Another day passed. This day, by the riverbank, there were only Fang Dinghao and He Xiaoyuan. No third person. No sunshade, no small table, and no table piled high with fruit and snacks.
Fang Dinghao held his fishing rod, the tip tilted upward. See? I told you to stop messing around. The good days are over now.
Then he thought: What a jerk. He only sweet-talked him for a few days and then stopped. Is that even a man?
It was a workday. Maybe the other one didn’t come because he had to work?
That made sense.
So which one of the two had been assigned to keep an eye on him?
The younger one—the really handsome one?
Probably him.
But wasn’t he a little too unprofessional at this job?
Didn’t do a single bit of real work—just flirted the whole time.
Kids these days~~
On the surface, Fang Dinghao was fishing. In his head, it was nothing but fields of gossip.
He Xiaoyuan, meanwhile, deliberately wore a dejected expression, fishing listlessly. From time to time, he let out a few sighs loud enough for Fang Dinghao next door to hear. He had a wireless earbud in one ear and occasionally pulled out his phone, holding it to his lips, pretending to send voice messages—
“Yeah, this is how it is now.”
“He doesn’t think about me at all.”
“He’s just deliberately stringing me along.”
…
Fang Dinghao perked up his ears again, leaning his body over.
That day, after sitting there for half an hour, He Xiaoyuan started packing up.
He packed very slowly, deliberately dragging things out and making plenty of noise, drawing Fang Dinghao’s attention. He also made sure to look thoroughly dispirited, making sure Fang Dinghao could enjoy the gossip.
Finally, with the rod bag on his back and a pile of big and small items in his hands, ready to leave, Fang Dinghao turned his head to look at him and spoke up. “Leaving?”
He Xiaoyuan thought, Got him. On the surface, he kept looking low-spirited. He turned his head, glanced at Fang Dinghao, answered with a simple “Mm,” and stepped away.
Fang Dinghao twisted his neck, watching him go (watching the gossip).
Only after He Xiaoyuan had walked far away did Fang Dinghao turn back and continue fishing. Gone, all gone. One didn’t come, the other had no heart for it. Love really does torment people~~
After fishing for a while, Fang Dinghao habitually glanced toward the spot where that young, handsome guy used to sit. This glance showed him something dark and reflective. Huh?
Fang Dinghao propped the fishing rod on the stand, got up, and walked over. He discovered it was a cellphone. He flipped it over a couple of times and immediately realized it was probably something the young, handsome guy had left behind just now.
Fang Dinghao looked in the direction He Xiaoyuan had left, thinking to himself that the guy was already gone—no way to catch up now.
He lit up the screen to see whether it was locked. If it wasn’t, he could at least find a phone number and call to contact the owner. It was locked, though, and Fang Dinghao immediately noticed the wallpaper behind the pattern lock: it was a photo of the young handsome guy with his boyfriend.
Fang Dinghao clicked his tongue, put the phone back where it was, and thought he would just wait. Maybe the guy would come back for it.
But the entire afternoon passed, and the phone lay there quietly without the slightest movement.
In between fishing, Fang Dinghao glanced over and thought, Don’t tell me he still hasn’t noticed. That’s some serious carelessness.
He pondered it for a bit. Could it be that he had two phones? Or maybe he was in a bad mood, so he hadn’t realized yet?
Forget it—he was heading out too.
Fang Dinghao stood up and packed up his fishing gear.
Just before leaving, after a moment’s thought, he still went over, bent down, and picked up the phone.
On the way back, the lost phone finally started ringing.
Fang Dinghao picked it up from the storage compartment in front of the gearshift, glanced at the screen, and saw that the caller ID read “My Other Phone.” He answered. “Hello.”
An all-too-familiar voice came from the other end—it was the young handsome guy. “Hello. Did you happen to pick up a phone?”
Fang Dinghao asked, “Yours?”
“Yes. I dropped it by the river where people fish, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you still there? I can come get it.”
“I already left.”
He Xiaoyuan said, “Then where are you? Would it be convenient for you to give me an address? I can come to you right now. Or we can pick a place that works for you.”
After eating so much gossip from the guy these past few days—and with the other party being so polite, calling him sir every other sentence—Fang Dinghao gave an address in a good-natured way and said, “Come here. I was just about to go eat dinner at this place anyway.”
“Don’t be too late. I’ll wait until seven-thirty at most.”
“Okay.”
After hanging up, He Xiaoyuan looked at his phone and curved his lips slightly. The fish had taken the bait, hadn’t it?
After thinking it over, he decided it would be better to bring Lu Chen along that evening.
So not long after, at the Japanese restaurant Fang Dinghao had named, He Xiaoyuan arrived right on time.
