Honey Stewed Squid

Chapter 47 - The Ancient Legend ?!

Some time past ten in the morning was the time when sunlight was at its best.

At the end of class, all the students, of their own initiative, set their movie review written in English on the desk at the front of the classroom. Each person who walked by the front row to set down his or her stack of A4 papers tossed looks of “Oh yeah, you did good,” “Add oil!” and “Little Tong Nian, you have so made such a good showing”…

Against that growing stack of papers as background, Tong Nian carried on ever so slowly drawing little circles on her notebook, then drawing some more circles…

Until… Yaya quietly approached her and leaned in close to ask whisperingly by her ear, “So, did it feel awesome? Did you have a feeling like you were the female lead of something?”

“……” Her face flushed with warmth, she responded quietly, “You were the one who told him?”

“Yup. I gave him our whole class timetable as well as all the profs’ names.” Yaya broke out into a grin and, while she was at it, grabbed onto Tong Nian’s wrist, hissing excitedly, “If I had known, I would have started playing around on Weibo earlier. I just saw that God Gun actually opened up his own Weibo account! And you’re the only one he follows on it!!”

Tong Nian gave an “mm,” feeling as if she were floating.

“Not gonna disturb you guys anymore. I’m heading out of here.” Yaya gave her wrist a squeeze.

Why was she feeling a sense of melancholy, like she was marrying her daughter off? … Sigh.

Soon, all the students had cleared out of this amphitheatre-style classroom, leaving only her to keep Gun and the old professor company.

The old professor longed to chat more, but patting Gun on the shoulder, he told him that he still needed to hurry to his next class. After the professor had also left, it truly was only she and he remaining in the classroom.

Han Shangyan looked at her as she clasped her books to herself with a distracted look on her face, like she was about to drift away.

He knew he would be getting busier and busier, so he had told 97 to ask Yaya for Tong Nian’s class schedule. He had wanted to choose a morning or afternoon to simply keep her company and pass the time like any other normal campus sweethearts.

Yesterday, when he was reading her WeChat messages, he could sense that she wanted to talk more with him, but reluctant to disturb him, she was trying very hard to suppress the desire.

He reckoned, those sweet moments that campus sweethearts enjoyed were things that she would not have the opportunity to ever experience.

Thinking of it this way, he did owe her quite a lot.

“Your classmates all treat you quite well?” He finally closed the notebook he had been using for appearances and shoved it into her schoolbag. When those kids walked by them earlier on, they had all waggled their brows and winked at her, which plainly showed she had a good relationship with them.

“Mm-hmm. A lot of them were my classmates in undergrad.”

“I remember you once said, ‘I’m not very good with words. I used to always somehow offend my friends and classmates’?”

Such a good memory 0.0…

“During third year of undergrad, there was a period when… everyone didn’t really like talking to me.”

He nodded.

He recalled Yaya’s words:

“She said she always offended people? She’s overthinking things. It was just during third year, when the juvenile class students were integrated back in and assigned to the various faculties. When you suddenly switch into a new class, you always get that type of treatment. Back when I changed high schools, it was the same thing.

“Everyone from our year of undergrad knows the saying, ‘There are three treasures in the faculty: Tong Nian, the intranet, and the school team.’

“Do you know why? The intranet is a wealth of resources. Any movie you want, you can find on there, and things are uploaded onto it way faster than any webpage out there. The school basketball team has national-level athletes on it, so it’s the gathering spot for hot guys all year round. The last is our little Tong Nian. When it comes to our specialized courses or any major assignments, she will never refuse any request or plea for help from her classmates.”

Gun rubbed her little head.

Tong Nian did not know what had happened. “Let’s go now? There are still classes that will be going on in this room.”

His intention was to keep her company anyway, so it did not matter to him one way or the other. He stood.

The seats were too small, and he had sat for two full periods of lectures where he had been unable to stretch his legs out at all.

Now he felt as if he had been liberated. Moving his shoulders about, he watched as she efficiently gathered up her books and pens. Out of the blue, he thought, what had he done during his student days? He had absolutely no impression of them. Sure enough, there were huge differences in the focus of every person’s life.

The two stepped out of the amphitheatre-style classroom, and walking against the flow of the stream of people who were hurrying to class, they went downstairs and picked up her bicycle.

