CH 53.1

The heroine’s high school graduation was happening in this scene. All the students were in the same sports uniforms as they crowd together at the sports field, awaiting the start of the ceremony.

Han Shi Yu slicked his hair back and wore round-rimmed glasses as he read out the speech written on the script. The loud speaker echoed his voice out throughout the field.

He intentionally put a lot of weight onto the words ‘on-site’ when the camera pan towards the heroine and the scene changed to a flashback scene. She would recall her own uncle – who was played by Han Shi Yu, the principal – reprimanding her for fooling around too much while she played video games.

Yan Yuan handled her facial expressions well. Although she was supposed to be calm and determined, her eyes still shone with a bit of hurt. That little detail helped this rebellious, lonely girl appear less cold and indifferent.

After the silence, the heroine opened her lips and said, “It’s none of your business.”

“Do you think I really like doing this? It’s your dad who…” Han Shi Yu stood up and looked furiously at the girl who ran out of the room. “Come back here!”

The director: “Great! Done in one take.”

Yang Han and Xu Jia who were watching from the side gave Han Shi Yu a round of applause.

Xu Jia: “Uncle Han, amazing!”

Yang Han handed him a bottle of water and said, “Old Han, your acting skills are really great.”

Han Shi Yu smiled. “Right?”

“Yeah, so much that I want to step in and beat you up.” Yang Han felt the urge wiggling in her like an itch, “Your character is too mean.”

“That’s not being mean,” He raised an eyebrow, twisted the bottle cap open and explained. “In that era, educators who held such a position like him, was stuck between empathizing with the younger generation but struggling to adapt to new things due to the generation gap. Driven by this contradiction, coupled with this principal’s rather aggressive temperament, that’s why it led to this situation.”

Yang Han was confused, “Huh?”

“You’ll be able to see it clearly towards the later parts. He’s not a completely cold person. “He took the chance to pat her head and said, “This is how it is sometimes. Young people can’t just rush forward, chasing after their dreams without looking around them. They should try to make small, appropriate compromises for their seniors under the premise of not going against their original intent and wishes.”

Han Shi Yu twisted the bottle cap back and handled it to Yang Han. “Sometimes, ‘being misunderstood’ has nothing to do with the environment. Instead, it’s caused by ourselves.”

Yan Yuan walked over as the professional chicken owner seriously brewed a pot of chicken soup for his daughter. She listened and admired his words, “Although it’s just a cameo, Mr. Han really understands his role well.”

“It took a long time to memorize the lines.” Han Shi Yu waved at her and laughed, “Sigh, who never dreamed about being an actor as a kid?”

Yang Han blinked a few times and tilted her head, thinking about Han Shi Yu’s words.

Since childhood to adulthood, Han Shi Yu’s ideals had shifted a lot. Furthermore, Han Lang was very opened-minded and hardly ever stopped him from doing anything. The current him was a result of growing up freely and without a single restriction.

He used to want to be a writer or painter. Then, as he grew a bit older, he wanted to be a singer or actor. His elders and teachers all said he was very suitable for the stage. Plus, he also enjoyed performing, truly someone who suited being in front of the cameras.

In his early twenties, Han Shi Yu finally anchored his wild, sky-high dreams. It became Yang Mo, who was far away across the seas. Therefore, he barely had a second thought before choosing to start his own business. With that, he could justify his actions of pulling his man back to his side with a phone call.

A big part of the reason for the failure of Ji Xun at the start was due to his brainless enthusiasm. Reality wasn’t a romantic story of ‘love can conquer all’. The free-spirited Han Shi Yu, who was used to being carefree and easy-going, “made up” for all the negative emotions he missed out on in his life due to his momentary rashness. They came from his elders, friends and even his lover.

The proud him was forced to lower his head and learn to compromise.

Han Shi Yu smiled at that thought.

He missed Yang Mo again.

Coincidentally, Xu Jia, who had been watching from the side, tugged on Yang Han’s sleeve and asked, “By the way, where is Uncle Yang Mo?” I’ve been looking for him the whole day.”

“Dad’s on a business trip,” Yang Han said, “He won’t be back for a while.”

Yang Mo had secretly returned home already. When he arrived in Beijing with his suitcases, his fingers hesitated for a moment, hovering on top of his phone’s keyboard. In the end, he didn’t send the message, only tucking his phone away in his pocket.

If he were to send Han Shi Yu a ‘I’m back’ message now, he would probably fly over right away.

“Surprise” was a common trick for Han Shi Yu, but it wasn’t exclusively for his use.

Yang Mo didn’t go straight home. Instead, he stayed in the capital city and walked to the gate of his long-lost alma mater.

He let out a nervous sigh when he looked at the “Shou Cheng University” words engraved on the stone.

After graduation, he hadn’t been here for a long time. He wasn’t great at socializing or maintaining relationships. Every time his classmates had a gathering, he would either have something else going on or tried to avoid it.

The reason why he suddenly came here was because the other day—

Yang Mo was passionate about cracking down the firewall of Shou Cheng university’s student forum. This was known to all from Ji Xun. Therefore, at every end of the year, his colleagues would bring it up in the group chat, “Did department chief Yang succeed this year?”

