Chapter 71 – I Want to Wish You a Happy Birthday
“Ladies and gentlemen, due to a blizzard ahead, the plane will be making a temporary landing at the southern airport…”
At five in the morning the next day, Lin Ganzhi was groggily woken by a flight attendant. He grabbed his suitcase and went to the waiting lounge. Due to his status, he was directed to a VIP lounge.
The broadcast announced that the flight would take off again in about five hours. Lin Ganzhi did a quick calculation and figured it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. He sent a message to Yan Shengping and then fell asleep in the lounge, the sounds of discussion and complaint around him gradually fading away. He desperately needed to sleep.
When he groggily came to, the clock on the wall above him was already pointing to twelve.
Oh, crap! Did I oversleep?
Lin Ganzhi shot up in a panic, ready to head out, but the guy next to him lazily said, “Dude, it’s fine. Go back to sleep. They just announced another delay. We probably won’t take off until two in the afternoon.”
Lin Ganzhi breathed a sigh of relief and sat back down. The scare had chased away most of his sleepiness. Since he had nothing better to do, he put on his mask and started chatting with the guy beside him.
It turned out the central region was experiencing a blizzard the likes of which hadn’t been seen in twenty years. Not only were planes grounded, but even the trains had stopped running. They could only wait for the snow to stop. A sense of unease crept over Lin Ganzhi. He lowered his head and opened WeChat. After he had sent his message, Yan Shengping had replied with a simple “Okay.”
Then, half an hour later, another message arrived: Don’t force it if you can’t make it back. There’s still a heavy blizzard here. Book a hotel and get some rest. I’ll pick you up from the airport when the snow stops.
Lin Ganzhi rubbed his eyes. This feeling of being waited for brought an urge to cry. No one had ever given him something called a home, and there had never been a home waiting for him from afar.
Lin Ganzhi looked up at the clock on the wall.
I’ll wait another two hours. If that doesn’t work, I’ll find another way. I’m going home today, no matter what!
However, he didn’t dare say this to Yan Shengping directly. Given Yan Shengping’s temper, he would definitely call and scold him. That man never thought selfishly for himself. How many lifetimes of good karma did it take to meet a boss like him?
“Ladies and gentlemen, this flight will be temporarily grounded due to the blizzard…”
“Oh, come on! How can this be? Hey, buddy, where are you going?”
Lin Ganzhi grabbed his luggage and turned back to the man. “I’m going home!”
“Home? But we haven’t arrived yet. I was even going to invite you to stay at my villa here. You look awfully familiar. Could you be some celebrity?” the man muttered, watching Lin Ganzhi’s departing figure.
When Lin Ganzhi stepped outside with his suitcase, the cold air made him shiver. The temperature was a world away from the city he’d departed from, and he was only wearing a thin jacket. His teeth chattered as he tried to hail a car, his fingers so stiff that typing was twice as slow as usual.
Fortunately, the driver was efficient and pulled up in front of him within a minute. Lin Ganzhi checked and saw that the high-speed rail was still running. There were no business class tickets left, so he pulled his mask up higher and chose a second-class seat.
“Going to H City, young man?” the driver chatted with Lin Ganzhi on the way.
“Yes, sir. How did you know?” Lin Ganzhi said, blowing hard into his hands once he was in the warm car. It was so damn cold!
The driver sighed. “I just dropped a passenger off at a hotel from the high-speed rail station. He was also trying to get back to H City. He waited at the station for four hours before giving up and getting a refund. Nobody expected the snow to be this heavy over there.”
Lin Ganzhi’s heart sank, the small flame of hope threatening to fizzle out.
“Well, sir, are the buses still running?”
“The roads are probably frozen over, young man. I’d advise you to either wait for the train or go back to a hotel for the night. Don’t even think about taking a bus. You’d probably have to walk from Lin City.”
With that, Lin Ganzhi gave up on the idea.
“Then let’s go to the high-speed rail station.”
As expected, the display screen showed his train was delayed by an estimated three hours. It was already three in the afternoon. Another three-hour delay meant he wouldn’t arrive until nine o’clock, leaving no time to have dinner with Yan Shengping.
Lin Ganzhi secretly sent a message to Uncle Yan: [Uncle Yan, how did Yan Shengping spend his birthday today?]
Uncle Yan replied quickly, his words tinged with a hint of helplessness: [Mr. Wenren told me long ago not to make a fuss over his birthday. He doesn’t want to celebrate it. Sigh.]
Lin Ganzhi’s eyes fell. That liar. He had been chatting with him so happily yesterday, yet he still didn’t care about his own birthday.
This frustration, however, made him abandon the idea of taking a taxi to a hotel. He was going to stick it out right here!
