Engagement
Su Zesui clutched the small oxygen cylinder, taking a few breaths, but it did little to help.
His head, foggy from crying, still felt heavy and unclear. He only had the vague sense that the man in black looked familiar, yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall where he had seen him before.
Downstairs, the man in black took a sip of tea, then smiled at Gu Yilan. “It’s been a long time. You’ve changed a lot.”
His voice was like sand scraping together—hoarse, deep, weathered by years of hardship.
Su Zesui had no memory of him at all.
Gu Yilan, however, had no intention of catching up. “If you have something to say, just get to the point.”
“I just wanted to see how you’ve been lately,” the man in black said with a smile. “Why the constant cold face? You used to laugh all the time. What, don’t tell me life’s treating you worse than it’s treating me?”
Two words stood out to Su Zesui—’used to’ and ‘laugh’.
Paired with that smile, they triggered a sudden spark in his brain. In an instant, he remembered where he had seen this man before.
In an old photograph taken many years ago.
That photo—he had once stumbled upon it in the study behind Mr. Gu’s office, and had also seen a clearer version in Grandpa Gu’s album.
He’d always had a good memory. The reason he didn’t recognize the man at first sight was because, in the photo, he had been much younger, sharing the same features but with a bright, sunny demeanor—arms slung over a young Gu Yilan’s shoulder, both grinning happily. Nothing like the hostile, aggressive air he carried now.
But Uncle Butler and Grandpa Gu had both told him that this person was unimportant, and that no one knew where he had gone.
——So why had he suddenly appeared now?!
Downstairs, the butler’s expression wasn’t much better than Su Zesui’s.
Knowing nearly the whole story, he understood far too well that this man’s arrival meant trouble. Hearing Jiang Jianbai’s words—polite on the surface, barbed underneath—he clenched his fists.
But Gu Yilan remained indifferent. At those words, he even humored Jiang Jianbai with a thin, mocking smile. His eyes, frosted over with coldness, made it clear he had no interest in further conversation.
“All these years, and you’re still alone?” Jiang Jianbai glanced at the empty living room with a sigh. “All the money in the world can’t buy love.”
Gu Yilan said flatly, “Say what you want.”
Hearing the man say this, Jiang Jianbai lowered his head with a faint smile and said, “Compensation—for a former best friend, over ten years late.”
Gu Yilan gave a knowing nod and signaled the butler to bring the checkbook. He signed a check for one million, placed it on the table, and slid it toward the other man.
Jiang Jianbai glanced at the number, crossed his arms, frowned, and forced out through clenched teeth, “Only one million? Is that enough to buy back the life you destroyed?”
The butler ground his teeth in fury, wishing he could grab this insatiable man by the collar, tell him to take his grievances to the right person, and then throw him out the door for good.
But his boss remained unnervingly calm. Without a word, Gu Yilan crossed out the check he had just written, lifted his eyelids in a slow, indifferent glance, and crooked his finger.
The butler had no choice but to tear out another check for his boss.
With bold, fluid strokes, Gu Yilan filled in the amount—two million—set down the pen, leaned back on the sofa, and said, “That’s all there is.”
Jiang Jianbai took one look and gave a derisive laugh. “Trying to fob me off like a beggar?”
Gu Yilan’s gaze lifted slightly. His eyes flicked—calm and unreadable—toward a tuft of black hair poking out from behind the turn of the spiral staircase. Whatever he thought of, it brought a faint curve to his lips. “I don’t have that much money.”
“Save that for someone who’ll believe it,” Jiang Jianbai scoffed. “I want ten million. Money can erase all pain. Transfer the ten million, and our grudges are settled. I’ll never show up in front of you again.”
Gu Yilan watched him in silence, as if weighing something in his mind. The stillness made a cold prickle creep up Jiang Jianbai’s arms.
No one knew what this once-close friend had been through after Gu Yilan transferred schools, but every trace of warmth in his demeanor had been stripped away. He no longer laughed, no longer got angry—his emotions had withered into an inhuman chill. He was like a bottomless black hole, leaving only a cold, oppressive shell.
Jiang Jianbai didn’t care. He hadn’t forgotten why he was here. He pressed on with his threat. “If you can’t bear to part with the money, then we’ll go down together. I’ve got nothing to lose—I don’t mind telling the whole world about what happened between us. But you… aren’t you afraid of ruining your precious reputation?”
