Chapter 60: Lu Fei's Sauce

Xia An smiled.

He hadn't guessed wrong; this really was Lu Fei.

He knew Le Ning didn't drink carbonated beverages, and Le Ning knew Xia An didn't smoke.

Besides, Soft Hongmei wasn't a particularly good brand of cigarettes.

Yet when Le Ning saw Xia An not only accept the cola from her but also take the cigarette without hesitation, it struck a chord.

Xia An had attended Lu Fei's wedding in his previous life, but he was called away by a phone call before the ceremony ended, missing out on that celebratory cigarette.

And since Lu Fei himself didn't smoke, Xia An had resolved before coming to Binhai to make up for this missed moment in this lifetime.

Le Ning understood the implication of Xia An's "courtesy demands reciprocity," took the beverage to thank him, and then left.

Step by step down the stairs, step by step with her back held straight.

Puckering her lips slightly, Le Ning walked lightly along the pathway.

She pondered:

— He is a hopeless flirt.

— But what man isn't?

Lu Yao and Qi Buyang only used 5Q and didn't browse forums.

Given his age, the doctoral student was accustomed to using forums and didn't check 5Q.

But Le Ning had not only registered an account on 5Q but had also browsed the campus BBS in advance.

She knew that Tang Wan was pursuing her doctorate at this very university.

A coincidence?

Perhaps, or perhaps not.

Even if it wasn't a coincidence, it didn't matter.

She could wait; hadn't this wait already yielded a result?

This and that...

It was completely normal; most people didn't have only a single romance in their lives.

That was precisely why she, Le Ning, was so exceptionally precious, wasn't it?

Xia An... letting him act self-willed for a few more years, what of it?

— I like you, I cherish you.

— One day, you will understand.

Carrying her invisible sword forward, Le Ning's gaze was firm and resolute as she smiled faintly.

Zuo You, Tang Wan...

Heh, mere frost and snow in the wind, nothing more.

……

With Le Ning acting as this little interlude, the four guys in Room 515 skipped any awkward transition and grew familiar with one another instantly.

After Le Ning left, the clever Qi Buyang and Lu Yao chose not to ask or mention a single word about it.

As for the simple-minded Lu Fei, it never crossed his mind to ask anything.

He had gone downstairs, but he hadn't bought things exclusively for Le Ning and Xia An.

He had brought drinks for the other two as well, along with two extra packs of cigarettes.

Lu Fei had previously noticed that both Qi Buyang and Lu Yao smoked Huanghelou.

He had seen them in the small supermarket, but they were too expensive; it wasn't that he was unwilling to spend, but rather that he genuinely couldn't afford them.

Qi Buyang and Lu Yao didn't look down on him at all; instead, they immediately opened the packs of Hongmei and lit up.

Lu Yao pulled out a cigarette and handed it to Xia An, who accepted it without lighting it, tucking it behind his ear to signal he would smoke later.

With outsiders gone, they proceeded with the usual introductions of their hometowns.

Xia An didn't need to listen.

Especially when they started talking about their ideals for choosing this major.

He practically knew the trajectory of their futures better than the other three did.

Qi Buyang and Lu Yao were childhood friends from families that were long-time acquaintances, hailing from Ice City in Songjiang Province.

Qi Buyang was determined to become a great journalist.

To go to the front lines!

To experience the authentic roar of artillery!

Or else go undercover!

To experience the rough techniques of shady foot massage parlors!

After graduation, in order to escape family control, Qi Buyang chose to head south and work as an intern cameraman for a television station.

He was incidentally involved in the recording of Keep Running, and when Deng Chao broke his arm in that episode, Qi Buyang was implicated and fired.

Ultimately, he settled down in Guiyang as a contract-worker director for a television station.

He never made it to the front lines, proudly rejecting all financial and career assistance from his parents and elder sister, carving out his own path through half a lifetime.

Yet he genuinely experienced the foot massage techniques of countless different regions.

Once, during a class reunion KTV gathering, when Xia An heard a hostess call out about not having warm clothes and Qi Buyang immediately picked up his phone to apply for a loan, Xia An knew he would find it hard to ever lead a settled life.

As it turned out, Xia An guessed wrong.

In 2022, Qi Buyang, approaching forty, married a 26-year-old KTV hostess.

The girl, who had changed careers, used all her savings to pay a fifty percent down payment.

The house deed was written solely in Qi Buyang's name.

Throughout his entire life, Qi Buyang never asked Xia An—whose net worth exceeded a billion—for a single favor.

Lu Yao radiated the aura of a scholar.

Sharing Lu Xun's ambition, he aimed to write the world with his pen.

He married right after graduation, obeyed all family arrangements, and secured a stable position at a newspaper office.

He witnessed firsthand the decline of traditional print media, and by his thirties, he was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief.

His salary struggled to support his family, so late in life he plunged into the online literature industry, where he was cursed as a pretentious literary dog and became just another obscure, failed author.

With a heart loftier than the heavens, a mind full of poetry, refined personal values, and a sharp wit,

he ultimately drifted through half a life of mediocrity due to his personality and choices.

As for Lu Fei from the countryside of Jinan...

People wanted different things at different stages of life.

At twenty years old, Lu Fei only wanted to make money.

"I've never studied art; I just used to doodle randomly in the crop fields when I was a kid.

"Drawing wheat, drawing the field ridges...

"Later, the teacher at our village primary school said I drew well and gave me a set of watercolor pens.

