Chapter 62: A Tie Clip That Still Hasn't Been Dealt with to This Day
On the desk. On the walls. On the bookshelves. Across the floor.
Practice papers everywhere.
Something in the darkness was relentlessly chasing him from behind, jaws wide open, fangs bared. As he ran, Qiao Nan was busy considering how best to kill it when a sharp clicking sound suddenly rang out.
He jerked awake. Straightening from where he had fallen asleep face-down on the desk, his spine crackled loudly in protest. Still dazed, he looked around and realized the sound had come from a ballpoint pen that had fallen off the desk.
The biology workbook beneath his face was only one-third completed. Looking around, he saw dense text covering nearly every visible surface. The dim eye-protection lamp in the Qiao family study illuminated the hellscape before him, and the sight made the newly awakened Qiao Nan feel suffocated.
No. I can't keep doing this.
But I still haven't solved that question from earlier...
No, no! If I keep grinding like this, I'm definitely going to die!
The cellular location of the first step in the urea cycle is...
A message notification suddenly chimed beside him. After pausing for a few seconds, he started digging through the mountain of clutter on his desk. Notes. Biology textbooks. The required reference materials he'd stayed up all night studying. A fresh batch of past exam papers that the old biology teacher had compiled and delivered recently… Most of them already showed signs of heavy use. Since the student doing all this work was utterly hopeless at tidying up, completed assignments simply ended up piled together in chaotic heaps. After considerable effort, Qiao Nan finally fished his phone out from beneath an open book. He glanced at the screen.
[Customer Service, "We'll Finish You Off While You're Sick," Three-Crown Taobao Store Guaranteed to Improve Biology Scores in One Week]: Dear customer, the "Super VIP Gold-Level High School Biology Study Materials Collection" worth 8,999 yuan that you purchased from our store has been shipped. Tracking number XXXXX. Please watch for delivery~
Qiao Nan: "........................"
Silently, he deleted the message. After sitting in a daze for a while, he finally lowered his gaze to the workbook on his desk—still two-thirds unfinished—and bent down in resignation to pick up his pen.
Just then, the study door opened. Qiao Yuanshan appeared in the doorway. His eyes swept over the study's apocalyptic scenery, and a trace of satisfaction appeared in them.
"Nannan. It's three o'clock. Get ready and clean yourself up."
Then, seeing the obvious confusion on Qiao Nan's face, he added: "You forgot? It's your grandfather's birthday banquet today. Your uncle... Shi Jiajun said he'd come pick us up around three-thirty. Your brother's already gone to change clothes."
Qiao Nan: "..."
Holy shit!!
Finally, he didn't have to do these damn worksheets anymore! Granted, attending Grandpa's birthday meant running into Shi Jiajun and his crowd, which was pretty awful in its own right. But it was still the best news he'd heard all day.
Without the slightest guilt, he shoved the stack of workbooks aside. "Got it!"
The moment father and son stepped out of the study, they met a sharp, piercing gaze.
Qiao Nan's eyelid twitched under the stare that seemed determined to carve a piece off him. "...Brother?"
Qiao Rui ignored him. He simply stared at him for a moment before turning around and silently returning to his room.
His retreating figure radiated a chilling aura.
Qiao Nan: "..."
His older brother had been acting weird lately. Not that he'd ever been normal, but the nature of the weirdness had completely changed. Before, Qiao Rui's strangeness came from being cold and taciturn. Recently, however, he'd developed a hobby of "sudden appearances." Like a ghost. He would materialize behind you out of nowhere, stare at you with a look that clearly said "Have you forgotten something?", then leave without saying a word after thoroughly establishing his presence. Qiao Nan had no idea what was going through his mind.
The whole thing had become so unnerving that for the past several nights he'd been repeatedly checking the locks before bed. It was mentally exhausting.
Speechless, he returned to his room. Meanwhile, Qiao Yuanshan remained where he was and turned toward his wife, who had just appeared at the staircase. "Xiao Luo, has Ruirui been in a bad mood lately?"
"Hm? Has he?" Luo Meisheng looked surprised. She stepped forward to straighten her husband's jacket and thought for a moment. "I think you're overthinking it. I haven't seen the two brothers fighting."
Then she added thoughtfully: "Although... maybe we should buy them something soon if we get the chance. Nannan's fine. Students don't really need to worry much about appearances. But Ruirui is constantly attending meetings and seeing clients. And he keeps wearing that tie clip. It doesn't really look appropriate anymore."
