Chapter 47 After Li Xingzhou took the stethoscope...
After taking the stethoscope, Li Xingzhou came out of the room and passed a locked door. He looked at the lock on the doorknob, hesitated for a moment, and then unlocked it and went inside.
"Halfway, turn on the light." Li Xingzhou's hand was still on the doorknob, and less than a second later, the white light above his head instantly turned on.
The room was small, with only one window. Some leaves from the trees in the yard rustled gently by the window. Upon closer inspection, a standing piano could be seen in the corner of the room. It was different from the pianos on the market because its style was too rare. It was entirely beeswax-colored and looked quite old. Looking up slightly, a black and white painting hung on the wall, depicting the woman they had seen in the Vancouver plaza.
However, it's quite different from the one she used to study before. This one is much smaller, only about the size of two fingers, and the headphone cable is also very thin, almost like threading a needle.
Li Xingzhou unplugged his wired headphones. With nothing obstructing his view, the music suddenly started playing, and he looked up at the painting on the wall.
"It is a piano piece composed by the famous pianist Chopin in 1837, and it is also the piece that made Mingxin famous in the Chopin International Piano Competition."
As he listened to the familiar piano music from his memory, a rare look of bewilderment appeared in Li Xingzhou's eyes, and his usually sharp, almond-shaped eyes suddenly closed.
However, it was tightly closed.
Because the skin around his eyes was undulating slowly and irregularly, his hands, hanging at his sides, were clenched stiffly, and his whole body exuded a dark and gloomy aura.
This expression was very rare on his face; even when Huang Shiyu dumped him, Li Xingzhou had never shown such an expression.
It was a long-accumulated pain that lingered in him.
It was just hidden too well, and no one has been able to find it.
The piano music was still playing. He didn't know if it was because the Singularity mental health product was really working, but he felt that the dark space was no longer a monster to him. The piano music, which was full of gentleness, courage, peace and love, enveloped him. Gradually, the piano music blended into his nerve endings, or perhaps it took him back to the distant past.
Go back to his childhood.
It was a bright and sunny afternoon, and the room was bathed in sunlight, with no spot spared. Fortunately, it was winter, so it didn't feel like being roasted over a torch.
Four-year-old Li Xingzhou sat on the piano bench, his small body sitting upright with unusually good posture. His little hands, clenched into egg-sized shapes, rested on the piano keys, and his arms moved rhythmically across the black and white keys in time with the metronome.
A pointer snapped on Xiao Xingzhou's shoulder, and his hands stopped on the piano keys. Xiao Xingzhou turned around and saw a magnolia tree on the wall not far away, its beauty so stunning that it made others envious.
The tender pink blossoms, just emerging from the branches, still carry a touch of shy, poignant beauty. This flower proudly blooms in the world with its short lifespan, as dazzling as a fleeting shooting star.
The pointer under the magnolia tree moved again. Mingxin looked at him gently, her eyes full of encouragement. Faced with such subtle encouragement, Xiaoxingzhou felt ashamed, thinking that he was too clumsy. He was even more nervous and under more pressure. As a result, he played several wrong notes.
Mingxin tapped his arm with the pointer, "Remember to relax your shoulders, lower your upper arm, don't raise it."
Xiao Xingzhou listened, nodded slightly, and began to play again.
But it was clearly even worse than before.
Mingxin immediately noticed the problem and tapped Xiaoxingzhou's shoulder with his pointer, "Relax, go down one note at a time."
"Okay, make the sound a little more solid." Mingxin patiently guided from the side. "It's a little floaty, don't be afraid of it hurting."
"Lower your upper arm."
This time, the little boat stopped but did not immediately bounce up again. Instead, it curled its little hands up slightly. At this moment, its eyes did not look at people with a seductive gaze. It just quickly glanced at Ming Xin before swiftly landing again.
"I start to get nervous as soon as I start playing," Xiao Xingzhou said softly, clearly lacking confidence.
Mingxin said gently, "It's okay, we'll take it one note at a time and get a feel for it first."
With Mingxin's gentle encouragement, Xiaoxingzhou finally finished playing a piano piece, albeit haltingly. Just as he was about to turn around and grab Mingxin's arm, slowly saying that he would play a piano piece properly starting tomorrow, he turned around and his eyes closed first. The sunlight outside the window was shining with countless golden rays, so bright that it was hard to open one's eyes. After the light passed, he opened his eyes and saw a few blurry images.
