The business partner had never expected Jiang Tingnan to be nothing more than a university student.
He wore a tracksuit, his hair cropped a little short, and there was still something of the student about his appearance, yet his expression was cold and showed not a trace of nerves, with a severity between his brows that didn’t match his years. He looked more like a seasoned hand at the negotiating table.
It left the business partner rather nervous instead. He rubbed his hands awkwardly and held out his business card.
Jiang Tingnan sat lazily in his chair.
The action was deeply familiar. There had been no counting how many people once stood at his side like this, respectful, bowing slightly, presenting a card with both hands.
Though Jiang Tingnan would never take it himself. There was always a secretary on hand for that.
He glanced down at the card and picked it up as though conferring a favor, and the name on it struck him as oddly familiar.
“Li Han?”
Li Han smiled. “That’s me.”
Hold on……
Was there not something slightly wrong with this exchange.
Li Han abruptly straightened up and coughed twice. “I believe I’m the client here?”
“……”
The negotiation went very smoothly.
Li Han was only a young working drudge himself, recently graduated and starting a business, without much money in hand, but he genuinely thought highly of Jiang Tingnan’s work.
He gritted his teeth, added another ten thousand, made it a round fifty thousand and transferred it to Jiang Tingnan on the spot.
Li Han had his own small designs, of course. He wanted to play generous this once and use it to poach Jiang Tingnan into his studio. Talent this good ought not to go to waste.
But before he could get the words out, Jiang Tingnan asked him mildly, “I’m planning to start a business. Do you want to come and work for me?”
Li Han, “Huh?”
Jiang Tingnan had finally remembered why the name Li Han rang a bell. He would later make his fortune starting with drones and count as one of the business world’s rising names, with a good head and a good eye.
He smiled faintly. “We can discuss salary. I’m entirely sincere.”
And so, without quite knowing how, Li Han came to a business meeting and an hour later had negotiated himself from client into employee.
Coming out of the teahouse, he hailed a taxi and held the door open attentively, asking with a smile, “Boss, when do we start work?”
Jiang Tingnan glanced at his phone. “Wait for my call.”
He needed to rent a place first, or they’d be working out in the middle of the street.
Li Han waved. “Right you are.”
Watching the taxi pull away, Li Han scratched his head. He seemed to recall having been the boss earlier? How had a few sentences from Jiang Tingnan brainwashed him into resolving to go and work for the man?
A student who’d only just started university, and where did that kind of nerve come from, serving up pie in the sky that big and that fragrant.
……
With the money in hand, Jiang Tingnan couldn’t even wait a day. That same evening he was looking at flats on his phone, and the next day he’d arranged to meet an agent and sign a contract.
A short lease, six months to start.
Jiang Tingnan was confident he could move Ruan Yan into something bigger and better within the half year.
He’d seen the place when he signed: one bedroom and a living room, not large, but warmly furnished, and everything in it new, which was why it cost rather more than comparable flats. Jiang Tingnan signed without blinking regardless.
Once he had the keys he didn’t tell Ruan Yan straight away, wanting to surprise him, and called only to say he was taking him out to eat.
Ruan Yan was in the library sorting records at the time.
He’d had a call first thing that morning from a teacher in the logistics department saying a position had opened at the library and he could go and try it.
Ruan Yan had shouldered his bag and gone eagerly.
The library work wasn’t demanding, mostly helping to put records in order.
When Jiang Tingnan’s call came, Ruan Yan was up a ladder shelving files.
He hadn’t dared tell Jiang Tingnan about the library job, or he’d have to hear about it endlessly, and there was every chance Jiang Tingnan would simply make him quit.
“I’m in the study room with my roommate, studying.”
Ruan Yan lowered his voice convincingly. “I’ve got another hour of it to do.”
Jiang Tingnan frowned.
It wasn’t that he lacked faith in his own husband.
It was that the notion of Ruan Yan studying.
