Zhong Zhiling had signed a love contract, nearly broken up with his girlfriend, confirmed that the investment was lost and the money gone, and now muddle-headedly found himself about to follow his senior into some kind of venture...
He returned to the dorm that night, adrift, wanting to scream, but everything that had happened that day had churned together and lodged in his throat, leaving him lying in bed able to do nothing but let out muffled, whimpering sobs.
He slept a while, cried a while, slept again, cried again.
His classmates and friends were off at internships or hunting for jobs, and in the empty dorm there was nothing but endless loneliness and sorrow.
Zhong Zhiling woke in a daze, splashed cold water on his face, and thought back on everything from the day before—suddenly he fell into hesitation and fantasy all over again. What if the senior in America had hidden reasons of his own? What if after a while he wired the money back after all?
Harboring thoughts like these, he silenced his phone and went through the motions of arriving at the lab, numbly continuing to warm up for his coming first year of grad school.
Holding his breath, focusing his mind, his troubles gradually faded.
Zhong Zhiling had never been this focused, as if immersed in an ocean of study.
Bang!
The lab door was shoved open.
Zhong Zhiling turned back blankly and saw his senior, Yu Xing, striding in quickly.
Yu Xing swept his eyes across the lab, saw no one else, and then saw this junior still standing in front of the incubator observing the petri dishes. He flared up at once: "Why didn't you answer your phone? Why are you still here messing around instead of doing real work?"
"Huh? I..." Zhong Zhiling hadn't expected to be interrogated like this, and for a moment was struck dumb.
Wait—senior, you're my senior, and I'm...
You're...
Whose real work is it, exactly?!
Yu Xing strode briskly over to the incubator and demanded: "Are you still holding on to some fantasy?"
"I..." Zhong Zhiling stammered, unable to get words out.
"Then did you call Yu Xuhui this morning?" Yu Xing pressed. "From yesterday to today, has he called you back?"
Zhong Zhiling shook his head. He hadn't called, and hadn't received any call back either.
Yu Xing stared into this unlucky fool's eyes and said, word by deliberate word: "I called! His phone was off! That surname-Yu bastard has most likely already run off with the money! Stop holding out hope for anyone surnamed Yu!"
Zhong Zhiling stared blankly at his senior, then suddenly said in a small voice: "Surnamed Yu... Senior, you're surnamed Yu too..."
"That's two completely different things! Besides, if I were going to run off, that would be a matter for later—right now we have to get past this hurdle!" Yu Xing raised his voice. "I'm asking you one last time. If you can't commit, then go back to your books!"
Zhong Zhiling was about to burst into tears again: "Xing-ge, don't push me like this..."
Yu Xing said nothing, just stared at the junior in front of him. When five seconds of staring produced no response, he turned to leave.
Zhong Zhiling's wavering and fantasies were finally punctured by this gesture. He took two quick steps, grabbed his senior's arm as if clutching a lifeline, suddenly certain that this was the real work.
"Xing-ge, I'm in!"
Yu Xing turned around and pointed toward the incubator: "Take the petri dishes out."
Not understanding, Zhong Zhiling carefully took the dishes out of the incubator.
The cell cultures in the dishes were extremely fragile—one wrong move and they'd be contaminated, and then everything would have to start over.
"Take mine out too," Yu Xing instructed.
Zhong Zhiling still didn't understand what his senior was up to, but he obeyed.
Seeing him dawdling, Yu Xing snatched his own dish away, pulled a pen from his pocket, and stirred the cultured cells into a complete mush.
"Xing-ge..." Zhong Zhiling cried out involuntarily.
Yu Xing tossed the dish and the pen onto the table, and without a word pointed at the pen.
Zhong Zhiling looked at his senior, then at the dish in his own hand, and finally steeled himself, took the pen, and likewise stirred the cultured cells into a complete mush.
As he stirred, he wept. This one stir meant following his senior in betraying the lab; this one stir meant his future was dimmed from this day on...
