ORCBRB – Chapter 10
Chapter 10
The next morning, Sang Shi'an was woken up by her alarm.
She was dazed for a few seconds before realizing she had slept in Jian Cenyu's room. She hadn't been as drunk this time, and the events of last night came flooding back to her.
She sat stunned on the bed for a few seconds before stiffly walking out of the room.
Fortunately, Jian Cenyu had already left. Su Ningyue was waiting for her on the sofa. "It seems Cenyu Jiejie's advisor needed her for something, so she left early. We have class first period, so hurry up and get ready."
"I know, I know." Sang Shi'an rubbed her still-sleepy eyes and headed to the bathroom.
Su Ningyue was starving too. "Okay, then hurry up."
At seven-thirty, the breakfast stalls were at their busiest. While they waited, Sang Shi'an unhappily kicked Su Ningyue's foot. "Next time you go drinking, can you leave a note with your sister's contact information in your phone case?"
Su Ningyue clutched her heart dramatically, feigning the look of an abandoned little widow. "Are you blaming me for interrupting you and Cenyu Jiejie? Didn't you say before that you two don't sleep together? When Cenyu Jiejie brought it up last night, I didn't see you refuse very strongly."
She lowered her hand and clicked her tongue twice. "She just said a few words and you were tricked. What am I to do? I'm starting to think there's really something going on between you two."
Sang Shi'an was just testing the waters, not expecting that Su Ningyue hadn't been completely wasted. She immediately realized, "If you weren't that drunk, why didn't you say something? You made me sleep in the same bed with her."
Su Ningyue defended herself very logically, "We were both drunk. What if something happened with two drunkards sleeping together? Have you forgotten how novels usually start?"
Sang Shi'an actually thought Su Ningyue had a point.
It's just...
This reminded her of the advice her group of armchair strategists had given her during dinner last night.
But Su Ningyue, as if she could read her mind, took two rice balls and chattered on endlessly.
"So, are you going to invite Cenyu Jiejie to eat with you today? Will she come?"
"How about I give you another idea? While there are a lot of people on the road, give me a kiss and let me be your official partner?"
Sang Shi'an was speechless. "Stop, stop, that's enough! You're getting more and more ridiculous!"
Su Ningyue blinked. "So if you don't agree to kiss me, does that mean you're going to eat with Cenyu Jiejie? I mean, you've already slept together. What's the big deal about having a meal and taking a walk?"
Sang Shi'an: ...
You're crazy!
Just lying next to each other, does that count as sleeping together?
She dodged to the side. "I don't talk to people with poor language skills. Go away."
Su Ningyue laughed loudly. "Why are you acting like some kind of homophobic person in the closet? It's just sleeping together."
Sang Shi'an couldn't win against her and broke down. "Please, just shut up."
Before the first major class period began, Sang Shi'an finally understood why Jian Cenyu had left so early that day.
Professor Xu had just opened her lesson plan when she announced to them, "We'll have a pop quiz next class. I'll have a graduate student come to proctor. The quiz results will be counted towards your final grade."
A chorus of wails erupted in the classroom. The Monday 8 AM sleepiness vanished completely. Before the bell even rang, everyone had already uncapped their pens, ready to take notes.
Just as the bell was about to ring, a few gasps were heard in the class. Sang Shi'an paid no mind at first, until Xu Taotao snatched her notebook.
"What are you looking at your notes for? Quick, look who's here!"
"It's just a graduate student—"
Her voice trailed off.
The person who walked in was actually Jian Cenyu.
The very person Professor Xu had mentioned would be proctoring their quiz.
"Aren't you and Cenyu Jiejie friends? Why don't you go say hi?" Xu Taotao's eyes lit up as she watched Jian Cenyu helping the professor with her lesson plan.
"I'm not going." Sang Shi'an glanced at Jian Cenyu and went back to playing a game on her phone. "You guys know her too. You can go say hi."
Sang Shi'an stubbornly refused to approach Jian Cenyu. Xu Taotao and the others, who wanted to see some drama, couldn't say anything and could only sigh in disappointment.
Ten seconds later, Sang Shi'an received a message from Jian Cenyu.
[Is the seat to your left taken?]
In Sang Shi'an's childhood friends' group chat, someone had just sent an invitation for a weekend dinner. Sang Shi'an didn't plan to respond to Jian Cenyu. She replied in the group chat first, then exited and confirmed that the message was indeed from Jian Cenyu.
