Chapter 3: a.s.sociation — I suppose z and y are two continuous natural numbers, so let’s test it.
??
When Qi Xiao Yan pushed open the door to the house, there was no one inside. He turned on the lights to the living room, exchanged his shoes for slippers, and entered. Out of habit, he tied his hair behind his head. He scanned the living room once, before entering his study.
Chu Tian followed him and entered the study. Glancing around, he saw that the room was filled with papers and research material, leaving him somewhat speechless. Qi Xiao Yan did not say a word as he arranged his things. Chu Tian looked at his back. Lips pursed, he asked, “Did you and Yang Wei really divorce?”
Qi Xiao Yan immediately threw the divorce certificate at Chu Tian.
Chu Tian examined the violet-red book in his hands before glancing at Qi Xiao Yan. He probingly asked, “Are you willing to part with her?”
Qi Xiao Yan didn’t reply, merely carrying a stack of books from his bookshelf and placing them into a cardboard box. Chu Tian silently closed his mouth,. He could still remember suddenly receiving a wedding invitation from Qi Xiao Yan and how shocked his heart had been upon getting it.
To Qi Xiao Yan, women were existences on the opposite spectrum to mathematics——completely lacking in logic. So Qi Xiao Yan, for the whole of his life, had never had a girlfriend, only regarded as an ambiguous target by women one after another, including the female students of Imperial Capital University. There was a young woman back when he was in the school basketball club, but when Qi Xiao Yan went abroad, nothing happened between them after.
He absolutely didn’t expect Qi Xiao Yan would also have a lightning-wedding kind of day! The first time he had met Yang Wei was during Qi Xiao Yan’s wedding. The young woman was incredibly beautiful, and her smile was especially sweet. But…Qi Xiao Yan was not a superficial man!
In his memory, when they were still learning two-digit addition and subtraction, Qi Xiao Yan had already been awarded first prize for the National Primary Math Olympics Compet.i.tion; when they had finally touched upon squares and square roots, Qi Xiao Yan had already achieved full marks in the International Mathematics Olympiad Compet.i.tion. In the year before they had taken that exam, this guy had already entered University.
Fourteen-year-old Qi Xio Yan had been the youngest student to enroll into Imperial Capital University. When he graduated from his undergraduate course later, he went abroad to study for his PhD. In four years, he graduated without a hitch and joined his alma mater to conduct a year of research. Afterwards, Imperial Capital University hired him as a full-time professor.
Qi Xiao Yan’s background was like the growth of a glittering, golden, bright winner in the history books, but Chu Tian felt that the most annoying thing about Qi Xiao Yan was that this guy also had an extremely attractive face, easily drawing in women.
Having been this man’s friend for twenty years, he felt that he really did not have it easy.
As he recalled the magnificent life of Qi Xiao Yan, Qi Xiao Yan had already packed all his things in the study. He walked to the bedroom and glanced at the neat and tidy large bed. He opened the wardrobe and began taking out his clothes. Chu Tian also followed him into the bedroom and glanced at the substantially large wedding photo hanging front and center on the wall. The first thing that caught his sight, however, was the photo beside the wedding one…Mo Zhen’s poster. His eyes twitched as he asked, “Yang Wei actually stuck Emperor Mo’s poster right next to the wedding photo. You’re not divorcing her just because of this, right?”
Qi Xiao Yan paused for a moment before taking out several plastic-covered suits, throwing them into his suitcase. “She was the one who wanted to divorce me.”
“And you just agreed?”
Qi Xiao Yan didn’t speak and simply closed the door to the wardrobe, dragging the suitcase out of the room. Chu Tian looked at the wedding photo on the wall and then placed his hand on Qi Xiao Yan’s shoulder. “Your wedding photo can directly be hung in front of the photo studio as an advertis.e.m.e.nt. Those who don’t know you would probably have thought that you’re both models.”
“The photo studio people also said this.” Qi Xiao Yan pushed Chu Tian’s hand off his shoulder without a single trace of politeness. He scanned the living room again. Several small photo frames were arranged throughout the room, all of them featuring him and Yang Wei. He took half and placed them in his suitcase. The ones he believed he was the most handsome in, he left behind in the living room.
“Let’s go.” Qi Xiao Yan pulled the suitcase zipper closed and stood up, his posture as tall and straight as it always had been.
Chu Tian lowered his head to look at the two cardboard boxes and one suitcase. “Your things only amount to this much?”
“Mn.” Qi Xiao Yan lowered his head to look at the house key in his hand. He thought it over for two seconds before dropping them into his pocket. He carried the two cardboard boxes and walked towards the door. “Carry the suitcase.”
Chu Tian worked hard to carry the suitcase behind Qi Xiao Yan. When he turned off the lights, Qi Xiao Yan suddenly asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
Chu Tian stared blankly at him for a second, before replying, “I don’t.”
Qi Xiao Yan softly chuckled, near inaudibly. “Before I met Yang Wei, neither did I.”
After Yang Wei sent Sheng Lei home , she also took a taxi home. When the taxi pa.s.sed by a supermarket, she stopped on the way to go buy a few things to eat.
Pushing the shopping cart through the aisles of goods, Yang Wei’s thoughts wandered about. She recalled the last time she and Qi Xiao Yan had visited the supermarket. The thing she liked to do the most was letting him guess the total cost of all the items in the shopping cart. If he got it wrong, he had to accept a punishment. Qi Xiao Yan, however, only needed to quickly scan the shopping cart before being able to accurately pinpoint the total price every single time. He was never a yuan off, so in the end, the one accepting punishment would always be her.
“Yi, today your husband isn’t accompanying you?”
