It was the dead of night, and the spot was secluded, so no one would notice them. Jiang Xu never liked to bear an undeserved reputation; if people called him a little hooligan, he had to act like one for them to see. Only then would it not be a losing deal.

And so, Gu Qingzhou watched as the man, who had clearly turned to leave, inexplicably doubled back. Without any warning, he pulled him into his arms, pressed him against the car door, and kissed him fiercely. For a moment, Gu Qingzhou's pupils contracted sharply, and his back stiffened instantly.

Jiang Xu still couldn't hide the domineering nature in his bones. He seized Gu Qingzhou's endlessly struggling hands, grinding and teasing his way across the other's cool lips, robbing him of the last bit of thin air. Then, just as Gu Qingzhou forcefully pushed him away, he pulled back first, perfectly demonstrating what it meant to be a true hooligan.

The kiss was utterly without finesse, even somewhat rough. Gu Qingzhou nearly lost his footing and had to lean weakly against the car. He panted raggedly while glaring fiercely at Jiang Xu. The flames that suddenly ignited in his usually cold eyes held no intimidating power, however, due to his disheveled shirt and reddened lips.

Jiang Xu stood a few steps away, blew a flippant whistle, and pointed a long index finger at his lips from a distance, saying seriously, "This is what you call being a hooligan."

He looked proud and arrogant. After speaking, he shoved one hand into his pocket, took a few slow steps back, and then turned to leave. His tall figure was swallowed by the shade of the trees, then gradually vanished from sight.

Utterly despicable.

Gu Qingzhou silently clenched his fists, his knuckles turning pale. He stood rooted to the spot for a long time before, with a deadpan expression, he slammed his fist against the car window and could only turn to go upstairs in frustration.

His current residence was just a random choice from back then, without any deliberate decoration. The furniture and arrangements were all in cool tones. Returning home from work late at night, set against the backdrop of the sparse city lights outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the place seemed even more silent and empty. The sound of a needle dropping would be crystal clear.

In such an environment, Gu Qingzhou's previously fluctuating emotions suddenly cooled. He sat down on the sofa, turned on the television with the remote, but didn't spare a single glance for the screen, as if he simply wanted to make the house feel a little more lived-in.

His phone had been on silent the entire time. It wasn't until he got home that Gu Qingzhou remembered to check for messages. When he opened it, he found several missed calls from a very unfamiliar number. A thought came to him, and his fingertip rubbed against the screen for a moment before he finally dialed back.

The person on the other end was probably waiting for his call back. The phone rang no more than twice before it was quickly answered. A woman's voice came from the other side, sounding as if she wanted to lose her temper but held it back for some reason. "Where are you? Why did I hear from Old Master Gu that you've returned to Hai City?"

Gu Qingzhou's expression was blank as he gazed at the changing characters and scenery on the television. After a moment, he responded with an emotionless "Mn."

His cold attitude clearly annoyed the woman. Her originally gentle voice unconsciously rose a few notches as she questioned, "Do you even have your mother in your eyes?! Old Master Gu's health is failing right now, and Gu Ting and the others are running around his sickbed trying to curry favor. At this critical juncture, you run off to Hai City without a word. You won't be happy until you've angered me to death, is that it?!"

Gu Qingzhou shifted his sitting position. "So many people are rushing to serve him, he's not lacking one more."

Mother Gu was so angry she could barely breathe. "What kind of talk is that? If something happens to Old Master Gu, how will the inheritance be divided? What about the company? Even that idiot Gu Ting knows to show some filial piety in front of the Old Master, and you actually ran off to Hai City! Do you even know what kind of people are in that broken-down place?! They're all hooligans and thugs..."

Gu Qingzhou abruptly cut her off. "We also came from Hai City."

Before Mother Gu could finish, she was interrupted by Gu Qingzhou. He repeated calmly, "You, and I, both came from Hai City."

They were both people who had struggled to crawl out of that city, but there were still many who had not been able to. His youth in Hai City had always been filled with poverty and misfortune. Years later, when Gu Qingzhou returned with honors, he still couldn't forget the place. He was even grateful for the suffering and trials of those years, because growth and setbacks were inseparable.

