CH 75

“How absurd?” Yan Suizhi asked.

Hearing this, Gu Yan’s movements paused. Both hands holding the rim of the basin, he turned his head over, gazing deeply into his eyes. 

Yan Suizhi laughed at himself. He lightly tapped a knuckle against his forehead, correcting, “That’s not right, why did I ask this? I should be asking, what absurd ideas?”

His voice wasn’t loud, maybe in part also affected by the ambience of the cherry orchard in the evening, easily sparkling with a relaxed and mischievous mood.

The touch of mirth colouring his warm voice always made people long to bare their hearts without reservation when talking to him.

However, Gu Yan merely turned his gaze away, continuing to wash his fingers. 

Yan Suizhi suspected that this was probably the longest time that Gu Yan had ever spent washing his hands, nearing his own abnormal care.

“You don’t want to hear it,” said Gu Yan, without even looking up.

Yan Suizhi clicked his tongue, but not out of impatience. Only that he felt… the same soft scratchy sensation as he had during lunch again, and was using this sound to let it out. “It should be up to me whether or not I want to hear it, no? Why are you deciding it for me?”

Gu Yan, “Mn.”

“What ‘mn’?” Yan Suizhi was caught between laughter and tears. “Are you trying to use that courtroom psychology on your own teacher?”

“Nominally, I’m the teacher now,” Gu Yan said.

Perhaps the low timbre of his voice blended too well into the twilight scenery of the cherry orchard; despite his bickering, it was unable to rouse the slightest annoyance in Yan Suizhi.

His eyes narrowed, Yan Suizhi contemplated it for a moment and said, “I have this feeling that you were going to answer me at first, but when I later spoke again… you changed your mind?” 

Gu Yan finally straightened up and drew an antibacterial paper napkin to wipe the water from his hands. Following his movements, the sound of gently streaming water ceased. He changed the direction of his feet, turning his body over, and in doing so, he and Yan Suizhi were now facing each other.

The area enclosed by the railing wasn’t large; this stone platform was only intended for a single person to wash hands in the first place. They stood with their eyes locking in this manner, and when Gu Yan subtly dropped his gaze, all of a sudden, the space seemed to constrict further. It was clearly an open-air area, and yet, inexplicably, it felt a little cramped.

Leaning against the railing, Yan Suizhi’s upper body unconsciously moved back slightly, bumping into the green vines entwined on a vertical bar.

The flowering branch that extended to the side of his face quivered. 

Gu Yan looked at him for a while before shifting his gaze to the flowering branch.

He casually reached out and touched it, and the movements of the quivering branch quietened. “You used to have no interest in this type of thing.”

“What type?”

“The ‘obsolete and inconsequential’ thoughts of others,” Gu Yan said evenly. 

Yan Suizhi froze.

In fact, Gu Yan was spot on. He didn’t like being probed and similarly wasn’t interested in probing into the affairs of others. Outside of the courtroom, he didn’t pay attention to what others thought, let alone those from an unknown number of years ago, long past expiration. For no matter what the nature was, they couldn’t affect him, and thus he disregarded them.

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It was quite amusing for a word like ‘secretly’ to be used on Gu Yan. After saying it, amusement, laced with a sliver of mischief, flooded Yan Suizhi’s clear eyes.

Gu Yan, “…”

People usually got somewhat excitable when they had one too many drinks, yet Gu Yan looked even more restrained, as if he had suppressed deeper in him the wildness and recklessness that a normal person should have.

Yan Suizhi looked at him, unruffled. “Then… are your so-called absurd ideas the same as these labels you’ve given me behind my back? In a derogatory sense?” 

“No.”

Gu Yan decisively shot him down.

He didn’t seem at all surprised by Yan Suizhi asking this.

With that, he turned his head and spoke to the nearby thicket. “Stop tiptoeing around like a thief.” 

Joe poked his head out from behind the thicket, completely baffled. “I’ve already kept the braking motions to a minimum and was all ready to slink away; how were you still able to hear me?”

Impassive, Gu Yan pointed to the ground near him. Young Master Joe’s shadow was hit by the light behind him straight this way; as long as anyone looked at Yan Suizhi, they could notice the lump of that sneaky shadow.

Yan Suizhi turned over to look.

Joe stood with both hands held high in the air, in mock surrender, saying, “I only came here to wash my hands… I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?” 

“No.” As Gu Yan turned his head and walked back, the corners of his mouth pulled minutely, carrying a hint of self-mocking—but no one saw it.

Yan Suizhi watched him leave.

Joe walked to the basin, muttering, “Why do I get the feeling that he’s a bit moody; is it because of me?”

After a while, Yan Suizhi said, “Not you.” 

“What happened, then?” Joe asked.

“Maybe I accidentally pinched his mint leaves,” said Yan Suizhi.

Joe, “Huh???”

Young Master Joe’s head turned foggy with confusion, his eyebrows tangling together into a knot. “Where did you pinch him? Did my brain go dumb from drinking too much or something, why don’t I get it at all.” 

It didn’t really matter if he didn’t understand; but when this young master asked ‘where did you pinch him’, he even unconsciously looked down and scanned each of his own body parts.

Yan Suizhi, “…”

Nevertheless, even if Young Master Joe’s intoxication was surging up, he still had a friend to protect. So, half-stern, he glared at Yan Suizhi and asked, “Did you pinch him on purpose?”

Yan Suizhi, “…No.” 

“So what now?”

