Chapter 15
After leaving the investment conference, it was already evening. The sky was darkening, and the temperature in Kuanshi was even higher than in Haishi. This place, affected by the subtropical high pressure, had a year-round humid and hot climate.
“Want to have dinner together?” Shi Yu stopped and asked after a pause.
The two walked away from the venue together. In April, Kuanshi only felt a bit cool during the night.
Jiang Shangwan didn’t answer but instead took out a slim lady’s cigarette and a jet-black lighter engraved with English patterns from her bag. Her slender index and middle fingers held the delicate cigarette. She tilted her head down slightly, lowered her eyes, and lightly took the pale gray cigarette tip into her mouth.
This was the first time Shi Yu saw her smoke.
With the friction sound of the lighter, a red spark flared at the cigarette’s tip, leaving faint burning ash and glowing embers.
Her movements blowing smoke rings were light. She flicked off a cluster of grayish-white ash with her fingertips. When she tilted her head back to exhale upward, the corner of her eye showed a lazy, charming allure.
“What, never seen a woman smoke?”
Perhaps sensing his gaze was too direct and intense, Jiang Shangwan casually joked, “After a busy day, it’s easy to feel tired. It helps me stay alert.”
Shi Yu didn’t hold the outdated stereotype that women shouldn’t smoke. He just thought she looked very sexy when she smoked.
The tiny red embers flickered dimly in the dusk. This was their second time relaxing and chatting at night. Only then did Jiang Shangwan reply, “I’ll go eat after finishing this one.”
“Okay.” So Shi Yu waited quietly, watching her skillfully stub out the cigarette and toss it into a nearby trash bin.
“I always thought you were a kid before,” Jiang Shangwan resumed her usual elegant and noble demeanor. The relaxed, lazy moment was just a brief instant. Her graceful and serious manner was the norm. “It’s not good to smoke in front of kids, afraid you’d pick up bad habits. But today, I feel like you’ve grown up a bit.”
Shi Yu understood her unspoken meaning — because she thought he had matured, she felt it unnecessary to keep hiding things in front of him.
This sentence made him very happy.
“Let’s go eat,” Jiang Shangwan thought for a moment. “I remember there’s a newly opened Cantonese restaurant nearby. I heard the food is pretty good, but I think you need to make a reservation in advance.”
Just as Shi Yu was about to speak, Wang Yi suddenly interrupted from nowhere: “Ms. Jiang, may I have the honor of joining you for dinner?”
Wang Yi, dressed in a white suit with a pen clipped to his pocket, quickly pulled out the pen and wrote a string of numbers on a sticky note. Smiling, he handed it to Jiang Shangwan and said, “This is my phone number. I didn’t get a chance to leave my contact before. I didn’t expect to run into you again this time by chance. There’s a Michelin three-star chef nearby who’s a good friend I met in Canada. If you’re interested, we can go try it.”
“Of course,” Wang Yi glanced at Shi Yu beside her, “including your brother.”
His polished manners and refined approach were flawless, leaving no room to find fault. Shi Yu noticed that the men approaching her all seemed to be cut from the same mold — uniformly elite, prestigious family backgrounds, and seemingly gentle but actually using a subtle push-pull tactic.
Jiang Shangwan took the note, her red lips curling slightly. “I’ll keep your contact. Maybe we’ll meet another time, Mr. Wang. But we won’t go to that restaurant now. Thank you for the invitation. My brother is still in college, I need to take him back to school.”
Wang Yi showed a look of regret and awkwardly left, “Then I guess we’ll meet again if fate allows.”
“He’s Wang Yi, son of Wang Qun, the richest man in Kuanshi,” Jiang Shangwan said. “Do you know Hongwang Technology?”
Shi Yu was silent for a moment, then nodded, “I know.”
More precisely, it was hard not to know. Hongwang Technology’s games almost monopolize the domestic mobile and PC gaming markets. Anyone with some gaming experience has heard of them. Even the game Lin Chuan was obsessed with was produced by them. The city where this investment conference was held was their main base.
“If you get the chance, I’ll introduce you to his older brother, Wang Li,” Jiang Shangwan said casually. “He’s the real visionary and insightful one. Wang Yi is still far behind, his methods are too soft.”
Shi Yu listened as she named off these rich young heirs as casually as commenting on dishes on a menu.
“Let’s just go eat first.”
Shi Yu opened his phone and searched for the hottest Cantonese restaurants nearby. Just as Jiang Shangwan said, all required reservations. So they had to pick a restaurant nearby where they could just walk in and order—it was a Thai restaurant.
The usual taste, the usual environment, and of course, the usual prices. When Shi Yu got up to pay at the bar, Jiang Shangwan was looking at a message from Qiao Yuqing. It said that that stubborn old man Wang Jie insisted on auditioning actors before casting, if anyone was forced into the crew, he would rather have her withdraw the investment.
When Shi Yu returned, he saw Jiang Shangwan lowering her eyes, typing a message. She casually said toward the volume speaker, “If you give him the impression that people are being forced on him, with his temper, of course, he’ll instinctively resist you. But if these kids actually have good acting skills and can bring in a large amount of funding, wouldn’t that just be icing on the cake?”
