The city was already completely shrouded in darkness.
Yu Tu closed his WeChat interface, feeling a little moody. He took one of Zhai Liang's cigarettes from the coffee table and went out to the balcony.
In the midst of the faint tobacco smell, his mood gradually calm down.
"What? Being persuaded again?" Zhai Liang, holding a can of beer, walked to his side.
"No, something to do with my high school class group." Yu Tu did not want to say more, so he hastily glossed over it.
"I thought your colleague came to persuade you to go back."
Yu Tu flicked the ash off his cigarette, "On the contrary, there have been ex-colleagues who resigned who have made me determined to leave."
"So, why are you still hesitating? Between an annual salary of one million and an annual salary of a hundred thousand plus working yourself to death, is it so difficult to choose?"
"Where'd you get annual salary of one million?" Yu Tu broke into laughter.
"Why not? If you had simply taken any one of all those offers you got when you graduated from undergrad, your annual salary would already have been several million if you'd kept working until now, right? You just had to be foolish and do postgraduate studies with some sort of focus in the aerospace direction. You work yourself to death and you still only take home ten to twenty grand. You solve a big, difficult problem and you still only get five grand. Don't you feel you're doing your IQ no justice? At least …."
Zhai Liang drank a mouthful of beer, "At least, you and Xia Qing wouldn't have broken up."
Yu Tu looked indifferent, "Don't mention the past."
"In my opinion, you'll regret it sooner or later. Where are you going to find such a smart and beautiful wife in the future?"
Yu Tu glanced at him. "It'll be easier than you anyway."
Zhai Liang said "Bah, you're just relying on your face."
After a while, Zhai Liang spoke again: "Ideals and feelings cannot be eaten as food. If you're resolute, then leave la. You are already thirty years old, yet you still need me to say this. Isn't it childish?"
"I promised my teacher I'd take a month to consider."
Academics can actually make such sly schemes? I thought they were all old tech nerds." Zhai Liang was a little shocked at this.
He shook the beer can: "My thinking and awareness are different from yours. I worked so hard to graduate, so I must earn the most money and live the best life. In today's society, a celebrity can act in a movie or sing a song and then earn tens of millions. Having an affair and getting pregnant can also make headlines. You guys send rockets and satellites into space, but you go and ask, who knows your names? Who knows you only earn so little money a year?"
Yu Tu was quietly smoking.
"Would you say lately, these have been the most dispirited and wasted days of your life? You're staying at home to play games every day. Actually, you can go to Beijing to roam around, visit old classmates, and so on. I heard that, Xia Qing is still single, so if you go now, maybe you can rekindle the relationship and so on." While talking, he seemed to discover something, getting a little excited," I say, you've stayed single for so many years, is your heart still ... "
"No," Yu Tu interrupted him.
Zhai Liang said, "Hey, I just don't understand you."
He drank the beer all at once, patted his shoulder and left Yu Tu alone.
After he finished smoking, Yu Tu went back to the living room, closed his eyes, and leaned on the couch. He recalled the teacher's stunned and pained expression on the day he went to resign. His teacher finally said: "All these years, you must be very tired, not even taking a day off, so take all your vacation days first before we discuss further."
"For the next month and little more, you think it over properly, and after that time, if you still want to leave, then I'll approve."
In fact, there was nothing to think over, since he had understood thoroughly all the different gains and losses long ago. All he needed was to make a decision, but he did not want to make it now.
He opened his eyes, picked up the phone, and clicked to enter into the game.
No one was online, Qiao Jing Jing was bored to death and played a man vs machine match. Of course, she could not select a support hero in a man vs machine match, so she selected Zhuge Liang, who was often played by Yu Tu. As a result, she was almost abused by the computer.
This hero is simply too hard to play … How did Yu Tu execute a lightning raid in the crowd?
After battling life and death with the computer for a while, Qiao Jing Jing ended the game by quitting this match. She looked at her friend list again. Yu Tu was already online.
He ought to have seen her gift?
As a reserved and proud female celebrity, Qiao Jing Jing was patiently waiting for Yu Tu to invite her to play a game. However, after a while, there was still no action.
When Qiao Jing Jing thought her investment was spent in vain, a QQ dialog box popped up on the phone.
Yu Tu:
No need to give me skin.
Qiao Jing Jing stared blankly for a while before clicking to open QQ. She did not expect Yu Tu would send her a message in QQ.
Yu Tu's sentence was displayed in the dialog box at the upper left corner of the phone. Qiao Jing Jing stared at it, suddenly a little lost. It seemed like, a long, long time ago, when she was a teenager, every day she had also wished such a sentence initiated by him would appear in this dialog box.
She did not expect to realize this wish ten years later.
Things had changed; people had also changed. Qiao Jing Jing smiled and shook her head at this young girl's thought. All of a sudden, she did not know what to reply.
She put down her mobile phone and ran on the treadmill for a while. Midway, she received a phone call from big sister Ling to inform her that her whole family would be having parents and children activities tomorrow. Hence, she did not need to go to the workshop for training.
After hanging up the phone, Qiao Jing Jing was still holding the phone. Out of nowhere, a bold idea suddenly appeared in Qiao Jing Jing's mind.
Without taking much time to think through, she clicked open QQ and typed out the line: "Can I invite you to be my coach?"