That night, no one drank alcohol.

After dinner, Fang Yongnian packed his things and went home. On the contrary, Lu Boyuan dawdled, tidying up while talking nonstop.

“I owe Yongnian too much,” he muttered endlessly, even more long-winded than if he were drunk.

Lu Yixin deeply agreed, rolled up a stack of test papers, and stuffed them into the very bottom of her schoolbag.

“I really owe him too much,” he started rambling like Xianglin’s Wife, “but sometimes, when he’s being so stubborn, it really makes you want to scold him.”

Lu Yixin continued to deeply agree, folded her clothes neatly, and placed them on top of her bag.

“Do you think he’ll start overthinking things on his way home?” Lu Boyuan worried like an old father. “When your mom helped him find that apartment, she didn’t think it through. The place he’s living in now is too quiet. Living alone in such silence isn’t good for one’s temperament.”

Lu Yixin: “……”

She clearly remembered that back when her mom helped Fang Yongnian find a place, Lu Boyuan had been strongly against it, saying her mom was meddling in other people’s business.

Men truly were fickle.

Lu Yixin pouted.

“No, I can’t rest easy.” Halfway through packing, Lu Boyuan threw the remaining tasks to Lu Yixin. “Finish up and take a taxi home yourself. I’m going to Yongnian’s place.”

That finally got a reaction out of Lu Yixin. She quickly balled up all her things, shoved them into the suitcase, pressed down twice, and declared it packed: “I’m going too!”

“What are you going for? There’s no food at his place.” Without giving her a chance, Lu Boyuan patted his butt and left.

He didn’t even glance back at his daughter, who was now sitting on a suitcase nearly the same size as herself, in the empty inpatient building for cadres.

“I probably wasn’t born to them,” Lu Yixin muttered resentfully, kicking the suitcase out of habit, long used to being left behind.

She was worried about him too…

Ever since Grandpa Wu came, he hadn’t said a single word…

When he left, he didn’t even say goodbye to her.

She… was worried about him too.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ 

Lu Boyuan didn’t like Fang Yongnian’s home decor at all, the landlord’s basic furnishing mixed with what seemed to be childish trinkets likely bought by his daughter. It was a mismatched mess.

“You spoil Yixin more than I do,” he sighed, pulling out a SpongeBob-shaped cushion from under himself.

That thing must have been Yixin’s doing, she had two identical ones in her own room.

“It’s a rental anyway.” Fang Yongnian took a sip of water.

Lu Yixin’s clingy personality must have been inherited from Lu Boyuan. It was already ten at night, yet he was still lingering around.

Sitting on the sofa, Lu Boyuan looked around again before speaking, “That shirt you’re wearing looks a bit old.”

Fang Yongnian: “……”

He’d never realized before that this father and daughter were so alike.

Lu Boyuan seemed to realize that his small talk was too stiff and coughed awkwardly.

“I just wanted to ask what your plans are from now on.” He gave up on trying to sound casual, small talk really didn’t suit him. He decided to get straight to the point.

Fang Yongnian toyed with the mug in his hand.

It was made of coarse black pottery, the texture grainy and vivid to the touch.

“First, I’ll finish these generic drugs for the Yu family,” he said, tilting his head back and draining the last of the water in one gulp.

The matter from four years ago had finally come to an end. Yet, aside from the sick heaviness pressing in his chest, he felt no sense of relief.

So this was what revenge amounted to.

Instead, having lost his goal, he now felt a little aimless.

After finishing the generics, he would pay off the money owed to the Yu family, then find some small place and open a little neighborhood fruit shop. Occasionally, he would come to Hecheng to collect the dividends from this pharmacy.

That would be his life — nothing more, nothing less.

“About that project Professor Wu left behind…” Lu Boyuan said hesitantly.

“I don’t want to do it.” Fang Yongnian interrupted, his answer firm and final.

“I know.” Lu Boyuan waved his hand. “I don’t want to do it either.”