“Coax him, I guess,” Yan Suizhi smiled.

Joe’s expression instantly turned into a particularly splendid sight.

He stared at him like he was out of his mind. He blinked. “To tell the truth, this is the first time in my life hearing someone say they’re going to try and coax him. Can I follow along and take a look?” 

Yan Suizhi, “…To tell the truth, this is also the first time in my life coaxing someone.”

Joe immediately changed his tune. “Forget it, I’d better not watch lest I become a third-party casualty.”

Saying that, he gave Yan Suizhi a solemn pat on his shoulder like an elder, intoning gravely, “Take care of yourself.”

If one day he found out who it was that he was acting like an elder to, he would probably want to chop off this hand. 

In a certain sense, Gu Yan was worthy of being branded as a student once under Yan Suizhi’s direct charge. It was difficult for most people to tell whether he was really happy or unhappy, because regardless of what mood he was in, his face would always be frozen over.

Such that even on the way out of the cherry orchard, he would still respond to whatever Yan Suizhi said, showing no difference from usual.

So even Young Master Joe felt that the so-called ‘not-quite-happy’ feeling from earlier was a trick of the light.

Joe brought the sleeping Ke Jin into the car. He had originally planned to directly change Gu Yan and Yan Suizhi to another hotel, but Gu Yan said that they would already be returning to De Carma the next day, so it would be superfluous to change to another. Joe let up the idea, driving them to the hotel. 

Before leaving, he poked his head out of the car window and eyed the building, pointing. “Who picked this place for you? They sure have some taste.”

“What is it?” Gu Yan asked.

“It isn’t anything much,” Joe said. “I previously heard that though Old Manson’s still breathing, the weasel brothers have already started growing restless, buying up a lot of old property without authorisation—this hotel and the next lane among which. Who knows what they’re up to. Although it’s not yet the stipulated date, many of the property in this area should be under the Mansion family name.”

“Only over on this side?” 

“Not only, I’ve heard it extends much further than Tian Qin,” Joe said. “On the flip side, however, it should be quite safe living here. After all, it’s a place they recently bought, if anything happens it’ll be on their heads. I can’t say much for anything else, but they usually don’t sully their own territory, they only like to bring trouble to others.”

He sneered. “Just as revolting as Old Fox.”

The Old Fox he spoke of was his own father. It was general knowledge that the state of their father-son relationship remained in the subzero all year round, starting from when Joe was about eight or nine years old, never thawing to this day. The only contact Joe kept with his family was his sister, Eunice. The young master was very tenacious. After being cut off from pocket money twice right after coming of age, he straight-up stopped accepting any, borrowing a little start-up capital from his sister to make investments.

He lived to have fun and didn’t have great ambitions, and made just enough for him to get by and have a good time. His wealth fell far short of his father and his sister but was still much more affluent than most. 

The number one rule to be friends with Young Master Joe was not to mention his father, or he would get into a terrible mood.

Thus upon hearing him say so, Gu Yan didn’t continue to broach the subject, directly changing it. “How far along is Old Manson?”

In actuality, he didn’t even have any interest in these messy family politics. But when Joe brought it up, he would always follow the flow of the conversation to ask another question or two about it, making sure that Joe hadn’t been caught up in the mess.

“I heard that his will had already been drawn up three months ago,” Joe said. 

To prevent any disputes and to give import to the validity of a self-written will, the interstellar alliance had a specialised authority in place, the Probate Office. Some choose to leave the execution of their wills to family members or lawyers, but some with more complicated family relationships or without family to entrust their wills could choose to file their wills to the Probate Office.

After confirmation of death, the office would progressively execute the contents of the will under procedural safeguards.

The advantage was that this procedure was extremely difficult to interfere with. There weren’t any slip-ups in the many years of their establishment, and they wouldn’t bend to any influence or coercion. The downside was that it was relatively inefficient. Most people who needed the help of the Probate Office to execute their wills either had too much estate or involved too many public welfare organisations. These often required many layers of audit and verification, a process that could span from a period as short as two months, to as long as a year to complete.

“Those few brothers of Manson’s are going nuts because their old man didn’t hand the will over to a lawyer, filing it to the office instead,” Joe said. 

Such a move was worth inspecting. If the contents of the will were clearly in their favour, why bother giving it to the office? Just let them execute it. By filing it to the office, it was clearly in consideration that they would disagree with the contents of the will.

“But that’s their family politics. Old Fox is chummy with them, so I’m keeping out of this.”

Joe chatted briefly with them for a little while more before taking Ke Jin back.

Gu Yan and Yan Suizhi went back into their own rooms after going upstairs. 

However, the night that Gu Yan thought would be quiet, was unexpectedly interrupted by a sudden knock on his door an hour later.

He froze, then took a clean shirt hanging from the clothes rack and put it on, fastening to the last few buttons before opening the door.

“Are you about to go to bed already?” Outside the door, Yan Suizhi glanced at his short hair which was still damp.

“Mn.” Gu Yan asked, “Is there anything?” 

To this question, he saw Yan Suizhi raise the glass in his hand, saying, “Brought you a beverage to drink before you sleep.”

The beverage, as the esteemed Professor Yan called it, was a familiar sight—mint leaves steeped in ice water.

“…”

His face paralysed, Gu Yan asked, “Purpose?” 

Yan Suizhi’s eyes curved, “To coax the brooding student who is throwing a tantrum; dampen the fire a bit.”

Gu Yan, “…”