The running around had drained too much of his energy. Lin Ganzhi set an alarm for two and a half hours, hugged his luggage, and fell asleep again. The heating in the waiting hall was turned up high, and Lin Ganzhi felt warm all over. In his sleep, he accidentally pulled off the mask hanging from his ear. He took a deep breath of fresh air, let out a small, comfortable snore, turned over, and sank back into a deep sleep.
“Wait, isn’t that Lin Ganzhi?”
“Holy crap, are conditions for celebrities this bad now? He’s just waiting here alone, hugging his suitcase?”
“Why is he wearing so little? It’s so cold!”
Completely unaware, Lin Ganzhi had no idea that a photo of him sleeping while hugging his suitcase had been posted online, where it was now slowly gaining traction.
When the alarm went off, Lin Ganzhi slowly opened his eyes. To his delight, his train hadn’t been delayed any further. Then he realized his mask had accidentally come off. Startled, Lin Ganzhi quickly put it back on. He might be an obscure celebrity, but he was also a famous figure with tens of millions of anti-fans! He could only count himself lucky that no anti-fans had recognized him while he was asleep, or it would have been a huge hassle.
Lin Ganzhi picked up his suitcase and moved to a different spot. Half an hour later, he was finally on the high-speed train back home. As he sat in his aisle seat, he was so moved he nearly cried tears of both emotion and cold. So moved, and so frozen!
As the three-hour train journey entered its final stretch, Lin Ganzhi saw the blue-gray, glittering snowscape through the window. The earth was wrapped in a single color, and all living things seemed to have fallen into the same dream. When he heard the broadcast announcing their arrival in H City, he was almost moved to tears. It hadn’t been easy. If he had given up for even a moment, he wouldn’t have been able to reach H City today.
Yan Shengping, Boss Yan, your little master is here!
After getting off the train, Lin Ganzhi, wearing only a thin jacket, endured everyone’s strange looks and hurriedly called a ride-hailing app. He first went to the nearest shopping mall. It was already nine o’clock. At most, he had an hour to pick a gift for Yan Shengping before he had to rush back.
Yan Shengping liked cake but not anything too sweet. Luckily, the chain bakery on the first floor of the mall hadn’t closed yet. Lin Ganzhi ordered a matcha cake and asked them to hold it for him, then marched purposefully toward the affordable luxury section on the second floor.
Even though the mall was well-heated, Lin Ganzhi was the only one walking around in just a thin jacket. However, the clothes he wore were all meticulously designed by Shen Fei, and experts could tell their value at a glance. So, quite a few sales assistants from clothing stores approached him, asking if he wanted to buy clothes.
But Lin Ganzhi was in no mood to look at clothes for himself. He politely declined the sales staff along the way and finally stopped in front of a store with a medieval European decor. It wasn’t for any particular reason other than the fact that this store had a more upscale vibe than any other he had passed. Without even figuring out what kind of store it was, Lin Ganzhi walked in.
“Hello, may I help you?” The person who greeted him was a young woman who looked about his age. She had a good demeanor and was dressed quite fashionably. To put it in Lin Ganzhi’s limited vocabulary, she was “classy.”
“Uh, hello. I’d like to pick out a birthday gift for my partner.”
The young woman smiled and asked, “And is your partner a man or a woman?”
Huh? Did she have to ask that? But Lin Ganzhi was in a hurry, so he answered without any hesitation.
The young woman led him to a different section. The items displayed here were a bit different from those in the main hall, but they all looked exquisite. There were clocks with a beautiful sense of order and cufflinks on display stands. Lin Ganzhi looked around and his gaze finally landed on a fountain pen placed in the very center.
It was a pure black pen with a dark green gem inlaid on the cap. Lin Ganzhi suddenly recalled that Yan Shengping had a habit of twirling his pen when they talked in the study. He had to praise himself for his keen observation. It wasn’t easy to discern even a small preference in a man like Yan Shengping, who usually seemed to desire nothing.
“How much is this pen?”
“Oh, my, you have excellent taste, sir! You’ve spotted our store’s greatest treasure right away!” The young woman seemed quite excited.
But this statement made Lin Ganzhi shudder. He dreaded it most when salespeople praised his taste, because once that happened, congratulations, you were about to become a sucker and choose the most expensive item in the store. As a poor man, Lin Ganzhi couldn’t bear the weight of such praise.
But wait, he was different now! He was a rich man! What was there to be afraid of?
Lin Ganzhi gave himself a pep talk and bravely asked for the price.
“It’s not expensive at all! Seeing as you have a connection with this pen, it’s only 99,999 yuan.” The young woman’s smile was radiant.
99,999 for a pen? Lin Ganzhi almost coughed up a mouthful of blood. He might not be able to accept the world of the rich so quickly. If it were up to him, he would never buy something like this, not in a million years!
