a controversy ever arose involving either of them, whether or not it was true would be irrelevant; it would definitely have an impact on their nomination.

Yan Suizhi glanced at Gu Yan, who was thanking Fizz. But he could tell that Gu Yan wasn’t particularly concerned about such things. 

“It’s fine, I was just giving you a friendly reminder. I’ll go catch up on my beauty sleep now.” Fizz waved a hand at them and got back into the driver’s seat. As she started the car, she told Yan Suizhi, “Anyway, I’m leaving at eight-thirty in the morning, feel free to hitch a ride.”

“Thank you.”

After Fizz left, Yan Suizhi followed Gu Yan towards his house. Before entering the door, he paused for a moment and asked, “Which is Hobbes’ house? Point it out for me.”

Gu Yan, “Are you leasing a room from him? Why do you have to recognise his place?” 

Yan Suizhi, “It’ll be easier for me to avoid him if I know which it is and save you the trouble. After all, that kind of misunderstanding isn’t anything good, either.”

“…” Gu Yan’s chilly gaze swept over him. “Misunderstand what? Do I look like someone who enjoys looking for trouble?”

Yan Suizhi, “…?”

In the end, Yan Suizhi didn’t get to find out where Hobbes lived, as Gu Yan didn’t even deign to answer this question. 

Gu Yan had gone straight into the house and then leaned against the wall, his finger on the lock controls for the door, ‘so are you coming in or not, if you keep dawdling I’m locking the door’ written all over his behaviour.

Yan Suizhi sighed, thinking to himself, ‘This student really has no patience at all. If his competition knew about this blasé attitude, they’d probably drop dead of rage.’

Gu Yan’s house had very simple decor. The main colour scheme was composed of blacks, whites, and greys. It was extremely neat and tidy. While pleasing to the eye, it didn’t feel very homely; after all, the actual amount of time that he spent in this place likely wasn’t much. 

But given that the place Yan Suizhi used to stay in didn’t really feel lived in too, it was easy for him to adapt to this style.

The ground floor mainly consisted of a living room and a kitchen which didn’t look used for more than a few times. There was also a glass room, half embedded into the floor and half shorter than the rest of the rooms, where the gym equipment was kept.

Gu Yan’s own bedroom and study were on the second floor. The loft, which was lent to Yan Suizhi, was on the third floor.

It was a loft in name, but it actually spanned quite a large area and had its own bathroom. 

When he previously heard Fizz say that Lawyer Gu never brought people into his private residence, he thought it was just an exaggeration.

Only after he saw the loft did he realise that it wasn’t just empty talk.

The guest rooms and loft in Lawyer Gu’s house were purely decorative. It was a wonder that Gu Yan had even remembered to put a bed in it.

“Are you… planning to have me sleep on a mattress with my coat on?” Yan Suizhi asked from where he stood at the top of the stairs to the loft. 

How that bed was like when it was bought, was how it was like now. It appeared as if it had never been touched before, and once covered with cloth, could be dragged out to be sold again.

Lawyer Gu’s footsteps paused briefly up the stairs, and a subtle trace of embarrassment appeared on his always-apathetic face.

Judging from that hint of embarrassment, most probably, letting Yan Suizhi through the door was indeed a spur of the moment decision.

Gu Yan came up and scanned an eye over the state of the loft. Yan Suizhi suspected that he had only been to the third floor a bare handful of times, and had probably forgotten what the loft looked like himself. 

“Follow me.” Gu Yan inclined his head.

With a puzzled expression, Yan Suizhi followed him downstairs and entered one of the guest rooms.

Gu Yan opened the wardrobe and gestured inside. “There are beddings here. Pick one that you like and use it.”

Yan Suizhi swept a gaze from top to bottom. Green, orange, solid black… 

“…”

There really… wasn’t any bedding that he liked.

Gu Yan leaned against the wardrobe door, his arms crossed as he waited for him to pick.

A corner of Yan Suizhi’s mouth twitched. “I couldn’t tell that you had such taste…” 

Gu Yan’s face was even more paralysed than his. “I couldn’t spare the time to buy supplies for the guest rooms and the loft, so I asked a friend to do it for me. This is my lesson.”

No wonder the beds in these rooms didn’t even have beddings on them. The owner of the house thought them too ugly and simply tucked them all out of sight.

Yan Suizhi leaned a hand against the wardrobe door, appreciating the sight once more. He glanced back at Lawyer Gu’s expression and couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s important to be prudent when choosing friends,” Yan Suizhi said, mirth dancing in his eyes. 

Gu Yan looked at him for two seconds before standing up straight, knocking on the wardrobe door. “Pick one at random, then.”

With this, he averted his gaze and walked out the room without a single look back. “I’ll get you a set of toiletries.”

Yan Suizhi pinched the bridge of his nose. Out of the three beddings that rendered him speechless, he settled on the solid black set.

Although, it was a little… at least it was plainer than the garishness of the others. 

By the time Gu Yan unpacked a brand new set of toiletries and brought them up, Yan Suizhi had laid out the black sheets and was putting the black quilt over them.

“Don’t take this set.” Gu Yan’s voice abruptly rang out in the room.

Yan Suizhi turned his head. “What?”

Gu Yan’s brows knit together. He placed the toiletries on the glazed counter of the bathroom and came out, directly gathering the quilt off the bed. 

“Don’t take this set.” His voice was strained; he didn’t sound particularly happy. “I haven’t washed it since getting it. Use another set.”

He threw that set back on the bed in the guest room and randomly pulled out a dark green set to take up to the loft.

Yan Suizhi, “…Are there no other alternatives?”

Gu Yan put down the quilt. He lifted his eyes to look at him, then bafflingly, flung out a sentence. “You can try grovelling.” 

Yan Suizhi, “???”

Did you swallow rat poison in the time it took you to go downstairs?