That became an annual ritual in the technical department.

Of course, Yang Mo had found many bugs in the firewall. However, his definition of success was very critical, so he always felt like there was something lacking when he worked on it. The system was simple but cleverly designed. Yang Mo found it to be quite interesting. He even created his own cracking software, specifically to study Shou Cheng University’s firewall.

Shou Cheng university would never have expected that one of their students who had graduated over ten years ago would still be obsessed with the school forum. This was truly something unheard of in the university’s history.

What made Yang Mo so obsessed came from the hands of Cheng Shao.

Cheng Shao was Yang Mo’s mentor but also the one who noticed his talent before anyone else. It was him who brought Yang Mo, a curious non-major student into the major, answering all his doubts and questions.

But after they became familiar, Yang Mo found that Cheng Shao’s temper was the same as himself. The two could somehow start arguing out of nowhere.

His temperament was no worse than his student. Despite not using a single curse word, Yang Mo could still feel the insinuated insult when Cheng Shao scolded him.

The day before Yang Mo returned home, out of habit, he opened the special software program he had made and went to find the fault in the school forum system again.

He pressed a fist against his lips and seriously dove into cracking the codes on the screen.

Suddenly, the software prompted him with a suspected loophole. Yang Mo’s eyes opened wide as he pulled the stool forward, click into the designated codes and began to work on it.

Yang Mo gave his full attention to operate on it, so focused that even the air around him was tense. After a few minutes, Yang Mo exhaled deeply and leaned back in his chair. A small joy could be seen in his bland expression as he picked up the coffee on the table and took a sip.

He successfully invaded the space of one user who was most likely using some unorthodox plug-in software. That was why the protection for his account was abnormal.

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But this couldn’t be regarded as something Yang Mo single-handedly cracked. He felt a little regretful to log out now, so he kindly helped this person by adding a layer of protection for his plug-in, so that his information wouldn’t be leaked.

However, he couldn’t log out.

Yang Mo frowned and pressed the button a few times, but the system prompted him that he had been locked in.

He suddenly had a bad feeling, so he moved the mouse to the identity of the user and checked his ‘registration information’. He realized this was an internal account of Shou Cheng university’s student worker number.

The user was none other than Cheng Shao.

Yang Mo: “……”

His hands left the keyboard and he subconsciously made the action of bending down to turn off the CPU, but then he remembered he was using a laptop.

At this time, a window suddenly popped up.

The text box began to roll out with texts automatically.

“Yang Mo, don’t think of shutting it down. I know it’s you, brat.”

Yang Mo: “.”

He really fell into the hole that Cheng Shao had dug long ago.

He rested his head on top of his hands. Who would have thought that this bug was a deliberate, intentional bait?

The text displayed:

“Oh no, now you should be called Starry. What’s the matter? Did you think you were no longer a land creature but a sea creature after changing into a foreign vest? A brat will be a brat no matter what. Even if you’re in the water now, you’d only be a rabbit who can swim.” 1

“Not returning to your nest for more than ten years, huh? How did you not end up as a pickled rabbit?”

Seeing that familiar yet kind words and tone, Yang Mo was speechless again. “……”

“If not because you showed your face, I really wouldn’t believe Starry is you. Other teachers told me that Ji Xun’s CTO is the same Yang Mo that I taught years ago. I said, bullshit. That brat is working abroad and I would’ve known if he came back.” Cheng Shao’s dissatisfaction could be felt between the lines.”

“I was waiting for you to report to me after returning. Yet, you sure are capable. Not a single word. Touch your chest and tell me, is there still conscience inside?”

The text slowly emerged.

Memories started flashing in Yang Mo’s mind. He remembered when he graduated, he brushed aside all his pride and went to Cheng Shao, asking for advice on working abroad.

At that time, Cheng Shao looked triumphant. He helped him analyse everything and showed off his “beloved pupil” who he had fought with for 3 years and said, “See, the older the wiser.”

“If you’re willing to pick up your conscience and dry it under the sun again, then return to Shou Cheng university to take a look. If not, forget it. Since your conscience can’t sell for much anyways.”

As if he expected Yang Mo to not be swayed by that, he added, “It’s good to not be confined by the past too, I suppose. What did Ni Kuang say again? Mankind can only progress because the young people didn’t listen to the previous generation.”

“That’s really well said. I see that over the years, aside from anything else, your shamelessness has grown a lot too.”

“You can treat us old farts as trash scraps or chase after what you want to do without a care of anything else, but there are still things that you need to keep and hide well in your heart. Don’t forget that.”

Yang Mo stared at the screen for a while. Although the texts were pre-coded ages ago, but it really felt like there was a stubborn old man with white hair on the other end, looking at him in silence.

Finally, the last line displayed on the window was—

“You’ll always be the student I’m proudest of.”

The date that was signed along with the text was the day he and Han Shi Yu had done the livestream together for work. Cheng Shao had somehow tuned into the livestream and the second he saw Yang Mo’s eyes, he immediately recognized that it was his own shitty student.

Yang Mo could imagine how he was cursing as he typed out all these texts.

The system lock was lifted, but Yang Mo stared at the screen blankly for a long while before he turned off his software.