Luo Wenbing seemed afraid Xu Ye would change his mind. At noon the next day he tracked Xu Ye down to say the money was ready and ask when they would sign.

Xu Ye was privately ecstatic, but what he said was, “There’s no rush, is there? Didn’t we say three days?”

Luo Wenbing was going frantic. He couldn’t wait to seize the whole school’s fruit market, and one trip at noon wasn’t enough — he came back again in the evening.

Xu Ye deliberately dragged it out a day before signing the contract with him.

The moment the two hundred and twenty thousand was in hand, Xu Ye moved it straight into the stock market, then turned to Zhang Xinzhou. “I’ll give you your share at the end of June. I’ll add a bit of interest on top.”

Zhang Xinzhou knew that any money Xu Ye had went into the market. He asked a few more questions, and hearing Xu Ye swear blind that stocks would keep climbing, he not only made no push for his share — he handed over the two hundred thousand he had been saving for a car and asked him to trade that too.

Xu Ye was hardly going to refuse. Over four hundred thousand between them, worked at two-to-one leverage, meant more than 1.2 million yuan going into the market. At a time like this a pig could make money in stocks, let alone Xu Ye, who already knew which way every industry was going for the next ten years.

Once the transfer contract was signed, Xu Ye had Li Tongwen and Xu Wanying run a clearance sale, and in the blink of an eye it was Thursday.

After dinner that evening Yang Fei made himself Xu Ye’s little tagalong. Wherever Xu Ye went, he went, plainly determined to stick to him.

Xu Ye knew he wanted company at the student union dinner that night, and deliberately didn’t let on.

Bit by bit the sky darkened.

Only then did Yang Fei ask, “Xu Ye, it’s about time. Shouldn’t we be setting off?”

Xu Ye played dumb. “Setting off where?”

“Didn’t the two of us agree to go to the student union’s get-together tonight?”

“Did we? I’ve forgotten.”

“Bro!” Yang Fei caught hold of him and begged wretchedly. “Just come with me the once. I lose my nerve going on my own.”

Xu Ye laughed. “If you want to see Li Lulu, can’t you just ask her out by herself?”

Yang Fei had no backbone about it. “You have to take it a step at a time, don’t you? You’ve got to make contact first, get to know each other a bit. Or did you hold your girlfriend’s hand the first time you met her?”

“Well, no.” Xu Ye laughed. “It wasn’t until the third time we met.”

“…”

Coming back to the dorm that afternoon, Yang Fei had showered and changed into a very flashy casual blazer, and blow-dried his hair up full. He plainly thought a great deal of tonight’s dinner.

Xu Ye stopped teasing him and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s just after seven. I’ll stay with you until nine at the latest.”

“No problem!”

“Then message Li Lulu and ask her where she is.”

“Right away.”

Yang Fei got his phone out in high excitement and sent Li Lulu a message, but he waited a long time and got no reply at all, which left him rather embarrassed.

Seeing that, Xu Ye told him flatly, “Just call her. She might be busy — she wouldn’t see a message.”

“That… isn’t that a bit much?”

“Are you calling her or not? Because if you aren’t, your old man’s going back to the dorm.”

Xu Ye made as if to drive back to the dorm, and Yang Fei hurriedly stopped him, saying over and over, “I’ll call, I’ll call, I’m calling right now. What are you in such a hurry for?”

Yang Fei sat in the passenger seat and quickly put a WeChat voice call through to Li Lulu.

He had it on speaker, and Li Lulu’s voice came through almost at once. “Hello?”

“Senior, it’s Yang Fei. Didn’t you say last time that there was a dinner tonight?”

“That’s right, I’m on my way already. Have you and Xu Ye set off?”

Yang Fei said awkwardly, “You haven’t told me the address yet.”

“My fault, my fault, I forgot to send it to you. I’ll send it now, just come straight over. It’s near Baolong Plaza — we’ve got the whole street stall booked for tonight.”

“Right away.”

“Is Xu Ye with you? Remember to bring him. He’s our biggest sponsor for this event.”

“He’s right beside me.”

“Come over quickly, then. That’s it, bye.”

After the call, Li Lulu sent the address and the name of the place straight over, and Yang Fei had Xu Ye drive over there at once.

Yang Fei was dragging him along because he was a coward.

But Xu Ye couldn’t quite work out why Li Lulu had insisted he come. Yang Fei had handled this whole thing from start to finish, and he had barely crossed paths with her more than a few times. Could she have some ulterior motive?

Xu Ye didn’t take the thought any further. The drive took him under ten minutes, and he parked below the street stall. Yang Fei flipped the sun visor down, tidied his hair in the mirror one more time, and only then got out of the car with him.

At the door, Yang Fei had meant to send Li Lulu a message asking whether she could come out and meet him — most of the people at dinner tonight were student union people, after all, and barging in on his own would be awkward.

But his phone was barely out of his pocket before Xu Ye had already walked inside.

“Christ. Wait for me.”

There were a good many people in the street stall, twenty or thirty on the first floor alone, all deep in conversation. Xu Ye spotted somebody he knew: Tang Peng, head of the student union’s arts department, whom he had met through Wang Shiyu and played basketball with. He had a decent impression of the man.

Seeing Xu Ye arrive, Tang Peng came over of his own accord. “Xu Ye, what brings you here?”

Xu Ye shrugged. “Somebody from your external liaison department asked me to come.”

“Jiang Ming?”

“Not him. Li Lulu.”

Tang Peng paused a moment, then pointed upstairs. “She’s only just arrived — she’s on the second floor. Do you want me to take you up?”

“No need. You go ahead. We’ll go up ourselves.”

Xu Ye headed up to the second floor. The setting up there was a great deal better than downstairs, and the people on it were essentially the ones holding some rank or other in the student union.

They might all be university students, but the levels and standing in the student union were marked out with perfect clarity. At meetings and at dinners alike, seating went by the size of one’s “office” — you could say they had no talent for office and had caught every disease of it.

The moment Xu Ye appeared he drew a great many eyes.

Li Lulu saw him and hurried forward to explain to everyone. “Everybody, let me introduce someone. This is our junior Xu Ye, from the School of Finance. He was our biggest sponsor for the campus singing competition.”

But no sooner had she finished than somebody put in, in a joking tone with a barb in it, “Isn’t this an internal student union dinner? Why have you brought outsiders along?”

Li Lulu planted her hands on her hips at once. “Chen Zebin, I invited them. What exactly do you mean by that?”

Chen Zebin waved a hand and pushed back his long bangs. “I don’t mean anything by it. It was a joke.”

He laughed it off.

But he noticed that Xu Ye hadn’t said a word — Xu Ye was simply staring at him, and hadn’t looked away for a long while. It made Chen Zebin’s skin crawl. He frowned and asked, displeased, “Hey. What are you staring at me for?”

Xu Ye shrugged. “I’m not looking at you. I’m looking at the tattoo on your arm.”

Chen Zebin pulled his sleeve straight down. “It’s the twenty-first century. Can’t you look at a person with a tattoo like a normal human being?”

Xu Ye came straight back at him. “If you didn’t have a tattoo, I’d certainly look at you like a normal person. But you got one — and if I still look at you like a normal person, then you got the damn thing for nothing, didn’t you?”

“You—!”

(End of Chapter 231)