But it was obvious that Mother Gu would only regard those old memories as a nightmare, one locked tightly in the box of her memory, never to be recalled. She lost her composure and cried out, "Enough! I never should have taken you to that place in the beginning! So what if we came from Hai City? We don't have to go back now, so why do you keep bringing it up again and again?!"

"I don't want to bring it up either, but some things simply exist. You can't change that."

Gu Qingzhou's nonchalant sentence was like a bloodless knife, piercing straight through Mother Gu's final veil of shame. She was vain and unwilling to do manual labor for a salary. During those years in Hai City, she often messed around with men, and with the gossip-mongering of a small town, her reputation gradually became notorious.

In his first year of high school, Gu Qingzhou had even gotten into a fight over this matter and ended up with a demerit on his record.

At seventeen or eighteen, an age when feelings were just beginning to blossom, there were several lovebird couples in the school. There was even a girl dating a gangster from another school, and coincidentally, she was in the same class as Gu Qingzhou.

During the evening self-study session, the teacher wasn't present. Worn out by exam week, the students didn't have the energy to make much noise and were all listlessly passing the time. Gu Qingzhou sat in the last row, engrossed in solving Olympiad math problems. Jiang Xu had his school uniform draped over his head and was sleeping soundly beside him, looking like some unidentified creature from a distance.

As the daylight faded, the glass windows reflected not only the shadows of the trees and the playground outside but also the bright fluorescent lights of the classroom. Suddenly, a tall figure approached and unceremoniously pushed open a window, impatiently calling into the classroom, "Zou Ying! Hurry up!"

Someone recognized him as Zhang Dalong from the sports school next door. He and their class beauty, Zou Ying, had been getting very close recently, and he came to pick her up from school every day.

At his shout, Zou Ying's face turned pale. She stomped her foot in annoyance. "Keep your voice down, the teacher's about to come on patrol! There are still ten minutes left, just wait a little longer!"

Hearing this, Zhang Dalong pouted but didn't say anything more. As he was idly sizing up the classroom, his eyes suddenly fell upon Gu Qingzhou writing at his desk. As if he had discovered a new continent, he tapped his finger on the window and said with feigned surprise, "Well, well, isn't it the son of that slut? So you study here, huh? My bad, brother, I didn't recognize you."

The boys from the sports school were mostly well-built. Relying on his fighting prowess, Zhang Dalong often extorted protection money. Once, he had miscalculated and tried to shake down Gu Qingzhou, only to be pinned to the ground and nearly have his ribs broken. After all, no one expected a tall, thin teenager to possess such strength.

The moment he heard the word "slut," Gu Qingzhou's pen tip had abruptly stopped. With a slip of his hand, he drew an ugly slanted line across the test paper that was densely filled with problem-solving steps. At Zhang Dalong's words, the whole class turned to look, whispering with their heads down.

"What slut? Is he talking about Gu Qingzhou?"

"I think he's talking about Gu Qingzhou's mother."

"No way, his grades are so good, how could his mom be a slut."

Zhang Dalong, enjoying the drama, grinned cheekily. "Don't you believe me? Gu Qingzhou and I are next-door neighbors. Go ask anyone on our street, who doesn't know his mom's a slut who hooks up with men all over the place."

His words were like a stone thrown into water, causing countless ripples. An uproar spread through the surroundings, and countless gazes fixed on the person in question. Unfortunately, Gu Qingzhou showed no reaction. He lowered his eyes, his expression unreadable, then slowly capped his pen, making a soft click only he could hear.

Since it wasn't his school, the teachers here couldn't discipline him anyway. Zhang Dalong grew even more audacious, leaning on the window and chattering endlessly, spewing all sorts of nasty words, making it impossible to distinguish truth from fiction.

