Fu Zheng came to sluggishly, felt like he no longer wanted to die quite so much, and scrounged up some small desire for survival. He gave Gao Yuan a call. "Come pick me up."

Quite naturally, Gao Yuan couldn't help but gloat a little. Knowing perfectly well already what was going on, he asked, "Oh, but Fu Zheng, you're always so busy. If you just say 'come pick me up', how could I possibly know where you are?"

Fu Zheng gnashed his teeth. "Don't you already know that?"

"Oh, oh," Gao Yuan sniggered, "You must be in your new 'mansion', right? At Yuelan community? I'll come right to your front door."

"Mn," Fu Zheng grunted in agreement, then suddenly remembered something and changed his words, "Hold on, don't come to the door. Wait for me in the alley by the corner of Yuelan's south gate."

In the mood to watch a drama, Gao Yuan soon arrived at the spot Fu Zheng had mentioned. The alleyway wasn't too far from the south gate where Fu Zheng was walking over from, yet he still hadn't appeared even though Gao Yuan had been waiting for nearly a half hour.

With such long legs, shouldn't Fu Zheng be able to cover this distance pretty fast?

Gao Yuan got out of the car and dawdled around for another ten minutes before finally encountering Fu Zheng at the intersection.

It was just that..... Fu Zheng, that ordinarily cold-faced, haughty, brisk walker... Though his face was just as chilly and imposing as it had always been, his legs... were a little bit off...

Gao Yuan stared wide-eyed as he watched Fu Zheng limping slowly toward him...

He really wanted to ask Fu Zheng what was wrong with his leg. But before he could say anything, Fu Zheng looked at him in a rather deflated manner--

"Don't ask."

“……”

After saying that, Fu Zheng didn't look at Gao Yuan again. He only pursed his lips, stony-faced, and opened the car door. But when he bent to get in, who know what nerve he struck - pain flashed across his face for an instant. However, in the end he endured and got into the car, trying to look tough.

From observation, it looked like he had pulled his back, and maybe an injury to his leg...

Gao Yuan got back into the car as well, already quite clear in his heart about what was going on. "Got hurt moving furniture?"

Almost immediately, Fu Zheng denied it through clenched teeth. "No."

Right on the money.

"Aren't you stronger than a porter?" Gao Yuan teased, unable to help himself.

Fu Zheng leveled a death glare at him. "You're talking a lot today, do you happen to have any last words you'd like to say?"

"Hahahaha, why do you always get so angry when you're feeling embarrassed? Why didn't you say anything when you were playing porter for Ning Wan? It must have been difficult pretending to be normal just now with that foot and back, mustn't it?"

Loosening his tie, Fu Zheng gave Gao Yuan a long, hard look. "Do you or do you not believe that I'm capable of strangling you with this tie right now?"

Gao Yuan shut up while he was ahead. But before long, he had a new question. "But with your foot like this, why didn't you just let me pick you up at the door? Aren't you just hurting yourself by limping all the way to that little alley?"

After getting into the car, Fu Zheng seemed to relax. He pulled his shirt collar open and loosened his tie further. "There are too many people who know me in the community, and gossip spreads quickly. I was afraid that Ning Wan might eventually hear about you picking me up, and then she'll make another scene."

Gao Yuan blinked in confusion. "Fu Zheng, it's none of my business, but aren't you trying a little too hard to maintain the status quo? And what do you mean, Ning Wan will make a scene? What's wrong with you and I coming into contact? Even if you're currently an intern, isn't it normal for me to ask an intern to do something for me?"

“……”

Fu Zheng's reaction to this line of questioning seemed a bit odd. He glanced at Gao Yuan, looked awkward, and finally mumbled, "Let's just say it's a bit odd for me to be in contact with you right now. I mean, I'm just an intern in the community. I shouldn't normally have so many opportunities to contact a senior partner. We'd better keep away from each other in the future, so that Ning Wan won't see."

Gao Yuan felt rather confused. How had his friendship with Fu Zheng turned into some sort of secret affair?

"Why does Ning Wan kind of sound like your Empress¹The 'main palace', also the head of the harem or the 'main squeeze' :), while I'm some mistress who has to be kept out of sight?"

"What do you mean, 'Empress'," Fu Zheng said, stone-faced. "And what makes you think that you could be my mistress? With my taste, I'd never take you as a mistress. You're a drunken one-night-stand at most."

? ? ?

Gao Yuan felt like that this friendship might not be able to go on.

The two of them went to their usual restaurant to eat, where Gao Yuan promptly demanded that Fu Zheng repay his favour--

"I'm a partner, I can't just work as a chauffeur for nothing. Come on, it's time for you to repay my kindness." As he spoke, he pulled out a stack of paper. "Here I have a case of insolvency and restructuring, but I keep feeling like the client is hiding something, and maybe dug some sort of trap for our lawyer. Something feels wrong to me, but I can't quite pinpoint what. Give me your opinion."