Qiao Yuanshan blinked. A tie clip? What tie clip?
Unlike his observant wife, the middle-aged man privately thought women were just overly picky about clothing and accessories. But when the two sons came downstairs ready to leave, he took a closer look. And realized she might actually have a point. Qiao Rui was dressed impeccably. A perfectly tailored high-end suit. Custom-made leather shoes. An expensive mechanical watch on his wrist. Low-key yet luxurious sapphire cufflinks at his sleeves. Every detail was flawless. Except for the tie clip attached to his silk tie.
It looked completely out of place. It wasn't that the tie clip was ugly. The design was actually decent. It might even have been quite stylish once. But its current condition was genuinely tragic. The silver metal had oxidized, revealing mottled brass-colored patches underneath. The edges, perhaps from years of handling, had even turned black in places. The decorative pattern that had once filled the surface was now almost entirely unrecognizable. Stones were missing from the left. Missing from the right. So many were gone that the surface resembled the actual moon. The few rhinestones that had survived clung on stubbornly. Their sparkle had long faded. They looked like they were desperately struggling not to fall out. Honestly, the sight was almost pitiful.
Qiao Yuanshan was stunned. He had absolutely no idea that this thing had originally come from his younger son's own handiwork. "Rui Rui," he asked in disbelief, "what jewelry brand made that tie clip you're wearing? The quality is terrible!"
Qiao Rui: “……”
He remembered the last time he had hinted that his assistant should take the tie clip to the brand and make a fuss over it. The assistant had pulled up Taobao on his phone, then hesitated for a long moment before showing him the screen.
He fell silent for a moment before turning his head toward his younger brother, who was coming down the stairs while doing nothing but fiddling with his phone. He had already directly asked for what he wanted, and had dropped hints about it countless times. Yet so many days had passed, and there was still no sign that his brother had any intention of giving him another gift.
After thinking it over, he walked toward him. When he got closer, he discovered that his brother was frantically tapping away at his phone, which was playing some kind of livestream program he couldn't identify. Amid the fairly pleasant singing coming from the phone's speaker and the screams of the audience, he asked in a low voice, “What are you doing?”
Qiao Nan casually looked up at him. His gaze didn't linger at all on Qiao Rui's puffed-out chest before quickly returning to the phone screen. “Voting.”
Qiao Rui leaned over for a look. On the phone screen, a gray-haired young man who looked pretty good—at least at first glance—was wandering around the stage with a guitar in his arms. Qiao Nan rapidly tapped the voting button, and Qiao Rui watched the number of votes on the right keep climbing. He had already spent several thousand yuan on votes, at the very least.
Qiao Rui pursed his lips, his face stiff with wounded indignation. “QAQ”
Just as Shi Jiajun pushed open the Qiao family's front door and stepped one foot inside, he was hit squarely in the face by an icy atmosphere before he had even managed to get his footing.
The honest, good-natured smile on his face nearly fell apart. After a moment of bewilderment, he finally noticed the distinctly unfriendly atmosphere between his two nephews in the Qiao family's living room.
His heart gave a little jolt. He immediately shifted his gaze away, while beneath his unchanged expression, excitement was practically surging up into his throat.
The past few days had been one setback after another, and the Qiao family's increasingly unpredictable attitude toward the Shi family had left him extremely uneasy. Since he had always had well-connected sources, he had been quietly asking around everywhere. By sheer coincidence, he had actually managed to hear some rumors.
Several executives in the company were absolutely convinced that the relationship between the Qiao brothers had improved. Their evidence? Not long ago, Qiao Rui had been showing off everywhere a tie clip that Qiao Nan had given him—one he treasured so much that he wouldn't even let anyone touch it.
Shi Jiajun had been deeply troubled by those seemingly well-founded speculations. At one point, he had even wondered whether he should make an early escape with the group's market division, which had been managed so tightly and securely over all these years.
But now that he was seeing this scene with his own eyes, it seemed he really had been worrying too much.
The children had grown up, after all. They had begun to learn how to act obedient in front of their father in order to get things from him, how to pretend to be loving brothers in front of outsiders, and then, once they were away from everyone's eyes and back home, drop the act and reveal their true colors.
He had almost been fooled himself, despite all his years of experience in the business world.
A gift?
What a joke.
Those idiots at the group should have thought about it. How much could a mere tie clip possibly be worth? A few thousand? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
And what was Qiao Rui's net worth? He was the kind of person whose watches casually cost seven figures. How could he possibly care about something as trivial and insignificant in value as that?
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