Alumni Association
After returning to China, graduates of overseas universities would occasionally attend alumni gatherings organized by fellow alumni to keep in touch and maintain their connections. Such events were mostly limited to first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, but recently, Nanshi had begun holding gatherings of this kind as well.
The venue started at five-star hotels. There would be a lively banquet, everyone eating and drinking a little, dressing up nicely, and catching up with old classmates. That was what Zhuyu had thought. It was not until the car arrived at the venue and she saw the airs put on by the other guests that she realized some people had even worn formal evening gowns.
“Is it really necessary to be this over-the-top?” Zhuyu turned to ask the young man beside her, who was dressed in a black suit and leaning against the back seat with his eyes closed.
The young man had thick, dark brows and lashes, and was handsome, looking to be around twenty-five.
“They’ve learned the aesthetic of old-school capitalist countries down to the last detail. I still remember how, at graduation ceremonies, anyone who didn’t wear leather shoes and showed up in sneakers would be turned away outright. They wouldn’t even let you through the door.”
“Seriously??” Zhuyu was somewhat surprised.
“Of course. Who knows what other nonsense we’ll run into once we get inside. It’s my first time attending too. But, Sister Xiao Yu, you don’t have to worry. I’ll say you’re my classmate. They won’t suspect anything.”
Zhuyu’s complexion had gotten darker from the sun lately, but all she had to say was that she had gotten tanned while sunbathing in Spain. Paired with the highlighter gleaming almost enough to reflect light on her cheekbones, smoky eyeshadow, and nude lipstick, she looked quite like the sort of person who had settled in Europe after graduating from a British university.
Xunli, who should now be called Danhu, had kept the car windows open ever since he got in. Zhuyu did not know whether he was carsick. When she saw him again, she found that the younger brother who had been extremely mischievous in his youth had become much more normal as a person. He was no longer as unreliable as he had been as a child.
“Are you going to throw up? Should I get you a plastic bag?” She noticed that Danhu had looked somewhat pale all evening, and had also grown unusually quiet.
“I’m not carsick…” He loosened his collar, wearing an air of melancholy that seemed impossible to explain even if he tried. He even let out a long sigh.
Zhuyu muttered, “Not carsick? Then maybe you’re starving.”
The black luxury car stopped in front of the hotel. The driver got out and opened the door, and a stylishly dressed young man and woman slowly stepped out.
“Pretty pretentious, huh?” Danhu said quietly.
“…Very.”
In China, there were only two kinds of people who loved places this ostentatious to death: high school graduates from international schools, and celebrities. Now she had found a third kind: rich people from big cities.
Inside the hotel, there were the scents of perfume and the glimmer of jeweled hairpins, all gilded splendor and people moving to and fro. What a dazzling vanity fair.
Even though Zhuyu was not a graduate of this university, with Danhu leading the way, they got in without the slightest trouble.
Liu Sizhao really did like to tell half a story and leave the other half unsaid. It was true that Danhu had left the United States on his own after graduating from high school, but later, his older brother had found him and brought him back.
It had caused Zhuyu to think that Sizhao was completely irresponsible toward his younger brother, and for a while she had harbored quite a bit of resentment toward him. If Sizhao had told her sooner, Zhuyu would not have treated him with such a cold expression.
Danhu had followed his older brother’s arrangements and returned to China after graduation. Sizhao had handed some of the group’s affairs over to him, letting him learn on the job while working at the company. By now, he had even managed to take on the title of manager.
“President Zheng. Sounds pretty convincing, doesn’t it?” Danhu kept his hands in his pockets and gave a low whistle. “More than enough to bluff people tonight. All you have to do is stand beside me and play the part of a rich girl.”
Nanshi was the provincial capital of one of the major provinces in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region. With transportation so convenient nowadays, alumni in the surrounding area were all happy to come together whenever they had the time.
Zhuyu figured Danhu had probably been something of a celebrity while he was at university. She just did not know whether it was because he was popular or because he was good at his studies. As he walked through the hall, he effortlessly struck up conversations with some people, and they gathered around him, clapping him on the shoulder and laughing loudly.
“So where are you working after graduation?”
“Oh, at the family company, of course. My family wants me to get some more experience so I can take over the real business later.”
Everyone said the same thing. Almost everyone worked at their family’s companies. But it made sense. People like them were hardly going to go work for someone else.
Even Danhu said the same thing.
The others could say it without consequence. Not a single person asked any questions. But when it came to Danhu, some people had smiles on their faces that, in Zhuyu’s eyes, were more than a little ill-intentioned.
“Which company? Tell us, let us hear it. You were really tight-lipped back in school, never saying what your family did. Now that everyone’s entered society, you don’t have to worry about revealing too much private information and getting scolded by your family. Come on, tell us. Maybe we can share resources in the future and do some business together.”
Danhu raised his arm with an exaggerated motion and deliberately glanced at the famous watch on his wrist, which was encrusted with diamonds and flashing outrageously.
“Isn’t it getting late? Are all our old friends here yet?”
Zhuyu had no idea what kind of watch it was, but judging by the expressions of the others, she could tell it was extremely expensive.
“All right, we know your family has money. Which family are you from, anyway? We’ve been brothers all these years. It’s not like you have to keep that much of a secret, do you?” Another, somewhat more rough-and-hearty man slapped Danhu on the shoulder.
“I’m afraid if I tell you, you’ll start looking into my family’s business and compete with me for the work.” Danhu smiled sweetly. “I only do good business that can’t lose money. I can’t possibly tell you.”