Fu Zheng didn't refuse. He picked up the stack and took a look. Unexpectedly, the case was quite complicated. After reading through the materials, the two of them discussed and analyzed and finally came to a conclusion. By then it was time for the restaurant to close, and as Gao Yuan prepared to send him home, he found that it had gotten very late.

Because community lawyers began their shift very early, Fu Zheng had gotten into the habit of going to bed early and getting up early. When Gao Yuan looked in the rearview mirror, he found his friend looking visibly exhausted and rubbing his eyes in fatigue. But even though tired and in a moving car, Fu Zheng was nonetheless typing out something on his phone. He looked quite serious. By Gao Yuan's understanding of him, he was obviously returning some sort of professional email.

"You haven't officially started yet, have you? Your team isn't put together yet, and I haven't seen you picking up any cases at all. Why are you still writing emails at midnight?" Gao Yuan counseled, "Weren't you going to the community for a little vacation to give your mind a break? Don't put so much effort into it. There's no end to work, send the email tomorrow."

Although this guy had earned his place as a partner, he was by nature somewhat pampered and had the temper of a coddled rich young master. He had no major cases currently that would warrant him pushing through fatigue to reply to emails while in a car, and he definitely wasn't the type to be a workaholic racing against time to finish the work from today...

But despite Gao Yuan's guidance, Fu Zheng's hands didn't stop. He covered his mouth as he yawned again, tears coming to his eyes, but he forced himself to keep them open and kept on typing. A long time later, he finally put down his phone, taking a deep breath as if he had finally completed some task--

"I guess she won't have to wait any longer."

?

What did he mean by 'wait'? Gao Yuan was baffled. When had Fu Zheng ever cared about the lives of the clients waiting for his reply? It seems like the community experience has really grounded him; for him to have become so approachable! It brought tears to the eye!

But what Gao Yuan didn't know was that after Fu Zheng clicked 'Send', in a room on the other side of Rong City Ning Wan heard the 'ding' of an email prompt. She swept away her drowsiness and immediately turned on her phone.

She had been on tenterhooks ever since getting home, and now finally the next email from the senior partner had arrived!

What was truly touching though, was that in this new email, the senior partner had given her the new topic in exhausting detail, down to the evidence and contracts carefully listed in the appendix.

This was obviously special treatment!

Ning Wan downloaded everything in a state of pious gratitude, feeling like a poor student behind in their studies who had just been given a makeup lesson from the teacher for free. In addition to catching up with her classmates and gaining fame as repayment, Ning Wan felt obligated to meet the senior partner's requirements as quickly as she could, join his team, and then repay him in the future by slaving for him like an ox!

Caught up in this tremendous surge of grateful passion and fervour, Ning Wan stayed up all night to finish the case analysis. This time, she carefully wrote down all the various possible strategies she had thought out, analyzed them, marked the one she thought was the best, and sent it back before going to sleep.

As could be expected, thanks to staying up all night Ning Wan went to work the next day with dark circles under her eyes. Although she had only slept a little, however, she was in good spirits due to being very motivated. Fu Zheng, on the other hand, looked gaunt. He was also moving slowly for some reason, perhaps due to not having slept well. Although his countenance remained composed and unperturbed, today Fu Zheng was walking very, very slow...

"Are you okay, Fu Zheng?"

But when Ning Wan expressed her concern, Fu Zheng's face screamed "I won't admit anything". His lips pinched together, he said only, "Nothing's wrong. I'm fine."

It was an obvious refusal to communicate.

Ning Wan observed him carefully for a while as he was answer phone consultations, and saw no suspicious scars. But when she watched his posture as he walked, he seemed to be having some strange stiffness in his back and hips. And when she looked at his legs, he seemed to be having difficulty taking steps, as if he had been injured somewhere...

He was clearly feeling uncomfortable somewhere, yet he refused to talk about it. It must be something very private and sensitive to be so difficult to talk about. What injury or disease could possibly make a man so unwilling to speak about it? Then lightning struck. Ning Wan had a sudden flash of inspiration. She had it!

Hemorrhoids!

Nine out of ten men experienced hemorrhoids²I thought this was an exaggeration, but who knew that it's actually a super common condition?! It's more like 75%, though.. If Fu Zheng had such a condition, was that what it was? Was that why he was walking as if he had sprained both his foot and his back? In reality, he was just afraid that he might take too big a step and aggravate that unspeakable wound...

At that thought, even Ning Wan suddenly felt a little sympathy.

Hemorrhoids at only 30 years old, and it looks quite serious. Poor thing.