The server took the order and headed off, leaving Li Zhengmin to make small talk with Ning Yue. "With grades like yours, what are you thinking of majoring in?"
Ning Yue didn't hesitate. "Materials science, probably."
It was her top choice. If she had the time, she'd want to branch out and study more on the side — but that was something she'd figure out once she actually got to university.
Li Zhengmin raised an eyebrow. "I figured you'd go for finance or business management. Materials science — I honestly don't know much about that field." What did it cover, exactly? Plastics, alloys, glass?
The dishes had started arriving by then. Li Mingrui stayed quiet until his father picked up his chopsticks, then immediately served some food to Ning Yue. She gave him a rare smile. "Help yourself too."
When someone smiles all the time, no matter how pretty that smile is, it loses its effect after a while.
But a person who rarely smiles — when they do let their lips curve, just for a fleeting moment, it's like catching a glimpse of something extraordinary.
Li Mingrui was completely floored. Sister Yue's smile was absolutely stunning — he just sat there staring like an idiot before finally snapping back to reality. Honestly, the school beauty at his own school didn't even come close.
Li Zhengmin caught the whole exchange and turned it over in his mind. Ning Yue was eighteen, his son fifteen. Three years older — they always said an older woman was a man's lucky charm~
If these two actually ended up together, he could hand the company over to this kid without a single worry.
"Hey, dummy. Eat your food."
Li Mingrui's face went faintly red. He quickly scooped some food into his bowl and kept his head down after that. God, that was embarrassing — he'd actually been caught staring at her like that.
Li Mingrui chatted with Ning Yue between bites. "Pork prices have already doubled since we first got in. The gains came faster than I expected — I really lucked out riding your coattails on this one."
Ning Yue shook her head. "It's the other way around — I'm the one who rode Mr. Li's coattails. When I left the Yan family, I walked out with nothing. Literally just the clothes on my back and my phone. If it weren't for you, I'd never have had that kind of working capital to begin with."
"So what's the plan going forward?"
"Once the pork wave plays out, the college entrance exam will be over too. I'll find somewhere to work part-time — treat it as real-world experience."
Li Zhengmin was speechless. Utterly, completely speechless.
A nine-figure net worth — and after June, that nine-figure fortune definitely wouldn't be starting with a one anymore — and she wanted to work a part-time job?
Fine. He was just out of touch. He didn't get how young people thought these days. But then again, he did happen to have a son.
"Ming Rui, when the break comes, you go work part-time with Sister Yue."
Li Mingrui stared. What did that have to do with him? He was fifteen — if he went to work a part-time job, didn't that technically count as child labor?
Li Zhengmin had asked Ning Yue to lunch mainly just to keep the relationship warm — there was no real business agenda. After the meal, the father and son saw her home.
...
Gong Yuze had arranged to meet a client at a Western restaurant. He arrived just before six with his assistant, and the moment they pushed through the door, a light, delicate fragrance drifted over him. A girl in a pale dress, dark hair falling loose around her shoulders, eyes curved into a soft smile — not a trace of makeup on her face. As they passed each other, she turned and flashed him a smile, then disappeared from view.
Long after the meeting ended and his assistant had driven him home, he could still recall with perfect clarity the gentle scent that had lingered around her, and that smile — bright as a summer bloom, warm as morning sunlight.
The following day, at the same hour, he found himself back at that restaurant. He couldn't help it.
But she never showed.
Walking out, Gong Yuze carried with him a faint, hollow sense of loss.
When April arrived, the Ning Family hired two employees to handle the day-to-day operations of the online store — customer communication and order fulfillment. With that taken care of, Ning's mother channeled all her energy into cooking for Ning Yue, dreaming up new dishes every day to make sure she was eating well. Ning Yue ended up putting on three or four pounds.
Mr. Ning found himself with time on his hands too, so he took on the daily task of driving Ning Yue to and from school. His little cargo van quickly became a fixture outside the school gates. Yan Qingqing spotted him there several times and, being the skilled actress she was, made a point of going up to chat with him, then introduced him to her classmates as Ning Yue's father. The looks those classmates gave Mr. Ning afterward were hard to read.
After that, Mr. Ning stopped acknowledging Yan Qingqing entirely. He was a straightforward man, but he wasn't stupid. The contempt and mockery in her eyes when she'd spoken to him had been impossible to miss. It left him genuinely puzzled — was this really the same girl he and his wife had spent years raising?
Yan Qingqing had been trying to show her classmates just how poor the Ning Family was. A couple who'd worked half their lives and couldn't even afford a car worth a hundred thousand yuan — if that wasn't poverty, what was?
Ning Yue, however, couldn't have cared less about the gossip. She rode in Mr. Ning's van every day without a second thought, cheerfully introducing him to her classmates without any trace of self-consciousness. If anything, the other parents were the ones turning green — top of the whole year group, the number one student at First High, practically a guaranteed Qingbei admission.
The scheme backfired completely. Yan Qingqing was so furious she smashed things around the house twice. Then, on the second mock exam, her scores dropped again.
Ning Yue suspected it had quite a bit to do with Yan Qingqing pouring all her energy into scheming against her. Some people sailed through life so smoothly that they never developed any real resilience — the moment things stopped going their way, they fell apart. Yan Qingqing was exactly that type.
On top of that, she'd gone from rags to riches overnight, and since returning to the Yan family her whole wardrobe had transformed. To put it plainly, she'd gotten vain. She was constantly showing off to everyone around her — how expensive her things were, how wealthy the Yan family was, how devoted her parents were to her, how madly in love her fiancé was with her.
All of that was eating away at her focus. And with Ning Yue's grades sitting firmly above hers, the frustration only festered. A slide in her scores was inevitable.
Yan Qingqing stared at her mock exam results, eyes burning. 617 points — a full seventy-one below the score she'd transferred in with.
Her class ranking had fallen out of the top hundred. It was a disaster.
It shouldn't be like this. She shouldn't have scored so low. First place was supposed to be hers — not Ning Yue's, who was supposedly inferior to her in every way.
"Yan Qingqing, come to my office."
Yan Qingqing bit her lip. She already knew what her homeroom teacher was going to say. She rose slowly from her seat and walked out of the classroom under the eyes of the entire class.
The homeroom teacher for Class One was a master-level educator who had produced two top scorers and an Olympiad gold medalist. She had her own private office and carried an air of permanent severity. Standing in front of her, Yan Qingqing felt a wave of guilt she couldn't quite suppress.
Ten minutes later, Yan Qingqing shuffled out of the office with her head hanging low. She had zero desire to go back to class. She couldn't understand how her grades had fallen so fast, and the injustice of it all pressed down on her chest. She ducked into the bathroom and called Gong Yuze.
The phone rang and rang. No one picked up.
Yan Qingqing frowned. That had never happened before. Even when Gong Yuze was in a meeting, he always had his phone on him — if he couldn't talk, he'd at least send a message.
...