As soon as he walked in, he scanned the room and spotted Fang Dinghao eating alone at the counter.
He Xiaoyuan steadied himself, adjusted his expression, and walked over. “Hello.”
Fang Dinghao had been slurping noodles with his head down. Hearing the voice, he lifted his eyes and at once saw the young handsome guy’s eyes—red at the corners, wet and glistening. Fang Dinghao inwardly let out a “damn.”
He Xiaoyuan said, “We did. I even left a stack of cash there. He’ll probably return it to me tomorrow—then I can use that as another excuse to talk to him.”
Lu Chen laughed and lifted a hand to ruffle He Xiaoyuan’s hair. “Too smart.”
He Xiaoyuan twisted around to look behind them, making sure Fang Dinghao wouldn’t chase after them and notice the two of them, then kept jogging forward. “Let’s go, let’s go—hurry up, don’t let him see us.”
The next day by the river, Fang Dinghao arrived first. Not long after, He Xiaoyuan showed up as expected, alone, wearing oversized dark sunglasses that covered half his stiff, expressionless face.
Fang Dinghao caught sight of him and clicked his tongue inwardly. Emotions really did wear people down—one day a whole new version.
Well, since he was here, he could just return that stack of cash from yesterday.
Fang Dinghao set up his fishing rod, stood up from his little folding chair, fished the wad of bills out of his back pocket, and walked over.
He held the money out in front of the sunglasses. “Yours. I’m giving it back. I don’t need it.”
With his eyes hidden by the sunglasses, the young man sitting there showed no reaction. Maybe he glanced at the money, maybe he didn’t. He kept a stiff face, gripping his fishing rod, not saying a single word.
“Hey.”
Fang Dinghao gestured with the money again.
He Xiaoyuan didn’t move.
“Hey,” Fang Dinghao said again.
Still nothing.
Fang Dinghao squatted down. “Can you hear me or what?”
Did he go deaf?
Only then did He Xiaoyuan speak. “If you don’t want it, then throw it away.”
Fang Dinghao: “……”
He Xiaoyuan added, “That money was given to me by him. I don’t want it either.”
Fang Dinghao’s gossip radar: ding!
Originally, Fang Dinghao had planned that if the kid didn’t take it, he’d just put the money aside and weigh it down with a rock. But hearing that, he couldn’t suppress his gossip instincts anymore. Still holding the cash, he squatted nearby and asked, “You didn’t make up yesterday, then?”
He Xiaoyuan went quiet for a moment. “No.”
Fang Dinghao said, “So what kind of line did he cross that you won’t forgive him?”
He Xiaoyuan turned his sunglasses toward the man.
Based on the gossip he’d pieced together, Fang Dinghao guessed, “He won’t marry you? His family doesn’t approve?”
He Xiaoyuan yanked off his sunglasses, revealing that strikingly handsome face, and glared at him fiercely.
Fang Dinghao let out an “Hey,” clearly staking his position. “It’s not that I wanted to know. You guys were just too loud. I happened to hear it.”
Then he added, “And you’re the ones who kept following me. I wasn’t following you.”
He Xiaoyuan stared at him expressionlessly. “I didn’t come here because I wanted to. My boss arranged it. He said you’re a technical big shot and told me to find a way to persuade you to join our company.”
Fang Dinghao clicked his tongue. He knew it.
He Xiaoyuan followed up with, “You’re a technical big shot? You don’t even know how to eat gossip properly, and you can’t fish worth a damn.”
Fang Dinghao: “……”
He Xiaoyuan put the sunglasses back on and turned toward the river. “Leave me alone. Let me be by myself.”
Then he said, “Whatever. I don’t care what kind of big shot you are. Come or don’t come, it’s up to you. I’m quitting soon anyway.”
After a pause, he added, “There’s no way I’m breaking up and still staying in the same company as that guy.”
Fang Dinghao’s gossip soul: ding!
Breaking up?
Same company?
He couldn’t help himself. “Didn’t you say yesterday you hadn’t broken up yet? So you were in the same company?”
……
The small river rippled with green waves, dried reeds from winter swaying in the breeze before any new shoots had emerged.
Two figures sat fishing, not far apart.
Unlike the previous days, Fang Dinghao no longer just fished on his own and ignored everything else. He started muttering as he fished. “Your ex treated you pretty well, you know. You came to keep an eye on me, and he specially came along to keep you company—brought you food, even set up a sunshade for you.”
“You two fell out because of his family?”
“His family doesn’t approve?”
“You look really young. Just started working, right?”
“You were coworkers?”
“Relationships always need some time to work things out.”
……
Then, as he kept talking, Fang Dinghao asked, “How long were you together?”