A beautiful woman with sun-kissed skin walked into the group and gave a soft laugh. “You. You’re going to build a mountain hot-spring hotel in Nanshi. What’s there to be so mysterious about?”
Sure enough, this aroused everyone’s curiosity.
“Which piece of land? Which mountain? What kind of hotel? How come we’ve never heard about it?”
“Hey, it’s the mountain belonging to this friend of mine’s family. They’re immigrating to Canada, and they have a mountain they’re eager to sell, so they’re offering it at a low price. That area was designated as a key economic development zone the year before last. It’s definitely going to develop in the future. By then, buying it will absolutely not cost what it does now. As for the mountain, I’ve been there too. The scenery is beautiful. There’s a lake, forests, and bald cypress trees.
“It would have great prospects whether you turned it into a resort hotel or an amusement park.”
Danhu spoke at length, pulling Zhuyu into the center of the crowd.
The listeners had originally been chuckling and chatting, but the moment they learned that Danhu was the young heir of the Yusheng Group, the crowd fell silent.
“I’m just doing it for fun. It’s not like I’m treating it as some major undertaking. My brother casually passed this project on to me. He thinks the prospects are good and wants me to get some practice. For now, though, I’m still hesitating. I don’t have any experience, after all. Anyway, if any of you know this kind of business, feel free to give me a pointer or two.”
As the current owner of the mountain, Danhu’s “older sister,” whom he had known since childhood, really did add the contact information of several second-generation heirs to business families that night.
Every one of them asked about the mountain and whether she had already signed the contract with the Yusheng Group.
This was the friendship of businesspeople: warm and friendly one moment, trying to pry the opportunity away from you the next. They were only testing the waters, but it was clear they were waiting for Danhu’s three-minute enthusiasm to wear off so they could take over at any time.
These second-generation business heirs had all gone into business with the support of their parents. Most of them were walking paths their families had already paved for them. Now that they were in their twenties, every one of them wanted to make a name for themselves, to show their families what they were really capable of...
Each holding a glass of champagne, Danhu and Zhuyu stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Smooth, right? It’s practically a piece of cake.”
They had come to the alumni gathering this time precisely to bring in more people. The goal was to sell the mountain. So far, everything was going smoothly, proceeding according to plan.
As time passed little by little, Danhu began checking his watch more and more frequently. Zhuyu grew curious about what exactly he was so troubled by tonight.
At eight o’clock, he gradually stopped looking at his watch. His expression became visibly dejected, and he began downing glass after glass of alcohol.
So when, at eight-thirty, an unfamiliar woman in a green dress walked into the hall, Danhu was already completely drunk, sprawled over the table and oblivious to everything around him.
“Hey, wake up.” The woman in the green dress patted Danhu’s face, then dipped her fingers in some tea and flicked droplets onto his face. He did not react at all.
Zhuyu was sitting beside Danhu, struggling to chat with people on WeChat. She suddenly turned her head and only then saw the woman who had just arrived. As Danhu’s companion for the evening, she had no choice but to take on the responsibility of looking after him once he got drunk.
“Hello, are you Danhu’s old classmate?” Zhuyu cleared her throat. The girl had an oval face, cherry-red lips, and was quite pretty.
“No, we weren’t in the same major.” The girl in the green dress shook her head. “Are you his current girlfriend?”
Zhuyu was so startled by the question that she nearly took a step backward. “No, no, no... I’m his sister.”
“Oh, then that’s fine. To be honest, I’m actually his ex-girlfriend. My name is Meng Wei. Nice to meet you.”
Zhuyu immediately perked up. “Oh? He actually has an ex-girlfriend? Him??”
It was not that Zhuyu was looking down on Danhu. It was just that they had known each other since childhood, and there was no version of Danhu’s sorry state she had not seen. When he was little, he had been dark and round like a lump of coal, and with his bad temper, he had looked like an angry lump of coal.
And this kid actually had such a refined and delicate-looking ex-girlfriend...
“He’s been waiting for someone all evening. It must have been you. You never showed up, and he was in such a bad mood that he drank quite a lot.”
Meng Wei sat beside him and stroked his face, occasionally giving his ear a gentle tug, but he still did not wake up.
It turned out they had been apart for two years. She had been working in Britain before, and this year, there happened to be a China-UK joint project. She had returned to China with the project team. Once the project ended this year, she would not be going back to Britain. She would be working here from then on.
She and Danhu had agreed over messages that she would come tonight. But she had run into a traffic jam, and the traffic had remained stuck until after eight. She had not expected him to have already drunk himself unconscious by then.
“Why did you take so long to come?”
Through his drunken, hazy eyes, Danhu saw a familiar figure. But in his eyes, the figure was swaying back and forth,
and there were three of her.
Meng Wei and Zhuyu exchanged a glance, holding back their laughter. Then, speaking to him with great solemnity, they said, “Xiao Hu, you’re dreaming. Once you wake up, I’ll have disappeared, and you won’t be able to see me anymore.”
“Don’t leave.” He grabbed her hand. “Didn’t we agree?”
“Agree on what?” Meng Wei asked curiously.
“We agreed that the next time we saw each other, we’d continue dating.” He murmured the words.
“That’s true. We did say something like that. All right. Starting from now, tonight at 9:05, when you wake up, you’d better not forget, okay?”
The girl in the green dress smiled at Danhu, allowing him to hold her hand and happily giving him her promise.
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