The ultimate blue sea

Chapter 1-Su Qing the loser

It was late autumn. The temperature dropped and dropped.

Su Qing, wrapped up in a dark grey trench coat, his sharp chin drawn into the turned-up collar, walked quickly through the intersection.

He was a young man of twenty-three or -four, with a slender figure, pale skin, single eyelids, delicate features, and soft, shaggy hair that fell over his ears. It floated up when the wind blew, indistinctly revealing a pair of black stud earrings. Even with his head down, walking hurriedly along the street, his looks could make many girls turn their heads.

Among those who knew Su Qing, some said he was useless, some said he was a pretty boy, and some said he was a sissy. There wasn't a word of good in all these appraisals, but on the other hand, no one had ever said he wasn't good-looking. Probably Heaven was fair—it gave one thing and took away another. When Su Qing's turn came, he got nothing of virtue, intelligence, or strength—all the supernatural influence went into his face.

His biography was also very simple—he had graduated from a second-rate university without earning a penny of scholarship or doing a single thing worth bragging about. It was anyone's guess what he had learned, but at any rate he had muddled his way into a diploma. He hadn't looked for work. He currently lived on the support of his man—oh, yes, we forgot to say, Su Qing was gay, already out.

Because of this, his nouveau riche father had disowned him in a rage. Since then, Su Qing had gone from an idle rich kid to a pretty boy being kept by a man, living a contemptible life of sitting around doing nothing.

If Guo Julin hadn't suddenly called and invited him to dinner, Su Qing would probably have wasted away in his room.

Guo Julin was his man, a young genius. He already ran a foreign trade company and was quite successful with it. He was doing pretty well for himself. He had a house, a car, and no wife. The only blemish on his life was keeping a brainless vase of a lover like Su Qing.

This was a long story. By chance Guo Julin had run into Su Qing fooling around with a group of idle young men at a karaoke bar. He had been shaken on first sight, nearly blinded. His hormonal secretion levels had been instantly thrown off. So he had begun an operation to encircle and entrap Su Qing, putting all his arts into play, paring away his hard-earned gains at a discount, tossing out cash like tissue paper, exchanging a thousand pieces of gold for one smile.

And Su Qing? As a standard wastrel of the modern era, there was no form of dissipation he wouldn't stoop to, and he felt good about himself. Before, he had been open to men and women alike and hadn't turned down those who danced attendance on him. Suddenly having this noble lover with more money than sense running after him, every word out of his mouth like Romeo's, apparently unable to live without him, his whole world did the cha-cha-cha—Su Qing really did buy his act.

When he came out at home, Su Qing had an earth-shaking dust-up with his father. His father, Su Chengde, had dropped out of school in his teens and gone into business for decades. He was quite a respectable figure. Who knew what sin he had committed in a past life to father a miserable piece of work like this? He only wished he could simply pick up a vegetable knife and resolve this problem handed down by history.

Guo Julin had been really good then. He had dropped everything to keep him company. He had promised to support him in the future, to comfort him. He had even found time to take him out for drives. His TV melodrama male protagonist's moves hadn't declined one bit. If not for his age, Su Qing would simply have felt that Guo Julin was his real father. From then on, Su Qing had been dead set on Guo Julin.

There is a certain type of person who likes to play the field, who won't date with marriage as a presupposition, who often tosses out the phrase "just playing around." This might be because he is especially shameless, but it might also be because, subconsciously, he takes emotions very seriously. Even if he isn't willing to admit it himself, in his heart, a person who "isn't playing" is different.