Li Xingzhou's clenched hands suddenly relaxed the moment he opened his eyes. He looked up at the painting on the wall. Ming Xin in the painting was still so elegant and beautiful, but he suddenly didn't want to look at it anymore.
As he turned to leave the room, he glanced at the clear photograph on the wall and thought to himself: "I brought someone with me today. Li Mansu doesn't like her, but I think you'll like her. She's a very nice person, especially kind, and like you, she often donates to charities. There's just one downside, though—she doesn't really like me..."
He tilted his cheek to the side, letting out a whisper that revealed the emotions he had been holding back for years: "But I really like her."
Unlike the heavy atmosphere on his side, downstairs was a peaceful and quiet scene.
"Your hearing is pretty good, you can even recognize people by their voices," Huang Shiyu teased her.
“I started learning to read music and play the piano when I was three years old, and I have been playing for more than 20 years now.” Li Ruixi tidied up the soil scattered on the ground and put it into a new vase. “I don’t have perfect pitch, I only have average relative pitch, but as long as I have heard a sound, that is the note, I will never forget it.”
"That's impressive." Huang Shiyu stood aside watching her tend to the flowers. When he saw her about to move the remaining potted plants to another spot, he quickly stepped forward and said, "Let me help you carry them. I have plenty of strength."
Perhaps realizing her earlier mistake, Li Ruixi didn't stand on ceremony with her. "Thank you. You came here just to have me treat that plum blossom?"
"Yes, I asked Li Xingzhou to ask you to help me heal that plum blossom." Huang Shiyu placed the potted plant in the designated spot, looked at the fragrant flowers, reached out and touched them, and spoke in a more serious tone than before, "It's very important to me, it has a very special meaning, can you understand?"
Huang Shiyu turned to look at her, wanting to know what she would say.
“I understand. Everything in this world is a matter of personal taste. Just like the flowers in this little villa, no matter how beautiful they are, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Li Ruixi smiled meaningfully. “Why bother asking who came? Don’t you think so?”
Huang Shiyu said thank you.
She felt that Lee Seo-hee was different from others, not in the way that blind people are different from sighted people, but in her mindset and her perspective on things.
She found this person special and interesting.
Seeing that she was pacing back and forth and seemed very busy, and realizing that he couldn't help her, Huang Shiyu thought for a moment and said, "Will my standing here be in your way? Maybe I should go outside."
"No, I'm used to people coming and going here every day."
Lee Seo-hee held the wave plates in her hand, bent down and carefully installed them on the potted plant, one by one. Only then did she look up at Hwang Si-woo. Although she couldn't see him, it didn't stop her from wanting to look at him.
"Actually, the report I heard was about you and Li Xingzhou. I heard it a long time ago, right? If I hadn't seen you here today, I wouldn't have remembered it."
Huang Shiyu hadn't expected her to bring this up again, and only paused for a second before quickly realizing, "That report was obviously a publicity stunt by the media to gain traffic; it was very fake."
She used a similar reason to gamble on someone again, only this time the target was Lee Seo-hee.
However, Li Ruixi didn't buy into her argument. "Huang Shiyu, do you know how I met Li Xingzhou?"
Huang Shiyu remained silent because she knew there was definitely a story behind this, and Li Ruixi was just about to speak when, in the next second, she actually got right into Li Ruixi's hands.
"It was in Shanghai in 2020, in a flower shop. My family had just gone out to deliver goods that day, and I was in the shop packaging bouquets for C University's 100th anniversary celebration. That's when he appeared in front of me."
Huang Shiyu looked at her, listened to her, and was unexpectedly drawn into that time along with the storyteller.
"Hello, I'll take all the baby's breath flowers in the store."
Lee Seo-hee was putting her last effort into wrapping the flowers piled on the ground when she heard such a heavy sentence. After all, she was almost overwhelmed with the bouquets she was holding. She looked in the direction of the voice and asked, "You want them all?"
"Yes, it's a gift."
Upon hearing this, Lee Seo-hee's eyes lit up instantly, and she smiled and said, "Your girlfriend is so lucky."
I will give you an address.
"Okay, I'll write it down. You go ahead."
"C University, just say it's a graduation season promotion by the flower shop, and they're giving away the flowers for free to graduating students."
Lee Seo-hee paused for a moment, then asked after a few seconds, "What about the greeting card?"
“Just write ‘Happy Graduation’ above…” He paused, then continued, “Never mind, let’s just write ‘May everything go smoothly’.”
Upon hearing this, Huang Shiyu seemed to be caught off guard and remembered something, something she had forgotten in the long river of her memory, but she didn't have the courage to recall it.
