CH 36

Gu Yan didn’t come alone. He came together with a group of around seven or eight people roughly his age.

Yan Suizhi wasn’t unfamiliar with those faces; they could even be considered very familiar to him. They were all his former students. Three of them, like Gu Yan, were direct students under him, and the remaining few were students once under Yan Suizhi’s mentorship for a half-year period due to course research. 

He didn’t spend much time prying into his student’s personal lives, but from what little impression he had, this group of people got along quite well with each other.

Yan Suizhi knew this because several of the more active members of the group would mention their get-togethers from time to time, and even share a few photos. Gu Yan’s figure appeared in most of these photos.

In them, Student Gu was always a unique sight amidst the vibrancy of his surroundings. He would either be sitting with a glass of wine in his hand as he watched the crowd dancing, or listening to the people next to him chat animatedly with his gaze hung down.

For them to persistently invite such an unsociable blockhead meant that they had to be good friends. 

Most of these people had kept in touch with Yan Suizhi after graduation. Some updated him about their work, others updated him about their lives, and they would always send him seasonal greetings.

There were only two exceptions.

One of them was Ke Jin. Coming from an orphanage, he was a very diligent person who had a serious outlook on life. As he had excelled in all his courses, Yan Suizhi was more than happy to award him various scholarships in the capacity of the dean, and occasionally gave him some reminders regarding his studies and work.

Ke Jin was very grateful and greatly respected Yan Suizhi, thus had initially kept in contact. Later, due to an unexpected incident, he became very ill. The eventual surfacing of a mental health condition caused them to lose contact.

The other was Gu Yan.

He never expected that after a few years, Gu Yan would conversely become the one who he was most closely connected to. It was absurd how they were never able to get away from each other, and such was the fickleness of fate.

They were still some distance apart, so Yan Suizhi could not see the expression on Gu Yan’s face. Yet, for some reason, he felt as if the other person felt it more preposterous than him, like he’d seen a ghost. 

Not long later, that group of people walked closer in a file.

“Oh. They aren’t from our batch, they look like they’ve just graduated.” The young blonde lady leading the group swept a surprised glance across Luke and the others, her gaze lingering on Yan Suizhi’s face a few seconds longer.

But she swiftly realised that it wasn’t appropriate to stare at others like that. She smiled at Yan Suizhi, saying, “Are you… also here to see the professor?”

The lady who spoke was named Laura Stephen, a lively and cheerful girl. The last time that Yan Suizhi had seen her was at a lawsuit two years ago. She had matured significantly since her schooling days, but she was still as upbeat as before. 

Today at the cemetery, however, her smile was shallow and fleeting, obviously only worn to put on a friendly and good-natured front.

As she finished speaking, Gu Yan had just walked up to the last step. He stood to one side, his gaze falling first on the gravestone, then on Yan Suizhi’s face, and finally on his hand.

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Yan Suizhi, “…” Wimp.

He lifted his head, eyes locking awkwardly with Gu Yan’s. For some reason, Gu Yan’s expression looked particularly… speechless. 

“…”

For a while, the atmosphere was extremely awkward.

Professor Yan’s finger silently twirled the flower stalk, itching to pin the flower to the gravestone again.

Neither of them had opened their mouths, yet the awkwardness of the atmosphere between them was palpable. Sensing a strange undercurrent, everyone looked questioningly at him, then at Gu Yan. 

After staring at Yan Suizhi for two seconds, Gu Yan lowered his eyes, checking the time with a sweep of his finger over his smart device. “Shouldn’t you still be sitting tight at the office, going through the files at this time?”

Yan Suizhi said snippily, “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But something unexpected obviously came up.”

As he spoke, Luke desperately jabbed his back with a finger, as if reminding him that he shouldn’t speak so bluntly to his teacher. But the force Luke used was close to poking holes into Yan Suizhi’s coat.

Anna and the others also stared at him, their eyes wide, as if asking, ‘do you not want to live anymore?’ 

“Gu, you know him?” The people who were with Gu Yan asked, startled.

Gu Yan said blandly, “New intern for this term.”

Now, it was their turn to flip out like they had seen a ghost.

“Intern? Yours?!” Clearly, Gu Yan’s friends all knew him well. “You actually took on an intern? Are you serious?” 

The eyes of those people instantly concentrated on Yan Suizhi. If they could, they would even want to gouge their eyes out and stick them onto Yan Suizhi to study him better.

“Is he from our school?”

“Exceptionally outstanding?”

“Did he do anything amazing?” 

“Tss, don’t you think he looks like—”

Gu Yan promptly nipped the curiosity of these friends of his in the bud. “Didn’t look into it, nothing special; he was originally assigned to another lawyer, but due to unforeseen circumstances, that lawyer was unable to take him on. He ended up being assigned to me for the time being.”

