Author: 长洱 / Chang’er
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 49
When Lin Chen and Xing Conglian were busy at the girls’ dorm, a storm was brewing in the principal’s office.
At the top of the bookshelf, the green leaves of the chlorophytum drooped lightly. There was a cup of boiling water on the table.
The old man in a simple shirt was sitting in front of the window with his glasses hanging on the tip of his nose. He held a pen in his hand and was looking down at a student’s paper.
In front of the old man was a senior. The boy was covered in cold sweat, as if he were extremely nervous. The boy came to ask for guidance on his graduation thesis but didn’t expect to run into a high-level struggle in school.
The vice principal and a well-dressed middle-aged man were standing behind him. The two of them looked gloomy, as if they were enduring something, but the principal didn’t seem to care about them. He was solemnly reading the boy’s thesis, as if the affair that just happened wasn’t as important as the words on the paper.
“Principal, I’m afraid it’s not good to keep Mr. Chen waiting for too long.” Finally, Vice President Xu, who couldn’t bear it anymore, broke the heavy atmosphere in the room.
The boy gulped and looked around, pretending as if he didn’t hear anything.
“Oh… What does he want?” The old man didn’t even raise his head. He turned to the last page of the paper as he replied gently.
“Principal Su, is it your intention to let Lin Chen enter the school to investigate?” The butler, standing at the side with his hands in his pockets, took an imposing step forward.
“Oh, that.” The old man pushed up his glasses and didn’t go on. He looked up and handed the annotated paper back to the boy, then said, “The topic can be more refined. The research scope is still too big… There are two translation errors in the abstract. I have already marked it. You have to go back and carefully check the exact usage, and the explanation needs to be more concise…”
The boy lowered his head and looked at his densely marked thesis. He had an indescribable feeling in his heart. He thought that the principal reviewing his thesis was just doing it as a formality. How could a top leader of the university have the time to advise the graduation thesis of young undergraduates? But he didn’t expect the old man would take it seriously, be extremely meticulous in his guidance, and be patient from beginning to end as he pointed out all the flaws in his paper. Even the punctuation errors were carefully marked. This rigor made the senior dare not to be slack at all.
“There’s nothing wrong with the data collection. You’ve done it with great care, but for the analysis of the variance here, you need to do multiple comparison tests…”
As the old man kept talking, Chen Ping’s face became uglier. As the chief butler of an elite family, he had never suffered such cold treatment.
“Principal Su, are you not going to answer my question?” Chen Ping asked again.
“Please wait a moment.” After the old man finished speaking, he continued to lower his head and explain the thesis to the student.
“Su Anzhi, what are your intentions?!”
“I can’t let my students wait. I’ll have to trouble you for a moment of patience,” the old man said politely.
Hearing this, Chen Ping couldn’t bear it anymore and suddenly raised his voice. “Su Anzhi, who do you think you are? Who are you to ignore the board of directors’ resolution and let Lin Chen into the school? Our Chen family has already taken a stand and forbid Lin Chen to set foot onto Yongchuan University ever again!”
“These are probably all the issues. Go back and change them, then show them to me at 1 on Friday afternoon.” After the old man finished speaking, he nodded to the student and signaled that he could leave.
Hearing this, the boy glanced at Chen Ping. There was no disgust in his eyes, only indifference. He bowed solemnly to the principal and turned to leave.
“I’m the president of Yongchuan University.” The old man took off his glasses, hung them on the chest pocket of his shirt, and responded seriously. “In this school, I am the only one who can make decisions on behalf of the board of directors.”
“What do you mean by that? You’re protecting Lin Chen while not even putting the Chen family in your eyes!” Chen Ping slammed on the table fiercely.
“My students can protect themselves,” the old man said disapprovingly.
The old man’s attitude was surprisingly tough, not buying into the Chen family’s account at all. Chen Ping suddenly realized he didn’t have a sense of propriety, and there was no alternative. In the end, he could only stretch out his fingers and lay down some harsh words. “Su Anzhi, when the board of directors meets this year, be warned. The Chen family will be the first to impeach you!”
Accompanied by these fierce threats came three knocks at the door.
Knock, knock, knock…
The sound was very soft and gentle, but each note seemed to be a knock at Chen Ping’s heart, which made him even more furious. Who was so brazen that they would dare knock while he was having his throes?
He turned his head suddenly and couldn’t help but stagnate his breathing. He saw a good-looking young man standing at the door.
The young man was wearing smoky gray pants and a black cashmere turtleneck sweater. The cuffs on his sweater were pulled to the elbows, revealing his fair wrists. He was holding a dinner plate in his hand with two clear cups on it. The liquid inside shook gently. The young man raised his eyes and glanced at the room with a smile. His hair color was light, his eyes were amber, and his skin was excessively pale. Against the background of the black turtleneck, his smile was elegant and gentle like the spring breeze.
After the young man knocked on the door, he didn’t speak. He just walked in with the dinner plate and sat down in the seat next to the old man. He didn’t put down the dinner plate and handed one of the cups to the old man.
The old man acted as if he had seen a treasure. Regardless of the people around him, he raised his cup and took a big sip.
Chen Ping, who was watching in a daze, only then reacted. He wanted to speak, but the young man raised his head slightly and glanced at him with a smile at the corner of his eyes. “Butler Chen, there’s something wrong with what you just said.”
Hearing this, Chen Ping only found it funny. He didn’t want to quarrel anymore, but now that someone had provoked him, he was naturally happy to say a few more harsh words to vent his anger.
“Impeachment is a procedure used to criminally prosecute senior government officials who violate the law and commit crimes. I’m afraid the board of directors of Yongchuan University doesn’t have such power.”
Chen Ping thought he had heard it wrong. He was actually corrected. Was someone so idle that he had nothing better to do than correct incorrect word usage?
