“I’ve got a feeling Lu Zhou isn’t himself today.”

After Lu Zhou reached the green, the assistant coach remarked to the manager.

The manager shook his head and pulled his arms close to his chest, not wanting to talk to anyone.

Sure enough.

With his mind elsewhere, Lu Zhou made an error off the tee.

Someone thought they might have heard the faint sound of a topped ball, and then the ball sailed straight into a small grove of trees.

Lu Zhou frowned and went to search for it with his flustered caddie.

The gallery fell into murmuring:

“Isn’t this supposed to be the most promising player in Asia? I can’t see what the advantage is.”

“They say Mr. Lu’s strength is how relaxed he plays — but all I see today is the muscles in both his arms pulled tight.”

“I watched his earlier rounds — this opening today is really alarming.”

“Looks like we won’t be seeing a minus-four score today.”

“This isn’t the performance of a top-class player.”

The manager listened to the murmuring crowd, his heart thudding, and stared into the fading sunlight with a tense, drawn expression.

In a secluded spot among the trees, Lu Zhou finally located the ball — but then his foot slipped, and he nudged it.

He was already in a thoroughly agitated state.

Now he lifted the white edge of his Descente shirt and looked down at the ball sitting in the mud, and felt his mood sink entirely into the mire with it.

Under the rules, touching the ball carried a two-stroke penalty.

Lu Zhou felt unlucky. He hesitated — and the caddie immediately spoke up: “Lu Zhou, it’s fine, just keep playing. Nobody here could have seen. The security camera is blocked by the leaves…”

Lu Zhou looked up at the layered canopy of vivid green overhead, paused for a moment, then bent down, picked up the ball, and walked back toward the course.

The caddie assumed he was going to say nothing and play on — deliver a comeback performance and dominate the rest of the round.

But Lu Zhou simply sought out the referee and reported himself for a two-stroke penalty.

The manager and every spectator present let out a collective sigh of disbelief at the call.

With those two strokes now gone, though Lu Zhou played normally for the remainder, the match ended quietly.

When Lu Zhou came off the course, the manager’s face was as black as the bottom of a cast-iron pot.

On the road to the airport, sitting in the back of the Jaguar, the manager finally could not hold it in any longer and challenged Lu Zhou.

“Even if you wanted to get back sooner, did you have to pull a stunt like this? A championship was right there in your hands and you let it fly away! What possible good does this do for you, or for me?!”

“Lao Zhao, I’ve told you once — I didn’t do it deliberately,” Lu Zhou said, making every effort to explain. “My form genuinely wasn’t good at the start, so I lost control of my force…”

“I don’t want to hear that!” The manager cut him off with an imperious wave of his hand. “I’m asking you one thing: in those trees — did your foot actually touch the ball? Little Ding already told me. There was no camera there. Did you really need to be that noble?”

“Lao Zhao, what do you mean.” Lu Zhou was displeased and turned the question back on him.

The manager put on his sunglasses, furious, and dropped one blunt sentence. “Your foot — whether it touched that ball or not — only heaven, the earth, and you know. In my view, when no one else can prove it either way, any reasonable person would not have gone running to the referee to report themselves.”

“Lao Zhao!”

Lu Zhou heard what he was implying. The manager suspected that Lu Zhou had deliberately told the referee his foot had touched the ball — all so the match would end sooner and he could get back to the country, to Lin Qing.

“Am I wrong?” The manager was beside himself.

In his fury, the manager yanked all the contracts out of his briefcase and flung them down onto Lu Zhou’s lap.

“You go back and deal with these yourself!! If you’d played steadily and taken the championship, none of this would have been a problem! Now you go ahead and count — how much are we going to owe?!”

Lu Zhou paged through the contracts. It was indeed not a small amount.

No wonder the manager was in a rage.

Because of Lu Zhou’s final blunder, many of the performance-guarantee clauses in their previously signed deals were now in breach.

Deposits had to be returned, and penalties on top of those.

Lu Zhou’s throat moved as he swallowed. He quietly sorted the contracts and put them back into the manager’s briefcase.