Gu Qingzhou still didn't move, his expression holding a calm indifference that shouldn't belong to someone his age. He was silently contemplating how best to deal with the mongrel outside the window after school to vent his anger, when the desk next to him suddenly slammed with a loud thud—

No one expected Jiang Xu to suddenly make a move, not even Gu Qingzhou. After all, they weren't well-acquainted at the time.

All everyone saw was Jiang Xu, who had been sleeping soundly, suddenly sit up straight in annoyance. He then threw his school jacket on the floor, stepped on his desk, and nimbly jumped out the window. He landed a punch square on Zhang Dalong's face, knocking the guy flat on his back.

Jiang Xu hauled him up from the ground, his face full of the irritation of being woken up, his voice unbelievably cold. "Are you the fucking reincarnation of a hen?! Were you poisoned mute in your last life or something, is that why you have so much crap to say?!"

It's human nature to love a spectacle. Seeing them scuffling, the students in the classroom didn't go to inform the teacher. Instead, they crowded around the window, watching, clapping, and cheering. Only Zou Ying was so anxious she was about to cry.

Seeing this, Gu Qingzhou watched through the window for a moment, then put down his pen, stepped on his desk, and jumped outside. Under the astonished gazes of the crowd, he joined the fray. He and Jiang Xu pinned Zhang Dalong to the ground and beat him black and blue. The absurd farce only came to an end when the teacher and principal, having heard the news, rushed to the scene.

In the end, the two of them were dragged to the office. It wasn't strange for Jiang Xu to get into a fight; he was always stirring up trouble. The homeroom teacher just couldn't understand why Gu Qingzhou would get involved as well. He paced back and forth in front of them with a large porcelain mug, drinking a cup of water until only tea leaves remained.

The homeroom teacher asked, "Alright, tell me. Why did you two fight him?"

Jiang Xu said impatiently, "He disturbed my sleep."

Hearing this, the teacher glared at him, then slammed his mug down on the desk in frustration, even letting a curse slip out in his anxiety. "Sleep, sleep, all you know how to do is sleep! Do you come to school just to sleep? I'm not teaching a hypnosis class! If you want to sleep, go home and lie in bed, you'll even save your family some money!"

Then he looked at Gu Qingzhou, his tone unconsciously softening, though still stern. He tapped the desk and said, "What about you? Why did you get into a fight too? Did he disturb your sleep as well?!"

Gu Qingzhou kept his head down and didn't speak. In the teacher's eyes, he looked too ashamed to say a word.

Zhang Dalong was helped to the infirmary. Fortunately, his injuries weren't serious, and he knew he was in the wrong, so he left after getting his wounds treated. When the homeroom teacher heard the news, he felt a great sense of relief. He pointed at Jiang Xu and Gu Qingzhou and said, "You two really have some nerve, ganging up on him two against one. Don't go around saying I taught you!"

The homeroom teacher felt that even if his students were gangsters, they had to be gangsters of different levels. Someone like Jiang Xu, though he loved to fight, knew how to hold back. But someone like Zhang Dalong, who slept with girls and extorted protection money, was simply beyond hope.

It was already late, so any issues would have to be resolved with their parents the next day. As Gu Qingzhou was walking out of the school gate with his backpack, he happened to run into Jiang Xu riding his bicycle out. As Jiang Xu passed by, he suddenly squeezed the handbrake, planting one foot on the ground and coming to a stop.

Jiang Xu turned his head and sized up Gu Qingzhou with interest, the hem of his blue school uniform lifting in the wind. "Hey, is your mom really a slut?"

Gu Qingzhou didn't speak. He could neither say yes nor no. Malice swirled in from all around, threatening to drown his thin frame.

Jiang Xu's gaze seemed to see right through him. Seeing Gu Qingzhou's silence, he didn't press further. He rang his bicycle bell and said, "I helped you in a fight today, so let me copy your homework tomorrow, got it?"

With that, he pushed off the ground with his foot and rode away, his figure gradually disappearing at the end of the bustling street.

Gu Qingzhou's thoughts slowly returned to the present. Before him was still the cold, empty living room. He clutched his phone, finally wanting to say something, only to find that the other end had already hung up.