BSS - Chapter 122
Chapter 122
Deng Chuan returned to her room, first tossing the shirt and hoodie she had worn all night at the bar into the laundry basket. Then, she let Xu Wei know she was back and went into the bathroom for a hot shower.
Steam filled the air, and the alcohol went to her head. When she came out of the shower, Deng Chuan felt her throat was terribly dry, but the thought of Gu Ninglu still being outside made her pull back the hand she had reached out to open the door for water.
Fortunately, there was still a half-finished glass of water from the morning on her desk.
The night was deep, and her surroundings were quiet. Perhaps because of the alcohol and the shower, Deng Chuan felt her mind was exceptionally clear. Since she wasn't sleepy anyway, she sat down at her desk and reviewed the few pages of problems the professor had assigned. She had already solved them, but she felt her understanding wasn't thorough enough.
She was halfway through a class recording when Xu Wei called her.
Xu Wei's voice was tinged with weariness, as if she had just woken up. "Hm? Didn't you go drinking… Why aren't you asleep yet?"
Deng Chuan's language system hadn't switched over yet. She translated Xu Wei's words into English in her head, then translated her own thoughts back into Chinese. After fumbling for a few seconds, she finally managed to say, "If I were asleep, I wouldn't have been able to answer your call."
The Little Friend had probably just pulled herself out of study mode, and her tone was a bit dazed. Xu Wei pictured her sitting alone at her desk in the middle of the night, reading and writing, and a feeling arose in her heart, soft and unpredictable, like a cat's paw batting at a ball of yarn. The ball of yarn rolled far, far away, leaving only a single thread tugging at her heart.
Subconsciously, as if to dispel this emotion, Xu Wei hugged Zhou Liu, who had snuggled up to her at some point, and nuzzled him before saying softly, "I only called because I thought you'd be asleep."
With a seven-hour time difference between them, their schedules often didn't align. Deng Chuan was a heavy sleeper and usually didn't hear any noise. For them, the meaning of this call, which would most likely go unanswered, was no longer about connecting but about creating a record.
Xu Wei found it hard to define this behavior. She had understood long ago that actions stemming from emotion, unlike mathematics, could not be precisely measured.
Just hearing the ringing of the phone as it dialed was satisfying enough for her.
After saying this, which felt like rolling the ball of yarn toward Deng Chuan, she changed the subject. "Why are you still up so late?"
The Little Friend hummed, then said hesitantly, "I can't sleep…"
"Oh." Xu Wei detected the guilt of staying up late in her voice and responded gently, "Did you drink plenty of water? Does your head hurt?"
"I did," Deng Chuan said. "It doesn't hurt, I just feel really awake."
As she spoke, she propped her head up with one hand and gazed at the bright moonlight outside the window.
"Then you should get back to your books," Xu Wei said. "It's Monday today, the school has a flag-raising ceremony. I was already getting up late, and talking to you has delayed me even more."
Immediately after, Deng Chuan heard what sounded like Xu Wei throwing back the covers and sitting up. Either Zhou Liu or Juzi meowed softly, and Xu Wei said something to them.
"Okay." She chuckled softly. "Teacher Xu, you should hurry to work. Don't forget to eat breakfast."
"I know." Xu Wei's voice lowered. "You too… don't overexert yourself. Rest when you're about done, okay… Alright, I'm hanging up."
In the end, the ball of yarn rolled across Eurasia and into Deng Chuan's palm. Deng Chuan clutched her phone tightly, reluctantly humming in agreement several times before finally hanging up.
She finished listening to the class recording and read through a few financial case studies. Before she knew it, the sky in the distance was gradually turning white, tinged with a hint of cyan. A small cluster of hills on the outskirts of the city, hidden deep among the town's dense houses, was shrouded in the morning mist.
Deng Chuan rubbed her neck and drank the rest of the water in her glass. While brushing her teeth and looking in the mirror, she saw that her complexion was already somewhat haggard—grayish circles under her eyes, a pale face. Staying up all night really drained a person's vitality. She had never looked so worn out.
Deng Chuan stared at herself for a long while before spitting out the toothpaste foam.
She had class on Monday morning. Deng Chuan hadn't planned on sleeping anyway. It was still early, so she washed her face thoroughly, carefully applied a face mask, tied up her hair, and pulled on a hoodie. She pushed open her door, planning to go to the kitchen to make a sandwich to wake herself up.
The living room was empty. Gu Ninglu was gone.
Deng Chuan took the blanket back to her room, planning to wash it again. There was no warmth left in it; it seemed Gu Ninglu had left quite early.
The heiress's seemingly angry departure didn't cause much of a stir in Deng Chuan's heart.
Deng Chuan wasn't at all surprised that Gu Ninglu would choose to act this way. Thinking about the confident words she had spoken last night, she decided not to send a text to check if she was safe, lest she give the heiress any more misleading hints.
With these thoughts, Deng Chuan calmly cleared away the bedding from the sofa, restored the living room to its original state, and then calmly walked into the kitchen. She took out the pre-portioned and marinated chicken breast from the freezer and made simple vegetable sandwiches for herself and Lao Lin, adding a piece of pan-fried chicken breast to each.
She made three: two for herself, one for Lao Lin.
Deng Chuan sat at the dining table eating her sandwich, casually turning on her tablet to check the unread emails in her inbox.
