Seventh Year Of Separation chapter 35
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The next evening, Gu Jiahe unexpectedly had to work overtime for a while. When he messaged Li Zhao on the subway, Li Zhao replied with a different address.
Gu Jiahe opened the map and found that it wasn’t far from Yuping Road, just half a block away.
Twenty minutes later, Gu Jiahe got off at another subway exit and after walking a few hundred meters, finally found the location sent by Li Zhao.
Looking up, he saw it was a free boxing club.
Pushing open the heavy glass door, Gu Jiahe walked in and saw Li Zhao standing on the platform. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt and training shorts, his muscles tense, his eyes sharp.
Bang—Li Zhao executed a move, throwing his opponent to the ground.
The coach below smiled and clapped. “Good, that’s enough for today.”
Li Zhao shook his arm, removed the boxing band from his hands, lifted the ropes beside the platform, and walked down to the ground.
Gu Jiahe stood about three meters away from the platform, and Li Zhao immediately spotted him as he looked up.
“You’re here.”
“Yeah.” Gu Jiahe nodded at him.
It was the first time he had seen Li Zhao like this. Li Zhao’s muscular lines were still not back to their normal state, and he looked extremely aggressive.
Gu Jiahe subconsciously took a step back.
After exchanging greetings with him, Li Zhao walked to the nearby cabinet, pulled out a dry towel, and wiped the sweat from his body.
Gu Jiahe stood beside him.
Li Zhao’s breath hadn’t calmed down yet, his breath somewhat rough. The tense muscle lines were swaying under Gu Jiahe’s gaze.
Gu Jiahe couldn’t help but look a few more times.
Li Zhao felt his gaze and looked back at him. “What? Do you want to learn?”
“Learn what?”
“Boxing. I can recommend a coach for you.” Li Zhao casually picked up his phone and opened WeChat.
Gu Jiahe quickly shook his head. “Forget it, forget it. I prefer to stay still.”
In recent years, Gu Jiahe’s greatest physical activity was walking from the company’s gate to the subway.
“Why didn’t you bring anything today?” Li Zhao wiped off his sweat and asked, holding his arms.
“Dang.” Gu Jiahe forgot about this matter as he worked late, slapped his forehead, and then thought it strange that Li Zhao was making demands already. “It’s good enough that I’m here. Do you have so many demands?”
“Hmm?” Li Zhao saw he was talking back and raised an eyebrow. “Is this your sincere attitude to make amends?”
Gu Jiahe deflated instantly and turned to push the door. “Wait for me.”
Ten minutes later, Li Zhao changed into a loose T-shirt and casual pants.
Just as he pushed the door open, Gu Jiahe came in, holding a large paper bag in his hand. He sat on the bench in the rest area, opened the bag, and picked out the largest piece of cake to give to Li Zhao.
“Is this sincere enough?”
“It’ll do.” Li Zhao nodded and started eating the cake.
Gu Jiahe sat beside him and suddenly stretched out his arm, making a fist.
“What are you doing?” Li Zhao noticed his little movement and asked.
“…Just stretching.” Gu Jiahe quickly put down his arm.
Both of them grew up eating regular meals, so how did Li Zhao manage to train like this over the years? Gu Jiahe couldn’t figure it out.
“Oh, it’s rare to see you eating sugary stuff.” A teammate who had just sparred with Li Zhao came over, patting his shoulder.
Li Zhao looked up and smiled, not responding.
Gu Jiahe glanced at him from the side. “Don’t you like eating these now?”
“Who said that?” Li Zhao asked back.
Another person started practicing on the platform, and shouts and gasps filled the air. Gu Jiahe felt like he was sitting on pins and needles, realizing he was in the wrong place.
Li Zhao, however, savored the cake slowly, only finishing it after a while.
Gu Jiahe hurriedly gestured with his eyes, asking if he was ready to leave. Li Zhao nodded.
Gu Jiahe stood up and took two steps forward, ready to push the door open. However, the door was heavy, and he had a large paper bag in his hand. He was about to prop the glass door open with his foot when Li Zhao suddenly reached out his arm from the side and helped him hold the door.
With Li Zhao’s arm raised, Gu Jiahe stood in front of him.
For a moment, Gu Jiahe felt himself enveloped by Li Zhao’s aura, and the strong hormones seemed to hit him head-on.