Pushing her little white bike, she strolled beside him, continually pointing things out to him. That over there was the undergrad dorms. That was the grad students’ dorms. Over there was the Campus Activity Centre. That was the physics building and the chemistry building as well as the laboratory that she worked in that was built in the middle of the lake. Gun had never experienced the feel and atmosphere of universities in China. With both his hands in his pants pockets, he ambled slowly with her.

They passed by the building for the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies.

“How did you get on such friendly terms with this professor?” At last, unable to contain her curiosity, she asked him this.

“He’s a pretty nice guy.”

“……”

“What?”

“The title he’s been given in our faculty is ‘Old Demon King.’ He’s failed the most number of people…”

Gun gave an “oh?” and then told her, “He’s quite an interesting guy. He’d spent his whole time teaching English, all the way into his forties, and then he suddenly decided he would give himself a long break. So just like that, he left, studied, and got himself a master’s degree in industrial design.”

“And then he came back to continue teaching English? He studied up to a master’s level…” What was the point?

“It was only for fun, to pass the time anyway.” Gun caught sight of the library. “Some people’s pastime is travelling, some people’s is studying. Mine is gaming. If everything you did needed to have an ultimate goal to it, your life would be too boring.”

He was very interested in the library.

Locking up her bicycle downstairs, she brought him in.

The second level contained books that were for leisure and entertainment. He did not pause there and headed directly up with her to the section with professional and technical books.

All around, it was quiet.

The students sitting in the reading and study area were all head down, busily taking notes. She followed him, walking all the way to that area where there seemed to be no end to the row upon row of bookshelves. Every so often they would see someone searching for a book, someone looking down and texting, some young girls looking at the book list their professor had given and discussing in whispered tones, as well as… sweethearts holding hands or touching one another’s arm…

Gun came to a stop.

Following suit, she also stopped.

She tilted her head up for a look. They were all books on design. They were related to his field of study?

Pulling out a book at random, he leafed through it.

She leaned in close and also glanced over it, asking in a soft voice, “Are you really good at freehand drawing?

He made no remark in answer.

So nice. She really admired people who were good at sketching by hand.

“Then… how come you’ve never drawn anything?”

“Draw what?” Gun raised his brows.

“Draw… people?”

Clearly, the kid had no idea at all what people in industrial design did. Shutting the book, he set one of its corners against her forehead and slid it down along the length of her little nose until it reached the tip. “Don’t tell me you think industrial design is the same as body painting.”

“……” I never said it was body painting, ah…

So, when someone came near that particular bookshelf and recognized that very well-known cutie-girl who had placed in the ACM-ICPC World Finals, that person also got to witness how she, with ears and face burning brightly, dashed away from there as if she was fleeing. The man behind her, on the other hand, looked laidback as he unhurriedly set a book back into its original location. For some reason, there was a sense that romantic pink bubbles were floating everywhere, you know?

The little girlie’s face was so red… Could it be… there had been a love profession? Or a stolen kiss?

This…

Aw, seriously, are you kidding? … This is the library, ’kay?

Hey, friend!

Requesting a playback, requesting a replay, requesting you do it one more time…

* * * * *

Before long, the national finals for Tempest of the Sealed Chamber had begun in Beijing.

On the condition that she would not take any time off for the three months that followed, Tong Nian was able to negotiate a short, one-week break with her academic supervisor. She used it to go with Gun to attend the Tempest of the Sealed Chamber national finals. There happened to be all sorts of meetings and conferences, big and small, going on this week and hotel availability was tight, so he reserved a two-bed executive suite.

After the two stepped in the door, he went first to take a shower. “We’re having dinner with a friend tonight.”

She answered in agreement. Sitting down on a bed, she surfed aimlessly through programs on the television.

Not long after, she heard the sound of the bathroom door opening.

Immediately, she jumped off the bed. “You’re good?” The instant she ran into the bathroom, she was stupefied…

Just a towel around the waist…

In a split second, she had spun herself around, but from behind, he lifted her into his arms. The ground and ceiling seemed to spin before her eyes.

She was set down on the marble bathroom countertop.

Grabbing her legs by the ankles, he locked them behind his waist. “What are you doing running off?”

She squirmed restlessly, trying to avoid him. This position…

“I kind of miss the times when you’ve had a drink,” he teased her, resting his chin against her forehead and pulling her against his body. His eyes looked into the mirror. “Before we head out, I’ll tell you a story.”

Story?

She could feel his hands starting to get naughty, and her heart felt fidgety.