Yu Xing was getting somewhat used to his junior's sniffling, and nodded with satisfaction: "Good. Today we swear a pact over these dishes—we're going to carve out a road for ourselves one way or another!"
Seeing that his junior didn't answer, he figured he ought to add some pep, and encouraged: "This year, we make one million!"
Cultured cells stirred into mush, vowing to make a million this year!
Zhong Zhiling's tears stopped. He looked up at his senior: "What about the rest of the debt? Didn't your family put in five million?"
Yu Xing pressed his lips together. Damned fool—always poking at the sore spot!
He answered testily: "The rest, obviously, we earn back slowly!"
Although he felt there was something to it, Yu Xing hadn't set the bar too high for this love-contract project. As long as money was coming in, as long as he could get through this stretch, time was still on his side!
Zhong Zhiling looked at the two petri dishes on the table, then at the senior who struck him as heartless, and suddenly didn't know what to do.
He asked the leader: "Xing-ge, what do we do now?"
"You call your girlfriend, and I'll think over how exactly to implement this project. This afternoon you come with me to ask about entrepreneurship support policies for university students—you're a graduate, I'm still enrolled, so there might be a role for you there," Yu Xing laid out the arrangements one by one. "Tomorrow we go find Old Liu and see if you can take a leave of absence or have your enrollment deferred."
Hearing the second half, Zhong Zhiling's throat bobbed involuntarily, but he raised no objection.
From yesterday to today, he had noticed that his senior worked with clear goals and real drive—far stronger than himself in that respect.
Yu Xing sat down, saw the unlucky fool still standing there blankly, and pointed at the dishes on the table: "Throw those out."
Holding the two disposable petri dishes, staring at the ruined cell cultures smeared across them, Zhong Zhiling felt his own future had been stirred into mush just the same.
With considerable anguish, he threw out the dishes, then turned to look at his senior, who already seemed to have thrown himself into the venture as if nothing had happened. Silently, he took out his phone and dialed his girlfriend, Lü Haiying.
With an anxious heart, Zhong Zhiling reported his plans to his girlfriend. He didn't mention the investment blowup—he only painted a glowing picture of how much he believed in his senior's venture.
Thankfully, from yesterday to today, there was finally some good news: his girlfriend agreed.
After hanging up, Zhong Zhiling gleefully shared this with his senior.
"Mm, she'd most likely agree," Yu Xing said absently, half-thinking of something else. "You're not doing the master's anymore, so more than half the problems between you two disappear. She won't have to retake the grad school exam a second time, and you're entering the workforce. Whether or not she goes back to her hometown is another matter, but at the very least, the two of you are in similar situations now."
The smile on Zhong Zhiling's face suddenly froze.
Then he exploded: "Xing-ge, what's that supposed to mean! Why are you sowing discord! Are you trying to scam me out of my 500? Are you planning not to pay out my roses?!"
Yu Xing looked up in surprise at his junior, then changed his tune: "Mm, mm, okay, okay, right—here's how it is. Lü Haiying trusts you unconditionally, supports you firmly purely out of her feelings for you. She never thought anything like that. My mistake."
Zhong Zhiling's anger, like a balloon with a pinhole poked in it, abruptly deflated.
He stood there stunned for a long moment, both flustered and heartbroken: "Would she—would she really think that way? How could she? That's not right, shouldn't we both just want what's best for each other?"
"What's wrong with people thinking of themselves? Love yourself first, then love others," Yu Xing consoled him. "Besides, who gets to decide what counts as a better future? Didn't you tell her our project is good and has a lot of potential?"
"That was—that was..." Zhong Zhiling said, a little angrily, "that was just something I said for the time being!"
"You lied too. OK, we're even. Stop overthinking it," Yu Xing closed the topic.