"When I got to county high school, because my brain is slow and my grades weren't good, I still wanted to get into a good university.

"Classmates told me studying art gave you extra admission points, a whole lot of them.

"So I took the unified art exam, but I didn't pass the first year..."

This year, Binhai University expanded its enrollment for the photojournalism major.

Lu Fei applied and was accepted.

He was one of the out-of-province art students who arrived by train this morning.

Although Xia An had a much earlier birthday, he was still ranked as the youngest in the dorm.

Because the other three were all repeat students who had stayed behind to retake their exams.

Noticing that Lu Yao realized Lu Fei came from a very poor family, Lu Yao offered a comforting thought: "A person should just live a plain life, build a house, marry a wife, and raise a dog."

Qi Buyang chuckled, "And have two billion in savings."

Xia An listened with a constant smile.

Outside the window, the campus broadcast played continuously,

introducing the school and the city,

interspersed with music.

The hallway outside grew increasingly noisy as new students arrived one after another.

Xia An looked at one person, then another.

Old friends, long time no see.

Qi Buyang smoked frequently, and by now the room was hazy with smoke.

Given their age and life experience, chatting about identities and ideals was exhausted in just a few exchanges.

Eventually, the topic inevitably drifted back to girls.

Yet with Xia An sitting right there, there wasn't much left to say about girls.

Comparing goods against goods only made one want to throw them away.

Qi Buyang stubbed out his cigarette butt and got up to go to the restroom.

Before leaving, he muttered, "If I could find someone comparable to the one from Xia's family... I'd lose weight."

Lu Yao scoffed, "Don't bother going to the toilet; you can just urinate on the floor, bend down to look at your reflection in it, and that delusion will clear right up."

Qi Buyang grabbed a pack of "tissues" and stomped off resentfully, muttering, "Number two."

Less than two minutes later, Lu Yao's phone rang.

He answered and hung up.

Bursting into laughter, Lu Yao grabbed a roll of toilet paper and walked to the door.

"That idiot took the egg yolk pastries your girl sent to go squat in the stall."

……

When the sun turned the color of an orange, Xia An checked the time.

He knew the serving schedule of the Binhai University cafeteria better than anyone else.

Arriving even a few minutes early was definitely advantageous,

so he suggested going to eat.

Qi Buyang said, "Why go through that trouble? Let's just go to a small restaurant; I'm the oldest, so it's on me."

Lu Yao didn't mind either way.

Lu Fei's expression instantly twitched, and he habitually scratched his head, smiling as he claimed he wasn't hungry yet and told them to go ahead without him.

Lu Yao didn't say anything.

Qi Buyang wanted to speak up.

Xia An nudged them both with his chin, signaling them to stay quiet, and then told Lu Fei:

"Alright, then we'll just grab a quick bite and come right back."

When Lu Fei filled out his college application, he had no idea that the photojournalism major required not just a computer,

but also film, chemicals, photographic paper, and other consumables, as well as major equipment like film cameras, digital SLRs, or DVs.

Tomorrow, after the class meeting, when Lu Fei realized that completing his four years of college, tuition included, would cost no less than two hundred thousand yuan, he would collapse on the spot in sheer terror.

He genuinely collapsed.

A strapping young man of one meter eighty-five turned ashen white, unable to stand, trembling all over.

Even the counselor was scared out of his wits.

In his previous life, after receiving emergency care from classmates and teachers, Lu Fei broke down and wept bitterly.

Shandong was a major province for the college entrance examination, and repeating a year wasn't considered rare.

But given Lu Fei family's financial situation, his previous year of art school repetition had depended entirely on a good harvest year, trading crops for tuition.

Doing it again was simply impossible.

Yet twenty thousand yuan—even if they sold their brick bungalow and farmland, they could never afford to send him to college.

Having scraped together tuition and travel expenses this time around, Lu Fei had less than three hundred yuan left to his name.

Drop out?

At that moment, those were the only two words in Lu Fei's mind.

Later, the school helped, the teachers helped, and the classmates helped.

Student loans, subsidies from teachers, and daily care from his buddies.

After military training, Lu Fei started taking on weekend part-time jobs, and thanks to his own drive, he secured scholarships every single year.

He finally managed to earn his degree.

Yet that breakdown during the freshman class meeting had subjected Lu Fei to countless overt and covert slights, leaving him with an inferiority complex that lingered for years.

Xia An was acutely aware of Lu Fei's current and imminent distress,

just as he firmly cherished the brotherhood he would share with him over the coming decades.

It was no big deal.

Half an hour later, when the three guys returned carrying several takeout bags of various sizes, Lu Fei—who had been sitting hunched over, gnawing on a pancake wrapped with scallions—was startled out of his wits.

His first reaction was to drop the flatbread, jump up, and fan the air frantically with a pillow to clear out the strong odor.

The scallions definitely didn't smell bad.

What smelled was the soybean paste his mother had fermented.

Qi Buyang burst into a cackling laugh, "Damn, actually I smelled a stinky foot odor at noon, I fucking thought it was Lu Yao's feet, so I didn't have the heart to say anything."

Lu Yao cursed him with a smile, "So vulgar!"

Xia An set down two hearty dishes, walked over with a smile, and said,

"Quick, roll one for me; I've been hearing forever how delicious Shandong scallions are."

Qi Buyang: "Make it two."

Lu Yao: "Three."