Lee Seo-hee suddenly said, "I've never liked anyone before, so I don't understand why people have such intense emotions, and why they're so sad. This is the first time I've ever experienced unrequited love in someone else's life."
Hwang Shi-woo, who was standing to the side, was stunned by what she heard, and Lee Seo-hee's next words made her even more terrified.
"And the reaction point is you."
Huang Shiyu's eyelashes trembled slightly: "Why do you say that?"
“I’m not very sensitive to sound,” Lee Seo-hee said, recounting what happened later. “I knew he was following me the whole time. I thought he was following me because he was afraid I would embezzle his money, and he wanted to see if I had actually delivered the flowers.” She shook her head. “But that wasn’t the case. When I delivered the last two bouquets of baby’s breath, I clearly heard him stop walking. He didn’t leave; he just quietly waited beside me.”
"Waiting?" At this moment, the depths of her memory seemed to be chopped and smashed with an axe, and this memory began to emerge. Her eyes flickered, as if she suddenly remembered the details of this memory. It seemed that she received a bouquet of baby's breath the year she graduated, with the words "May everything go smoothly" written on it. But didn't Li Xingzhou tell her to come to him if things didn't go her way in the future?
Would someone like that really wish her all the best?
After their reunion, she always believed that Li Xingzhou was waiting for her to beg him.
“Yes, it’s waiting,” Lee Seo-hee said calmly. “But I don’t know which of those two girls he’s waiting for. For a long time, you’ve lived in my imagination because I can’t see you. To be honest, over the years, I’ve really wanted to see you. After all, I’ve witnessed his unrequited love.”
"Don't you think he's kind of funny? Why make sending flowers so complicated? Why not just send them anonymously? I asked him about it later, and he said I'm very guarded and he wouldn't accept them."
At this point, Lee Seo-hee couldn't help but laugh.
She then added, "I think you are a really interesting person. For the past few years, I have been imagining what you are like until I heard the news report about you and Li Xingzhou on TV."
"So, this isn't the first time we've met."
"You're so sure Li Xingzhou likes me just because you read a news report?" Huang Shiyu said. "Didn't I say that was just a media tactic to get traffic?"
Lee Seo-hee shook her head: "For someone of his status, if he doesn't want to, who would dare to release gossip? It would probably be intercepted before it's even published."
"Did Li Xingzhou send you to tell me all this?" This was the only possibility she could think of, or rather, she was trying to comfort herself by thinking that it was all arranged by Li Xingzhou.
"No." Lee Seo-hee sensed the probing in her words and said tactfully, "Who would hurt their pride and expose their wounds to others, especially in front of someone they like? They would feel like they're losing face."
"That's because I'm being too sensitive." Huang Shiyu glanced at Li Ruixi, as if to confirm the credibility of her words.
Lee Seo-hee touched the plum tree branch that Hwang Si-woo had brought and said, "Plum blossoms are resilient and unafraid of the cold, which is somewhat like you."
“Let’s end our conversation here.” Her ears twitched. “I will send the plum blossom to your hotel after the treatment.”
“Okay, then…” Before Huang Shiyu could finish speaking, Li Xingzhou walked over with a stethoscope.
Li Xingzhou glanced at the two of them: "You two seem to be having a good chat."
"She knows the plum tree branch can be saved, so of course she's in a good mood." Li Ruixi took the stethoscope from Li Xingzhou. "Here you go."
Li Xingzhou said out of the blue, "The key is too low, raising it by an octave is just right."
Lee Seo-hee was stunned: "Huh? What?"
"The piano music you played sounds too melancholic." Li Xingzhou looked around the villa. "It's not just flowers, it makes people want to commit suicide."
“That makes sense,” Lee Seo-hee said.
Huang Shiyu also looked around in silence, but didn't hear any piano music that Li Xingzhou mentioned. Could it be that those thin tubes really were some kind of medium she was thinking of, just like the principle of headphone wires?
Before she could figure it out, Li Xingzhou made another move.
"Then we'll be going now. We look forward to your good news." Li Xingzhou gestured to her with his eyes, the meaning clear though he didn't speak, that it was time to leave.
"Wait a minute, take these. They are calming sachets that I made myself. The ingredients inside are all flowers from the villa. They are very effective in helping you sleep, but I hope you will never need them."
Looking at the two small gift boxes so close to him, Huang Shiyu didn't know whether to take them or not.
“This is very useful, take it.” Li Xingzhou gestured to her with his eyes again.