He reached over and pulled at the manager’s sleeve, trying to make peace. The manager shook him off and stared out the window.

Lu Zhou could only turn away as well, letting the breeze move over him as he gazed at the dappled patterns of leaves and shadows beyond the glass…

Liang Meng and Wang Zaiwu were in a room together.

A long wooden bench ran the length of the wall.

Liang Meng had deliberately positioned herself at a distance well beyond Wang Zaiwu’s reach.

Wang Zaiwu had one hand cuffed to the window frame; with his other arm stretched to its absolute limit, contorting like a yoga pose, his fingertips could just barely graze the air above the feathers on Liang Meng’s shoulder piece.

Several near-reaches, all ending in nothing.

Liang Meng calmly kept her face down, turned away from him, playing on her phone.

“Bang, bang, bang!!!”

Wang Zaiwu finally lost his patience and slammed the handcuffs three times against the stainless steel window frame with a crash.

Liang Meng looked up and asked without emotion, “What?”

“Talk.”

Wang Zaiwu’s request was simple enough.

“Talk about what?”

Liang Meng had no desire to talk to him, and couldn’t think of anything worth saying.

“Are you really that unwilling to go on a blind date with me?” Wang Zaiwu asked, utterly baffled. “All the effort with the ostrich feathers and the ‘deterrent strategy’ — what was that all about?!”

“I was afraid you’d fall for me.”

Liang Meng replied coldly, not even looking up, and went back to her phone.

Wang Zaiwu blew out a breath of indignant air. “Hey — come on! Even without all those theatrics, I’m not necessarily interested in you, you know, Miss Liang!”

“Perfect then. Everyone’s happy.”

Liang Meng tilted away slightly more, adopting the expression of someone who considers the conversation finished.

If both parties had the same goal, and the outcome aligned with that goal, what was there left to discuss?

Once the statements were done, Liang Meng just wanted to get home, shower, and sleep. She had a mountain of things waiting at the company tomorrow.

“Hey! Come on~!”

Wang Zaiwu was not ready to give up. He made a couple of playful clicking sounds toward Liang Meng, hoping to get her attention.

He had studied abroad and liked to say things directly.

“Liang Meng — is it that you don’t want to go on blind dates at all, or that you don’t want to go on one with me specifically?”

“Is there a difference?” Liang Meng looked back.

“Of course there is!” The handsome Wang Zaiwu suddenly grew animated. “If you don’t want blind dates at all, or if your orientation is toward women, then that’s not about me at all! But if that’s not the case, then the way you’ve been behaving tonight makes me question my own appeal!”

After saying that, Wang Zaiwu deliberately tilted his chin up, showing off his sharp, dashingly angular profile.

“Does your confidence depend entirely on other people giving it to you?”

Liang Meng cast him a dismissive sideways glance.

How tiresome.

“Confidence that comes from within is called arrogance! Confidence that comes from others is real confidence!” Wang Zaiwu countered cleverly.

Liang Meng put down her phone. She thought it over — she was just sitting here with nothing to do — she might as well exchange a few more words with this “idle person” to pass the time.

“Confidence comes from a person’s inner mindset and self-awareness. From what I can see, your self-awareness is rather low.”

“My self-awareness is low? Are you serious?” Wang Zaiwu bristled and scooted closer toward Liang Meng, ready to argue. “I — Wang Zaiwu — have the looks, the physique, the credentials, and my father has money on top of that! Most importantly, I’m young! Liang Meng, come on — tell me honestly: what exactly gives you the right to look down on me? You’re beautiful, fine — but you’re not young either! You’re almost thirty! At your age, you should be burning incense and thanking your lucky stars to find someone of my caliber on a blind date!”

