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Out in the hallway, Gong Chuang seized the moment to keep prying information out of Su Zesui.
Unfortunately, the boy still seemed to be holding something back. No matter how Gong Chuang tried to coax him, Su Zesui’s little face stayed tight with tension, lips sealed shut.
“Don’t worry. There are security cameras here, sure, but Gu Yilan’s not bored enough to actually monitor every second of them,” Gong Chuang said, stopping in his tracks and turning around to coax the boy behind him. “Just whisper me a few more details about last night—there’s no way he’ll find out.”
Catching the sight of Gong Chuang pausing, Su Zesui immediately stopped in place too, like a startled little animal.
Being alone with a senior he wasn’t that familiar with made him anxious enough, and Gong Chuang kept talking non-stop, which only tightened a string in his brain to the point where he wasn’t taking in a single word—just silently repeating, “Why aren’t we there yet?”
“Alright, alright, I see you don’t want to tell Brother Gong Chuang anything…” Gong Chuang sighed dramatically and shook his head with an exaggerated look of disappointment.
“W-WeChat… later…” Su Zesui stammered. He didn’t want people to look at him strangely or feel like he was being rude, so he tried his hardest and finally squeezed out a few words.
But to Gong Chuang, that was already a big win.
His gloomy expression instantly vanished, replaced by a bright, sunny smile. “Perfect! That’s all I needed to hear.”
The meeting room wasn’t far from Gu Yilan’s office. After just a short walk, they arrived.
When the door opened, seven or eight people were already seated at the long conference table. All of them turned to look at the two who had just entered.
Su Zesui flinched, instinctively wanting to back away—until his eyes quickly found the man sitting at the front.
Gu Yilan gave him a small wave and said calmly, “Come on.”
Su Zesui instantly abandoned Brother Gong Chuang and hurried over to him.
At the spot reserved for him, there was a soft seat cushion printed with a cartoon cat. Su Zesui guessed it might have been prepared for him. He placed the fluffy cushion on the chair and sat up straight.
Watching the boy’s smooth, natural movement, Gong Chuang froze for a moment. He suddenly started doubting whether all his assumptions were wrong.
“Want some candy?” Ji Yuxing, sitting nearby, placed a few colorful candies on the table in front of the boy.
He had a younger brother at home, so he always carried around small treats to help coax kids.
The lure of candy briefly overcame Su Zesui’s social anxiety. He whispered a barely audible, “…Thank you.”
Gu Yilan glanced at the wall clock and said, “Time’s up. Let’s begin.”
The topic of today’s meeting was “The Nonlocality of Quantum Entanglement and the Limits of Classical Physics.” Su Zesui couldn’t understand a word of it. All he could register were the voices of several people arguing heatedly back and forth over some result.
Gu Yilan barely spoke. After someone would passionately finish explaining their viewpoint, he’d give a subtle nod—neither agreeing nor disagreeing—then simply called on the next person to continue.
Unaccustomed to being in a room with so many people, Su Zesui kept his head down the entire time, not even daring to swing his legs.
Before the meeting started, he’d already placed his phone on the table.
Now, sitting stiffly, he slowly brought his hands up from under the table. He snuck a quick glance at the candies nearby, then—pretending to act casual—moved his right hand inch by inch across the table, until he finally scooped the candies into his palm.
Su Zesui’s palms were a little sweaty. He snuck a glance around the room, and once he confirmed that no one was paying attention to him, he quickly pulled his hand back in front of him, his eyes sparkling as he gazed at the colorful candies.
The wrappers were printed with some logo in either German or French—clearly imported sweets.
He swallowed, growing impatient to tear one open.
But the packaging was unusually tight. He tugged and pulled, even bit down on it with his teeth, but it just wouldn’t come undone.
“Brother…” Su Zesui glanced cautiously around, then, using the table to shield his movement, discreetly handed the candy to Gu Yilan from beneath it.
Just like whispering to a deskmate during class, he breathed out in a barely audible whisper, “Help me open it.”
Gu Yilan looked down at the candy, noticing faint bite marks left by the boy. His eyes narrowed slightly, his jaw tightening subtly.
Su Zesui licked his soft lips and sat up straight, eyes forward, like a student waiting patiently for his deskmate to unwrap the candy and hand it back.
Unfortunately, his “deskmate” wasn’t just another student—he was the “teacher” in this classroom.
With a loud smack, someone slammed the table in frustration—not far away, one junior stood up abruptly, glaring at another across from him. “Senior, you tell me—he messed up the whole process. Even if the conclusion looks right, doesn’t that still mean it’s wrong?”