This reason was beyond dull, but was much easier to swallow down than ‘Gu Yan voluntarily took on an intern’.

“Oh.” His friends seemed very put out not to hear any earth-shattering answers, and promptly lost interest. 

There was only one person who never said a word throughout this.

He walked at the back, his face was wan and looked slightly sickly. The light in his eyes was faint. His gaze kept skittering about, like he was drifting off another world away.

Even so, he still had a dainty and attractive face. Were he in better condition, he would most certainly be a young and refined intellectual brimming with promise.

Walking ahead of him, two of his friends had their heads kept down the entire time watching his steps, afraid that he might miss a step in a moment of inattention. 

That was Ke Jin.

From what Yan Suizhi knew of the situation, this could already be considered one of Ke Jin’s better days.

“So you’re all interns from Southcross?” Laura asked again.

“Yes,” Freida nodded, responding, “the preliminary assessment is coming soon. They arranged for it to simulate an actual case. We came here for an appointment to find out more about the case.” 

After she said this, the only unfamiliar face among them raised a hand. “Oh! You’re the ones Hobbes arranged to come over? Were you the ones who called me just a while ago?”

Luke peeked his head out. “Mr Zeng? I’m Luke, Mr Hobbes’ intern. So are the guests you said you were receiving…”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Laura said. “The professor would always organise a wine party for his birthday every winter back then. It’s about this time of the year too, so we thought to come over and visit the professor while our friend’s condition is still stable.”

“Birthday?” Luke eyed the inscription on the gravestone. “Uh… but isn’t it still a month away?” 

Hearing this, Gu Yan’s friends glanced at the gravestone. They fell silent for a while before saying, “Yeah.”

In the past, Yan Suizhi had actively avoided allowing students or anyone else to use his birthday as an excuse to send him too many gifts. Therefore, he had never explicitly told his students the date of his birthday.

He did organise a few small-scale private wine parties between the teaching staff and students, but the timing of which would always be an arbitrary date around a month before his birthday, and not on the actual date itself.

So, even his direct students had never known the actual date of his birthday. 

This way, any time anyone tried to prepare a gift for him, he could say “it’s still early” to politely refuse the goodwill.

But these students never expected that the first time they learned when their professor’s birthday was would actually be from his gravestone.

“However, we’re already used to getting together around the end of November or the start of December. I believe the professor will also be delighted for us to come by a little earlier.” Laura smiled.

The interns nodded, hastily stepping aside to make space. 

Laura and the others walked up before the gravestone, each of them clasping a small bouquet of flowers. The atmosphere became more and more melancholic. Yan Suizhi’s face also became more and more paralysed.

He silently walked to the side, feeling that he’d better keep this out of sight and out of mind. Hearing those grieving words made him have a disconcerting illusion of dirt burying his face.

Just then, Laura softly said, “Gu, are you really not going to take any flowers? Even just a few stalks will do, it’s better than being empty-handed.”

Yan Suizhi looked over, and he found that Gu Yan’s hands were completely empty, with nary a single stalk of flower in sight. 

“I’m good, thanks.” Gu Yan’s face was even more paralysed than his, the words ‘I Don’t Want To’ plastered all over his body. It was like even this visit to pay respects was something his friends had forced upon him, whereas he himself wasn’t that enthusiastic about it.

Professor Yan leaned against a cedar tree, his arms crossed, watching as Gu Yan refused Laura twice. He thought to himself, ‘Hey, Student Gu. Fancy that I was your direct mentor. Yet you wouldn’t even give me a single flower at my grave? I’ve my eye on you.”

Perhaps the intensity of his gaze was too strong; when Gu Yan was about to refuse the flowers Laura pushed towards him for the third time, he suddenly raised his eyes and looked over in Yan Suizhi’s direction. Their eyes met. And the hand that was about to refuse froze.

And for that split second, Lawyer Gu looked like he was caught between a life-and-death dilemma. 

Just as if what Laura was holding wasn’t a few stalks of pure white flowers, but a dynamite fuse.

Yan Suizhi silently waited for him to make a decision, and based on the decision, whether or not to count this as a strike against this student.

While the distinguished Lawyer Gu deeply questioned the meaning of life, someone suddenly asked in a low voice, “Ke Jin, what’s the matter?”

Yan Suizhi looked over upon hearing this, only to see that the flowers Ke Jin had held were scattered all over the ground. He was crouched down, at first tapping his hands against his head saying “head hurts”, then suddenly beginning to knock his head against the gravestone. He hunched over, endlessly chanting in a low voice, “I’m not, I didn’t, I’m not, I didn’t…”