Extra Chapter 2: Prologue
1
Many years later, he realized
that Ye Rong hadn't actually told him about Nie Xiguang directly. He'd heard
many things from Zhuang Fei.
One weekend after the start of
his senior year, he finished eating and washing the dishes, preparing to go to
Jiang Rui's house for a tutoring session. Zhuang Fei followed him to the door,
hesitating several times before speaking.
He sat down to change his shoes,
and Zhuang Fei finally spoke up: "Brother, does Jiang Rui's sister like
you?"
"Who told you that?"
Zhuang Xu stopped tying his shoelaces and straightened up. “Rongrong said it,”
Zhuang Fei said, then quickly explained, “She didn’t say anything bad about
anyone, she’s just a little sad. Jiang Rui seems really arrogant; she knows
your relationship, but she still said in the dorm that she’s determined to win
you over.”
Zhuang Xu paused for a moment,
then said, “I know.”
“Brother, do you like her? I
think what she’s doing… is really bad.” Zhuang Fei had always been a very
gentle boy; using “really bad” was already his limit.
Zhuang Xu didn’t answer him
directly. He bent down again and carefully tied his shoelaces. “You should
focus on your studies; these things are none of your business.”
He stood up, but didn’t leave
immediately. After a moment, he lowered his eyes and said, “I still have a few
classes; I’ll stop after that.”
He left without looking at Zhuang
Fei, forgetting to close the door behind him as usual.
Later, when their mother was
hospitalized, one day, only he and Zhuang Fei were eating at home. Zhuang Fei
brought her up again: "Brother, can't we borrow some money from Aunt to
pay back Sister Jiang Rui's money?"
Zhuang Xu immediately looked at
him: "Why do you say that?"
Zhuang Fei hesitated for a while
before saying, "Sister Rongrong said that your school knows about Sister
Jiang Rui lending you money. I don't know who spread it, but... she said in the
dormitory that since she helped you, you should definitely be with her."
Zhuang Xu held his chopsticks for
a long time, still saying, "Don't worry about these things, just study
hard."
But it was also Zhuang Fei who,
after meeting her once during the college entrance exam, said to him,
"Brother, I don't think Sister Xiguang is the kind of person Sister
Rongrong described."
He called her Sister Xiguang the
moment he met her.
Xiguang... Nie Xiguang.
Of course she wasn't.
Zhuang Fei knew after just one
meeting.
But back then, he…
“You say you misunderstand me?
What makes you think you misunderstand me? Because of what others say? But we
spent a whole summer and a semester together. I did so many things, said so
many things—didn't you see or hear them? With your intelligence and emotional
intelligence, can't you understand? You just don't want to understand; you're
just taking advantage of your position.”
Zhuang Xu stood before the
floor-to-ceiling window of his office in Lujiazui, wondering why he remembered
that conversation from so many years ago so clearly.
He knew he hadn't misremembered a
single word.
Over the years, he had long
understood that she hadn't misspoken a single word.
A soft knock came from behind
him, startling Zhuang Xu from his distant memories.
“Come in,” he said in a deep
voice.
The new assistant, Xiao Chu,
pushed open the door and entered. “Mr. Zhuang.”
He reported several tasks to him,
and Zhuang Xu stood by the window listening. Finally, Xiao Chu mentioned
University A's anniversary celebration. "The university has received our
stamped donation agreement, and the finance department will make the payment
according to the agreement in the next couple of days. Also, the university
invites you to the donation ceremony on the 25th and the banquet that evening.
The official anniversary celebration is on the 26th; the afternoon is the
university's anniversary celebration, followed by activities at the Business
School, and a dinner at the Business School in the evening. The coordinators
for other activities sent me detailed introductions, which I printed out."
Xiao Chu handed him the
anniversary celebration schedule, which Zhuang Xu quickly glanced at: "The
donation ceremony is unnecessary; the amount isn't large. You can attend the
banquet, but you can adjust your meeting on the afternoon of the 25th."