“Excuse me? How did I mess up?” The other junior stood up too, refusing to back down. “Tensor product, Bell inequality, Wigner quasi-probability distribution—I laid out every step clearly. What part is wrong?”
“You didn’t even consider the superposition and entanglement of qubits. What do you say to that?”
“You—! Do you even know what an ideal state is?”
The two continued bickering furiously until they finally noticed Gu Yilan’s cold expression at the front of the room—he hadn’t said a word.
Their momentum vanished instantly. Both hurriedly sat back down, as if afraid they had crossed a line.
Even though they still felt their arguments were perfectly valid, they couldn’t help but replay the exchange in their minds, wondering which sentence might’ve annoyed Gu Yilan.
“I see.” Gu Yilan waited until they were fully quiet before standing and picking up a whiteboard marker. “I’ll go through the calculations.”
Su Zesui had kept his head down ever since the first loud outburst, terrified of being caught slacking off.
Now that his “deskmate” was about to go solve problems on the board, he gave up hope of getting his candy unwrapped. All he wished was that Gu Yilan would finish smoothly—without making any mistakes.
But in his peripheral vision, that tall figure never moved away. He didn’t speak, nor did he approach the whiteboard. The entire meeting room had gone utterly silent.
Just as Su Zesui was about to sneak a glance to see what the man was doing—
A pale pink candy was suddenly brought right up to his lips, held delicately between long fingers.
Gu Yilan’s calm, even voice came from above him: “Why aren’t you taking it? Not eating anymore?”
Su Zesui froze, his neck flushing the same pink as the candy. After a few seconds, he hurriedly leaned forward and took the candy into his mouth, so flustered that he even forgot to say his usual polite “thank you.”
Gu Yilan spun the whiteboard marker in his hand, and once the boy had taken the candy, casually tossed the wrapper into the nearby trash can before finally walking to the board to begin the derivation.
Su Zesui felt his cheeks practically steaming. His mind was now entirely occupied by the memory of that large hand being so close, completely missing the stunned glances everyone else in the room was sneaking at him.
He bit down gently on the strawberry-flavored candy. For some reason, it tasted like the sweetest candy he had ever had.
“Holy crap, holy crap, I can’t believe I’m witnessing this in my lifetime.”
Sitting next to Ji Yuxing, Gong Chuang whispered in awe, “What kind of divine luck does that crappy little candy of yours have…”
Ji Yuxing just gave a polite smile, glanced again at the stunning boy beside him, and didn’t respond.
Su Zesui took a deep breath. His emotional state couldn’t handle such intensity right now.
Acting on instinct, he picked up his phone, hoping to distract himself with some online lectures.
The moment he unlocked the screen, the resource pack he’d downloaded the night before appeared.
He turned the volume to its lowest setting and tapped on a file with a strange name: [Duck x Rabbit x Bird 3P Classroom Public tj]
The loading circle spun briefly. Then the screen flashed white.
A string of black text appeared in the middle: [To maintain a healthy online environment, this video has been removed. Click to return to the previous screen.]
Su Zesui stared at the message, rereading it several times but still unsure exactly what it meant—other than that it clearly wouldn’t play.
Just then, a WeChat notification popped up:
[Brother Gong Chuang: Busy right now? Didn’t you say you’d tell me a little secret on WeChat? Is now a good time?]
There were quite a few questions, and Su Zesui needed time to answer them one by one.
[(o^^o): Watching a lecture]
But Gong Chuang’s typing speed was far faster. Before he could send another message, Gong Chuang replied again:
[Brother Gong Chuang: A lecture? Then I must be interrupting you!]
Su Zesui hesitated.
He didn’t like socializing and had always been used to figuring things out alone—never actively seeking help from strangers. Unless someone practically shoved it in his face.
[(o^^o): You sent it to me]
Gong Chuang blinked in confusion.
[Brother Gong Chuang: I sent it to you? When did I send you a lecture?]
[(o^^o): Last night. Can’t open it. (screenshot)]
A faint sense of dread crept over Gong Chuang.
He tapped open the screenshot Su Zesui had sent—and saw the now-censored video file from the cloud drive.
At that moment, Gu Yilan had just rewritten the calculation steps on the whiteboard. He always wore a cold, expressionless face when deriving formulas, but his handwriting was bold and elegant, flowing like water—exuding an air of unrestrained confidence.
The two people sitting below were dumbfounded. The original solution was indeed incorrect, but the quantum bit they had been arguing about had nothing to do with it either. It was truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black—they’d both made fools of themselves.