Fang Yongnian looked at him, not quite understanding what he meant.

He himself had never opened that file, but he knew Lu Boyuan had. Not only had he opened it — after reading it, he’d gone through an entire pack of cigarettes.

His feelings toward Professor Wu were complicated — resentment, despair. Yet he also knew that Professor Wu’s achievements in the field of neurodegenerative disease research were something both he and Lu Boyuan could only look up to.

Before leaving, Professor Wu had made it clear that the project documentation had no issues and had gone through proper channels — meaning it truly was a viable project.

That man had indeed been making amends in his own way, and in the end, he even left him a path that could lead him back into the pharmaceutical world.

But to look up to a person like that, it made him sick.

He no longer wanted to touch any of it. Nor did he want to spend years, even decades, chasing an outcome that might never come.

He couldn’t go back anymore, neither in mind nor in body.

“Do you have any alcohol here?” Lu Boyuan suddenly changed the topic.

“No.” Fang Yongnian shook his head.

The only edible thing in his home was a packet of candied lotus root in the fridge, something he had bought last time when he had dinner with Lu Yixin and planned to visit Huating afterward.

“Then let’s go out for a drink?” Lu Boyuan stood up, and behind him, another SpongeBob cushion peeked out halfway, its yellow face grinning idiotically.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ 

The late-night food stall at the neighborhood gate wasn’t doing well. Several tables outside sat nearly empty. Lu Boyuan ordered a few bottles of beer, bought some grilled skewers, and even went across the street to pack a bowl of soup for Fang Yongnian.

Cordyceps flower, American ginseng, chicken soup.

Looking at the steaming bowl of soup and the pile of red-glazed skewers beside him, Fang Yongnian suddenly understood Lu Boyuan’s logic. He probably thought that beer and barbecue were unhealthy, so he added a bowl of soup to “balance it out.”

He drank a spoonful of the soup speechlessly, and for some reason, thought of the chocolate Lu Yixin always carried with her.

She hadn’t used to have that habit. It seemed to have started after that one morning when he got dizzy from low blood sugar and didn’t go to the pharmacy.

Father and daughter, both had a very down-to-earth way of showing they cared.

“I’ve been having nightmares,” Lu Boyuan said, opening a bottle of beer and taking a swig straight from it, smiling faintly. “In the dream, it’s still the day of the project approval. Ge Wenyao’s standing behind me, and you’re over there betting with rock-paper-scissors on who gets which seat in the office.”

He chuckled. “Thinking about it now, that doesn’t even count as a nightmare.”

To speak of nightmares — the person sitting across from him, this junior fellow student, was the one who had truly been living in a nightmare these past four years.

“You were right to suspect me.” Lu Boyuan took another swig of beer.

“I just wanted to take charge of a main project, to make a name for myself faster. As project manager, I didn’t even realize there were holes in the project’s funding — let alone that the data had been tampered with.”

“When Professor Wu told me that the documents had been leaked, I didn’t suspect you at first. But then he asked me, how many people had that level of access?”

Fang Yongnian smiled.

Lu Boyuan gave a bitter laugh and drank again. “See? You all understand me better than I understand myself.”

They knew his temperament, that just one sentence like that was enough to plant the seed of doubt in his heart.

“All that talk about me being busy handling follow-up project work or busy dealing with the car accident, those were excuses.”

“The truth is, I thought it had to be you or me.”

If it wasn’t Fang Yongnian, then the only other suspect was himself. He couldn’t bear that kind of suspicion, so when people brought up the incident, he never once spoke in Fang Yongnian’s defense.

He hadn’t even asked why when the professor told him to stop digging further.

As Fang Yongnian’s senior, at the moment of crisis, he had abandoned him for the sake of his own future. When everyone else accused Fang Yongnian of wrongdoing for money, he too had followed the crowd and stepped on him once more.

Because he was afraid — that if it wasn’t Fang Yongnian, then it would be him.