Huang Shiyu quickly accepted the gift, her tone quite sincere: "Thank you. I look forward to seeing the results of your treatment. I'm really counting on you."
Before she even stepped out the door, Huang Shiyu saw Li Xingzhou, who was walking in front of her, stop, so she stopped as well.
Li Xingzhou turned around: "It's still early, let's go eat."
She glanced at Li Xingzhou: "Hmm? Are you hungry?"
"I'm worried that your body can't handle it. There's a saying that goes, 'Health is the foundation of everything.'"
"I'm not hungry, go eat if you want." She had no appetite at all right now.
Li Xingzhou glanced down at the map; the nearest restaurant was still some distance away, but there was a convenience store nearby. He turned off his phone, then looked up with a cryptic smile. "Haven't you been owing me a meal all this time? What, you want to back out now?"
Huang Shiyu was about to explain, "No..." but then she remembered that there seemed to be only one person eating that meal, and that was her. She immediately gave up the idea of arguing and just thought for a moment, "No, it's not true."
She glanced at the convenience store Li Xingzhou mentioned, but didn't ask him anything like, "Do you really only want me to treat you to this and not anything else?" She just wanted to finish this quickly and didn't want to waste any time.
The two grabbed some things from the convenience store, but Li Xingzhou did all the grabbing. She didn't have much of an appetite, so she only took a small cake and a bottle of afternoon tea. When she was in a bad mood, she liked to eat something sweet. It's said that the stomach is an emotional organ, and eating sweets can help the brain produce a lot of dopamine, which makes people feel happy.
Huang Shiyu opened WeChat to pay, but Li Xingzhou had the clerk scan the code so quickly that she didn't even have time to react.
"This meal is on me." Li Xingzhou reached out and took the bag from the cashier.
Huang Shiyu held her phone, staring straight at him. "Didn't we agree that I would treat you?"
As if considering a possibility, she frowned slightly, "You're not going to accumulate interest for me again, are you? I don't want to get involved in something like compound interest that's a losing proposition."
"You know me best; I don't do things that don't lose money." Li Xingzhou smiled.
Huang Shiyu sighed inwardly: "Speak, what do you want me to do this time?"
The two walked to the dining area and sat down.
Li Xingzhou took everything out of the bag and put it on the table. He opened a bottle of water and also opened Huang Shiyu's bottle of milk tea, handed it to her, and then said, "I want to ask you about someone."
Huang Shiyu glanced at him, took the milk tea he offered, and said sarcastically, "Did the sun rise in the west today? I find that so strange."
“You heard me right.” Li Xingzhou held the water but didn’t drink it, looking at her. “I just wanted to ask President Huang about someone.”
"Mr. Li, you dare to say it, but I dare not listen." Huang Shiyu looked at the milk tea in his hand. "You have such a wide network of connections, and you are such a remarkable person. I don't quite understand it."
Seemingly helpless, Li Xingzhou took out his phone, tapped on it, and then handed it to her, saying, "I'm the kind of person who always says what I think. I really need Mr. Huang to help me find out about this person."
Huang Shiyu lowered his eyes, looking at the portrait of Qixing's CEO, and paused for a moment.
Huang Shiyu had heard rumors that foreign chip manufacturers were no longer willing to provide chips to Sunac, but this news had not yet been confirmed. However, after thinking about it, she believed that based on the person Li Xingzhou had asked her to inquire about, it was probably true.
“Zhang Jinheng?” Huang Shiyu asked.
Li Xingzhou put his phone away and replied, "Yes."
Although she had heard that this person had been developing 3nm chips in recent years in addition to doing contract manufacturing for other companies, she was not very optimistic. The yield rate was too low, which was worlds apart from that of the foreign chip company.
Moreover, she had heard from industry insiders that Zhang Jinheng had always been an OEM manufacturer. He stopped OEM manufacturing for a long time because the chip market was booming. After failing, he went back to his old business and has been doing it ever since. However, he still has his heart set on developing his own chips. Now he is developing his own chips while doing OEM manufacturing for other companies.
Although she didn't know what the boat was going to do, she felt it must be something extraordinary.
"I'll send it to you after I find out." After saying that, Huang Shiyu took a sip of milk tea. After a long while, he felt like he had lost out. "This deal is a bit of a loss. I feel like I have to take advantage of you a little more."
"Not full?" Li Xingzhou noticed she was only drinking milk tea and hadn't touched the cake, so he asked, "Want some more?"
