CH 120

“Spit it out,” Gu Yan said.

“We were all students; can’t I look at him once or twice?” In a rare show of sensitivity, Young Master Joe caught the subtle drift in Gu Yan’s tone. “There used to be a few hundred people staring at him every lecture; why didn’t you issue blindfolds to everyone?” 

Gu Yan, “…”

Joe, used to courting death, finished teasing Gu Yan, and turned his head right over to see Yan Suizhi smiling at him.

Joe, “…”

In university, out of boredom and to hang around Ke Jin and Gu Yan more, Joe chose to take a law elective once; the lecturer was the esteemed dean himself. That was probably the biggest regret of Joe’s time in university. He felt like the elective had caused his hair to thin significantly. At one point, he’d even had the nightmare that he was going to suffer from early balding. 

Near the end of that semester, he clung onto Ke Jin’s and Gu Yan’s pants for three days, wailing non-stop, before just barely mucking his way into a passing grade.

For a long time after that, he’d always make a wide detour around the law school, similarly getting hit with an affliction wherein he would get chills whenever he saw the dean smiling at him for no rhyme or reason.

This affliction persisted for a year before getting better, but he now suddenly showed signs of relapsing.

The lead-in that he had planned was derailed by Yan Suizhi’s smile just like that.

Young Master Joe felt his tongue get twisted. “I… actually, my head’s been addled all this while. I’m a bit dumb; I have many questions. May I ask them?”

“Ask. I’ll hear you out,” Yan Suizhi smiled.

He unconsciously wanted to ask Yan Suizhi why he had assumed the identity of an intern, but he then recalled the favour that Gu Yan had asked of him—to enlist the help of a tight-lipped specialist for a genetic test.

Now, from the looks of it, it was as plain as day who this was for. 

He also wanted to ask, since you aren’t dead, why did you modify your genes instead of recovering your identity?

But the answer to this question was, similarly, self-evident.

Who would give up their renown, their social status, and cushy life to become a bratty little intern?

Without asking a single question, Joe managed to think through mostly everything himself, pretty much understanding Yan Suizhi’s current predicament. 

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Joe was flattered to have received this honour. “So… in reality, the only ones you’ve told are Gu and I? Even Laura and the rest are still out of the loop, but you’ve revealed it to me?”

Gu Yan wordlessly looked at him, “…”

“Don’t look at me like that. I know that it’s all thanks to you; I’m basking in your light,” Joe said to Gu Yan.

In fact, this statement wasn’t wrong. 

Even if, in his opinion, the dean wasn’t someone who took things to heart, he wasn’t easy to get close to. Back at school, they had never heard Yan Suizhi bring up personal matters, so it was clear that he was not someone who would easily have a slip of his tongue.

How would someone like this let his identity drop at a simple probe?

It was just that he would be very relaxed when he was with Gu Yan, and his guard would be down.

Or perhaps that he didn’t mind letting Joe know this. 

But Joe had more than sufficient self-awareness to know that, to Yan Suizhi, his most unique trait was probably that he was ‘Gu Yan’s best friend’.

Any special treatment he received likely hinged on this point.

But this didn’t stop Young Master Joe from feeling moved. He was the type of guy where ‘if you treat me kindly, I’ll double down back at you’, not to mention that this was more than kindness but a treasure even more rare—trust.

And so, Young Master Joe immediately raised his hand to vow his allegiance, “Alright, I won’t joke around. You can trust me. I hate being a disappointment. This information stops here at me, and nothing will be divulged without your consent, not even to people I’m close to. If I speak a single word out of turn, I’ll cut off my tongue and serve wine to you.” 

Yan Suizhi warmly refused him, “There’s no need for that. You can keep it.”

Joe, “…”

Unwilling to linger on the subject of cutting his tongue and serving wine, he changed the subject, “Right. What did you say you wanted to ask me just now? When I was almost off the line with Eunice.”

Gu Yan asked, “We saw in the photo on your screen that Mr Yves has a decorative ornament on his desk?” 

Joe froze, obviously not expecting this to be the question. “He has many. Which one are you talking about?”

He pulled out the image of his stormy-faced father and magnified the desk, showing the screen to Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan. “Isn’t this a whole row of them?”

Yan Suizhi pointed to the ‘Club’.  “This one.”

“Ohhh,” Joe said, “I heard that someone gave it to him as a gift quite a long time ago. It came into the family even earlier; I have to address it like I would an elder brother.” 

“Why this gift? Does Mr Yves like playing poker?”

“As if! He’s just giving money to the table when he plays poker; there’s no way he could like it.” Joe said, “This was given to kiss his ass.”

“Sending a Club to kiss ass? Isn’t that somewhat of a stretch?”