Li Zhao was wearing a windproof jacket with only a short-sleeved T-shirt inside. The two walked side by side towards the parking lot.
Gu Jiahe noticed how lightly Li Zhao was dressed. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Not at all.” Li Zhao shook his head.
“Why did you suddenly think of learning boxing?”
“To relieve stress.” Li Zhao reached the car, unlocked it, and signaled for Gu Jiahe to get in. As soon as Li Zhao got in the car, he took off his coat, revealing his beautiful arm lines again. The dim natural light outlined his body.
Gu Jiahe stood outside the door, his heart suddenly pounding heavily. He slapped his cheek suddenly and then shook his head, “Never mind, I’ll take the subway back.”
“You’re leaving now?” Li Zhao leaned out and asked.
“Yeah.” Gu Jiahe nodded and then turned around, quickly walking towards the subway exit.
It’s not good to stay too long. It’s not good to stay too long. Despite the early winter weather, the temperature at night was almost freezing, yet Gu Jiahe inexplicably felt hot all over his body.
Perhaps Wu Mou saw that Gu Jiahe had been leaving work early recently, so the next day, as soon as he arrived at the company, he assigned him a big task.
Gu Jiahe looked at the thick stack of files in front of him and asked Wu Mou, “Director Wu, what’s this?”
Wu Mou looked at him and said, “The R&D department wants to establish a new research center, involving a lot of recruitment and vendor cooperation. Can you help review the contracts?”
Gu Jiahe was just worrying about this when He Xiao rushed into the office, “Manager Gu, have you heard? Lawyer Li has an admirer! They’ve been pestering him recently!”
Gu Jiahe looked up at her, “Really? How’ve they been pestering him?”
“They send flowers to his office every few days. There are pink roses, white roses, red roses on Lawyer Li’s desk, and none are repeated. The person, however, has never shown up. It’s become the biggest mystery in our office.”
Wen Qi leaned over from the opposite side to join the conversation, “Lawyer Li is really broad-minded. Doesn’t he have an old partner? Did they break up or did someone else catch his eye?”
He Xiao nodded, smirking at him, “Manager Gu, why don’t you find out? It’s not convenient for us to ask about our superiors’ affairs.”
Gu Jiahe smiled awkwardly, thinking, how could he ask? Was he going to tell them that he was the old partner and he was also trying to woo him? Digging his own grave?
But Li Zhao accepted the flowers without ever sending him a picture or message on WeChat. As the gift giver, he felt a complete lack of achievement.
Gu Jiahe thought for a moment and still asked one more question, “How does he deal with those flowers?”
“The weirdest thing is that he arranges them in a row on the windowsill and hasn’t thrown away a single bouquet,” He Xiao touched her chin, “Is he thinking of making dried flowers out of them?”
“But why are you asking about this, Manager Gu?” He Xiao was curious.
“Oh, I just like taking care of plants,” Gu Jiahe said matter-of-factly.
He Xiao looked puzzled. What did that have to do with anything?
Coincidentally, that day, the IPO project came to a temporary halt, and the intermediary agencies withdrew from the office one after another. When He Xiao and Wen Qi left for the law firm at the end of the day, Wu Mou wasn’t usually in the office either. Gu Jiahe was the only one left sitting in this row of workstations.
In the late-night office, only Gu Jiahe was tapping on the keyboard.
After finishing his work, sending the finalized contracts back to the business department, it was already past ten in the night.
Thinking that the end of the year was approaching, Gu Jiahe decided to apply for a salary increase with Wu Mou. With this thought in mind, he got into the elevator to go downstairs.
The lights in the office building were all out, and it was pitch black. Gu Jiahe walked out of the lobby and looked up, only to find a familiar car parked at the entrance.
A gray Lexus.
Gu Jiahe walked to the side of the car and lightly tapped on the window, but there was no response from inside. He leaned in to take a look and found Li Zhao actually asleep on the steering wheel.
Gu Jiahe reached out and knocked on the glass heavily twice, and Li Zhao finally woke up groggily.
He reached out to lower the car window, and the cold wind rushed into the car, fully awakening him.
Gu Jiahe leaned against the door frame, “It’s not safe to sleep with the windows closed in the car, you know?”
Li Zhao rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, “You’re off work.”
Gu Jiahe thought to himself that he was talking nonsense when he was half-asleep.
“Why did you suddenly come over?”
Li Zhao cleared his throat, “I came to check the evidence of my client.”
