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It was four in the morning.
Most of the photos floating around the sofa and the coffee table had been sorted out. The ones that didn’t convey any information were stacked together whilst the remaining ones were played before their eyes over and over, like a rolling screen. dUjQ9F
Yan Suizhi took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Do you want a cup of coffee…” He was about to ask if Gu Yan wanted an energy boost, but when he turned his head, he found that Gu Yan had already fallen asleep some time ago with his chin propped on his hand, a row of photos still placed side by side for comparison before him.
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Gu Yan hadn’t gotten much rest these days, or to be precise, during this period of time. Going through the photos was both mentally draining and insipid; it was easy to feel fatigued. Even as he dozed off, his brows were still gently creased, and his bowed head caused the visioncare glasses to slide down to the middle of his nose, the lenses glinting from the light beneath.
Yan Suizhi looked at his handsome side profile, laughing soundlessly, “You should have gone to sleep long ago.” i1ZrcY
He leaned over, secretly removing Gu Yan’s glasses, then moved the annotated photos in front of the other to his side instead.
The original plan was to move Gu Yan to the bedroom, but after measuring it up in the air with his hands, the esteemed Professor Yan decisively abandoned the thought.
Once again, he started to regret his lack of regular exercise, especially since he wasn’t as tall as he once was after the genetic modification, and he didn’t have enough arm strength. Wanting to move Gu Yan, with the height of an adult male, was basically a pipe dream.
Professor Yan rolled up his sleeves, yet, unable to start, fretted with his hands on his hips.
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If only you really were a potted mint, he thought, I could just whisk you right off.
Who would have known that Gu Yan was such a light sleeper that he could even sense when a person was standing before him in his dreams. His brows creased for two seconds, then he lazily blinked open his eyes.
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“You’re up?” Yan Suizhi asked in a low voice, like even raising his voice by the slightest bit would scare Gu Yan’s drowsiness off. “Did I wake you?”
Xe Tjc rtbbx tlr tfjv, ifjclcu yjmx jujlcra atf rboj, “Lbk ibcu vlv P riffq?” d4CQ9w
“Kkfcas wlceafr ja wbra,” Tjc Velhtl rjlv.
“Zw,” Xe Tjc geyyfv tlr afwqifr klat tlr lcvfz xcemxifr. Lf ujhfv ja Tjc Velhtl lc ogbca bo tlw, j ilaaif ecjyif ab qgbmfrr. “Qts vlv sbe gbii eq sbeg riffnfr?”
Yan Suizhi, “Admiring my newly acquired immovable asset.”
“Immovable asset?” Gu Yan blanked. hSm62t
“Immovable private asset.” Professor Yan explained its meaning, “It’s considered a movable asset when awake. So, Mr Movable Asset Gu, go upstairs and sleep.”
Lamentably, the movable asset didn’t cooperate.
Yan Suizhi extended a hand to him. Gu Yan caught his fingers and pulled himself up, but he didn’t obediently go upstairs. Even under Teacher Yan’s stern gaze, he fished out the cups reserved for their use, and poured two cups of freshly brewed coffee, taking a sip himself first.
“Come over,” Yan Suizhi waved a hand at him. 7vdJCS
Gu Yan set the other glass on the coffee table. “What am I coming over for?”
Yan Suizhi groped his left pec.
Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.
Gu Yan, “…”
“I’m checking if your heartbeat is normal,” Yan Suizhi said. “You haven’t slept more than a few hours in the past few days yet you’re still drinking so much caffeine. It’s like you’re deliberately trying to keep me from retaining my last bit of assets.” CWdcG9
At times like this, regular exercise had a remarkable effect. Gu Yan’s heartbeat was as steady and powerful as it always was. He stood there with half his cup of coffee for a while, listening to a certain someone spout nonsense, but was eventually unable to stand it, plucking the paw away from his chest.
“What’s the hurry? Let me finish counting to a full minute,” Professor Yan said with a straight face. “I felt that it just got a bit faster.”
Gu Yan, “…”
Grope further down and my heart will beat even faster, dare to give it a shot? zudWX5
Yan Suizhi was so amused by his paralysed face that the corners of his lips ticked upwards. In the end, he simply wheedled Gu Yan into lying down on the sofa, laid a throw blanket over him, adjusted the room temperature, then put a hand over his eyes, forcing him to go back to sleep.
