“Alright, alright, stop standing around.” Zhou Desheng’s voice pulled him out of his memories.
“Qin Wan, go tell the kitchen to add two more dishes. We’ll celebrate properly tonight. Yaozu, put your phone away and say something to your brother.”
Zhou Yaozu tossed his phone onto the sofa with a dull thud. “What is there to say?”
The teenager stood up lazily, his 178-centimeter frame half a head shorter than Zhou Guchuan.
“Dad, that spot was originally mine.”
Zhou Desheng’s smile faded slightly.
“You were the one who said you didn’t want to go back then,” Zhou Guchuan pointed out bluntly.
“I was just…” Zhou Yaozu gritted his teeth, not daring to finish the sentence.
He really hadn’t wanted to go. The way the Yin family had arranged things—seven invitations lined up in a row—felt like selecting a concubine.
All the attendees were from the top-tier families in Jiangcheng: Lu Huai, Zhao Mingyuan, Xie Zhiqiu. Just hearing their names made his legs go weak.
What was Zhou Yaozu compared to them? Going would only make him a laughingstock.
So he had told Zhou Desheng he wouldn’t go, crafting a perfect excuse: “The Yin family’s standards are too high. Even if I went, I’d just be there to make up the numbers. I can’t bear that kind of humiliation.”
What he hadn’t expected was for Zhou Guchuan to take the initiative and approach Zhou Desheng, saying, “I’ll go.”
Since his younger son didn’t want to go, Zhou Desheng had immediately agreed. “Fine, then get ready.”
It was that simple. No one asked Zhou Guchuan why he wanted to go, and no one thought he would actually be chosen.
Zhou Desheng had sent him as a last resort—as long as a son from the Zhou family attended, it would save face.
But he was actually chosen.
Zhou Guchuan said, “The spot was yours. You didn’t want it, and now you do?”
Zhou Yaozu’s face flushed bright red. Qin Wan quickly tugged at his arm, smiling to smooth things over.
“Yaozu, your brother is right. You were the one who turned it down. Besides, your brother’s success is a blessing for our Zhou family. From now on, we can benefit from the Yin family’s resources.”
The last sentence was directed at Zhou Desheng, reminding him that regardless of who was chosen, the benefits should go to the family, not just Zhou Guchuan alone.
Zhou Guchuan understood the implication, and so did Zhou Desheng.
“Of course.”
Zhou Desheng’s face lit up with a smile again. “Guchuan, pay more attention to Miss Yin. Even a small project from the Yin family could sustain us for three years. Your brother isn’t young anymore. If there’s an opportunity later…”
“Dad,” Zhou Guchuan interrupted him.
He rarely used that word, and it caught Zhou Desheng off guard. This eldest son had never been close to him.
“I’m tired. I’m going upstairs.”
After saying this, Zhou Guchuan ignored the expressions on the faces of the people in the living room and headed straight for the stairs.
As he reached the staircase, his gaze swept past the cheap crystal decorations in the living room and landed on Zhou Desheng’s face.
“Oh, by the way, Miss Yin asked me to send her regards.”
Zhou Desheng’s eyes brightened.
“She also said she’s very satisfied with the son the Zhou family raised.”
Zhou Desheng grinned from ear to ear, while Qin Wan’s face turned another shade paler.
Zhou Guchuan turned and went upstairs, pushing open the door to his room.
This room was the innermost one on the second floor, originally a storage room that had been cleared out for him after he arrived.
The window faced north, never catching any sunlight. In winter, it was as cold as an ice cellar.
When he first arrived, Qin Wan said the house was short on rooms, and he believed her.
Later, Zhou Guchuan discovered that this small Western-style house had a total of six bedrooms. Besides the master and secondary bedrooms, there were two guest rooms that had been left empty for years, used to pile up Qin Wan’s online shopping delivery boxes.
Zhou Guchuan closed the door, didn’t turn on the light, and opened his palm in the moonlight. Lying in his palm was the petal he had taken from Yin Lan’s hair during the day.
Five years ago, at Old Master Yin’s sixtieth birthday celebration, Zhou Desheng spent a fortune to get an invitation. Originally, he intended to take Zhou Yaozu, hoping his younger son could see the world.
Zhou Yaozu had a stomachache just as they were about to leave. Zhou Desheng, embarrassed, casually grabbed him, who was standing nearby, and pulled him into the car.
He wore one of Zhou Yaozu’s old suits, the sleeves a bit too short, exposing half his wrists. No one noticed him.
Zhou Guchuan stood in a corner of the garden, holding a glass of orange juice, watching the glamorous people raising champagne glasses and exchanging pleasantries, as if observing another world.
Then he saw Yin Lan.
She walked out of the villa, wearing a blue dress, its hem swaying gently around her ankles like ripples.
She walked under the jacaranda tree, looked up at the flowers, and petals fell onto her hair. Yin Lan didn’t brush them away; instead, she smiled.
That smile wasn’t directed at him, nor at anyone in particular.
It was simply the eldest daughter of the Yin family, amused by the jacaranda blossoms in her own garden, curving the corners of her lips.
Sixteen-year-old Zhou Guchuan stood in the corner, holding that glass of orange juice for a full ten minutes.
On the way back, Zhou Desheng grumbled in the car, saying the Yin family looked down on everyone and hadn’t even given him a proper glance.
Zhou Guchuan sat in the back seat, watching the streetlights outside the window recede one by one, his palms sweaty but his heart burning fiercely.
From that day on, he started running.
Every morning at five, he would get up, run ten laps around the park near the Zhou residence, and then do a hundred push-ups.
Zhou Guchuan studied hard. The textbooks provided by the school weren’t enough, so he borrowed books from the city library—anything and everything: economics, management, psychology, history. The records on his library card were densely packed.
He scored first in the school in the college entrance exam. Zhou Desheng mentioned it once at the dinner table and then forgot about it.
When filling out his college application, he chose the finance department of Jiangcheng University without consulting anyone.
It took Zhou Guchuan five years to transform from the son of a nouveau riche who couldn’t even wear a suit properly into the person standing before Yin Lan today.
Not because the Yin family needed him, but because he had decided, from the age of sixteen, to step into that garden.
Today, when Yin Lan chose him, she asked, “Young Master Zhou, do you think the Yin family’s jacaranda blossoms are beautiful?”
He said he had watched them for ten minutes five years ago.
What she didn’t know was that during those ten minutes, he had counted every second in his heart.
It took three seconds for the petals to fall, her smile lasted two seconds, and when the wind blew, she brushed her hair aside—these movements he could replay with his eyes closed.
Ten minutes, six hundred seconds—he remembered them for five years.
Zhou Guchuan carefully placed the jacaranda petal between the title page of Principles of Economics on his bedside table. His phone vibrated on the nightstand.
He reached for it and saw a text message from an unfamiliar number, with just one line:
“Mr. Zhou, I look forward to your guidance in the future.”
The moment he saw the message, Zhou Guchuan knew who it was. He carefully saved the number, but when it came time to add a note, his slender fingers paused.
What should he save it as? Lanlan… wife?
Zhou Guchuan hesitated for a long time over the last two words, but ultimately didn’t type them out. Even though he really wanted to use that nickname, they weren’t married yet—would such a term of endearment offend her?
She was such a wonderful person…
Ten minutes later, Zhou Guchuan replied with a single word: “Okay.”