“What evidence?” Gu Jiahe was puzzled.
“The recording? Have you found it?” Li Zhao opened the car door and got out.
It was only then that Gu Jiahe remembered that he had charged the old phone a few days ago and indeed found the recording, but he hadn’t had time to transfer it out of the phone.
“Just wait, I’ll go up and get it.”
Gu Jiahe ran upstairs in three steps and returned downstairs in two. By the time he got back to the ground floor, Li Zhao had already parked the car in a roadside parking spot and waved lightly at him.
A few days ago, Gu Jiahe had struggled to borrow a charger similar to the one from his colleague. However, this old phone’s touch wasn’t very responsive. It took two days to fully charge the battery.
“Get in.” Li Zhao opened the passenger door.
Gu Jiahe nodded and got in.
Li Zhao took out a laptop from the back seat and turned it on, “Copy the audio files to the computer for backup.”
Gu Jiahe turned on the phone, and the ancient startup animation appeared.
After it was turned on, there was a four-digit unlock password.
Li Zhao noticed it and turned his head to look at it casually.
Gu Jiahe entered the four-digit password, and the phone unlocked with a sound.
“0708?” he asked seemingly casually.
“Yeah.” Gu Jiahe nodded.
“What does it mean?”
“My mom’s birthday. It turns out this phone belonged to her.”
“Ah, I see…”
“What’s wrong?” Gu Jiahe noticed he seemed to be very concerned about this password.
“Nothing.” Li Zhao shook his head, pointing to the phone screen, “Find the recording.”
The buttons on the old phone were not very responsive, and the recording icon was next to the messaging icon. Gu Jiahe pressed it twice but opened the messaging inbox instead.
The first message that popped up had a date of August 26, 2008, next to it.
The content of the message was very simple, only two words: “Look back.”
Li Zhao also saw that message, and both of them fell silent for a moment.
Gu Jiahe thought for a moment. This message should have been sent by Li Zhao when he was about to board the high-speed train to North City. After receiving this message, he turned his head and saw Li Zhao waving at him from the other side of the platform.
“Why did you apply for a school in North City at that time?” Gu Jiahe hadn’t asked him about this for so many years. Clearly, at that time, he had said that his first choice was Ningcheng University, but he suddenly ended up in North City.
Li Zhao chuckled and then said, “North City’s political and legal system is not bad.”
Five seconds later, the phone screen finally returned to the recording folder.
There were two audio files on the page.
“Which one is the recording from that day?”
The audio files were named using the system’s default names, without any labeling. Gu Jiahe couldn’t recall which one it was for a moment.
“Let’s open them both and listen,” Li Zhao cracked his knuckles, then opened the first audio file to play.
Unexpectedly, the first one was indeed the recording from that day.
Although the sound was somewhat noisy, all the key points were captured. However, Li Zhao kept frowning until midway through when a female voice seemed to come from the side and called out “Gu Jianmin.” The male voice on the recording responded.
Li Zhao’s brow finally relaxed, “It’s usable.”
Gu Jiahe handed the accompanying data cable to Li Zhao. Li Zhao opened the folder, copied the audio files into the computer.
“What’s this recording about?” Li Zhao clicked on the second file below with the mouse.
Gu Jiahe was initially contemplating, then suddenly realized something, and quickly said, “Nothing, let’s not listen to that one.”
“Oh?” Li Zhao raised an eyebrow.
He hadn’t said anything, but now Li Zhao suddenly became interested in hearing it.
Before Gu Jiahe could stop him, Li Zhao had already clicked on the audio.
Soon, the sharp, piercing sound came out from the laptop’s speakers.
Three seconds later, the waveform of the audio suddenly spiked. Bang— it sounded like a soccer ball hitting the ground. Then came a series of footsteps.
Immediately after, a familiar voice came through, “Gu Jiahe—”
A young, clear voice. Li Zhao recognized it immediately.
And for the next ten seconds—
The audio was filled with the sound of the person breathing heavily after exercising, the rhythmic rise and fall of breath, making his voice somewhat alluring.
In the small compartment, Li Zhao’s voice from ten years ago echoed between the two.
Gu Jiahe stiffened all over, not daring to move. After a while, he remembered to snatch the mouse from Li Zhao and pressed the pause button.
Li Zhao turned to look at him, “Gu Jiahe, I didn’t expect you to be so kinky back then.”