“I told you,” Gu Yilan replied, “that’s all the money I have.”
That offhand indifference completely ignited Jiang Jianbai’s anger. He sprang to his feet, glaring at Gu Yilan. “I treated you so well back then! Even though my family wasn’t well-off, anything I had, I’d split in half for you. And you, Gu Yilan—how did you treat me? Do you need me to remind you?”
The butler, who had already noticed the little master hiding upstairs to eavesdrop, jolted at those words and instinctively moved to stop Jiang Jianbai from running his mouth.
But Jiang Jianbai shook off his arm with a cold smile. “What? Don’t want me to say it? Then pay up.”
“Go ahead,” Gu Yilan said, taking a sip of hot tea. “Sit down and take your time.”
“Sure. After all, what do those old things mean to you? You didn’t lose anything—it’s just me reopening my own wounds.” Jiang Jianbai laughed bitterly. “I’m not from some high and mighty family. I bet you think I should be grateful—light incense, bow to the heavens—that I even had the honor of being a passerby in your life, right?”
“I’m sorry for what happened back then,” Gu Yilan said evenly. “I couldn’t protect you. And later… I couldn’t find you.”
“You think you can just wave it off with a casual ‘I couldn’t’?” Jiang Jianbai snapped. “If you really feel sorry, if you want to make it up to me—then pay. I know you have at least billions in liquid assets. Don’t try to fool me.”
Gu Yilan merely motioned with his chin toward the two-million check on the table, unwilling to repeat himself.
“I was only eight years old back then!” Jiang Jianbai’s voice rose in fury at the man’s indifference. “You told me to come to your house—you said it was huge and had lots of good food. I believed you and happily followed you onto the bus. And what happened? What happened?!”
The long-buried memories narrowed Gu Yilan’s eyes. He exhaled a breath so faint it was almost imperceptible, but didn’t interrupt.
“You disappeared. Your disgusting parents locked me in a small room and gave me four straight hours of ‘education’—sneering at my family background, my grades, even my clothes. I had just started primary school! Do you have any idea what those hours were like for me?!”
Shaking with rage, Jiang Jianbai went on, “Yes, you were the high and mighty young master of the Gu family, the future heir to its name. And me? Just because I came from an ordinary home, I wasn’t even human? I had to be accused of corrupting you, humiliated, and forced to transfer schools? Do you have any idea how long I needed therapy to crawl out from the shadow you left me in? Do you?!”
The butler kept glancing at Gu Yilan. Seeing his boss remain unmoved, he finally couldn’t stand it any longer. He stepped forward to block the agitated Jiang Jianbai, countering, “Go after the ones who wronged you. Whoever insulted you, confront them. What’s it got to do with him?”
As an old hand of the Gu family, he knew exactly what had happened—he had even witnessed it himself.
Back then, Jiang Jianbai’s family was modest—newly rich but with no real influence in City A. But the young Gu Yilan had been close friends with him.
They were desk mates, did homework together, joined school activities together.
Knowing Gu Yilan had to go home on time every day, Jiang Jianbai had even skipped activity classes to take him to the newly built mini amusement park at his own house.
Little by little, their bond had grown deeper.
When little Jiang Jianbai said he also wanted to go play at little Gu Yilan’s house, Gu Yilan thought about it for a long time before carefully choosing a time when both his parents were away on business. He skipped class to take Jiang Jianbai over.
But he was far too young back then to outwit parents who had spent decades navigating the treacherous seas of the business world. He was caught almost as soon as they stepped through the door.
Afterward, he was locked up in solitary confinement, pounding on the door to no avail. Jiang Jianbai was driven into a small room, where he endured the longest hours of his life—only to later face his family’s bankruptcy, being forced to transfer schools, and falling overnight from heaven into hell.
The butler thought with some sadness—
Jiang Jianbai once said it took him a very long time in therapy to escape the shadow of those years. But it seemed that even now, Mr. Gu had never managed to shake off the trauma of his own childhood.
That 24-hour surveillance system with no blind spots, those private investigators who once kept constant watch over Mr. Gu’s parents—these were all extreme, twisted forms of self-protection.
Jiang Jianbai, burning with rage, snapped, “How can you say it has nothing to do with him? If it weren’t for him, would I have gone through all that? Gu Yilan, if you have even a shred of conscience left, transfer the money to me right now!”