Zhong Zhiling's heart was a tangle of emotions when he suddenly spotted a hole in his senior's words: "Xing-ge! You said I lied! So you think this project isn't any good either, that it has no potential, don't you!!"
"Of course not," Yu Xing answered calmly. "Because you said it wrong. You should say: our project is excellent, it has a brilliant future, and right after launching it won customers' affection and quickly landed orders."
Zhong Zhiling said in delighted surprise: "We have an order?"
Yu Xing pointed at the unlucky fool: "You're it."
Zhong Zhiling: "..."
He slumped into a chair and said helplessly: "Holy crap! Xing-ge, you've seriously got me going in circles!!!"
Seeing his senior say nothing, he went on plaintively: "Xing-ge, how can you be so cruel? You're so different now, it's scary!"
Yu Xing heard this, thought for a few seconds, looked back at the unlucky fool, and said earnestly: "Zhiling, I've realized you haven't quite adjusted your mindset and identity. Of course, that's not your fault—objectively speaking, asking you to switch over that fast is a tall order. But I have to say..."
"It's not that I'm cruel. It's that we're both facing extremely real problems right now."
"Your money, my money—it's all gone. We have a massive financial hole that needs filling."
"You need to change your mindset and your identity as fast as possible, or all you'll face from here on is harsher reality."
Listening to his senior's matter-of-fact pronouncement, watching those calm—even cold—eyes, Zhong Zhiling felt a chill run through him.
Yu Xing sighed and said: "Otherwise, Zhiling, think about it. If you didn't come work with me, or if you'd suddenly found out about this on your own—what would you have done then?"
This time Zhong Zhiling stayed silent for an especially long while, and finally gave a shiver. The wind on the rooftop must be so strong; the water in the lake must be so deep...
He gulped down a big glass of water, looked at his silent senior, and still voiced what was in his heart: "Xing-ge, we've never run a project before, never done any startup stuff. I'm just scared... Can we actually pull this off?"
Yu Xing didn't answer right away. It really was a fair question.
In fact, he had spent the previous night going over his situation and direction again and again. The love contract he had initially validated on his junior had real-world precedents—two of them, in fact: one was an insurance product from an insurance company, the other was a commercial contract from an ordinary company.
The former had once been famous; the latter had also been advertised as landing over a hundred thousand orders. In the dream, he had even been a potential customer at one point—he'd decided to buy a house back then precisely because he was dating a girlfriend who loved trying new things.
Whether it was the insurance company or the ordinary company, the product was the same product. The difference was that the former had stronger institutional backing and made it easier to win consumers' trust.
Yu Xing didn't set the goal for the "love contract" very high. He wasn't delusional about going public, nor did he imagine making tens of millions or hundreds of millions. He just wanted to run a lean operation and earn a modest profit—after all, right now he had no people, no money, no technology, no resources, and his investments had just blown up.
If it could at least somewhat cushion the storm that was coming—if it could at least give his family something to hope for—that would all be good.
If the love contract showed no sign of gaining traction in a short time, then he'd have to carry the debt and try something else. But Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent had been developing for years; all the well-known tracks already had their players. To accomplish anything, he'd probably have to start from a niche vertical segment.
For instance, e-commerce was booming—maybe a price-comparison website could prove popular.
And failing that... growing grapes!
Yu Xing's emotions had already settled, and he had genuinely considered a way out in grape farming—not by going back to his uncle as things stood, but by introducing a variety that would later become hugely popular: the Shine Muscat grape.
A variety native to Japan, it was at one point hyped up to several hundred yuan per jin after being introduced to the country, hailed as the Hermès of grapes.
Yu Xing figured that if it came to it, he could get a sip of that soup. He didn't need enormous wealth—as long as it beat the original situation, anything would do.
But to do any of this, it was best to have some money squeezed out first. You needed a source of living water.
He cautiously set his inner expectations, and considering his junior's current state of mind, softened his tone and made a promise he didn't intend to keep: "Zhiling, I don't know if we can pull this off either. Let's do this: if nothing picks up this month, if we can't see any hope, then we'll go do your little blue pill."