Was in itself rather……
He said quietly, “Don’t study too hard, baby. This household isn’t relying on you coming first. Just don’t fail anything…… and failing wouldn’t matter either.”
Ruan Yan hung up on him.
He thought it was just as well he and Jiang Tingnan had no children.
Or heaven knows what the man would have spoiled them into.
He didn’t dare imagine a child coming home with a zero on a test. Jiang Tingnan would probably praise the child on how nicely round the zero was.
With the last of the work done, Ruan Yan handed back the keys, clapped his hands and finished for the day.
When he got back to the foot of the dormitory building, Jiang Tingnan was already waiting there.
He wore the clothes Ruan Yan had bought him and had his head down over his phone, half of the streetlight falling across him and lighting one side of his face, the rest in shadow.
When the two of them first started seeing each other, Ruan Yan had still been a junior employee at the group, and privately he hadn’t much wanted people knowing he was dating the president, so every time Jiang Tingnan would make a show of leaving work, turn down an alley, and wait for Ruan Yan in some out of the way corner.
Exactly as he was now.
Jiang Tingnan waiting for Ruan Yan.
Never once impatient.
At first Ruan Yan would walk over with careful decorum, eyes curving in a smile. “Sorry, have you been waiting long?”
Within a couple of days that became a little bird scampering over at speed and crashing into Jiang Tingnan’s chest. “Ugh, our supervisor made us work late again.”
Another month on, and Ruan Yan came flying over, chirping, “Husband, husband, I saw a sports car I liked at work today.”
Jiang Tingnan caught him securely every time. His own scarcity of words didn’t matter, because Ruan Yan had words enough; Jiang Tingnan couldn’t have got one in edgewise if he’d tried.
In the beginning Ruan Yan had hated eating at those star-rated restaurants, because the rooms were so quiet that he felt too self conscious even to chatter. He’d hold it in for ages and then laboriously tap out a message to Jiang Tingnan.
【Husband, am I allowed to talk to you?】
After that, Jiang Tingnan generally had the place cleared whenever they ate.
So that Ruan Yan could say whatever he liked.
Jiang Tingnan finished replying to Li Han’s message and had only just lifted his head when someone crashed into him, his body reacting first and catching hold of the person before he’d thought about it.
“Baby.”
Ruan Yan burrowed into him. “I missed you, I missed you, husband, hold me.”
Jiang Tingnan held him tighter and said quietly, “I missed you too, baby.”
After being lovey-dovey for a while, Ruan Yan looked up. “Husband, what are we going to eat?”
“You’ll know when we get there.”
Jiang Tingnan took Ruan Yan to an apartment building outside the school, and it was only while they were waiting for the lift that Ruan Yan sensed something was off.
He blinked. “What sort of place is this? A private kitchen?”
Jiang Tingnan gave an “mm.” “You have to book in advance. Tonight they’re only serving our table.”
If they hadn’t still been in the lift, Ruan Yan would have dragged him straight back out. “Noodles from the stall by the school gate would have done, what do we want with a private kitchen, how much is this going to cost, come on, let’s go, I’m not eating.”
“Too late.”
There was laughter in Jiang Tingnan’s voice. “I’ve already bought the groceries.”
Ruan Yan was lost.
The lift doors opened. Jiang Tingnan took Ruan Yan’s hand and led him to the flat directly opposite, pulled out a key and pushed the door open, while beside him Ruan Yan simply stood there dazed.
Jiang Tingnan squeezed his palm. “Go on in, baby.”
This was their first home after the rebirth.
A rented flat, a very small apartment.
But this was only the first step Jiang Tingnan took while holding Ruan Yan’s hand.
It took Ruan Yan a good while to come back to his senses.
Jiang Tingnan had rented a flat?
It hadn’t been long at all, not even a month.
Ruan Yan walked in, head spinning. The apartment was clean and pretty. He went round it once, then pushed open the bedroom door.
“Wow! Husband!”
“What a big bed!”