“Not really, this actually carries symbolism.” Joe explained, “I heard from my sister that a long time ago… I can’t say for sure if it’s forty or fifty years back. Ms Eunice doesn’t treat me like a functioning human and the smaller details change every time she tells me a story; she’s always making me think that she’s just fabricating it, plus it’s really hard for me to find evidence against her. Anyway, around that time, a few powerful families took charge, wanting to set up a conglomerate or something like that to pool more resources together. 

Habitable planets in the alliance were innumerable. They weren’t too bad as a whole, but the disparity between each was glaring.

There were some like De Carma which were prosperous, yet also some like Wine City which were insalubrious.

There was Redstone, which interstellar space pirates could never surmount, yet also Helan, which they were perpetually fixated on attacking.

While the alliance was inclined to close such gaps, the efforts of a fragmented whole would always fall short. 

“That was roughly what the conglomerate planned to do,” Joe said. “It’s actually rather idealistic, but they did gain quite a bit of traction. Those merchants from Helan comprised the core, and they were more… kind and passionate. According to Miss Eunice, at least. Allegedly, if Wine City had local merchants like those from Helan, they could’ve formed the core as well.”

“At first, those people really did come together in discussion. But as it wasn’t formally set into motion yet, the discussions weren’t too formal. It went back and forth for many years. My sister was still an embryo at that time, but the discussions were so at length that my sister became fluent in bureaucratese and all that jazz—quoted from Miss Eunice verbatim. My sister said that she had the honour of attending one of those gatherings when she was around four or five years old. It was held at a mountain lodge on Mu Tuo Mountain. Those people were drinking and playing poker, talking about the collaboration while they were at it. Maybe because they had too much to drink, they got so excited that they began to get all fancy with playing card suits.”

“Oh? What about it?” Yan Suizhi asked.

Joe stressed again. “The accuracy of the information, as vouched for by Eunice, who was not even five at that time, might be limited. So, don’t take it too seriously. Purportedly, Clubs represented the socialites or something along those lines? Diamonds represented the nouveau riche. Spades represented sincerity, maybe legmen? Hearts… erm… I don’t recall anymore.” 

But Yan Suizhi nodded. “Got it.”

“Huh?” Joe was stunned. “I don’t even know what bull I’m spouting, but you already got it sorted out?”

“It’s classic card suit symbolism from the medieval ages of the alliance,” Yan Suizhi said. “Clubs are bastons, representing power and status. Diamonds are rhombus-shaped gems that were popular in the past, representing wealth. Spades are arrowheads, representing the military, whereas Hearts represents faith.”

“Expanding this analogy to the so-called conglomerate, Clubs should refer to families with power and authority, such as yours and the Mansons, who are able to provide the widest networks and resources. Diamonds, the figures who chiefly sponsored this mission. Clubs are those who predominantly carried out the mission, and as for Hearts…” 

Joe learned by example and, getting the hang of it, seized the initiative to answer, “Hearts might be those who offered up their hearts, coming along to have a good time… how’s that useful?”

Gu Yan, “…”

“It is. Don’t overlook them. Once their numbers reach a certain size, they can often influence the final outcome,” Gu Yan added.

“Ah—now, that’s weird,” Young Master Joe said. “According to Ms Eunice, that doomed conglomerate envisioned and discussed many things, but was never able to be brought into reality, and later dispersed entirely. So that card suit symbolism was basically an insider’s joke. But later, some would use that symbolism to kiss ass, such as sending Old Fox a club-shaped decor, pretty much indirectly saying ‘You have status! You have power! You’re incredible!’ and whatnot.” 

After a moment’s reflection, he commented, “It was a noble goal. But it didn’t work out as expected; too many people were involved. It might have worked out with fewer people. I remember wasn’t there an anonymous consortium helping Wine City years ago? It was supposedly a low-key partnership between two families. Though Wine City is a bit beyond hope and the consortium later disappeared for whatever reason, it did manage to take off at first.”

Joe was still mumbling to himself.

In his opinion, that conglomerate was bound to come apart, and the playing card suit symbolism, moreso, was simply meaningless prattle during an evening on a snowy mountain. They constituted a distant past that wasn’t worth mentioning further.

However, Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan didn’t think so. 

They felt that these matters of a ‘distant past’ hadn’t concluded those decades ago as Joe and Eunice assumed. Instead, it could have had, in some other… twisted method, persisted to the present.

The area segmentation at the bar, the ornamental decor on Devore Yves’s desk, and Cliff’s subconscious behaviour when playing with cards. All of them seemed to carry this link.

As well as Brewer Manson’s ring, and Miller Manson’s ear stud…

Now that he thought of it, those three diamonds, when looked at as a whole, formed the shape of a clover, like a King of Clubs without the ‘stem’.