Chapter One Hundred and Ninety: From Triumph to Sorrow (II)

There was a special day at the end of August.

In reality, everyone had a day that was special to them, a day that would come every year.

……

Xiao Yu rarely ever celebrated his birthday. When he had been a student, August was that awkward time at the end of their summer vacation. There were always those who needed to finish their summer homework, and others seized their last opportunity to go have fun. Thus, it had been hard to gather people to celebrate his birthday. On top of that, people in his family normally didn’t remember his birthday, and after a while, Xiao Yu didn’t care too much about it. After he’d gone overseas, there was even less of a reason to celebrate such a trivial matter. Then, when he’d started work, every day was spent on drawing designs until the middle of the night. His supervisor wouldn’t approve any vacation, and he’d missed observing the anniversary of his father’s death several times, not to mention his own birthday.

This year, Xiao Yu had forgotten that his birthday was coming up. His birthday hadn’t been celebrated for over twenty years, so it wasn’t a big deal to miss another. He hadn’t expected that someone else would remember.

While reviewing some doc.u.ments, Yan Jin said, “Oh, isn’t your birthday on the twenty-seventh?”

Xiao Yu stuck his head out from behind his monitor and silently looked at Yan Jin, who was sitting close by.

“Hmm? How come you aren’t saying anything?” Yan Jin also looked up.

“Are you asking me?” Xiao Yu said.

“Is there anyone else here?”

“It didn’t sound like you were asking me about my birthday.” Xiao Yu grumpily retreated behind his monitor.

“…So is that a yes or no?”

“Yes, yes, yes. What do you want to do?”

“Secret.”

Xiao Yu gave Yan Jin the middle finger.

“So troublesome…” Yan Jin muttered and went back to reviewing the doc.u.ments.

Their conversation had started randomly and now ended randomly. It really was quite confusing.

Perhaps Yan Jin understood what had happened, but Xiao Yu definitely didn’t.

Furthermore, Yan Jin had only brought it up that one time. He didn’t say anything about it for the next few days until they were leaving home together on the twenty-seventh.

Xiao Yu had wanted to bring up the topic many times but had resisted the urge in the end.

He didn’t care about his birthday.

Twenty-six years had gone by without celebrating it. One more time wasn’t a big deal.

“That’s why you’re here so early showing off your love life?” Jing Mo facepalmed after listening to Xiao Yu’s entire story. He was tactfully indicating that he wanted no part whatsoever in Xiao Yu’s love troubles.

“I’m not showing off my love life…” Xiao Yu’s weak denial only strengthened Jing Mo’s point. “I’m just, I’m just curious what Yan Jin is up to. If he hadn’t brought it up, I would have forgotten about it. What do you think he meant?”

“It doesn’t matter what he meant. At the very least, it shouldn’t be anything bad.” Jing Mo sighed and a.n.a.lyzed, “Maybe he just wants to surprise you?”

“That’s not how it sounded though. What did he mean by ‘so troublesome’…?” Xiao Yu refused to give up.

“I will tell you one more time what I think: it’s just a surprise. Stop worrying about it and go back to work.”

The entire morning had been wasted by Xiao Yu’s antics, and Jing Mo hadn’t even started on any work. He had wanted to send Xiao Yu off, but after seeing Xiao Yu’s pitiful expression, he softened his voice and said, “Whatever it is, you’ll find out by the end of the day. Just wait a little bit more.”

“He didn’t show up in the office this morning and isn’t answering his phone either though.”

“…You’ve been here hara.s.sing me since 9 in the morning, okay? Maybe he’s back now?”

“But he hasn’t replied to my messages.”

Jing Mo had no words left. He picked up his cellphone and checked the time. Then, he helplessly said, “Alright, fine, it’s already twelve. Let’s go grab a bite to eat. It’ll be lunchtime soon anyways. I’ll come with you to find him.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Now let’s go already.”

As Jing Mo pushed Xiao Yu out, he opened his phone to check QQ.