Gu Yilan pressed his thin lips together and said helplessly, “Two million should last you quite a while.”
“Not enough! Back then, the family fortune your parents destroyed was worth tens of millions.” Jiang Jianbai gave a cold, humorless laugh. “I’m not an ambitious man. At the very least, you should give me enough to ensure I’ll never have to worry about food or clothing for the rest of my life. Otherwise, how could you possibly repay the kindness I once showed you?”
“Not enough?” Gu Yilan murmured softly. He leaned forward slightly, picked up the two-million check from the coffee table—
And just as Jiang Jianbai thought the man was going to write another, Gu Yilan lifted his hand and, right in front of him, tore the check into pieces, one strip at a time. He scattered the shreds onto the table, then leaned lazily back on the sofa, gazing at him coldly.
The meaning was obvious without a word.
“Heartless, ungrateful, cold, selfish, greedy—you’re just like your parents. Parasites of society who don’t even see ordinary people as human!” Jiang Jianbai’s teeth ground audibly in fury.
His words were so vicious that even the butler, who had seen his share of storms, went pale.
Gu Yilan lightly tapped the armrest of the sofa, his gaze fixed on Jiang Jianbai’s face. Only after the other man had finished cursing did he speak in a calm, matter-of-fact tone: “You took their money.”
At that, Jiang Jianbai froze where he stood. The butler blinked in surprise for a few seconds before it sank in.
Jiang Jianbai’s sudden appearance had so caught him off guard that he had forgotten—Jiang Jianbai had been sent here by Gu’s parents.
Although Jiang Jianbai’s words had been filled with nothing but insults toward Father Gu and Mother Gu, as if he were utterly at odds with them, every move he made conveyed one message to Gu Yilan—
——All I want is money.
No matter how much pain you caused me in the past, for the right price, I can choose to forget it.
And remembering the words Father Gu and Mother Gu had said that day—“In twenty or thirty years, you’ll understand we only meant the best for you”—it wasn’t hard to connect the dots.
They were showing Gu Yilan: ‘Look at the friend we once forbade you to associate with—see how truly depraved he is, how despicable his nature. We were right to remove him from your life.
So stop being willful. We’ve seen far more of the world than you have. In the future, you should listen to us.
It was a checkmate. Because they hadn’t schemed or coerced Jiang Jianbai into acting, they had simply laid the facts before Gu Yilan.
But they seemed to have overlooked one thing—perhaps being content with an ordinary life, seeking nothing more than a full belly, was not as shameful or repulsive as they imagined.
Gu Yilan, still composed, said, “What they gave you should be enough to last a lifetime. I won’t give you any more. Leave.”
Realizing he’d been exposed, and that after all this fuss he wouldn’t get a single cent, Jiang Jianbai gritted his teeth and jabbed a finger at him. “I hate you, Gu Yilan. I hate you! You ruined my life. Meeting you was the worst misfortune of my existence.
After I was forced to transfer schools, no one dared get close to you anymore, did they? Didn’t they all call you a curse behind your back, saying that even talking to you would bring disaster?”
Gu Yilan lowered his gaze, quietly grinding his molars without a word.
Because it was true.
It wasn’t just his classmates—even their parents had repeatedly warned them to stay away from him. One wrong move, and if the predatory Gu family set their sights on you, generations of hard-earned family wealth could be destroyed overnight.
So he did everything alone, and he refused every scrap of kindness that came his way. It was rejection—but also protection.
Jiang Jianbai laughed bitterly. “Honestly, after transferring schools, I lost it too. I would tell everyone loudly, ‘Do you know a disaster called Gu Yilan? Don’t be friends with him—stay as far away as possible! Remember his name—Gu Yilan! If you don’t, he’ll ruin your life!’”
Seeing that his boss remained silent with his head lowered, the butler couldn’t stand it any longer. He called over the bodyguards to take the madman away.
“Seeing you grow up like this—so rich and powerful, yet still depressed and unloved like me—I can finally rest easy! Karma is real, and heaven sees everything…”
When the butler noticed that the boss made no move to stop him from ejecting Jiang Jianbai, he quickly had the bodyguards cover Jiang Jianbai’s mouth and dragged him out.
Gu Yilan looked calm. To ensure the madman was completely gone—and to give his boss some privacy to process his emotions—the butler and the bodyguards hurried out as well.
