How To Deal With A Tsundere Gong

Chapter 4 - Late Phone Call

As soon as Xu Bai Chuan left the airport, he booked a hotel room. Then he started looking for information on renting apartments the moment he sat down in the taxi. He had just left a hotel that he had been staying in for seven years and didn’t want to remain as a short-term tourist. Moreover, his savings right now are not enough for him to stay in a hotel for a long period.

Being together with Tang Jin for seven years, he hadn’t accumulated huge personal wealth as others had believed. After all, his entire income only came from being Tang Jin’s personal assistant, as well as being a serialized author of an online novel he had done for leisure.

But there was once an opportunity for him to become rich —

At first, Tang Jin believed that Xu Bai Chuan sought money so he gave him multiple cards. He assumed that Xu Bai Chuan would piss off to a distant place with those cards and stop being an eyesore to him. In the end, Xu Bai Chuan did readily accept the cards. However, not only did he not piss off, he became a personal assistant under the incitement of Tang Jin’s parents. At that time, Tang Jin was disgusted to the point that he wouldn’t even touch anything that passed through Xu Bai Chuan’s hands, let alone have a proper conversation with him. Even if he had spent until the card was cleared, Tang Jin wouldn’t have bothered retrieving the card.

However, nobody knew that Xu Bai Chuan had set up a separate card and used it for all personal expenses. He would only reluctantly swipe those other cards for Tang Jin’s expenses.

It’s not like he had never thought of using his own money on Tang Jin, but it was a matter of comparing their economic strength. The cost of Tang Jin’s tie would amount to a month of Xu Bai Chuan’s pay. Hence he joyfully admitted defeat. It’s not like it was implausible for him to feel self-fulfillment from personally buying gifts. The problem was that he had no power whatsoever to lower Tang Jin’s level of expenditure.

There is an old saying that’s very befitting: “It is easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but difficult to go from extravagance to frugality.” Just like when one becomes accustomed to the wasteful lifestyle of having 20 GB of data over three months on their mobile phone, they would find it difficult to revert to their original phone plan. Not to mention the basic necessities in life, people who had lived a life of luxury from childhood would most likely find it unbearable to suddenly wear tattered clothing. Besides Tang Jin already loathes him so he wouldn’t possibly wrong himself even more.

In Xu Bai Chuan’s case, buying his partner something that is of lower quality than his usual standards and having his partner be moved and find a use of it, is something that only occurs in novels.

Regardless, Tang Jin was never concerned about how much Xu Bai Chuan spent nor what he spent it on. In short, he had firmly believed that Xu Bai Chuan was greedy for money. Though it couldn’t be helped, for the card was in Xu Bai Chuan’s hands and he truly did swipe it.  If questioned about his spendings, he wouldn’t deny it. In any case, having more ‘abilities’ ¹ was no burden.
[T/N: 1 Ability to spend more money]

Once he arrived at the hotel, he uploaded the concluding words of the novel online before immediately clearing the hard disk, erasing all traces of Tang Jin.

In fact there was nothing difficult about this. Apart from feeling suffocated and the need to vent, everything was fine as long he endures the ache. Who in this world is unable to leave someone?

Xu Bai Chuan found a 70 square meters single apartment on YiShuiEr’s rent site. He was somewhat pleased with himself: Fortunately, he had endured being disheartened countless times in the past years and now had greater toleration for pain. Pain is also existential in life.

The next day when Xu Bai Chuan went to look at the apartment, he finalized the one year contract on the spot. He also sent back all the pre-existing furniture.

As a person who attaches great importance to a sense of ritual, he doesn’t want a trace of any other person at the start of his new life.

After informing the real estate agent of the remodeling, he designed the layout and personally selected the furniture. He even did some handiwork, one of them being the painting of a heart. On the left of the heart was a ‘Tang’ character and the right had a ‘Song’ character. He originally wanted to draw cartoon figures but he simply didn’t have the skills for it.

Xu Bai Chuan thought: ‘I don’t have anything of value to compensate you guys with. This gift is of little value but it expresses regret in my heart. It’s not the gift that counts, but the thought behind it!’

There was a sour feeling in his heart so he vexedly released a sigh: ‘You shouldn’t be like this. Although good medicine tastes bitter, you ought to drink it. Applying medicine to wounds do hurt, but it’ll only heal after getting through the pain. You ought to apply it!

On the third day of staying in H city, he was applying color to an artwork in his crafting workshop while pondering over whether he would be invited to Tang Jin and Song Yi Yu’s wedding in the future. It was at this moment that his phone rang.

As his hand was dyed and he couldn’t grab hold of his phone, he turned his head over to look at the unsaved number on his phone. This number is one that he would never forget. Over seven years, there were numerous times when he would anticipate a call from this number but his hopes were rarely ever met.

It was Tang Jin.