Sang Shi'an: [The first row is so empty, can't you just sit there?]
Jian Cenyu didn't message her again. Instead, she walked directly towards them. Su Ningyue was sitting on the outside. When Jian Cenyu asked if the seat inside was taken, Sang Shi'an couldn't stop Su Ningyue from giving an enthusiastic, "Nope."
Sang Shi'an: ...
Sang Shi'an could only reluctantly stand up and let Jian Cenyu take the seat.
Fortunately, the class bell rang right after Jian Cenyu sat down, so no one else could cause a stir.
Jian Cenyu sat quietly beside her and didn't ask about them sleeping together last night. It was as if she had really just been looking for a familiar face to sit with. Sang Shi'an breathed a small sigh of relief.
None of Professor Xu's pop quizzes were for nothing; they all counted towards the final participation grade.
Sang Shi'an opened her textbook and began to listen attentively.
There was a ten-minute break between the two short class periods. After Professor Xu left, Jian Cenyu walked up to the lectern and tapped lightly on the desk. Her long, loose hair shimmered in the sunlight.
"Excuse me, everyone. I'm Jian Cenyu, a first-year graduate student. While you were in class, I looked over the questions Professor Xu left. A few of the calculation problems are quite intensive and might take more than one class period to finish. So, I wanted to ask if you'd like to start early?"
"Is there a reward for starting early?" a girl in the class eagerly raised her hand.
Immediately after, a boy started to heckle, "Can we add you on WeChat, Senior? I have questions I'd like to ask you after class!"
"Yeah, I want to ask questions too!"
"Is that okay, Senior?"
A wave of teasing filled the classroom.
Jian Cenyu, holding the quiz papers, tapped them lightly twice. "Asking questions is, of course, fine."
Then, she picked up a piece of chalk and began writing on the blackboard behind her.
Her movements were unhurried, her expression calm. Paired with her serene and elegant aura, every stroke was like a slow-motion shot in a movie, playing out frame by frame in the classroom.
During this, Su Ningyue lamented, "It's over. Cenyu Jiejie's WeChat is going to be added by the entire school now."
But Sang Shi'an frowned at the string of numbers being written and blurted out, "That doesn't seem to be..."
"Not what?"
Soon, someone in the classroom provided the answer: "Why is that Professor Xu's WeChat! Senior! You tricked us!"
Su Ningyue was amused when she heard this and turned to Sang Shi'an. "Were you about to say that's not her phone number? You've even memorized her phone number?"
Sang Shi'an pretended not to understand and looked down at her microeconomics textbook. "Shouldn't you be using this time to study? Do you want to pass this quiz or not?"
Su Ningyue: Tsk.
Jian Cenyu's voice came from the lectern. "If you have any questions, you can ask Professor Xu. She's a very responsible teacher."
Another round of wails filled the classroom.
Jian Cenyu walked down from the lectern. "Since there are no objections, I'll start handing out the papers."
During the pop quiz in the second half of the class, Sang Shi'an was on pins and needles. She kept feeling Jian Cenyu's gaze fixed on her, but whenever she looked up, she found Jian Cenyu looking at other students' papers, every bit the serious senior.
Sang Shi'an was the first in the entire class to turn in her paper. As she placed it on the lectern, Jian Cenyu called out to her.
"Sang Shi'an."
Sang Shi'an turned around.
"Come help me check your class's attendance."
Sang Shi'an paused for a moment, then quickly understood the reason. During the last pop quiz, people who were paid to attend class for others had turned in papers, but some had written the wrong student ID, revealing they weren't the actual student.
Perhaps to avoid this situation, Professor Xu had specifically instructed Jian Cenyu to check student IDs when collecting the papers.
Since Jian Cenyu still had to proctor, this tedious task fell to Sang Shi'an, who had finished early.
Sang Shi'an had no choice but to go over and help Jian Cenyu check the attendance against the class list, one by one.
They actually found three people who had slipped through the cracks.
With Jian Cenyu there, Sang Shi'an couldn't help anyone cheat.
The few substitute students had worked all morning, probably without earning a single cent.
Sang Shi'an endured the curious stares of everyone in the classroom, her face growing stiff from trying to remain composed, until the bell finally rang.
Afterward, she went with Jian Cenyu to Professor Xu's office.
On the way, Jian Cenyu asked, "You turned in your paper so quickly. Did you answer all the questions?"
