When Lu Boyuan was smoking his fourth cigarette, he ran into an old acquaintance in the emergency ward.

“Do you still remember Liu Qing?” Lu Boyuan extinguished his cigarette halfway through. When he came back, his eyes were shining.

Fang Yongnian, who had been sitting opposite Lu Yixin pretending to nap, frowned. “Who?”

“The one who likes to speak half in Chinese and half in English, who used to be the scientific strategic consultant for the Kang Mo Project.” Lu Boyuan gestured with his hands, “The guy who’s very accomplished in genetics.”

“Didn’t he go to Sweden?” Fang Yongnian recalled.

“He’s back again!” Because he was excited, Lu Boyuan’s voice came out quite loud.

Lu Yixin, who had already fallen asleep, stirred, and the blanket covering her slid halfway down.

Fang Yongnian instinctively reached out to pull the blanket back up for her. When he was halfway through the motion, he saw Lu Boyuan’s glowing eyes, sighed inwardly, and forced himself to finish what he started.

Lu Yixin smacked her lips in her sleep.

Lu Boyuan, whose mind was entirely occupied with Liu Qing, didn’t notice Fang Yongnian’s small movement at all.

Feeling that his earlier hesitation had been completely unnecessary, Fang Yongnian cleared his throat.

He was overthinking again.

He always tended to overthink in front of this father and daughter.

“I thought I was mistaken at first.”

“But it really was him. Late at night, he had an arrhythmia and called for an ambulance. Once he got to the hospital, he was fine. Now he’s just being kept for observation.”

Lu Boyuan’s tone was really inappropriate for a hospital, but, rare as it was, he realized it himself and lowered his voice.

“He’s still single, no wife, no kids. Since he has to stay overnight at the hospital, he wanted to hire a caretaker for the night. I happened to run into him while he was making the call outside.”

“What a coincidence!”

Fang Yongnian said nothing.

He had been young back then, just a quiet researcher on the project team, and barely interacted with Liu Qing. But even someone like him, who usually paid no attention to anything beyond his own work, had an impression of the man. No wonder Lu Boyuan was so excited.

That man was truly capable. When he left the research institute for Sweden, it had caused quite a stir. Fang Yongnian remembered that Lu Boyuan had even gotten drunk over it.

All the talk was the same old thing—domestic hardware was subpar, talent couldn’t be retained, and so on.

“I asked him about it. He’s an only child. Although the Swedish pharmaceutical company had arranged everything for his parents, being in a foreign country, his parents are getting old and have always wanted to return to their homeland.”

“He said the domestic pharmaceutical environment is much better now than before. Someone like him might not be particularly outstanding in Sweden, but under the current circumstances here, he can achieve much more.”

“So he came back.”

“You think…” Lu Boyuan nudged Fang Yongnian with his elbow, “could we afford to hire him?”

Fang Yongnian: “……”

“Our company is very small,” he had to remind Lu Boyuan. “It’s only been established for less than three years. We don’t even have any products we can really show off.”

“Once those three drugs hit the market, we’ll have them.” Lu Boyuan didn’t take it seriously. “Not to brag, but I’ve only seen generic drugs of that caliber here. If those don’t count as something to show off, then I really don’t know what does.”

“How about I go ask him first?” Lu Boyuan came up with a new idea again.

“He’s here all night and can’t go anywhere. I should take this chance to have a proper talk with him, right?”

“He came back to make something of himself, and there’s no place more suitable for him to stretch his wings than our company. Don’t tell me he plans to go back to the research institute?”

“In such a huge and complex environment, someone who left midway like him wouldn’t be able to get his hands on any major projects again.”

The more Lu Boyuan talked, the more promising it seemed to him. He glanced at the IV dripping into Lu Yixin’s arm, then touched her forehead. This girl had a strong constitution—before the saline was even done, her fever had already subsided.

“How about this,” he said once reassured, “in a bit, you take Yixin home. I’ll stay here and talk to Liu Qing some more.”

Even if he couldn’t recruit him into the company, it would still be good to hear about the pharmaceutical environment in Sweden.

If nothing else, even getting him as a consultant in name would be great.

Fang Yongnian looked at the excited Lu Boyuan.

Lu Boyuan was very dedicated to this company. Unlike Fang Yongnian, who only focused on developing the three contracted generic drugs, Lu Boyuan cared more about the company’s future development.

That was why Lu Boyuan had used his own connections to recruit several core members. That was why Lu Boyuan had built a database in the company and worked with HR to organize promotion paths for every role.

That was why, despite his demanding standards, there were still young people willing to stay, endure hardship, and do research.

Lu Boyuan wasn’t one to say sentimental things. He was a simple man. He felt guilty toward Fang Yongnian, felt that he hadn’t fulfilled his responsibility as an older schoolmate, so he was making every effort to make up for it.

Even though Fang Yongnian had repeatedly reminded him that this company wasn’t his, and that he had no intention of working under Yu Hanfeng long-term, Lu Boyuan was still tireless.

It might have been a clumsy and exhausting way of doing things, but Lu Boyuan genuinely hoped he could get back on track.

The Lu family, it seemed, were all very good at moving people’s hearts.

“Yu Hanfeng’s offer for a senior expert’s annual salary is about one and a half times ours, with a fluctuation of no more than thirty percent. When the company was founded, there was already a plan for technical equity shares. If he’s interested, they can sit down and discuss it.” Fang Yongnian pressed the nurse call button.