Xiao Chu nodded, but inwardly
disagreed. A personal donation of tens of millions was considered a small
amount? While some alumni had indeed donated hundreds of millions, those were
veteran entrepreneurs nearing sixty; his own boss was only in his early thirties.
There was no need to be so demanding of himself.
"Is that staying in Nanjing
for a day?"
"Yes, you'll come with
me."
"Okay!" Xiao Chu's face
lit up with joy, and he responded loudly.
He was a recent graduate from
University A, and naturally, he was thrilled to return to his alma mater for
its anniversary celebration with his boss. In a way, joining this renowned
quantitative fund company right after graduation was a triumphant homecoming.
Xiao Chu excitedly left the
office, leaving the large space momentarily silent.
After standing for a while,
Zhuang Xu returned to his seat. Several screens in front of him flashed rapidly
with data that held the secrets to wealth, while behind him lay the dazzling
and expensive view of the Huangpu River.
His partner and investor had
jokingly told him when he moved into this office, "Zhuang, from now on,
you own the Huangpu River too."
Zhuang Xu simply smiled. In fact,
more often than not, standing before this floor-to-ceiling window, he felt it
was a precipice from which he could fall at any moment.
This mindset was reflected in his
investment style: always vigilant and patient, waiting for the right
opportunity to strike decisively.
His phone, lying to the side,
kept beeping with WeChat notifications. After replying to an email, Zhuang Xu
picked up his phone and opened WeChat.
The WeChat group for the Business
School of University A showed hundreds of unread messages.
This group is usually very quiet,
but recently, probably due to the upcoming anniversary celebration, it has
become unusually lively, and everyone's enthusiasm is particularly high today.
The reason for this surge of enthusiasm is that a little over an hour ago, a
student who stayed on campus to teach forwarded two news articles from the
campus network.
One was about Guangyu Solar's
donation to University A, and the other was about the donation from the
Sequence Quantitative Fund.
After forwarding these two
messages, the student added a tag, saying in a slightly official tone:
"@Nie Xiguang @Zhuang Xu, you are the pride of our graduating class of the
Business School."
About a month ago, Zhuang Xu
received an invitation to University A's centennial celebration. After
receiving the invitation, he remained calm, and no one even crossed his mind.
Until this moment when he was
tagged.
The WeChat message with the tag
had long since been lost to time.
Zhuang Xu looked at the
still-active chat history, but didn't scroll up, so he didn't know if the other
alumnus who was tagged had replied. Out of politeness, he felt he should reply
courteously.
He opened the text input box, but
before he could even finish typing "Thank you for your kind words,"
two new messages popped up in the chat.
The alumnus who had been tagged
along with him first sent a somewhat lively emoji, then said kindly and
politely: "I was just in a meeting. You flatter me, everyone. It's my
pleasure."
If seeing each other through this
message felt like seeing each other in person, wouldn't this be considered a
reunion with an old friend?
She seemed to have never spoken
in the alumni group, just like him.
At least, this was the first time
he'd seen her speak in the group.
After WeChat became widespread,
classmates formed all sorts of groups, but everyone tacitly avoided adding them
to the same group, except for public alumni groups like the Business School of
University A.
In reality, after Suzhou, he
hadn't seen her again, not even at a classmate's wedding.
Either he was absent due to other
commitments, or she was away on business. It seemed as if fate had abruptly
severed all ties between them, even refusing to grant them any more
coincidences.
Zhuang Xu held his phone for a
long time before finally sending his reply. Night had fallen outside the
window. He reset the alumni group chat to "Do Not Disturb" mode,
momentarily losing the will to continue working. There were still a dozen unread
messages on his phone. He stood up, grabbed his coat from the sofa, and walked
out, scrolling through them.
Alex had texted him at noon,
saying that Shawn, a former colleague from Bank A, had returned to China and he
was inviting him to dinner to welcome him back, along with some other friends.
He asked if he wanted to join them.
Zhuang Xu simply replied with two
words: "Where are you?"
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