“Who chased who?”
“He looks a lot more mature than you.”
……
And then, “Your name’s Xiaoyuan?”
“Which company are you from?”
“Who’s your boss, sending you to tail me?”
“And really, you know—you’re supposed to be tailing me, but you spend every day flirting under the blazing sun.”
“Young people—shouldn’t you at least take your job seriously?”
The wind swept over the water, ripples spreading in circles.
Fang Dinghao turned his head. “Hey, why aren’t you saying anything at all?”
He Xiaoyuan took off his sunglasses, hooked them onto his chest, turned his head, and asked, “What about you? My boss says you’re a rock no one can crack. Why do they want to poach you? Are you really that good?”
Hearing that, Fang Dinghao snorted and said smugly, “Because I’m damn good, that’s why. They’re all eyeing my high-level technical skills.”
He Xiaoyuan asked, “Then why do you spend every day fishing instead of going to work?”
Fang Dinghao snorted again. “Don’t feel like it. It’s boring.”
He muttered, “Every damn day it’s office politics and cliques. Who the hell has the energy for that kind of crap? Boring as hell. Fishing’s way better.”
Office politics.
Cliques.
He Xiaoyuan grew thoughtful.
—
At Yanlan Bay, Lu Chen stood beside the sofa with both hands in his pockets, a contemplative look on his face.
He Xiaoyuan sat on the sofa. “So it’s probably those two reasons that made him hate the workplace enough to stop going to work.”
He continued, “So I was thinking—if we promise him, and make sure he’ll have a simple, efficient work environment without internal power struggles later on, he might be willing to work with us.”
Lu Chen went straight to the key point. “Your position isn’t high enough to promise him that. Even if you did, he wouldn’t necessarily believe you.”
Then he said, “Bring him to meet me.”
He Xiaoyuan nodded. “Okay, I’ll do it as soon as possible.”
—
After that, He Xiaoyuan went fishing with Fang Dinghao for several more days. Little by little, their conversations shifted from idle gossip about other people to more everyday topics.
The good thing was that Fang Dinghao had known from the very beginning that He Xiaoyuan had approached him with a purpose. He had already put up his guard early on, and once they genuinely started to get familiar, he instead gradually let those defenses down.
Fang Dinghao even talked about this with He Xiaoyuan, saying, “If you can’t recruit me, then you won’t be able to report back to your boss, right?”
He Xiaoyuan shrugged. “Whatever. No one ever said a task assigned by a boss has to be completed one hundred percent.”
Later, Fang Dinghao also learned He Xiaoyuan’s name, but He Xiaoyuan never said which company he actually worked for.
Fang Dinghao didn’t really care whether he knew or not. “Fine. The internet industry is only so big anyway—just those companies, those people.”
“You definitely wouldn’t be from some tiny, unheard-of company. Small companies might not even know me, and they couldn’t afford me either.”
As they chatted back and forth, Fang Dinghao would always end up asking, “So what exactly happened between you and that ex-boyfriend of yours? Tell me properly, from start to finish. I can’t quite figure it out myself.”
After spending a few more days together, since He Xiaoyuan was originally someone who was very good at getting along with others, he and Fang Dinghao began to develop some personal rapport. Fang Dinghao took He Xiaoyuan to his usual Japanese restaurant—the same one they had gone to on the day the phone was returned.
Fang Dinghao said, “The sashimi here is seriously top-notch. Try it. I guarantee you’ve never had anything this good.”
He Xiaoyuan also shared his three-thousand-a-jin ground bait with Fang Dinghao, and the two of them sat together fishing for an entire afternoon.
Finally, on this day, while fishing, He Xiaoyuan spoke in a casual, chatty tone and said to Fang Dinghao, “Brother Hao, how about you meet my boss? At least let me turn something in.”
When Fang Dinghao heard “turn something in,” he felt there was no problem with it. After all, he wasn’t going to go back to work just because someone tried to persuade him. He agreed readily. “Sure. Meet him, then. Consider it doing you a favor.”
So that evening, after they finished fishing, Fang Dinghao followed He Xiaoyuan to a Japanese restaurant decorated in a strong Japanese style.
They followed a server dressed in traditional Japanese attire all the way to a private room. Pushing open the wooden sliding door, taking off their shoes, and stepping inside, Fang Dinghao lifted his eyes—and saw Lu Chen’s face, one that was far from unfamiliar.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
He Xiaoyuan followed right behind and walked in.
Fang Dinghao turned his head, looked at He Xiaoyuan, then at Lu Chen, his face full of shock: ???
Weren’t they here to meet a boss today?
Why was it the ex-boyfriend?!