Tycoon: From Rags to Riches

"Nanyi, Feng Yao, Su Tang, so this is where you are..."

A male voice drew closer, and its owner soon appeared before them.

"Nanyi, this is your Bo Ya’s Broken Zither String."

"Feng Yao, this is your Flower Field Oolong Tea."

"Su Tang, this is your Ten Thousand Miles of Magnolia."

The boy, carrying a bag from Overlord Tea Girl, hurried over to the three girls. He immediately took the drinks out and handed them over, his expression a little too eager to please.

"Thanks for the trouble, Wang Hao~"

"You must have been in line for a long time, right?"

Liu Nanyi took the drink from him, her voice melodious and her smile sweet.

Su Tang and Feng Yao also thanked him politely, but without much enthusiasm, clearly keeping their distance.

"It was nothing, really."

"As long as you girls like it."

Looking at Liu Nanyi’s sweet smile, Wang Hao found it impossible to suppress his own grin.

But soon his gaze drifted involuntarily to Gu Heng, who stood beside Liu Nanyi, and his expression turned as wary as a husky on high alert.

Just moments ago, from a distance, he’d seen this guy hitting on Liu Nanyi, even asking for her WhatsApp.

’It must be because I wasn’t here,’ Wang Hao thought. ’Nanyi is too polite to say no, so this guy must have taken advantage of the situation.’

Wang Hao was thinking this to himself. That is, until he saw Gu Heng’s face. He froze on the spot, his eyes slowly widening as he pointed a finger. "Gu... Gu Heng!"

"Holy shit!"

"Gu Heng, it’s really you!"

As Wang Hao stared at Gu Heng, a flood of long-buried memories came rushing back.

He remembered back in the day, they were classmates in junior high.

In those early days of puppy love, he’d had a huge crush on his deskmate.

He didn’t dare confess his feelings, so he could only express them through his actions, bringing her breakfast, snacks, and drinks every day.

At first, he thought this was just what having a secret crush was like.

What was that saying again?

A secret crush is supposed to be a one-person party!

Until one day...

The moment he saw all the snacks and drinks he’d given his deskmate end up in Gu Heng’s bookbag... it felt like his world was collapsing.

What the fuck!

My one-person secret crush had turned into their two-person party?

It was supposed to be a movie starring the three of us, but I wasn’t even in the credits?

That single incident left such a deep scar on his budding romantic heart that he didn’t dare have a crush on a girl for his entire three years of high school.

Now, he had finally graduated high school.

After getting to university, he followed the advice from a ’playbook’ he’d bought from an upperclassman for 9.9 yuan. He wasn’t going to play the secret crush game anymore; he decided to be direct and make his move.

And the result...

He’d finally hit it off with a girl and successfully asked her out.

And he’d fucking run into Gu Heng again!

This guy just won’t go away!

The three girls looked surprised to see that Wang Hao knew Gu Heng. None of them had expected such a coincidence.

"You are..."

Gu Heng stared at the person in front of him. After a long moment of hesitation, he said, a little uncertainly, "Wang... Wang Hao?"

He honestly had trouble remembering. The person in front of him looked so different from the person in his memory. Back in junior high, the guy had been skinny and small and hadn’t seem to have hit a growth spurt even by graduation; he was smaller than many of the girls in their class.

But now he was nearly six feet tall and had filled out quite a bit.

"Old friend, we haven’t seen each other in three years, and you’ve already forgotten me?"

Wang Hao looked at Gu Heng’s face, which had barely changed since junior high, and then at Liu Nanyi standing beside him. The old feelings of being overshadowed by Gu Heng resurfaced, and alarm bells instantly went off in his mind.

But when he remembered what happened to Gu Heng later, a bit of his confidence returned.

’I’m a student at a prestigious university now,’ he thought. ’And him?’

’A high school dropout. Heh...’

As these thoughts raced through his mind, Wang Hao’s expression grew even warmer.

"Our junior high class had a reunion over the summer. We were just talking about you."

"You had great grades back in our class. If you’d taken the high school entrance exams like everyone else, you would’ve had no problem getting into a top school. It’s such a shame you decided to drop out."

He ended with a theatrical sigh, as if he genuinely felt it was a pity.

A dropout?

When Liu Nanyi, Su Tang, and Feng Yao heard that, they all froze. The way they looked at Gu Heng subtly changed.

The Northeast Three Provinces might lag behind the national average economically, but their emphasis on education is absolutely top-tier.

For kids like Liu Nanyi and Su Tang, who grew up in the Northeast, dropping out was something only good-for-nothing delinquents did. Even most of those delinquents managed to get a high school diploma.

And yet, Gu Heng had apparently dropped out right after junior high.

At that thought, their imaginations ran wild, and they even started to feel suspicious about the source of the money Gu Heng had just spent so lavishly.

At this, Gu Heng’s eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at Wang Hao.

He had actually been happy to run into an old classmate, even one he hadn’t known well in junior high.

He never imagined the guy would pull a stunt like this the moment they saw each other again.

’Did I bully you in junior high?’

’Or steal your girlfriend?’

’What’s with all the hostility?’

The flicker of joy Gu Heng had felt moments ago vanished completely.

"It is a shame, you’re right."

"I can’t compare to you students from prestigious universities."

Gu Heng smiled, but his expression grew cold.

’He’s just a kid who hasn’t left the Ivory Tower,’ Gu Heng thought.

’His petty tricks are so childish.’

"Ah..."

"At the end of the day, we’re still just students. We still have to ask our parents for money."

"It’s not like you, who’s been earning your own money and supporting yourself for a while now."

Though inwardly pleased by Gu Heng’s words, Wang Hao gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "I heard from a classmate that you’ve been in Beichun lately, selling... what was it you were selling?"

"Food delivery."

Seeing the other man pretending to struggle to remember, Gu Heng answered for him, completely open and without a trace of embarrassment.

Just then, the sales associate returned with five gift sets of the essence cream combo. She handed the Super VIP card, the Centurion Black Card, and the receipt back to Gu Heng.

Gu Heng took them, pocketing the two cards and the receipt without a glance. He looked at Wang Hao with a slight smile. "If you all are so interested in me, you could just invite me to the next class reunion."

"It’s a good thing I ran into you here today. Otherwise, who knows what rumors you’d be spreading about what I’m doing in Beichun."

"I say I’m in Beichun delivering food, and you’d tell everyone I’m in Beichun just... selling?"

"There’s a pretty big difference, you know..."

"I’m still young. I have to find a girlfriend eventually."

"You can’t just go around slandering a person’s good name."

As he said this, Gu Heng leaned forward slightly, his eyes fixed on Wang Hao.

He was smiling, but it made Wang Hao feel an inexplicable chill.

"Old friend..."

"Am I right?"

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