Most of the emails were from the university—from professors, classmates, and the school itself, inviting her to dinners, mixers, and discussions. There were reading lists from professors and notices about related courses from the school. There were also a few from back home, and surprisingly, one from Su Mian, with a very formal turn of phrase, inviting her to London to play video games…
Deng Chuan couldn't help but smile.
Her smile was relaxed and bright in the morning light, as if she had shed all the fatigue from her all-nighter.
Lao Lin walked out with drifting steps, grabbed the sandwich from the wooden tray, and took a bite. He glanced at the vibrant Deng Chuan. "So energetic? Don't tell me you didn't sleep all night?"
"Yeah," Deng Chuan said. "Couldn't sleep, so I just didn't."
Lao Lin gave her a strange look, as if he wanted to say something but didn't dare. Chewing his sandwich, he sat down across from her, hesitating.
After a long moment, he spoke cautiously, "So, why couldn't you sleep? It wasn't because of what your Senior Sister said last night, was it? Hey, hey, don't look at me like that, I didn't mean to eavesdrop… Her voice was just too loud…"
Under Deng Chuan's silent gaze, his voice grew quieter and quieter. "…I just happened to overhear."
Deng Chuan said, "What did you hear?"
Lao Lin scratched his head. "Bits and pieces. She said something about an internship, something about money, something… I… heard it all."
Deng Chuan sighed heavily.
She didn't know how to describe this exhaustion. It was like a simple true-or-false question, with only a one-in-two chance for the answer—a check or a cross. The decision was final, leaving almost no room for hesitation. Yet, people kept coming to her, telling her she had misread it, that it was actually a long-form problem that required navigating many, many variables to solve.
So complex. So far, she had only ever had that much patience for problem-solving with one person: Xu Wei.
After blurting out the gossip, Lao Lin saw her expression and didn't dare say another word. Deng Chuan ate her breakfast in silence. It wasn't until she had swallowed the last bite of her sandwich and turned off her tablet that she composed herself, ready to explain.
"I'm sorry." She first apologized to Lao Lin. "I might have lost control. The sound of the door closing was a bit loud."
Lao Lin quickly shook his head, then heard her pause before saying calmly, "I'm not interested in her."
"I have a girlfriend, and I love her very much."
Lao Lin said, "Oh…"
Deng Chuan stood up. As if afraid Lao Lin didn't understand, she delivered a final, decisive blow. "It's the person you saw me video-calling that day."
With that, she picked up her bag, turned, and left, leaving Lao Lin sitting there alone to digest this heartbreaking fact.
Deng Chuan didn't let out a breath of satisfaction until she was in the elevator.
She was by no means as gentle and harmless as she appeared on the surface. Ever since stumbling upon Gu Ninglu's little schemes last night and hearing her unrestrained, crazy talk, Deng Chuan had been holding in a breath of frustration.
The fact that Gu Ninglu dared to harbor such intentions toward her, to offer those conditions—her actions themselves carried a kind of lofty condescension.
Deng Chuan hated the way she looked at her, hated the things she said, and resented Lao Lin's probing.
Be it affection or possessiveness, once it became a vine dragging her down, Deng Chuan would struggle to break free, even if it meant falling into a mountain of gold and silver.
Deng Chuan understood clearly that Gu Ninglu might like a version of her who would be swayed by her conditions, but that was definitely not her.
She had had a smooth life since childhood, without encountering any major setbacks. Anything she wanted, she could obtain step by step. Even the small stirrings of her adolescence were carefully protected by Xu Wei. And yet this fortunate Deng Chuan understood better than anyone what was most precious to her.
The conditions Gu Ninglu had laid out were questions she had been pondering since the Gaokao ended. Work and ideals, personal value and basic needs, a grand future or a mundane life, staying in her hometown or striving in a big city—after getting through the long-distance and international separation they were currently experiencing, what kind of answer should she present to Xu Wei?
Even if the mindset and lifestyle of a working professional were still far removed from her current identity.
The nineteen-year-old Deng Chuan stubbornly contemplated these questions that seemed to have existed in her life from the very beginning.
Should she strive? The answer was, of course, yes. Deng Chuan had never lacked hardworking people around her. The high school classmates who studied until they fainted, the roommates who started preparing for graduate school exams as freshmen, and even more so abroad—peers who pulled all-nighters every day, who could send her five emails in a single day to discuss papers and problem sets.
Whether pushed along by these people or by her own nature, Deng Chuan had always been among the best.
But the choices she faced didn't seem to be problems that striving alone could solve.
Her train of thought hit a dead end again.
Deng Chuan pressed her palm to her forehead and sighed.
Perhaps it was the exhaustion from the all-nighter welling up in her heart, but Deng Chuan suddenly had an intense desire to hear Xu Wei's voice.
But just as she was unwilling to tell Xu Wei about what happened last night, she was also unwilling to ask Xu Wei about these problems.
She no longer wanted to present all her questions to Xu Wei, waiting for her to unravel them one by one.
Learning to keep some things to herself—perhaps this was what it meant to grow up.
The elevator reached the ground floor, and the doors opened. Deng Chuan took a deep breath, pushing all her worries and confusion to the back of her mind.
Gu Ninglu's appearance was perhaps just a coincidence; she still hadn't found the answers to her questions. Therefore, before the answers came, the only thing Deng Chuan could do was to do everything within her power.
Holding on to this thought, Deng Chuan stepped out and threw herself into the chase of a new week.
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