“You shouldn’t be so rigid when handling things. Try to think about the problem from the other person’s perspective.”
Shi Yu didn’t know who she was speaking to, but he took the words to heart.
The restaurant was busy, with quick table turnover. As one group left, another came in with a number. Because of the affordable prices, the place was noisy, filled with many student couples coming together to check in and take photos, laughing and chatting about school gossip.
After leaving, the two of them naturally walked together to the nearby riverbank to help digest their meal. Shi Yu casually pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. Tall and long-legged, even his casual clothes gave off the relaxed vibe of a supermodel out on the street.
He looked more like a student from a nearby university out looking for food.
Jiang Shangwan stared at his profile for a while. The hood made him look sportier, more playful and youthful, which seemed a little unusual—she hadn’t been around such a boyish young man in a long time.
Unfortunately, he was a student she was sponsoring.
Jiang Shangwan thought this somewhat untimely. The moonlight was hazy, the evening breeze by the river brushed their cheeks, and the soft lights stretched their shadows—perfect for a wonderful date.
They walked at a distance neither too close nor too far.
Shi Yu was always good at restraining himself and maintaining the right boundaries with her.
Jiang Shangwan’s subtle magnolia perfume lingered in the invisible night air, accentuating her presence. But as they walked farther, the scent slowly deepened and grew richer.
Shi Yu’s Adam’s apple tightened sharply.
She was drawing closer to him.
Jiang Shangwan’s mind began to drift again into those sensual emotions driven by instinctual desire. She knew such thoughts crossed the line, went beyond moral boundaries—after all, she had once been his teacher in another sense.
But at this beautiful moment, with the evening breeze softly blowing and the warm body of the young man right beside her, she found it truly difficult to restrain herself.
Her body seemed to act before reason did, unconsciously leaning toward the source of that warmth.
Shi Yu suddenly slowed his pace and quietly looked at her with half-lidded eyes.
“Do you still remember last time at Capella?”
Jiang Shangwan met his straightforward gaze, and a sudden tension snapped in her mind—she didn’t know what he wanted to say.
The next second, he whispered, “You said you liked my hands.”
Jiang Shangwan hesitated, caught in a swirl of complex feelings—shyness, embarrassment, and a fluttering heart pressed repeatedly on her mind. She looked at the small protruding bone at his throat and saw it move very slightly and gently.
Her heartbeat recognized this feeling before her reason could name it. But Shi Yu didn’t stop. Rarely, he showed the direct, somewhat aggressive side beneath his restrained emotions.
He asked again, “Do you want to hold my hand?”
In that moment, Jiang Shangwan’s mind went completely blank.
The young man’s large hand reached toward her, leaving no room for refusal. First, his fingers brushed over hers, then his palm enveloped the slightly cool back of her hand. His touch grew firmer and insistently continued, until their knuckles lightly touched and their fingers clasped tightly.
Their eyes met, and in the silent night at that moment, their ten fingers intertwined.
Jiang Shangwan stared in disbelief at their joined hands.
“Like my hands? Like holding hands?” Shi Yu’s obsidian-like eyes shone remarkably bright as he looked at her flushed face, and at the very rare, helpless expression on her face.
She had always been capable of anything, yet in front of him, she showed a side of panic and helplessness, like a startled fawn.
A strong sense of morality surged within her. If the lingering sensual feelings were a wave of desire swelling in her heart, the clear physical touch now shattered her definite boundaries, making her realize this was no longer a fleeting thought, but stark reality.
An intense urge to escape crowded out her remaining thoughts. She wanted to pull her hand away and immediately stop this absurdity.
But Shi Yu, as if sensing her fear and retreat, quickly grasped her delicate hand with his large one, giving her no chance to flee.
“Your hand is so soft.” Shi Yu, still holding her hand, pulled it over to rest against his chest. Through the thin fabric of his hoodie, Jiang Shangwan could clearly feel the defined lines of his muscles and the passionate beating of his heart.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
Shi Yu looked deeply into her eyes.
“Can you hear it?”
Jiang Shangwan felt embarrassed, the rapid pace made her uneasy. This shouldn’t be happening.
“…What exactly are you doing?” Jiang Shangwan struggled to speak, her palm pressed against his pounding heartbeat, impossible to ignore.
Shi Yu’s instinct told him this was the crucial moment to make her realize the shift in their relationship, not to give her room to pull back.
So he smiled softly at her: “Do you know what else happened that night at Capella?”
Jiang Shangwan was on the verge of breaking down, fearing what shocking words he might say next—until the young, clean, beautiful face of his smiled slightly and spoke.
“You kissed my hand, just like this.”
Shi Yu finally released her hand, but his fingers brushed over her lips, his thumb pressing down on her lower lip, tracing its outline. Then his index finger slipped past her teeth, exploring inside her mouth.
The world collapsed.
Jiang Shangwan felt utterly shattered inside.