Derailed - Chapter 7

“Your uncle was famous at school. Of course I knew him. But he probably didn’t know me.” Yu Huan finished ordering and set the menu aside.

“Famous?” Shen Yilin smelled gossip immediately and hurried to pour her some tea. “My mom said loads of girls pursued him back then. Is that true?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Even I wrote him a love letter.”

“Seriously?” He hadn’t expected that. Disbelief covered his face.

“That surprising?” She sipped her tea.

“…No. It’s just… Ms. Yu, you don’t look like someone who’d write a love letter.”

“What if someone paid me?”

“Huh?” He looked even more astonished, his jaw almost dropping.

Yu Huan looked up at him, but her gaze gradually focused beyond him, on another similar face in her memory.

After the day of the downpour, Gao Yan might not have remembered her, but she couldn’t help noticing him.

He was the kind of person it was difficult to look away from. If she had to compare him to anyone, he was a little like Shen Yilin now, though less sunny and outgoing, with an added sophistication and composure.

His exceptional looks made him stand out in any crowd. Even a careless gesture could have been a still from a romantic television drama.

And he had family connections and brains. Yu Huan had marked his math homework. His handwriting was beautiful, and he showed strong logical thinking and originality.

But to her, none of those was the rarest quality. What mattered most was that he never behaved as though he were above anyone, or as though the world belonged to him. His dealings with people were always impeccable—like the time he took her home.

Only years later, after entering working life and meeting all sorts of people, did Yu Huan understand that some people’s impeccable manners and consideration weren’t necessarily true gentleness. They were simply principles of conduct learned naturally from growing up in comfortable homes with a secure sense of their own advantages.

They enjoyed being nice, enjoyed doing favors, because those favors cost them neither effort nor worry. It was even hard to say whether this was a more concealed, deeper kind of arrogance.

Born fortunate, they unconsciously felt compassion for everyone else.

Still, that way of behaving could have a devastating effect on someone who seldom experienced it.

The prettiest girls in a class, the prettiest in a year; younger students, older students—there was no shortage of girls confessing to Gao Yan at school. He turned them all down gracefully.

And still they kept coming. In the first term of her second year, Yu Huan won a prize in a provincial essay competition. A transfer student in her class approached her afterward and asked her to ghostwrite a love letter.

Looking back now, she couldn’t remember what she’d written. Nothing more than admiration, a request for a chance to get to know him, and a few lines of poetry, perhaps sickeningly sentimental.

However much care went into choosing the words, the result would most likely become meaningless wastepaper.

Yu Huan hadn’t put her whole heart into it. Unexpectedly, however, Gao Yan accepted the letter. He even asked the girl out.

The date didn’t go particularly well, and they never got together.

“So they actually met because of that letter?” Shen Yilin’s interest took a different direction. “What sort of letter was it? Did my uncle find out afterward that you wrote it?”

“…That’s hardly the point.”

She asked, “If a girl wasn’t your type, would you agree to go out with her just because she wrote a good love letter?”

He had no answer.

“So the letter wasn’t what mattered,” Yu Huan said. “Besides, she paid for it. That made it her letter.”

“How much?”

“A week’s living expenses.”

“That’s not much of a writing fee.”

“And how would you know?”

“I don’t.” He shook his head. “But you don’t look like someone who throws money around.”

Yu Huan was silent.

“Anyway, even if she paid, under copyright law she only had the right to use it. You still owned the copyright.”

“The food’s here… Eat.”