Sang Shi'an said, "Didn't you already look at the paper I turned in?"
When she went to check the attendance roster, she had clearly seen Jian Cenyu flip her test paper over and even look at the questions on the other side.
Jian Cenyu explained, "I didn't look at your answers, I just checked if you missed any questions."
Sang Shi'an pouted. "So if I say now that I didn't finish, would you give my paper back and let me write a little more?"
Jian Cenyu said, "No."
Sang Shi'an shrugged and said nothing more.
As they walked out of the office building, Jian Cenyu's voice came from behind, getting straight to the point, "Want to get lunch together?"
"Don't you think that's weird?" Sang Shi'an wanted to refuse.
She explained, "We don't see each other often, so they think we're having a secret affair. If we see each other a lot, they'll think we're showing off our relationship. No matter what we do, we can't explain it."
Jian Cenyu stood against the light, her eyelashes slightly lowered. "Then let me rephrase. It's lunchtime. May I invite you to have lunch with me?"
Sang Shi'an subconsciously wanted to ask Jian Cenyu, 'Don't you have anyone to eat with?'
But when her gaze fell on Jian Cenyu's face, taking in that cool expression, and she thought about how Jian Cenyu had to do experiments and manage a company on top of her graduate studies, it seemed she probably didn't have much in common with the other finance graduate students.
She was slightly taken aback.
Sang Shi'an had always thought that Jian Cenyu was sought after in any situation, that if she just stood somewhere, hordes of people would flock to her. She had never imagined that Jian Cenyu didn't even have anyone to eat with at school.
She suddenly felt that perhaps Jian Cenyu's life wasn't as smooth as she had imagined. Sang Shi'an couldn't describe her current feelings. She felt a bit uncomfortable, but it was also as if she had glimpsed a real side of Jian Cenyu, bringing her a little closer.
Sang Shi'an pursed her lips and said dryly, "I guess that's fine."
On the way to the cafeteria, Sang Shi'an heard a campus broadcast.
The male student who had harassed her and nearly injured her last Friday had been publicly criticized in a school-wide announcement and expelled from Yanjing University as a cautionary example.
Her mood suddenly improved quite a bit.
After finishing her classes for the day, Sang Shi'an returned to the Zuo'an Community, planning to order takeout for a simple dinner, when another message popped up.
It was a reply from her professor about the paper she had written earlier.
There was a discrepancy in the data of a case she had cited. It wasn't due to her carelessness, but because one of the companies involved in the case had appealed two days ago, won the lawsuit, and changed the outcome of the valuation adjustment mechanism.
Professor Xu said this was extremely rare in valuation adjustment mechanisms and considered it a fortunate coincidence, telling her to look up the recent developments of the case and re-analyze the reasons why the lawsuit was won.
This professor was none other than Sang Shi'an's advisor, Professor Xu.
If any other professor had said this, Sang Shi'an would have given a perfunctory reply and searched for it later when she had time. But this was a notice from Professor Xu, so Sang Shi'an didn't dare to be careless. She immediately put down her phone to find a computer.
After leaving home on Sunday, Sang Shi'an had gone for Japanese food, which delayed her from buying a new computer.
It seemed she could only borrow Jian Cenyu's.
The last time she borrowed it, she had left the computer on the desk in the living room. She didn't know if Jian Cenyu had taken it back to her room.
She messaged Jian Cenyu to explain why she needed to borrow the computer while walking towards the living room.
Jian Cenyu agreed to let her use it.
Jian Cenyu's computer didn't have a password. Sang Shi'an imported the paper she had written before, opened the browser, and set the computer to split-screen mode so both pages would be displayed.
For Sang Shi'an, the losing party of the valuation adjustment mechanism winning the lawsuit was not a good thing. It meant that her previous analysis of the reasons for failure, done from a god's-eye view, was now invalid. Instead, she had to find reasons for the turnaround within the original causes of failure, which felt embarrassingly like slapping her own face.
However, in the next second, her gaze froze on the other side of the computer screen.
The paper, the lawsuit, the valuation adjustment mechanism—everything vanished from her sight.
She stared intently at the browsing history that popped up below the search bar. Shock was no longer enough to describe Sang Shi'an's emotions.
A long list of browsing history showed:
【Explicit lesbian films】
【R-rated lesbian anime】
...
【Forced age-gap dual female lead adult】
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