Chapter 43

Xie Wen snatched Lu Shengfan's phone and sent a voice message to the other man.

Chu Zeshen played the message, and Xie Wen's voice came through, screaming at the top of his lungs-

"Chu Zeshen, you're a fucking bastard who forgets his friends the moment romance comes along!"

Gu Bai glanced at Chu Zeshen from the passenger seat. "What did they say?"

Chu Zeshen put his phone away as if nothing had happened. "They said they'd look after Mocha, so we don't need to worry."

Gu Bai said, "Mocha loves exercise. As long as you wear him out, he'll behave and do as he's told."

Chu Zeshen started the car and drove away from the resort hotel.

"What made you want to get Mocha in the first place?"

Gu Bai didn't know why the original owner of his body had wanted a dog, but considering his own circumstances, he gave his own reason.

"I wanted someone to keep me company. I didn't want to be all alone."

Chu Zeshen paused at that answer, with a hint of caution he didn't even recognize himself.

"When do you feel lonely?"

Gu Bai smiled. "That was just in the past. I don't anymore. When did I feel lonely? Probably when I went off to university on my own."

Mocha was already a year and a half old. The original owner had gotten him during university.

Hearing when he had gotten the dog, Chu Zeshen actually already had an idea in mind. Gu Bai's university major didn't seem to have been his own choice.

The atmosphere in the car was a little strange, but Gu Bai seemed unconcerned.

"I was young then. It was my first time going so far from home for school, so feeling lonely was normal. Now that I'm older, I've gradually stopped caring about being alone."

Chu Zeshen said, "You're only twenty-two. You're still young."

Gu Bai had accidentally let his true thoughts slip. In his previous life, he had gone abroad to study, and he had indeed felt lonely then. But as he grew older, he came to feel that loneliness was merely a sign of weakness. As long as he was strong inside, he wouldn't care about such things.

"Oh, I'm only twenty-two. But why does it feel like I graduated ages ago?" Gu Bai looked at the scenery flashing past outside the car window. "It's only been two months."

Chu Zeshen faced his own age head-on. "If even two months feels like a long time, then, considering how long it's been since I graduated, could you say I've got one foot in the grave?"

Gu Bai suddenly understood. So this was what having one foot in the grave felt like. He'd been wondering why it felt as though so much time had passed.

"You wouldn't be wrong to say that." Gu Bai turned his head and smiled. "You were seven years ahead of me at university, after all, senior."

This wasn't the first time someone had called Chu Zeshen "senior." Whenever he returned to his alma mater for events, almost every student addressed him that way. Back then, he had felt nothing and simply nodded in response.

Now it seemed a little different. Hearing it gave him a faint, barely perceptible tickle inside, and he very much wanted to respond.

"Happy graduation, junior. May you have a bright future."

Gu Bai accepted it with a smile. "Thank you for your kind wishes, senior."

They chatted as they headed toward their destination. Along the way, Gu Bai never asked where they were going.

The car stopped on a street, and Chu Zeshen unfastened his seat belt. "There's a café here. I hear their mocha is very good."

Gu Bai liked coffee, the kind with sugar and milk, and mocha was his first choice.

Gu Bai hadn't expected their first stop to be checking out a café. It was something he had never done before, and he found it incredibly interesting.

Gu Bai ordered a mocha, while Chu Zeshen ordered an iced Americano. There weren't many people in the café at the time, and they took their coffees up to the second-floor balcony.

There were a few tables on the balcony, along with a simple counter facing the sea.

The sunlight was dazzling, so Gu Bai put on the sunglasses Chu Zeshen had prepared for him the night before.

They sat at the counter and looked out toward the sea. Gu Bai had put on the perfume Chu Zeshen had given him that day, and a sea breeze blew past, carrying away that same scent.

It was actually quite nice to do nothing and simply watch the sea in silence. The moment Gu Bai sat down, he no longer wanted to leave.

Chu Zeshen turned to look at Gu Bai's profile. "How's the mocha?"

Gu Bai said, "Average. The coffee beans taste all right, but the milk doesn't taste pure enough, and the chocolate sauce is a little too prominent. Still, with this view, I can give it an eight out of ten."

"Looks like I picked a dud. You only gave me a high score because of the scenery." Chu Zeshen took a sip of his iced Americano. "My first café visit was a failure."

Gu Bai shook his head. "Failure is too strong a word. Let's just say that with beautiful scenery to help things along, it doesn't matter if the coffee isn't good. You stay in a pleasant mood all the same."

Chu Zeshen asked, "If you opened a café here, would you spend more on the coffee to improve the quality of the drinks, or would you cut costs? Just as you said, when people come here and see a view like this, it gives the drink in their hands a boost."

Gu Bai thought for a while before saying, "Senior, you don't really think I studied the same subject as you, do you? I majored in literature. I don't know anything about running a business."

Chu Zeshen smiled. "Of course I haven't forgotten. We're just setting professional knowledge aside and answering this question from an ordinary person's perspective."

Gu Bai really did seem to know nothing about business. He shook his head. "I've never thought about it. Whether you raise costs or lower them, it's all just to keep the business going in the long term. But either option could work here for a long time."

Chu Zeshen didn't question him further. Instead, he quietly stayed beside Gu Bai and watched the scenery with him.

After watching for quite a while, Gu Bai asked, "Where's our next stop?"

He was looking forward to the rest of the outing.

Chu Zeshen said, "You've been to this island once before. You pick our next destination."

So it was an escape with no plans at all. Gu Bai's anticipation didn't diminish.

He suggested, "I don't know where to go either. Why don't we just go wherever you happen to drive?"

Chu Zeshen agreed to the suggestion and drove along the coastline with Gu Bai, enjoying the sea breeze.

Along the way, they came across a tourist attraction that wasn't on Xie Wen's planned itinerary, so the two of them bought tickets and went inside like tourists.