Zhong Zhiling breathed a sigh of relief. So his senior wasn't absolutely determined to plunge headfirst to the death into this love contract after all.
He was just about to nod when he suddenly froze. Wait—I never said I wanted to go make the little pill!
"At lunch, call your girlfriend again and ask her to help us rally her friends. This month, we'll see if we can make some noise in the student community," Yu Xing had already moved on to the next topic. "If we can't even open up a market among sentimental college students in graduation season, then we switch tracks immediately."
"Xing-ge, the way you talk, are college students really that stupid?" Zhong Zhiling attempted a mild defense.
"Zhiling, it's not stupidity—it's just that at this stage their eyes are clearer," Yu Xing said seriously. "We're both medical students. I think we can look at our customers, at our business, from a more grounded angle."
"What is love?"
"The brain secretes phenylethylamine. It makes people excited, speeds up breathing and heart rate, makes people fall in love at first sight, makes people tumble into love."
"After two people start dating, their bodies secrete dopamine, making them happy and satisfied, dying to be glued together every day. But unfortunately, it comes fast and goes fast too. It doesn't stay at high levels in the body forever—on average, less than two and a half years."
"As dopamine declines, endorphins take over, reducing anxiety and increasing feelings of stability and warmth."
"On top of that, there's vasopressin, norepinephrine, serotonin... all working together to complete the journey of love."
"Let's not mystify it. We can look at it more materially. What do you think?"
Yu Xing painted a picture of love under the influence of the body's hormones.
Zhong Zhiling shook his head repeatedly: "Xing-ge, reducing love entirely to hormones is way too cynical... You can't be that calculating about everything. If you talk like that, then everything has to be that calculating."
He didn't quite dare spell out the implication, but Yu Xing understood.
It was nothing more than this: if you viewed love with such cold logic, then you'd view projects, relationships, all of it, with the same cold logic...
Yu Xing smiled faintly: "I'm just describing one way of looking at it. Actually, I do believe in love. As for everything else—whether it's this project or that little pill you want to make—when it's time to talk interests, we talk interests. When something happens, don't be polite about it."
Zhong Zhiling felt a bit embarrassed, and a bit surprised: "Xing-ge, are you serious?"
"Of course. Starting a business doesn't call for gentility, for being refined and courteous. Business is business," Yu Xing said gravely. "We both owe money. If you ever find I'm trying to grab the cash and run, or anything like that, feel free to tear into me directly. No need to be polite."
Having his senior voice this concern so bluntly, though it made him somewhat uncomfortable, Zhong Zhiling still nodded in light of their bleak situation: "Senior, if you put it that way, then we're being petty rogues first and gentlemen after. If it ever really comes to that, don't blame me for being ruthless with you."
"Don't mention it. Come on, we've got to get busy starting today," Yu Xing said, rising without a care. "This afternoon we ask about the policies, and afterward we'll have you be the legal representative of our company."
As they walked, Zhong Zhiling asked: "Why me?"
Yu Xing answered succinctly: "You do it. Good."
Zhong Zhiling nodded, asking nothing more: "Oh."
After a few steps he suddenly stopped, looked at his senior, who turned back in puzzlement, and said earnestly: "Xing-ge, I wasn't serious about making the little pill. I was just grasping at straws."
"I understand. I know you're a good person. Let's hurry," Yu Xing said understandingly. "If you weren't such a good person, I'd never make you the legal representative."
Zhong Zhiling let out a breath and quickened his pace to keep up. As long as his senior didn't misunderstand him, that was enough.
Thanks to Sanaz for the Alliance Leader gift, thanks to Wuma Xing, Yixiang Panguike, Chongma Chongyi 2016, Ke Shang ye, Qiuye Sixue, and all the other big shots for the tips, and thanks to everyone for the collections and votes.