“Then what?” Zheng Ranran flipped a page of her exercise book and yawned lazily.

Lu Yixin propped her chin in both hands, her round eyes sparkling as she declared with firm conviction, “Then I’ll marry him!”

As expected.

Zheng Ranran had long since developed immunity to this conclusion, she couldn’t even be bothered to roll her eyes anymore.

“I even took a picture!” Lu Yixin was still excited, pulling out her phone like showing off a treasure and shoving it in front of Zheng Ranran.

Lu Yixin’s photography skills were average at best, her selfies in her youthful prime could somehow capture only the underside of her chin. But when she photographed Fang Yongnian, perhaps because of her overwhelming affection, there was always emotion overflowing from her lens—simple, yet moving.

Like this newly taken photo.

Completely ignorant of lighting and shadows, Lu Yixin had taken Fang Yongnian’s face under dim shade. In the pale, old pharmacy, he wore a dark gray sweater, the cigarette between his fingers burning quietly.

In the photo, Fang Yongnian looked desolate—to the point of danger.

Zheng Ranran seriously admired it for a full minute, then mercilessly burst Lu Yixin’s pink bubble. “Your male god told you to study hard, yet your chemistry score is still a fraction of mine.”

“…You got a perfect score in chemistry!” Dragged back to reality, Lu Yixin protested indignantly. “What did I do wrong in my past life? Everyone around me in this one is a genius-level top student except me!”

The male god she had adored since age twelve, Fang Yongnian, was a prodigy in physics and chemistry. Already a master’s graduate in pharmaceutical chemistry at twenty-two and now pursuing a doctorate.

Her father, Lu Boyuan, was a genius too, his name appearing frequently in academic journals while still young.

And her only best friend—whom she’d met on the first day of middle school military training and had mistaken for a shy, quiet girl—turned out to be a top student who ranked first in the entire school every exam.

Lu Yixin’s grades weren’t bad, but in such an environment, she was the living sample of an academic underachiever.

“You got this question wrong.” The top student Zheng Ranran pointed at Lu Yixin’s exercise book with a spicy strip, her tone reserved.

Halfway through her daydream, Lu Yixin could only chew her spicy strip in bitterness and continue studying.

“But…” Zheng Ranran said as she chewed and watched her friend do the exercises, a bit worried, “what if your dad comes back and they start fighting again?”

“I thought about it on my way back.” Lu Yixin finished a question, checked the answer key, and sighed in relief. “They’re going to fight sooner or later anyway. It’s good practice if they argue a few more times now.”

Zheng Ranran stared at her with a spicy strip hanging from her mouth, full of question marks.

“Before Fang Yongnian and I get married, there’ll definitely be a battle of the century between them,” Lu Yixin said solemnly. “If they let out all their anger now, it’ll be good for the future.”

Zheng Ranran: “……”

Truly… a master of logic.

“May you two have a hundred years of harmony.” Zheng Ranran gave up on reasoning with a lunatic.

With Lu Yixin, any topic about Fang Yongnian would always end with “a hundred years of harmony.”

A young girl’s affection and admiration were the most passionate and pure. When it reached its peak, the fiercest words she could think of were simply—I’ll marry him.

This kind of idol-like affection was most beautiful in the process; there was no real ending.

Zheng Ranran, rational and intelligent, understood that clearly. And even the impulsive and energetic Lu Yixin knew it as well.

Lu Yixin’s mother, Liu Miqing—who had raised her daughter with an open-minded approach from childhood—understood it best of all.

“Our daughter’s at it again, shouting that she’s going to marry Fang Yongnian.”

Lu Yixin and Zheng Ranran never closed the door when doing homework. Liu Miqing heard everything clearly and, rubbing her temples with a smile, told her husband Lu Boyuan over the phone.

Because of work, the couple had been living apart for two or three years, and the thing they talked about most on the phone every day was their daughter, Lu Yixin.

Lu Boyuan let out a hum on the other end of the line, clearly unwilling to continue this topic.

Liu Miqing laughed.

She had a gentle temperament. Over the years, because of Lu Yixin, she had interacted frequently with Fang Yongnian. Setting aside those suspicions without direct evidence, she actually quite liked this junior schoolmate of Lu Boyuan’s.

“It’s also fortunate that Fang Yongnian hasn’t been in a relationship these past few years, or else our daughter’s adolescence would probably be even more of a handful.”

As Liu Miqing chatted idly while walking into the kitchen, the laughter and chatter of Lu Yixin and Zheng Ranran from the room filled her with warmth. Her lips curved in a smile, her eyes soft.

Normally, Lu Boyuan would not spoil his wife’s good mood—but today’s topic was Fang Yongnian, the very person who had given him a headache during a meeting earlier that day.

So he hummed again, and this time couldn’t help muttering, “With the mess he’s gotten himself into now, whether he’ll even live long enough to find a girlfriend is another question.”

“What do you mean?” Liu Miqing’s smile faded.

She paid close attention to anything concerning Fang Yongnian. Lu Yixin was far too close to him, especially after her maternal grandmother passed away. Overcome by grief, Liu Miqing had fallen ill, and at that time Lu Boyuan’s project was at a critical phase. During that period, Lu Yixin had practically been left in Fang Yongnian’s care.

A girl in her teens, following a man in his twenties day after day—sharing three meals, plus free tutoring sessions. Their bond had grown too deep at their closest point.

After the car accident, Lu Boyuan and Fang Yongnian had completely fallen out—but Lu Yixin had not.

Lu Yixin was a simple-minded girl. She truly regarded Fang Yongnian as both family and idol. If anything were to happen to him, there was no way she wouldn’t be affected.