Xiao Yu began to count off on his fingers the good food available to eat in the cafeteria this week. “It’s Thursday today, so unfortunately there’s no fruit. Oh, but I think there’s some dessert? YL’s cafeteria is worlds apart from SI’s. What should I eat? I heard the fried noodles are really good…”

“…Wait.”

Jing Mo had come to a stop and was staring at his phone.

“What’s up?” Xiao Yu looked back at him, puzzled.

“I think I know what Yan Jin is up to.”

“Huh?”

Jing Mo held up his phone vertically for Xiao Yu to see.

Xiao Yu stared blankly at the posts scrolling down the screen for a while, but didn’t know what they were talking about.

It was the internal employee QQ group. During working hours, the group usually didn’t have many messages. When there were, they were usually gossip about personal events. When Jing Mo had looked at his phone, there had been a screenshot there. However, in a few short seconds, the screenshot had been pushed down by ninety-nine other messages.

Xiao Yu never had the opportunity to see the screenshot. He could only see all the replies that had buried it. They were all very strange; it wasn’t too much to describe them as gibberish.

What the heck was “I can die happy now”, “Unheard of”, “Call me your Daddy”, “Pigs have flown”, “IRL Tagging @Chairman Yan @Chief Xiao”, and “Mom is asking why I’m kneeling”?

Xiao Yu was bewildered.

Then, just when he had opened his mouth to ask Jing Mo what it meant, there was an explosion inside the office.

To be more precise, it wasn’t the office that exploded, but the employees inside that did.

There was suddenly an uproar.

It was already time for the lunch break, so it was reasonable to expect some noise. Some went to eat together, some chatted with each other, some made fun of the leaders.h.i.+p team, and others went to go play games.

Some noise was normal, but this intensity definitely wasn’t.

It wasn’t an exaggeration that Xiao Yu thought the building had caught fire.

“What’s going on out there?”

Xiao Yu was stunned by the noise and his attention was diverted from Jing Mo’s phone.

Jing Mo realized that the screenshot had been buried, so he went to the group files and retrieved it. He then held up his phone again for Xiao Yu. “Look here.”

Xiao Yu looked at it, and then——

“The f.u.c.k?!”

The screeching shriek was lost within all the noise that had reached levels resembling a food market inside the building.

……

The current head of the Gabriel Family announces his engagement!

This news was released on the twenty-seventh of August at exactly noon on YL’s official blog and spread like wildfire. In under five minutes, it already had over ten thousand likes and reshares. Every netizen who saw it helped spread the news. The netizens started to prepare a lot of snacks to enjoy the fireworks.

Even if it was about the Gabriel heir and YL had run a marketing slogan for “twenty percent off this month if we get a hundred thousand reshares, fifty percent off this month and fifty randomly chosen winners will receive a complete set of our new Ocean Swell summer product if we get a million reshares”, a simple engagement announcement wouldn’t have generated this amount of reshares and comments. There were two reasons for such a ridiculous reception.

The first was that the Gabriel heir, who was also the powerful chairman of YL, was getting engaged to another man.

Even though gay love wasn’t as controversial anymore, out of so many people, there were bound to be those who couldn’t accept the change and came out to criticize them. For people like Yan Jin with a large social responsibility, many ordinary people couldn’t accept such a powerful professional figure having such a “scandal”. They believed that this would have a negative effect, and indeed many declared online that they would boycott YL’s products.

Aside from ordinary people, even upper-cla.s.s people found it hard to tolerate Yan Jin’s behavior. Any slight movement from the Gabriel heir left City S’s upper cla.s.s scared for several days. There were many who couldn’t forget the trauma of the funeral incident half a year ago. Not much time had pa.s.sed since then, and now this was announced. They were concerned about any forthcoming implications.

The second reason was because of the other engagement incident.

Indeed, it was because of the announcement of the engagement between Nan Chan and Yan Jin on NN’s official blog about two months ago.

After the coincidence of the engagement photo and Yan Jin’s departure, the discussion had brewed for a full month before it had reached its peak when Yan Jin had returned for the press conference.

Then, Yan Jin had plainly denied any engagement with Nan Chan. On top of that, his significant other was a guy?