“Liu Qing specializes in genetics, and our current pharmaceutical research focuses on the human immune system. Their fields are aligned.” While waiting for the nurse, he tapped on his phone a couple of times and sent an email to Lu Boyuan. “You can show him this email, see if he’s interested in joining.”

“This email contains the financing plan Yu Hanfeng obtained from another pharmaceutical company at the end of last year. I didn’t think too far ahead back then, so I only glanced at it and never gave her a reply.” Fang Yongnian looked at Lu Boyuan. “Given the company’s current progress, this plan is feasible.”

The nurse in the emergency room had already come to remove Lu Yixin’s IV. Pretending to sleep all this time while eavesdropping, Lu Yixin squinted at her father and her man.

She felt that this fever had been worth it.

She saw the shadow of his younger self in Fang Yongnian again. Only this time, the topic wasn’t professional jargon she couldn’t understand, but company planning.

Her man and her father could finally sit down calmly together, doing something they were both capable of and passionate about.

Success and prosperity…

Lu Yixin frowned as she watched the nurse rather mercilessly pull the needle from the back of her hand. Though it didn’t hurt, the visual alone made her purse her lips and almost cry.

“The blood’s coming out,” she said, nasal and teary, and the first person she complained to was Fang Yongnian.

Beside them, Lu Boyuan—who was planning to poach a new hire in the emergency room in the middle of the night scratched his head and, for the ten-thousandth time, sighed at how his daughter was closer to Fang Yongnian. With that, he felt even less psychological burden about leaving.

“You and your Uncle Fang go home first. I’m not going back tonight.” He glanced at the nurse’s freshly taken temperature reading. It had already dropped back to normal.

“When you get home, take a bath and go straight to bed.” Lu Boyuan wasn’t good at taking care of people. After he finished speaking, he realized that aside from telling her to sleep, he didn’t really know what else to say.

“Right, there’s a rice cooker at home.” He racked his brains and finally remembered something. “You can set it to cook porridge on schedule. If you don’t know how, let your Uncle Fang help you set it up. There are side dishes in the fridge. Tomorrow morning, drink some porridge and take your temperature again.”

He felt that since he’d covered food and sleep, that was enough.

So he patted Fang Yongnian’s shoulder and couldn’t wait to leave.

This was the first time in more than a year that Fang Yongnian had finally relented—the first time he hadn’t rejected the company’s next plans, the first time he’d communicated his own thoughts.

Lu Boyuan was thrilled.

That excitement even overshadowed the strange feeling he’d had earlier when he first entered the emergency room.

When he left, he didn’t look back.

Just like all those times over the past nine years when he left Fang Yongnian to babysit—hurriedly, and with complete peace of mind.

So he didn’t see the speechless expression on Fang Yongnian’s face.

“Your dad doesn’t seem to realize you’re almost twenty.” Lu Boyuan’s way of dumping his kid was truly the same as always.

He really didn’t care about distinctions between men and women. Whether it was that he didn’t see him as a man or didn’t see Lu Yixin as a woman, who could tell.

“Yeah, last time he found my yellow book¹Yellow Book: a Chinese slang term for erotic or pornographic books — similar to saying “dirty magazines” or “adult books” in English. in my room and yelled at me, saying how could a minor read such indecent stuff.” Lu Yixin still had her head lowered, pressing the spot where the IV needle had been removed, answering casually.

Fang Yongnian: “……”

Not realizing what she’d just said, Lu Yixin looked up at him innocently.

“I’m hungry.” Now that her fever was gone, that half bowl of thin porridge she’d had earlier didn’t count for much.

“Let’s order takeout when we get back.” Fang Yongnian lowered his head to call a car on his phone. When he looked up, he touched her forehead again.

Lu Yixin took the chance to wrap her arms around his.

She’d said earlier that she wanted to hug him, she hadn’t forgotten.

But in public like this, with her father just behind a wall, that hug turned into simply holding onto his arm.

“Fang Niannian, I missed you.” It had been nearly ten days since they last met. The girl was clingy by nature, and after falling ill, she was even more shamelessly so.

Her forehead was slightly damp from sweat, her body wrapped in a blanket. Her face, usually rosy, was pale now.

Looking up at him with a pitiful expression, she clung to his arm and gave it a little shake.

Fang Yongnian quietly pulled his arm free.

“The car’s here.” He gave a brief explanation without looking at her.

When they got in, he opened the car door, placed a hand on the roof so Lu Yixin wouldn’t bump her head, then closed the door and took the passenger seat himself.

He didn’t move his arm until the car started, the same arm she’d been holding just now.

Sitting in the back seat, Lu Yixin took out the phone she’d swiped from her father. He could hear the soft sound of her tapping at the screen. For some reason, just listening to the rhythm of her typing gave him a vague sense of foreboding.

As expected, her WeChat message was sent to him.

Unlike before, when she’d send a flood of short messages one after another, this time she wrote a long paragraph.

She said: Just now, did you touch my chest? Did you doubt that feeling? Did you find it unpleasant? They say girls can still have a second growth spurt at nineteen, and apparently, once you have a boyfriend, it’s guaranteed to get bigger.

She said: That really was my chest. Even though it’s flat, if you feel it carefully, there’s still a sensation.

She said: You’re sitting so quietly in front—are you being shy, or are you protesting?

She said: You already touched it, so you have to take responsibility. You can’t just pretend nothing happened.

She said: Hey!! What’s going on already!!

Fang Yongnian: ……

Fang Yongnian: Get lost.

Footnotes

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  Yellow Book: a Chinese slang term for erotic or pornographic books — similar to saying “dirty magazines” or “adult books” in English.