"I want milk tea, coffee-flavored milk tea." After saying that, she picked up a small cake and started eating.
"Okay." Li Xingzhou replied, then got up and walked out.
As Huang Shiyu ate, she watched him walk towards the shelf area. She had just glanced around and realized that there was no coffee-flavored milk tea for sale there. She felt that she had agreed too quickly and seemed to have made a big mistake. She was determined to make up for it.
The essence of a successful businessman is nothing more than being despicable and vile.
Moreover, Li Xingzhou asked her to inquire about Zhang Jinheng. If she remembered correctly, Zhang Jinheng was a chip manufacturer, but his products were all related to mobile phones, cameras, and the like. Although she didn't know what Li Xingzhou was up to, she was sure it wasn't that simple.
So she took out her phone and asked Wang Ping to find out what Li Xingzhou was up to.
After she sent the message to Wang Ping, Li Xingzhou also returned.
She was far away just now, and with her severe astigmatism, she couldn't see clearly what the red-packaged box in his hand was. Now that Li Xingzhou sat down, she could see that he was holding a box of coffee liquid.
She watched as Li Xingzhou took the milk tea she had just finished drinking, which was still mostly empty, and poured coffee into it, instantly darkening the color of the milk tea by several shades.
Huang Shiyu pursed her lips, her speechless expression almost leaping out of her eyes, "That's a bit perfunctory."
"Try it, is this the coffee-flavored milk tea you wanted?" Li Xingzhou pushed the bottle of milk tea infused with coffee liquid in front of Huang Shiyu and looked at her as he spoke.
Huang Shiyu picked up the milk tea, shook it gently a few times, and wondered if it was drinkable.
"What's wrong with your hand?" Li Xingzhou asked, staring intently at her hand.
Huang Shiyu also looked down at his hand because of his words. There was a very small, light pink scratch on his hand. It wasn't serious at all. He must have accidentally scratched it when he was helping Li Ruixi tidy up the broken potted plants.
She truthfully replied, "Oh, it must have been a minor scratch. It's nothing serious; I'm pretty tough."
Even a piece of steel won't do.
Almost the instant Li Xingzhou finished speaking, Huang Shiyu could only see his back in the second she looked up. Before she could even wonder what he was doing, she saw him return, though she could vaguely sense that his breathing was somewhat unsteady.
Li Xingzhou was about to hand the band-aids he had bought to Huang Shiyu so she could apply them herself, but then he remembered how Huang had applied medicine to herself the last time he saw her, so he decided against it.
The next second, without saying a word, he directly raised his hand and grabbed Huang Shiyu's injured hand. He glanced at her, and after the two looked at each other for a while, Li Xingzhou lowered his eyes and put a band-aid on her hand. His movements were very gentle. "Your hand is the hand that is used to point out the world. Can't you be a little more careful?"
Huang Shiyu's gaze fell on the hand with the bandage on it, and he couldn't help but feel that the skin there was a little hot, and his body also stiffened a little. After a long while, he said, "Don't say that, it's not like you."
"Can I ask you a question?" After finishing posting, Li Xingzhou returned to his seat. "Was that plum blossom branch a gift from Song Chaoye?"
Huang Shiyu looked up: "The weather is unusually nice today, and you actually asked such a spoilsport question."
Li Xingzhou said ambiguously, "I am indeed a very disappointing person."
Perhaps feeling that the other party had just helped her, Huang Shiyu explained, "No, these plum blossoms were planted by my grandparents. It's rare that they weren't crushed by the house, so I'm keeping them as a memento."
Li Xingzhou nodded, then asked, "Do you love him?"
Huang Shiyu frowned slightly at the question. She felt that Li Xingzhou's question was too inexplicable and too invading of her privacy, but she still said frankly, "It would be a lie to say that I have never loved you."
"Did you ever love me?"
For a moment, the air was still.
Huang Shiyu smiled and said, "Hold on, hold on. My love isn't worth much, unlike those high-quality stocks that everyone wants a piece of the pie with. You should focus on Shenzhen and Hong Kong stocks." Then, she changed the subject, "So, will there be a lot of stock price fluctuation in the future?"
Li Xingzhou smiled as well, seeing through Huang Shiyu's little scheme at a glance. He was trying to set a trap for him, but he remained unmoved. "Little money-grubber, are you feeling better now?"
Hearing his words, Huang Shiyu knew she couldn't get any information out of him, so she maintained a polite smile and said, "Thank you, and thank you for the milk tea. I feel like I'm fully recharged now."
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