While pretending to take notes seriously, they were secretly wondering how Gu Yilan’s brain could work so well, and how someone could possibly be that amazing. Damn.
Gong Chuang, completely unaware of all this, was still testing the waters with the boy—
[Brother Gong Chuang: This isn’t an online course. Haven’t you watched it before?]
Because Su Zesui had some language processing difficulties, and Gong Chuang’s question was missing an object, he naturally assumed he was also asking about online classes.
[(o^^o): I’ve watched it before. I can open it.]
Gong Chuang let out a sigh of relief. He figured the boy probably just watched videos through a certain app and had never tried downloading them from a cloud drive. He searched through his phone’s file folder and sent a long image to him.
[Brother Gong Chuang: (Tutorial on How to Open Videos Without Getting Them Flagged)]
[Brother Gong Chuang: Just follow the steps exactly as shown.]
[Brother Gong Chuang: If there’s anything else you don’t understand, feel free to ask me. I’m a theoretical expert guy—plenty of experience with this stuff.]
Su Zesui opened the image and found a detailed step-by-step guide with lots of screenshots.
Gong Chuang glanced at the boy nearby, whose face was scrunched in concentration, and for some reason felt a pang of regret. Maybe he’d acted a bit rashly. What if things weren’t what he thought? If he’d gotten it all wrong, he’d be screwed.
Just as he was hesitating about whether to retract the tutorial, a cold voice like three feet of frozen ice suddenly rang out from the front: “Gong Chuang.”
Gong Chuang’s heart sank.
Game over.
Su Zesui hadn’t even put his phone on Do Not Disturb. Every time Gong Chuang sent a message, it buzzed—right under Gu Yilan’s nose. No way Gu Yilan could tolerate that.
He immediately scrambled to delete the message and instinctively stood up.
Only when he noticed the confused stares of the people around him did Gong Chuang realize what he was doing.
In this kind of academic seminar, aside from those giving reports or absolutely furious, almost no one ever stood up to speak. He now looked like a guilty elementary schooler who’d just been called on by the teacher—his guilt practically written across his face.
But Gu Yilan didn’t expose him. Instead, he asked calmly, “What do you think?”
Now it would be even weirder to sit back down. So Gong Chuang stayed standing, glanced at the formulas on the whiteboard, and thick-skinnedly rambled something completely off-topic.
But seeing Gu Yilan’s face growing colder and colder, he finally couldn’t keep going. He lowered his head and muttered, “Sorry, I spaced out.”
“Got it. Sit down.”
Gu Yilan replied expressionlessly. Gong Chuang couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but now that he had calmed down, he felt relieved that he’d managed to delete the tutorial in time.
He didn’t even know exactly why he felt relieved. His gut just told him:
If Gu Yilan ever finds out what he sent Su Zesui, he’d probably skin him alive.
Meanwhile, on Su Zesui’s end, as he was still reading the long tutorial image, a message popped up: “This message has been retracted by the sender.”
He paused in confusion, then opened his phone gallery and tapped on the most recent image saved from WeChat.
Because he lacked a sense of security, he had a habit of saving all important messages to the cloud the moment he received them—just in case the chat history got lost somehow.
But before he could study it thoroughly, the short academic meeting came to an end.
One by one, the participants said their goodbyes to Gu Yilan and left.
Gong Chuang said, “Sorry, man. Forgive me. I swear I won’t zone out again next time,” then left too—looking back three times with every step.
As for Su Zesui, being socially anxious, he didn’t dare move or even glance around. He only dared peek at the man beside him once the room fell completely silent.
They were the only two people left in the entire meeting room.
“Brother.”
Su Zesui held out another little candy from his hand.
“Help me.”
Gu Yilan glanced at the candy in his palm—
The wrapper was perfectly intact, no bite marks.
Clearly, the boy hadn’t even tried to open it this time and had just handed it to him directly for help.
Gu Yilan reluctantly tore open the candy wrapper. Just as he was about to hand it back to Su Zesui, the boy suddenly opened his mouth and went “ah”—waiting to be fed.
Gu Yilan’s gaze darkened, and his fingers tightened slightly around the candy.
When the man didn’t move, Su Zesui’s jaw began to ache. He gave a softer “ah” again, trying to remind him.
Gu Yilan gently placed the candy in Su Zesui’s mouth and said in a hoarse voice,
“This is your reward for being brave enough to attend today’s meeting. Keep it up.”
Su Zesui happily flicked the sugary candy with the tip of his tongue and nodded enthusiastically.