Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

With Huang Chong now a champion at the Tour of the United Arab Emirates, he had undoubtedly made good on his earlier promises.

The better Huang Chong performed, the more crucial Dewey would inevitably become to their three-way joint venture. There was no question about it.

Zhou Ming was the one for ideas and production, while Li Zifan handled more of the investment and operations side.

As for himself, his role was purely to leverage the bond he’d forged with Huang Chong, acting as the bridge for future business collaborations between the company and star cyclists.

While each of the three partners had their own focus, his connection to Huang Chong was, without a doubt, the most crucial.

If Huang Chong had failed to perform on the World Tour and couldn’t deliver good results, Li Zifan and Zhou Ming would have definitely kicked him out of the joint venture.

After all, without the connection to Huang Chong, he, Dewey, had no business taking a slice of the pie from a cycling gear company.

"That kid is a total badass now!!

A general classification win at a World Tour stage race! And he still managed to win, even with such a stacked lineup at the UAE Tour this year!

When he gets back, I’m gonna make him give me a pull. I need to feel that thrill!"

Before bed that night, Dewey held up his phone, staring at the championship photos of Huang Chong that Bora had just officially posted. His tone was full of emotion, but his face beamed with pure pride.

Wu Fang, several months pregnant with a small but visible baby bump, was also touched by the news. She nodded and said,

"It really is a little unexpected, isn’t it?

I remember back in college, even though you and Huang Chong were close, I never really knew much about him.

I always thought he was just... average. He was handsome, and for a guy from the south, he was tall and well-built, but I never imagined he’d become a sports star after graduation!

The change is just too dramatic!"

"Hmph. What do you mean, you ’never really knew much about him’? You think I couldn’t see what you were really thinking?"

But upon hearing his wife’s words, Dewey’s expression turned disdainful, and he began to tease her.

"Back then, you just thought that a guy from a small county with no family connections wasn’t worth getting to know. A complete waste of your time.

All you so-called rich girls are the same. Natural-born snobs.

You even have to consider someone’s financial status and future potential before you make friends with them. And it’s not just you. Take that best friend of yours—she has no self-awareness about her own situation, yet she had the nerve to look down on my boy for being a Professional Cyclist with no future.

So? What does she have to say now?

What do any of you philistines have to say now!"

Wu Fang’s face flushed beet red. Her husband, who was normally so easygoing and never brought up such topics, had just exposed the very mindset her parents had drilled into her since childhood: ’Only make friends with people of value, and only find a partner with financial means.’

Unable to find a comeback, she flew into a humiliated rage and bit down on her husband’s right arm, venting the frantic anger of having her deepest secrets exposed.

...

「Xianyun County, Xianyun Middle School.」

Huang Lingshan was well into the second semester of her senior year. School had been in session for a while, and the college entrance exams were just around the corner in June, but she still had the same old slacker attitude.

She barely studied, spending all day on her phone instead.

In the past, she’d scroll through posts about all sorts of celebrities and her favorite idols. Now, the majority of her screen time was dedicated to scrolling through posts about her cousin.

Because Huang Chong was a star now, too. He wasn’t one of those pretty-boy idols, but a road cycling star—and a handsome one at that!

Huang Lingshan even had the occasional, twisted fantasy. ’It would be perfect if my cousin and I weren’t related by blood—like if my aunt and uncle had adopted him from an orphanage, or found him abandoned by the side of the road...’

Unfortunately, Huang Chong resembled her enough that he was undoubtedly a direct descendant of the Huang Family. ’In this life, we can only ever be cousins!’

So now she was incredibly jealous of her girlfriends in class, who could shamelessly crush on her cousin.

And what do you know, as soon as Bora’s official account posted the news of Huang Chong’s victory, along with championship photos of him in various leader’s jerseys, the girls in her class got even more excited than she was. They immediately swarmed her desk.

"Lingshan, your cousin won again!! He got three jerseys this time!! He’s so incredible!!"

"SOB SOB SOB, your cousin is so handsome, Lingshan! He’s way more handsome than those idols! I’m going to print these photos out and make postcards. Can you get his autograph for me the next time he’s back in the county?"

"Yeah! When is your cousin coming back to the county, Lingshan? We’re all such good friends, why don’t you just set something up so we can all meet him?"

Hearing these requests from her girlfriends—all of them quite pretty and well-developed, and girls she was normally very close with—an ugly spark of jealousy ignited in Huang Lingshan’s heart.

’These little vixens. First, they wanted autographs. I got those for them, and now they’re trying to take a mile. They want to meet my cousin in person? They’re dreaming.’

’There’s no way I’m giving them a chance to hit on my cousin!’

But even though she was a terrible student, she was still an eighteen-year-old girl, and her mind had matured enough. She couldn’t just show what she was really feeling, and she certainly couldn’t let her jealousy stir up trouble for her cousin.