“My parents are both gone,” he told her simply. “I have an Auntie, my stepmom, who married in after my mother passed away. Later, my father passed away, too. It turns out the time I’ve spent with her has actually been even longer than with my own birth parents. When I was young, I really disliked her. She didn’t let me get into pro gaming, so I came back to China by myself.” And that’s why… when he was an adult, he ended up choosing to take the Chinese nationality?

She lifted her head, trying to look at him.

He stopped her.

“Later, when I returned here to China, I met a gaming master named Solo.”

SP China’s big boss?

“At the time, he had a little girlfriend named appledog. In the very beginning, it was just the three of us, and we wanted to start up a team. Later, there were more and more people, and we really were able to form one. We didn’t lack people back then, just money. So I ran back to Norway and, by trickery, got out some of the inheritance my dad had left me.”

No wonder his grandfather always yelled at him and rebuked him.

Tong Nian did not know how she could comfort him, so she simply hugged his back tightly.

She was not conscious in the least of what kind of an effect such an action would have on a normal man while her legs were wrapped around his waist. Gun narrowed his eyes slightly, his voice dropping even lower. “We took a lot of championships, but then, at the height of everything, when the buzz about us was going the strongest, for certain reasons, appledog left. At the time, Solo asked whether I wanted to take over as captain. I declined.”

“Why did you decline?”

“I’m a very stubborn person. I used to have a cat, but after it died, I didn’t want to go near or have anything to do with cats.” He explained, “It was the same with the team. When the people changed, it wasn’t the same team anymore. At the time, I tossed all the responsibilities to Solo and returned to Norway.”

Very lightly, she gave an “oh.”

This story about raising a cat, appledog had told her before.

However, she for once was wise and treated it as if she was hearing it for the first time.

“Later, I founded K&K. Although, when it was first established, I didn’t want to admit it, my purpose had actually been very simple. I wanted to redeem my past decision—to find my former teammates again and take care of them, give them a strong, capable organization and team, and start anew.”

Her eyes blinked, then gently lowered.

She was a little sad from listening to this.

“K&K established its China branch in 2013. I didn’t come back to China until the end of 2014. The first time I made an appearance at an exhibition tournament for Tempest of the Sealed Chamber, it was in Korea. That was… the first time I saw Solo and appledog, ten years later. They were both in SP. All my teammates from the past, they were in SP as well.” Only he, all alone, had become the leader of K&K.

Gun did not carry on speaking.

Why did he suddenly feel such a need to confide?

Possibly because of the “national finals,” which were such a large-scale competition.

Ten years…

She was still waiting for the remainder of the story when suddenly, he was taking her breath away.

This kiss was unrelenting. Perhaps he, Han Shangyan, had never before thought that one day he would do this to a young girl. Holding her lips between his teeth, repeatedly tormenting her. Pressing her diminutive body against his chest. Using actions to remind her exactly what the relationship was between the two of them.

“Come,” he requested in a low voice, “sit closer.”

Dazedly, she adjusted her seating position and slowly moved closer to him.

Until… she was sitting at the very edge of the counter. When she felt a certain something, she instinctively flinched backwards. He remained motionless, with no unnecessary movements, only gazing at her.

……

After the exhibition matches in Korea had ended, he had been unable to sleep the entire night.

That night, he had left the K&K headquarters with the intention of driving back home, but last minute, he had changed his mind. Stepping out of the building, with a very heavy duffel bag slung diagonally across his back, he had walked for three or four hours before picking at whim an Internet café with an especially tacky name and going inside. There had been nothing special to him about that night. Or at least, at the time, he had not known that the kid trying to sell a late-night snack to him had other thoughts about him in mind.

Why—

Her eyelashes fluttered slightly. Tilting her head back, she bit down lightly on his lower lip, rather shyly using her actions to express to him, “Han Shangyan, I love you.”

What, to you, is worth liking in someone like me?

Closing his right hand into a fist, he leaned it against the condensation-covered mirror behind her. From top to bottom, streaks of water drew paths as they continually slid down.

His bare back rose and fell with his fierce breathing. Water still dripped from his short hairs…

Don’t leave me.

Those were words he had many times wanted to utter in his lifetime but had never been able to say aloud.

“Nian Nian.” His voice was husky.

She made a sound in response. Sweat had long since dampened her bangs.

“Are you scared?”

……