Gu Yan was unable to do anything about Yan Suizhi, but then again, he really was exhausted, so he could only shut his eyes under the palm. He considered the nonsense of ‘movable and immovable asset’ that Yan Suizhi was going on about a short while ago, and suddenly asked, like it had just occurred to him, “Are those private assets and real estate under your name frozen now?”
Yan Suizhi arranged the photos that Gu Yan was annotating on before to the pile in front of him, saying as he went through them, “Not entirely. I registered my will with the Probate Office a long time ago.”
Gu Yan gave a start. “How long ago?” Udy8at
“When I was twenty-seven.” At this, Yan Suizhi chuckled. He discovered that from the day that he’d the talk with Gu Yan, he was practically able to freely open up about these age-old things. At least, when he disclosed them to Gu Yan, his heart would be a calm expanse, like a person who suddenly had a comfortable chair to relax on after standing for too long. “It was that self-destructive twenty-seven-years-old again, sometime after the medical case… My attitude at that time was more aggravating, and some people had more extreme methods of venting their emotions.”
Sulphuric acid, razor blades, bloody, unnerving objects, and suchlike—he had seen it all.
Fortunately, these didn’t pose any trouble at the current level of medical technology. By and by, he was desensitised to them.
“I had a friend at that time, a wrestling instructor. He probably believed that I faced life-threatening danger every day and insisted on teaching me a few moves.” Yan Suizhi was still in a decent mood when recounting those days. “What he didn’t know was that my middle school offered a self-defence and beginner’s wrestling class. We were just bratty teens then; most of us were slacking off, and if anything did go in, it would only be a smattering of moves at best. I hated sweating, so I only memorised the most basic—pinching the ulnar nerve. Afterwards, that instructor revised it with me. My technique’s pretty good; I was quite satisfied with that. But my friend wasn’t. He kept saying, almost seriously, that I should prepare my will in advance.” iC6F5o
Even when reviewing the past, the esteemed Professor Yan was as undisturbed as ever. “He might have thought it would stimulate me, but I felt that it was quite sensible. So, I really made a trip to the Probate Office, and that friend threw a fit.”
“…I’m not surprised.”  Gu Yan expressed commiseration for that instructor, whilst feeling a pang in his heart for the Yan Suizhi in his twenties. “So, you made your will when you were twenty-seven? What was in it?”
“A portion of my private assets would be donated to welfare institutions and orphanages after my death. The remaining would be left to any partner or family I might have.” Yan Suizhi said, “Even though I thought the two implausible at that time, life is unpredictable, so I still left a bit of leeway. My real estate is frozen, but it’s actually only a partial seal. I set a voice password.”
“A voice password?” Gu Yan asked. ZNM4Au
“Mm. A trick I picked up from my parents.” Yan Suizhi said, “In the past, they’d always prepare some presents for me, hiding them in places so illogical that I suspected that they might not even want me to find them. Whether I did was purely based on luck. Additionally, every gift came along with a password lock. I’d even have to pass a layer of authentication before being able to get it, and that password was a word.”
“What was it?”
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“A very simple word,” Yan Suizhi said. “But it was hard for me at that time, because I didn’t like to say sappy things. They liked to poke fun at me using this, finding all sorts of ways to give me goosebumps. But they later realised that their teasing was backfiring and eased up on it. So, after that, the password was just one word. They’d first record a question in the lock, asking, ‘Who in the universe loves us the most?’, then all I had to do was to answer ‘me’ to get through.”
The fingers that he used to cover Gu Yan’s eyes shifted. “If you’d been more impulsive two years earlier, a portion of my private assets and real estate could have been yours,” he teased him. “Now, they’ve been distributed to welfare institutions and orphanages; the probate officer should have executed my will by now. But I’m unclear what their status would be after I overturn my death certificate; maybe they’d automatically return to my name, or maybe I’d only receive a rather limited sum as compensation. You’ve just missed out on a fortune and might even have to raise a spendthrift, penniless bum. Any regrets?” od54L6
Yan Suizhi could feel that, under his palm, Gu Yan’s breathing had already slowed, drawing long and even.
Just as he’d thought that the other was fast asleep, Gu Yan’s voice, tinged in drowsiness, carried over. “Not really… I’ve accumulated some savings, enough to raise you for two hundred years.”