Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Confession on the Ferry Boat II (2/2)

Xiao Yu knew that his assessment was not objective. His opinion not only had scorns as a peer, but also because Xiao Yu treated Lin Zhou as his opponent. When dealing with an enemy, it was normal to be judgmental.

…… however, the drawing that Xiao Yu considered as ridiculous had instead won the client’s favor.

It was placed right in the center and was enlarged a few times more than the other drawings, proudly inviting people to look at it.

SI’s design director silently gave Lin Zhou a thumbs-up as the few designers muttered, “Senior Lin indeed.” That made Lin Zhou unable to hide the joy on his face, as he started to think of how he should relay his message later so that it would seem like he was genuinely surprised.

Xiao Yu’s eyes captured all that. At this moment, he finally felt disgusted by the joy on Lin Zhou’s face.

A stolen design, a stolen victory. Yet it made him joyous from the bottom of his heart.

Lin Zhou must be thinking that his victory was because of his alterations. Not only did he preserve the charm that Xiao Yu’s original work was trying to express, but it also satisfied the current design trends.

However, Xiao Yu understood at this moment that it was not the case.

Lin Zhou’s victory was purely accidental. Because of how he did not dare to plagiarize every detail of Xiao Yu’s design, Lin Zhou had to make some drastic changes. He knew that if he had only made changes on the finer details, it would be very easy for people to find out about it. Hence, in order to fool everyone, he purposely added that white flower as a decoration. In his design introduction, he specially mentioned that the white flower was removable. Which was to say, the decoration was only there so that his design was not as identical to Xiao Yu’s design.

Indeed, Lin Zhou had succeeded. No one raised any suspicions that this glamorous ring was made based on the same design as Xiao Yu’s hilarious-looking silver ring.

Yet, Lin Zhou probably did not expect that the detail that the elderly man had taken an interest in was in fact the white flower that served as a stopgap.

The reason why Lin Zhou did not add a heart or a water droplet as the decoration, but instead the white flower was because the ring that Xiao Yu had designed was engraved with flowers.

He did not understand why Xiao Yu did that, but that did not stop him from plagiarizing it. If there was a special meaning behind it, then at least he wouldn’t be missing that detail –

And so he added that rose with a single petal.

Xiao Yu sighed.

The engravings on the ring did have a special meaning to it. But it was not what everyone had assumed – it had a profound meaning.

When designing an item, they mostly talk about inspiration. Moreover, inspiration was more unreasonable than a random chance of sight.

Back then, Mr. Ji mentioned that he was just an adopted son of the elderly man, and that he had not met that lady in the story before. That was why Mr. Ji could not provide any useful information except for some collectibles and photographs that the elderly man had kept since a long time ago, to allow the designers to find inspiration from it.

Among those photographs, there was a picture of a young couple. The two of them had their hands linked above their heads as they stood below that gigantic clock tower. Their smiles were brighter than the sunshine, as the hour hand and minute hand of the clock tower aligned together, as if time had stopped for their love.

Most of the designers had drawn something out of this picture. Hence, half of the drawings submitted were the clock-series ring and the other half who had noticed the young lady’s jade bangle, chose to design their rings with colorless jadeite or Tian Yu².

However, Xiao Yu did not gain any inspiration from that picture. He felt that the picture did not represent anything. The couple in the picture was decently dressed, which made them seem like they were well-off. The time that the picture was taken was probably a few years before the couple had separated ways.

Those thoughts of his were deemed as illogical to others. But for certain people, they would become obstinate when they were inspired by these sudden thoughts and would ignore all objections, remaining unmoved.

Xiao Yu was such a person. Some may say that he was a fool, or that he was stubborn.

But back then, he thought: no one likes farewells, so why did the young man not accompany that young lady back to her hometown to visit her bedridden father?

Xiao Yu thought that the most logical reason was because at that time, the couple could not afford to buy a second ticket. The young lady who had left home for love was bound by necessity and unable take another step forward.

That would explain why the young couple had so little photographs taken together. Under the harsh circumstances in life, they did not even have much money left to indulge in extravagant pleasures, much less the money to hold a wedding.

In the end, the young lady had no choice but to visit her parents back home by herself – perhaps she was even thinking of asking for some financial help as well.

But this was not a fairytale-like romance story. It was the trivial livelihood of a young man who was left with no choice.

Very quickly, Xiao Yu found out that there was a large gambling house in that little town. He immediately noticed that everything was not a coincidence.

That gambling house had revealed the harsh cruelty behind this memory that was buried by time, which was hidden behind that rose-colored veil.

Back then, Xiao Yu was in fact very close to the truth. However, it was a pity that just when he was about to link all the clues together, Xiao Yu found out from Lin Zhou that SI had already secretly liaised with Mr. Ji. Feeling disappointed, Xiao Yu decided to head home.

That was why Xiao Yu’s final drawing was not complete. Or perhaps he would say, it was not all it had.

The reason why the ring was engraved with rose petals was because when Xiao Yu was on his return flight home, he saw from the ascending plane that there was a huge rose garden right in the middle of the town.

The fallen rose petals danced with the wind as if they were crying.