He had convinced himself of it.

For four years, he had treated Fang Yongnian like a thorn in his eye and a splinter in his flesh. Not only because he thought Fang Yongnian had done wrong, but because he was afraid.

“So I resigned.” Lu Boyuan narrowed his eyes slightly.

He had finished two bottles of beer. The skewers they had ordered were turning cold; the fragrance of cumin and chili powder slowly faded into the night.

Fang Yongnian hadn’t touched the beer. He had been quietly drinking his soup, but when he heard Lu Boyuan’s words, he froze and looked up.

“I resigned from the institute,” Lu Boyuan repeated. “Just now — before coming to your place, I sent an email and made a phone call.”

Fang Yongnian: “……”

“The institute couldn’t wait to get rid of me.” Lu Boyuan was probably a little drunk; his voice had grown unsteady. “The incident with Professor Wu was buried, officially labeled as a car accident. But everyone who needed to know still knew.”

Professor Wu’s reputation had crumbled, and everyone was desperate to distance themselves from him.

A lifetime of honor, ruined by his own son.

“You resigned?” Fang Yongnian focused on that part.

“Yeah.” Lu Boyuan nodded.

“Where are you going next?” Fang Yongnian frowned.

Lu Yixin was still in her second year of high school. Their family only had 150,000 yuan in savings, and he’d just quit his job?

“I want to work with you on the generic drugs.” Lu Boyuan leaned closer, his expression carrying both sadness and a trace of hope. “I thought about it, I’m not suited to being a project manager.”

“These past few years, I’ve been too desperate to achieve something. Like Professor Wu — wanting something too much, for too long, turns it into a demon in your heart.”

“You’re more capable than I am.”

“I’ll just follow you,” Lu Boyuan said. “Let’s work on the generic drugs together.”

“Generic drugs are good — practical. They solve the current urgent shortage of medicine, take less time, and still make money.”

“Once your company starts showing some results, we can save up more. Maybe then, we can even start a project for an original drug.”

“We won’t rely on anyone else.”

“We’ll rely on ourselves!”

Just a few sentences, and “you” and “I” had turned into “we.”

Fang Yongnian finally understood where Lu Yixin’s overly familiar personality came from.

He took another sip of soup. The broth tasted like a whole chicken had been boiled into ten jin of water, as bland as salted water.

“I’m only making generic drugs to pay back the money.”

Back then, he’d been too desperate for it — for the prosthetics, for revenge.

“Once the debt’s repaid, I won’t do pharmaceuticals anymore,” he said calmly.

Lu Boyuan blinked, letting out a dazed hiccup of alcohol.

“You won’t stay long in my company anyway. It belongs to the Yu family, not me.” This company was nothing more than a bargaining chip for Yu Hanfeng to seize her family’s inheritance.

Lu Boyuan looked puzzled. “If you’re not doing pharmaceuticals, what are you going to do? Open a pharmacy?”

With that rundown pharmacy?

The three of them working together, could they even make money from that…

“Open a fruit shop.” Fang Yongnian finished the last of his soup and wiped his mouth gracefully.

Lu Boyuan stared at him.

Fang Yongnian said nothing more.

He didn’t know what to say. He was simply done with it all, this rotten world. If he’d been like his brother, brawling and causing trouble since childhood, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up in such a miserable state.

“What shop?” Lu Boyuan asked, as though he hadn’t heard correctly.

“A fruit shop,” Fang Yongnian answered smoothly, without the slightest trace of embarrassment.

Lu Boyuan pointed a trembling finger at his nose, opened his mouth to curse, but couldn’t think of what to say. After a moment, his shaking hand reached for his phone and pressed a speed dial key.

Before Fang Yongnian could react, he heard Lu Boyuan shouting into the connected call, “Girl! Your idol’s gonna open a fruit shop! Are you gonna open a fruit shop too, for god’s sake?!”

Fang Yongnian: “………………”