The cashier’s question made Yang Wei lift her head to look at her. She didn’t remember this cashier, but it seemed that the cashier had recognized her. She half-heartedly agreed, and the upon hearing it, the cashier asked, “Then why don’t you guess how much the total price is?”
Yang Wei: “…”
Guess your sister!1
But she actually remembered this cashier now. That time when Qi Xiao Yan had declared what the total price was, the cashier had scoffed and said that they had used their phones to calculate the price in advance. Qi Xiao Yan had then swept a glance at the people behind them as they placed their things on the counter to pay. He then accurately declared the total price, which caused the cashier to immediately stare at Qi Xiao Yan with a pair of shining eyes.
Yang Wei packed her things and decided that she wouldn’t be coming to this supermarket next month.
Returning home, she opened the door and immediately felt that the room seemed unusually s.p.a.cious and empty. After carefully examining the room, however, she noticed that despite a few photo frames missing, everything else was there. She set the shopping bags on the coffee table, thinking to herself that Qi Xiao Yan must have returned to move his things. She opened the study door and saw that more than half of the contents had been removed. The bookcase held a scattered arrangement of her few specialty books and novels. The computer on the desk was also gone. Yang Wei had originally thought that since Qi Xiao Yan had given her the house, he would at least take a few household electrical appliances when he left, but he had only taken his computer.
She stood in the doorway for a moment before turning off the lights to enter the bedroom. Less than half the clothes in the wardrobe were taken. She closed the door to the wardrobe and flopped heavily onto the bed.
Until now, she hadn’t truly felt as if she had divorced Qi Xiao Yan.
Her eyes casted a glance at the computer table and spotted a few papers on it. Yang Wei crawled up to grab the papers, casually flipping it over. On one side were a few human body sketches; naturally, the model was Qi Xiao Yan. Although Qi Xiao Yan was a university professor, he had once partic.i.p.ated in sports, so his build was very refined and honed. Regardless of whether it was his perfectly curved lower back or his corded back muscles, Yang Wei was very much in love with all of it. Of course, she also loved his long legs and abs. Qi Xiao Yan, however, had never been patient when he was her model, so these quick sketches were a result of her seizing a moment of peace to quickly sketch him at lightning speed.
After a year, she had acc.u.mulated enough sketches to fill up a sketchbook. Although, Qi Xiao Yan, had never known how many times Yang Wei had sketched him.
Yang Wei once again flipped over another sheet of paper. She caught sight of a row of beautiful characters written with a fountain pen.
If X squared plus Y squared equals Z squared, the solution is all integers. 2
Yang Wei’s mouth couldn’t help but downturn slightly. During that time, Qi Xiao Yan had been solely preoccupied with writing his paper. Yang Wei had entered the study to try and find him, telling him that she was very bored by herself, so Qi Xiao Yan had given her a math equation to solve.
That was right, he had given her a math equation to solve!
Yang Wei now remembered how dejected she had felt back then, but she had still done her best to solve the math equation, earnestly studying it for ten minutes. Afterwards, she felt that Qi Xiao Yan was playing with her. Fl.u.s.tered, she had exasperatedly pushed open the study door. Qi Xiao Yan had only raised his eyes to serenely watch her leave. “I suppose z and y are two continuous natural numbers, so let’s test it.”
So he and Yang Wei went to test it, and after an extremely flexible display for half an hour, she suddenly came to a revelation. “Qi Xiao Yan! I’m not asking you to be my private math teacher!”
Recalling this, Yang Wei somewhat gloomily set the papers back down on the computer table. Why was Qi Xiao Yan everywhere?
She turned around and entered the bathroom to take a bath, resolving to go to bed early. She didn’t believe that she would fall asleep and dream of Qi Xiao Yan.
Sure enough, she didn’t dream about Qi Xiao Yan; she simply didn’t sleep.
Without Qi Xiao Yan sleeping beside her, the bed suddenly felt too big for her, unexpectedly making her feel terribly alone. Staring at their marriage photo hanging on the wall above her, although she hadn’t turned on the light, she could still clearly see two upturned lips. The wedding photo was extremely beautiful, even the owner of the photo studio had wanted to hang it up for publicity. Qi Xiao Yan, however, had refused.
Yang Wei covered herself with the quilt, no longer wanting to look at Qi Xiao Yan’s smiling face. Extending a hand out to explore the pillow beside her, she groped around and finally found her phone.
It was already 10:00PM, but she wasn’t even slightly sleepy. She pressed open the internet app with the intention of finding a novel to read. At the very top of the list was a t.i.tle named « Guard Against Marriage ». Yang Wei felt that her current mood corresponded perfectly with this novel and opened the link.
The novel summary had one short line——Guard against marriage; that is, guard against your downfall.
Wow. Yang Wei’s heart was shocked. Extremely interested, she started reading.
The female lead’s entire family, because of some secret, was killed by the male lead’s father. The female lead, in order to take revenge, deliberately got close to the male lead. The male lead fell in love with the female lead and took her as his wife. The female lead killed the male lead’s entire family, as well as the male lead. The female lead ended up regretting her actions, so she did her utmost to resurrect the male lead. The male lead experienced many trials and tribulations before finally coming back to life. The female lead had cried tears of joy, but the moment the male lead opened his eyes, he had stabbed a knife through the female lead’s heart.
Yang Wei: “…”
She remained completely silent for three minutes before she opened the comment section.
The first commenter gave a -2 in life to that author: “Life is already so difficult, why still bother to harm one another? ?Waves Goodbye?”
She exited the app, only to discover that it was already 2:30AM. She opened her contacts list and looked at the name at the very top. ?Curly-bae?3 Beating back a smile, she stuffed her phone under Qi Xiao Yan’s pillow.
It was the first day of their divorce, so she must have a nice dream.
Goodnight, me.