“He’s now applying to the Drug Administration to produce a generic version of an original drug.”

Lu Boyuan didn’t elaborate further. “There’s nothing wrong with the procedure, but the patent for that drug hasn’t expired domestically yet. Plus, there are several other generic drug companies eyeing the same original formula—and some of those people don’t exactly play clean.”

In recent years, the process for generics had become more regulated, and the cost of falsifying data had increased compared to before—but for the sake of profit, falsification still existed.

The original drug Fang Yongnian chose involved enormous profits. Whether his small company could get approval from the Drug Administration was one thing, but the dazzling list of credentials and qualifications he submitted in order to secure that approval had indeed blocked the paths of certain people.

To suddenly abandon his successful original drug research and turn toward generics—

That was one thing. But to refuse positions at major companies and instead take reckless risks by using his own small firm to compete with well-connected corporations—

Lu Boyuan had always known that Fang Yongnian had a death wish, but this level of courting disaster was truly exasperating.

“Because of this matter, the old professor even came to find me,” Lu Boyuan said, anger simmering in his voice. “After all, Fang Yongnian was his prized disciple, and the professor still wants to give him a hand.”

So, for the next project, the professor wanted to pull him in again.

“And you?” Liu Miqing closed the kitchen door, lowering her voice. “Do you want to give him a hand?”

“For the project’s sake, of course I do,” Lu Boyuan sighed.

Whether he liked it or not, Fang Yongnian truly was one of the top talents in domestic solid-state research. If he joined the project, things would undoubtedly progress with half the effort and twice the result.

But that temper of his…

Lu Boyuan sighed again and tried to justify himself. “If I let him join the project, maybe Yixin will settle down a bit too.”

The child was already in her second year of high school, her grades rising and falling without stability. He really didn’t want to hear his own daughter shouting that she wanted to marry Fang Yongnian ever again.

Even knowing it was just a young girl’s hormonal nonsense, it still made him uncomfortable to hear it.

Liu Miqing glanced toward Lu Yixin’s room, then shut the kitchen door more tightly. She turned on the exhaust fan, making sure no sound could leak out, before finally speaking.

“Boyuan, about what happened back then. Do you still suspect it was Fang Yongnian’s doing?”

It was a question she had never asked before.

She was an emotional person. After Yixin’s grandmother passed away, Fang Yongnian had truly treated Lu Yixin with sincere kindness, and she was grateful for that.

So even though she knew that before the car accident, there had already been academic disagreements between Fang Yongnian and Lu Boyuan, after the accident happened, she still couldn’t bring herself to press the matter further.

After all, Fang Yongnian had already lost a leg.

In that crash, including the driver at fault, four people had died—four living human beings.

The three young men in that car had all been people who would call her “sister-in-law” when they saw her.

The key project document they had been working on was published by a rival company on the very day of the car accident.

The investors, believing their project suffered from serious management problems, announced their withdrawal, and the entire project could only be declared a failure.

She knew that after the accident, the old professor had sought out Lu Boyuan in private. Originally, Lu Boyuan had wanted to find out the truth, but after meeting with the professor, he completely gave up.

He began telling everyone that the loss of the document was indeed due to poor project management—but from that point on, he no longer regarded Fang Yongnian as one of his own.

Lu Boyuan was silent for a moment. When he finally spoke again, his voice was inexplicably hoarse.

“The matter back then was suppressed only because the old professor pulled a lot of strings. I have no solid evidence, but the encryption key to that document—only Fang Yongnian and I had it.”

“I know for a fact that the one who leaked the document wasn’t me. Which means the only person capable of doing it was Fang Yongnian.”

“What about the accident?” Liu Miqing looked through the glass kitchen door at Lu Yixin’s back.

The girl wasn’t sitting properly. She was sprawled over the desk like a frog, head buried in her calculations.

Lu Boyuan was silent for a long time before speaking again, his voice still rough.

“I do suspect that back then, Fang Yongnian betrayed the project for profit—but that car accident was absolutely an accident.”

“If it hadn’t been an accident, I wouldn’t have agreed to the old professor’s request to help suppress the data leak.”

“The three people who died in that crash were all my junior colleagues, people I personally trained.”

“That car accident was an accident.”

At forty-five, Lu Boyuan’s voice was so hoarse it sounded old.

He and his wife shared everything—, o secrets between them.

He knew his wife didn’t believe Fang Yongnian would betray the project for money. In the beginning, he hadn’t believed it either.

But what Fang Yongnian did after the accident left him no choice but to doubt.

Fang Yongnian was merely a researcher slightly more gifted than most. He had an older brother in the police, and both parents were ordinary office workers—the family at best could be considered middle-class.

Yet after the accident, Fang Yongnian became rich.

His bionic prosthetic limb, the pharmacy he opened here, the pharmaceutical company he had others invest in under borrowed names. Every single expense was far beyond what a middle-class family could afford.

“You’ve always been the one in charge of Yixin’s upbringing. I’ve never interfered,” Lu Boyuan said earnestly. “But Yixin is eighteen now. It’s normal for a teenager to idolize someone, but she’s at an age where boys and girls should keep proper distance. She ought to be focusing on her studies.”

“As for Fang Yongnian, he’s someone I can’t see through.”

“In the past two years, nothing he’s done hasn’t been risky or extreme. He’s offended too many people.”

“Yixin running over to him all the time, it’s not a good thing.”

Liu Miqing gave a soft “mm,” then hung up the phone.

Sensing something, Lu Yixin turned her head—and met her mother’s gaze.

“I’m hungry!” The girl, still sprawled over the desk like a frog, puffed her cheeks and grinned, carefree and bright.