"Come on, I propose a toast. Everyone, raise your glasses—to our four years of college, to our youthful days! May all our futures be bright! We've graduated!"
"We've graduated!"
"Drink!"
A group of young people dressed in fashions that looked quite trendy for the era drank and celebrated noisily. They were celebrating the end of their college lives and the beginning of a new page in life.
Some of them had drunk too much and started bragging.
"I'm telling you, today Huazi is putting his word right here. Before long, just wait and see—I'll have a beauty in my left arm, a Mercedes key swinging from my right hand, and I'll come find you guys."
"You think driving a Mercedes makes you hot shit? I'll be driving a Rolls-Royce! I'll have one chick in my left arm and another in my right, and I'll have one of them waving my Rolls-Royce keys."
"Then you're still a loser. You're driving a Rolls-Royce and don't even know to hire a driver?"
The group traded jokes and boasted wildly, getting more and more ridiculous as they guzzled straight from their bottles.
A pretty girl with shoulder-length hair held a DV camera and recorded everything happening at the table. She had not been drinking, yet she kept smiling foolishly, because she felt happy...
Beside the several lively tables of college students was another table. Seven or eight shady-looking men sat around it, but they did not seem bothered by the students' noise. Listening to their bragging even struck them as somewhat funny. These thugs were surprisingly cultured...
At another table beside the men who looked like thugs, Wang Yan sat alone, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and canvas shoes. Colorful tattoos showed on his left arm, while his slicked-back hair was combed to