Liang Meng gave a scornful laugh. “Little brother! You’ve never been in a real relationship, have you? Feelings arise without warning — that’s what makes them all-consuming. The fact that you’re handsome and accomplished — what does that have to do with me personally? Can those things become my private property after marriage? Will your diploma have my name added to it? Can you peel your face off and paste it onto mine? Oh — right, the physique. I could make use of that. But who can guarantee you won’t pack on weight later? Maybe in a few years you’ll have a beer belly so big you can’t see your own feet! And you have the nerve to mention my age? If you’re so concerned about someone approaching thirty, are you afraid you won’t even make it to thirty yourself?”

“You—!”

Wang Zaiwu felt a surge of heat shoot from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his skull, and fury was about to come blasting out of his nostrils.

“Besides, I’m not interested in blind dates or relationships right now anyway.”

Liang Meng said it as an aside and went back to looking down at her phone.

“How come?”

Hearing this, Wang Zaiwu let out a breath of relief — and at the same time, pricked up his ears.

So it wasn’t that Wang Zaiwu lacked charm — it was that Liang Meng had no interest in romance.

“I’ve got a business to build.” Liang Meng said it casually.

“Career woman!”

Wang Zaiwu immediately pointed a thumb at her in mock salute, with a sardonic flourish.

In the derisive look in his eyes, Liang Meng could see his contempt for women who start businesses. She no longer had any interest in spending further words on him.

When people are on different paths, even half a sentence is too many.

But Wang Zaiwu, being as oblivious as he was, pressed on. He cited his own mother as an example and began to “counsel” Liang Meng. “Why would a girl like you push herself so hard? It’s just the Longquan Group in the end! Its market value isn’t even a tenth of our family’s group — and you talk about building a career like it’s something major, as if it were something real! Your thinking isn’t quite right, honestly. You’d be much better off going on a proper blind date with me. Settle into the kind of life my mother leads — buying bags, getting facials, enjoying life. Wouldn’t that beat grinding yourself down the way you’re doing now?”

Wang Zaiwu, through and through, was a wealthy second-generation son who lived to eat, drink, and play. Liang Meng had nothing left to say to him.

After all, that was exactly how Wang Zaiwu himself lived — his mother was a pampered socialite, he was the rich heir. Both of them were parasites living off Wang Xiancheng.

“Companies that aren’t managed well can get people killed.”

Liang Meng didn’t know where the resentment came from, but it suddenly broke free of her, sharp and truthful, between her lips and teeth.

After everything that had happened tonight, Liang Meng hoped Wang Zaiwu would see reality clearly.

She and he were not the same kind of person. The Longquan Group wanted nothing more than to leave the Wang Family alone and be left alone in return.

Wang Zaiwu was struck dumb by her words.

Liang Meng was deeply dissatisfied with the “let them eat cake” attitude of his wealthy-heir speech and still didn’t feel she had said enough, so she added a cold follow-up question: “Has anyone in your family ever died?”

What Liang Meng was thinking of, deep inside, was her own parents — who had both jumped from a construction site years ago precisely because they had mismanaged the Longquan Group.

So despite all these years of living under her sister and Jiang Han’s protection, clothed and fed and financially free, she had always carried a nagging sense of crisis —

If a company isn’t managed well, people can really die.

That was why she had worked so hard.

The sentence Liang Meng had said without thinking landed differently than she intended — it struck someone it had not been aimed at, and hit Wang Zaiwu where it hurt.

Liang Meng knew nothing about Wang Zaige’s story, but those who listen sometimes hear more than the speaker intends.

Wang Zaiwu went suddenly silent. One moment he had been lively and voluble; in the next instant, it was as though winter had arrived in a single second, and a layer of frost had settled over his entire being.

“Companies that are managed well can also get people killed.”

Wang Zaiwu was moved, and old memories pressed in.

If Wang Xiancheng hadn’t achieved some measure of success in business and then grown ambitious, wanting to expand his empire, he would never have placed such crushing expectations on his own brother Wang Zaige — and would not, in the end, have driven him to his death.

The two of them were talking past each other entirely — both convinced the other could never understand the subtext — and yet in doing so, each had spoken aloud the most genuine and carefully guarded feeling in their hearts.

“Life is short. Enjoy it while you can.”

Wang Zaiwu looked down at his handcuffs and let out a helpless sigh.