In truth, he had known for a long time that Gu Yilan had severe self-harming tendencies. Outsiders might find it unbelievable, but he understood perfectly.
Being forcibly cut off from the only family he had left, witnessing his closest friend driven to madness by their family, even having the most important competition spot nearly taken away by his parents through underhanded means—he had only managed to keep it by threatening self-harm.
When family, friendship, and academics are all destroyed, who can grow up mentally healthy?
. . . . .
Gu Yilan frowned. He didn’t look toward the crowded, noisy doorway where the bodyguards had gone, but sat quietly on the sofa, his gaze distant and vacant, lost in thought.
A dark, oppressive aura seemed to shroud him, weighing down the air and making it hard to breathe.
Gu Yilan had an incredibly high tolerance for pressure—or rather, after losing so much, he no longer cared about anything outside the realm of the physical. If he were to hear Jiang Jianbai’s past rumors now, his mind wouldn’t even flinch.
But when he went through those events, he was still a child, without the hard, thorny shell that now protected him.
What his childhood gave him wasn’t just experiences—it left a negative emotion that could never be shaken.
The despair and suppression from that time clung like invisible hands, and even years later, could still squeeze his throat, making it hard to breathe.
Right now, Gu Yilan wasn’t thinking about anything. He was just sitting there quietly.
Reason told him not to act, so he shut off all perception, feeling time rush by and waiting for his turbulent emotions to settle on their own.
It wasn’t until Su Zesui hugged him tightly that he realized the boy who had been eavesdropping upstairs had somehow come down.
Gu Yilan lifted his eyes, slightly coming back to himself, and said, “You…”
But before he could finish, a warm, soft touch pressed against his lips. There was no reason, no warning, no movement leading up to it.
Gu Yilan’s pupils contracted slightly. He looked in surprise at the boy who had closed his eyes and kissed him. Almost instinctively, his gaze reddened, and his hand rose uncontrollably to press against the back of the boy’s head, deepening the sudden kiss.
In matters of kissing, the love-clueless Su Zesui had zero experience. He didn’t even know where to place his lips.
But sensing the oppressive, dark aura radiating from the man, he tentatively followed what he had seen in novels, carefully extending his tongue into the man’s mouth.
At that moment, Gu Yilan vaguely regained some awareness, realizing a strong, metallic taste filled his throat, and the soft tissue in his mouth had gone numb with pain.
Feeling the boy’s tentative movements, the darkness in Gu Yilan’s eyes deepened.
He wasn’t fully conscious, acting purely on instinct.
After a brief hesitation, his tongue pressed against the boy’s, eagerly exploring every warm area in the boy’s mouth over and over, as if trying to merge completely with him.
Their heated breaths intertwined, hearts resonating at the same high frequency, each clash of their tongues a fusion of blood and warmth.
After a long time, Su Zesui began to run out of breath. He lightly pushed against Gu Yilan’s chest and managed to break free from the deep kiss.
“Y-You, close your eyes,” Su Zesui said, gasping, raising his hand to cover Gu Yilan’s dark eyes. Flustered, he repeated the advice Gu Yilan had once given him: “Take deep breaths… try to make them last.”
God knows what he had felt seeing Gu Yilan unresponsive before, blood on his lips, nails digging into his skin.
Gu Yilan followed Su Zesui’s advice and took several deep breaths. Then he gently removed the boy’s hand from his eyes, focusing intently on him, as if he wanted to memorize every detail.
“Don’t… listen to him. Someone will love you. I…I like you. I promise, I’ll let you pursue me.”
After speaking, Su Zesui’s cheeks flushed slightly. He rubbed his swollen lips and, holding the small oxygen cylinder in his hand, was about to place it over the man’s face. “Exhale… Inhale.”
But Gu Yilan gently pushed the cylinder away, then leaned in again, kissing him, even biting his lower lip.
“Mm.” Su Zesui stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, letting the man, now completely uncontrollable, take what he wanted.
Gu Yilan, though equally inexperienced, seemed far more natural. His lips were greedy, and his hands weren’t idle either. Despite his bloodshot eyes, which made him seem forceful and unyielding, his movements were surprisingly gentle.
Sliding his hands under the boy’s shirt, exploring with careful rhythm—sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter—he worked gradually. Before long, Su Zesui felt something shift in his body.