“Well, wrap it up, then,” Lin Ganzhi said, taking out his phone with a trembling hand. What could he do? It was for his boss.
“Of course, of course! You’ve absolutely made the right choice with this pen. Look here, you can press this diamond. Just a light press, and a mechanism inside will activate, securely locking the cap to the pen body. It’s also waterproof!”
Lin Ganzhi didn’t get what use that feature had at all. He could only chalk it up to the young woman being a little delirious after finding a big sucker like him right before closing time.
The young woman seemed to guess his thoughts and added, “Also, the diamond is real. I’ll give you a certificate. It was cut from a single, flawless emerald. The value of the diamond alone is no less than one hundred thousand.”
Woohoo!
Lin Ganzhi’s mood instantly soared.
After leaving the mall, Lin Ganzhi spent half an hour finally hailing a car willing to take him to the suburbs.
But today, Lin Ganzhi truly understood just how unlucky a person could get. When the car was only a five-minute drive from home, it completely broke down. In this suburban area, even calling a tow truck was a huge hassle. Feeling bad, Lin Ganzhi insisted on giving the driver a few hundred extra yuan, then got out, preparing to walk the rest of the way.
It was already half-past ten. In the heavy snow, Lin Ganzhi dragged his suitcase with one hand and carried the cake with the other, trudging through snow that was almost up to his calves. He was a pitiful yet comical sight.
As he walked, Lin Ganzhi began to question his life choices. The heavy snow had numbed his toes, and only his kneecaps, which were still working hard to move his legs forward, had any feeling. He didn’t know what he had been thinking. It didn’t really matter to Yan Shengping whether he came tonight or not; he himself didn’t care about his birthday.
He was the only one who cared. He cared about the ritual, about this day. He felt sorry for Yan Shengping for deliberately ignoring this day. He had wanted to make a big deal of it, to tell Yan Shengping what a happy occasion a birthday was.
But perhaps this was all just his own wishful thinking.
Tired from walking, Lin Ganzhi stopped and exhaled a thin puff of white mist. Forget it. He had been through worse. Even if Yan Shengping didn’t like it, he couldn’t get angry over it. He had to think more about his boss’s good qualities and hardships. Lin Ganzhi felt his eyelashes grow heavy. When he squinted at the lamppost ahead, he realized a thin layer of ice had formed on them.
In the study, Yan Shengping put down his pen and wearily pressed his eyes. His phone suddenly vibrated. It was a message from the administrator of Lin Ganzhi’s fan club.
[Big Shot, did you hear about what happened today?]
What happened? What’s going on?
Just as Yan Shengping was about to ask for details, Lin Ganzhi’s profile picture popped up. He immediately clicked on Lin Ganzhi’s message box.
Lin Ganzhi: [Yan Shengping, happy birthday!]
A warmth spread through Yan Shengping’s heart, but his reply was teasing: [Isn’t it a bit late to be saying that now?]
Lin Ganzhi: [Not late, not late! The gift just arrived at the door. Are you asleep? Do you have time to come down and get it?]
Yan Shengping’s heart skipped a beat. A bold idea surfaced in his mind. It couldn’t be, could it? It was still snowing so heavily outside! He remembered that the clothes Lin Ganzhi had taken with him were very thin. Even if he had returned, he would have called Uncle Yan to pick him up first!
The more Yan Shengping thought this, the faster his feet moved, seemingly of their own accord. He hastily pushed open the study door and clattered down the stairs, completely losing his usual calm and composure.
Once downstairs, Yan Shengping looked out the window at the heavy, goose-feather snow. The faint hope in his heart gradually died out, replaced by a single, overwhelming wish: Lin Ganzhi had better be lying comfortably in a hotel right now.
Clang!
Yan Shengping pushed open the main door. The cold light of the streetlamp illuminated the thick snow in front of the house. The vegetable leaves in the courtyard had been covered with thick plastic film by Uncle Yan. A small shadow was cast at his feet.
He saw Lin Ganzhi, holding a square paper box, his fingers purple from the cold and clutching the handle tightly. His other hand was still holding his phone, trying to type something. Upon seeing him open the door, Lin Ganzhi looked up and gave a silly smile. His frozen muscles could no longer accommodate his rich facial expressions. He just stood there stiffly in his thin jacket.
As their eyes met, Lin Ganzhi sniffled hard.
Then, in a somewhat cracked voice, he said, “Yan, Yan Shengping, happy birthday. Luckily, today, I, I made it.”
After a full day of bad luck, Lin Ganzhi felt he had finally gotten his one piece of good fortune: in the final hour of Yan Shengping’s birthday, he was able to wish him a happy birthday.