Forget the netizens; even the media had gone crazy from it.

Ninety percent of the time, public figures like Yan Jin who had been in this industry for such a long time, chose to hide their love life. No matter whether there were photographs of them going into a hotel together or videos containing conclusive proof, the public figures never gave any specifics. Many of them wouldn’t admit it for their life. The remaining ten percent found appropriate partners through mutually beneficial business marriages, and out of those, many stubbornly refused to admit having extramarital affairs. Yan Jin’s method of bluntly telling the truth had left reporters stunned. It really was too rare.

Yan Jin’s situation fell squarely into the “ninety percent of the time”, and it wasn’t an extremely scandalous picture either. It was just a kiss with another guy.

Indeed, Yan Jin wouldn’t have had any trouble bluffing his way through the Nan Family’s engagement announcement first and then the sneak picture after. When Yan Jin had held the press conference after returning to China, the reporters had already resigned themselves to Yan Jin’s inevitable wordplay. They hadn’t held much hope for a huge scoop.

For example, Yan Jin could have said the picture was photoshopped, or he could have said that this was a joke during a company event. It would have been harder to explain if it had been an ambiguous picture with another woman. It wouldn’t have taken any effort at all to pa.s.s off this picture with another guy.

After explaining the picture, if he chose to recognize the engagement with Nan Chan, he just needed to apologize to his fiancee for leaving too quickly a month ago. If he didn’t want to recognize the engagement, he could just say that there was too much public interest and pressure on them currently and that he temporarily didn’t plan on marrying Nan Chan. The engagement then… didn’t need to be recognized or rejected. After a half year to a year of no further progress, they could peacefully part ways.

This was the standard practice, clear and simple.

That was why the reporters never would have expected that Yan Jin would directly reject the engagement with Nan Chan. Furthermore, he had given a very reasonable justification: he already loved someone else, and that person was a guy.

Not only had this event received news coverage from all the top channels, it had even become trending on Weibo.

The reporters were already extremely happy to appear on news headlines, but their finely tuned reporter instincts told them that this wasn’t over.

After all, Yan Jin had only announced they were dating. It was unknown how far they had progressed in their dating; anything could happen. Compared to rejection of Nan Chan’s engagement, the explosiveness was about the same.

It wouldn’t be such a huge event if Yan Jin was only announcing that he was dating another guy. However, this announcement came off the back of a complete breakdown in relations.h.i.+p with the Nan Family!

At this cost, n.o.body would believe it wasn’t true love. Would this really be the end of it?

After waiting for a month, the reporters had finally received their follow-up.

On this special day, Yan Jin made another big move!

On YL’s official website, they announced not only the engagement, but the time and place of the marriage ceremony. It also included nine artistic engagement photos of the two of them. One of them was actually the one that had been secretly photographed over a month ago.

It wasn’t meant for face-slapping. This was the highest form of a public display of affection.

If this wasn’t true love, then what was?

If a teenaged second-generation noveau riche was doing this, it would have been funny, and no one would be surprised if they broke up. But, this was Yan Jin! For such a restrained and self-made man to announce this… the reporters were itching to know what kind of person this “Xiao Yu” was.

On the afternoon of August twenty-seventh, Yan Jin once again called a press conference.

Under such time constraints, many reporters couldn’t make it on time. Those that were closer to the city center had an advantage and immediately dropped everything they were doing to rush to the conference location and see what Yan Jin was up to this time.

“He destroyed his relations.h.i.+p with the Nan Family for this. The price for true love is really too high.”

“A strong dragon cannot defeat a tyrant. Things will only become more difficult for him. It really isn’t a wise move.”

“YL is going downhill. The future is looking bleak for them.”

“Mountains of riches have been spent for a beauty’s smile. This is what you call a hero.”

“I agree, love is priceless!”

These were the thoughts of the reporters entering the conference room.

However, when they entered and saw Yan Jin, only one thought remained in everyone’s brain:

f.u.c.k, who was the ecstatic guy in front of them with a face flushed with the triumph of success?