“Ha, so what? Without the Chen family’s vote, after the board of directors meeting in June, your teacher will be demoted from his principal position.”
“You’re wrong again.” The young man was still smiling, bringing in an even greater spring breeze. “He’s not my teacher.”
“Who the hell are you?!”
After Cheng Ping asked, he instantly regretted it. He sensed he had probably stepped into another trap.
“Guess?” The young man asked with a smile.
Chen Ping felt so uncomfortable that he wanted to vomit blood. This feeling was too stifling. It was as if he used all his strength to make a move, but the other party didn’t respond and just lightly stabbed back. It hurt and caused an itchiness that felt suffocating.
Chen Ping took a deep breath, flicked his sleeves, turned around, and was about to leave, but the voice of the young man that was still lingering in his soul sounded again.
“I’m just trying to understand what Butler Chen meant, so I thought about it for you. If the Chen family wants to successfully ‘impeach’ the president using the board of directors, they need to first get more than half the seats on the board, which is equivalent to 26 billion yuan. But you also know that absolute control of Yongchuan University has always been in the hands of that family, so even if the Chen family could afford it, I’m not so sure that family would be willing to sell their shares…”
The young man crossed his legs and supported his chin with one hand. His tone was quite worried. Su Lao couldn’t help but laugh out loud when he heard this, then burped from the carbonated drink.
“You!”
Chen Ping turned his head abruptly. Only then did he realize the drink in the slender cup turned out to be Coke…
The old man and the young man in front of him had been mocking him the entire time!
“Just you wait!”
Despite having a finger pointed at his forehead, the young man didn’t seem angry. He took a sip of the drink in his cup, smiled, then nodded, and didn’t say anything else but, “See you again.”
Chen Ping’s chest was hurting badly. He resolutely turned around and left, fearing that if he stayed any longer, he would have a heart attack from all the anger.
Looking at the distant backs of the butler and the vice principal, Su Lao put down his cup, raised his face, and turned to the educated young man next to him. “You bastard. You’re not half as filial as Lin Chen. You didn’t even want to come back to see me on my 60th birthday!”
“Of course.” The young man smiled. He raised his glass and lightly clinked it with Su Lao’s glass. “Not only am I inadequate at filial piety, but I’m also not as good at causing trouble like him.”
At this time, Mr. Chen, who was extremely irritated, held his chest and could only wallow in his anger.
——
Mr. Lin, who was still on campus, didn’t know that he was being talked about.
He had just finished visiting the girls’ dorm with Captain Xing. When they left, he had an old book in his hand.
Captain Xing rubbed his ear. Girls were probably the most talkative creatures in the world. With the addition of a hyper-talkative dorm manager, he only felt dizzy from the tinnitus. Recalling what the girls said just now, it was too much and too complicated, making things almost completely incomprehensible.
“Any luck?” He thought for a while and could only ask Lin Chen.
Hearing this, Lin Chen stuffed a book with a tattered cover into Xing Conglian’s hand.
Xing Conglian was taken aback. He looked down at the cover and found it was a book of “Discrete Mathematics”. The version of the book wasn’t old, but the reason it was worn was because it had been looked through many times. Thinking about this, he opened the book and found that on the title page, there was a name written.
“Xu… Haozhen?” As Xing Conglian read the name, he seemed to feel that it sounded familiar.
But before he could recall the name, he was patted heavily on the shoulder. Professor Fu’s voice came from behind him. “Lao Xing, are you thinking about our shimei?”
Only then did Xing Conglian remember that Xu Haozhen was the girl who was at Lin Chen’s reunion. He turned his head and saw Professor Fu’s face, which still looked sleepy. He was probably just woken up by phone, and his expression held some reluctance.
“Why is your shimei’s book in the possession of the deceased?”
“What deceased?” Fu Hao rubbed his face, thinking he was hearing things.
“Something has happened at the school.” Lin Chen grabbed Fu Hao and succinctly relayed the case of what happened earlier this morning.
As Fu Hao listened, his mouth opened wider and wider. He didn’t expect that such a big thing would transpire while he was sleeping.
“So… you found Xu Haozhen’s book on Wang Shishi’s bed. Does this mean that the two of them know each other?” Fu Hao’s gaze fell on Xing Conglian’s hands. He thought for a while and looked at Lin Chen in disbelief. “Shixiong… Didn’t you say that there was something strange with Shimei Xu earlier? Why?”
“At first, I thought she was just a little weird.”
“Why? Just because she admired you and wanted to meet you?”
“No. It’s because of her nail polish.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Under what circumstances would a girl choose to apply nail polish that isn’t suitable for her?”
“Isn’t that a matter of opinions? You may not think it’s suitable, but she might like it very much?” Fu Hao couldn’t help retorting.
Lin Chen recalled that when he shook hands with Xu Haozhen, the girl deliberately retracted her fingertips. “She knew it wasn’t suitable. She didn’t like it and was extremely mindful about it.”
“Maybe she’s just experimenting with colors?”
“Do you need all ten fingers to test colors?”
“Someone forced her to paint it?”
“It’s only compulsory to ask someone to paint their nails.”
Lin Chen’s tone was faint. Fu Hao hurriedly shrank his fingers. “You mean, whoever picked it out for her or wanted her to paint that color, she was too embarrassed to refuse? For example, if shixiong wanted to borrow a shirt from me, I would be too embarrassed to refuse… But shixiong, why are you struggling with this nail polish problem? Aren’t you just splitting hairs?”
When Fu Hao opened his mouth, no one could stop that chatterbox. Hearing this, Lin Chen’s eyelids suddenly lifted, as if he thought of something key.
<<< || Table of Contents || >>>
Kinky Translations 