Gu Jinyan · Chat

<scenario>7:00 PM. "Yu Yin Ge," a private club in Haicheng. In a Zen tea room on the top floor, the air is filled with a faint scent of agarwood and the dry, bitter aroma of premium aged tea.</scenario> <scenario>On the antique display shelves against the wall sit several priceless antique mechanical mantel clocks. The faint clicking of the interlocking gears is magnified several times in the quiet space, completely shutting out the hustle and bustle of the bustling city outside.</scenario> <scenario>This near-deadly, precise order is the domain Gu Jinyan is most accustomed to.</scenario> <narration>Gu Jinyan pushed open the heavy red sandalwood door exactly three minutes before the appointed time. For him, his thirty-five-year-old life had reached a stage where a "variable" needed to be introduced to maintain long-term stability.</narration> <narration>The tentative proposals of the family elders seemed to him nothing more than a sociological cost-benefit analysis. Since he needed a decent, legal spouse to ward off future trouble, sitting here according to the elders' wishes was the most efficient investment decision he could make.</narration> <narration>Even though Gu Jinyan's imposing 195cm frame was neatly wrapped in a charcoal-black, three-piece custom suit, the moment he entered the tea room, the originally spacious area instantly felt cramped.</narration> <narration>He showed no resistance or expectation toward the ancient ritual of a "blind date." On his face, which was as sharply defined as a marble sculpture, there was only his usual composure and unquestionable authority.</narration> <narration>In his eyes, this meeting was more like an on-site audit of "life assets," where every detail had to conform to his demands for order.</narration> <action>Gu Jinyan sat down in the seat opposite 你 with complete naturalness, his movements clean and free of any redundant social pleasantries.</narration> <narration>His broad shoulders cast a heavy shadow under the light, covering half of the tea table.</narration> <narration>Gu Jinyan was in no hurry to start communicating. Instead, he reached out with his long, slender, well-defined hands and steadily removed the cold, wire-rimmed gold glasses from the bridge of his nose.</narration> <narration>He slowly and carefully wiped the lenses with a velvet cloth. Once his eyes were no longer shielded by the lenses, they revealed a focus akin to a bottomless pool.</narration> <narration>He was observing. With a gaze capable of dissecting the structure of a precision watch movement, he quietly swept over every micro-expression of 你, attempting to evaluate whether the "component" before him could perfectly mesh into the tight gears of his life.</action> <message>"(Gu Jinyan nodded slightly in greeting. He took out a custom high-precision writing tablet from the inner pocket of his suit. His fingertips slid quickly across the screen, the handwriting sharp and highly structured, just like the man himself:)</message> <message>('Gu Jinyan. Sorry to keep you waiting. Since this marriage is a proposal led by our elders for both of us, I hope to start in the most honest and efficient way.')</message> <message>('You can put forward your conditions. As long as they don't disrupt my existing life order, I can satisfy most of them.')"</message> <narration>His movements revealed an extreme, almost arrogant candor.</narration> <narration>For a man like him, at the pinnacle of power and congenitally mute, time was the only luxury.</narration> <narration>Since no one in his family could truly force him, Gu Jinyan's presence here in itself represented a form of "permission"—he did not expect a romantic encounter filled with hormonal impulses. In his life's dictionary, such things belonged to the category of "high-risk, low-yield" toxic assets.</narration> <narration>He preferred to look for a partner who could respect silence and boundaries just as he did.</narration> <narration>At this moment, the mantel clocks in the room struck the hour. The dull chiming of the three clocks echoed simultaneously in the narrow room, causing the surface of the tea in the cups to ripple with tiny rings.</narration> <narration>Gu Jinyan's back was perfectly straight, and the top button of his shirt collar was fastened tightly, confining all his desires, emotions, and whatever remnant of humanity he had beneath the shell of an elite.</narration> <narration>He acted like the most patient observer, waiting for the other party to release a signal that would make him decide to "close the deal."</narration> <action>Gu Jinyan put his glasses back on, the cold layer of glass once again filtering out any personal connection with his surroundings. His long fingers lightly tapped the table, the frequency perfectly matching the ticking of the second hand on the Breguet clock on the wall.</action> <action>Then, he turned the writing tablet toward 你, picked up the hot tea just brewed by the waiter, and took a sip.</action> <action>The steam fogged his lenses, making his expression look somewhat blurry at that moment. Only his calm, deep-sea-like heavy aura remained firmly locked onto the person opposite him.</action> <message>"(The text on the tablet updated again:)</message> <message>('What I need is a stable relationship, and a shield that can exist as "Mrs. Gu" in social settings.)</message> </message>('Of course, I also have a small personal request—I do not like my schedule to be disrupted, and I am not good at handling overly intense emotional communication.')"</message> <narration>In this "confession," which was almost equivalent to a business contract, Gu Jinyan did not show even a shred of the warmth that a marriage should have.</narration> <narration>He was thirty-five years old, and the sleeping beast inside him had long since learned to coexist with social etiquette through prolonged self-discipline.</narration> <narration>What Gu Jinyan valued in 你 was the quality of being relatively well-behaved for now—a balance that allowed him to see right through them, yet was not so boring as to repel him.</narration> <narration>If this was a transaction, the bargaining chips he offered at this moment were already a peak that ordinary people could not reach in several lifetimes.</narration> <narration>Gu Jinyan did not think his opening statement was cold. On the contrary, he believed it was the most responsible form of respect for both parties.</narration> <narration>He did not need love. He only needed an exquisite "ornament" that could resonate with his silence, guarding the last bit of peace for him in this noisy world.</narration> <narration>However, when his gaze inadvertently landed on 你's fingertips, a flash of instinctive urge for "aggression," undetected even by himself, quickly swept through the dark pupils hidden behind his lenses.</narration> <narration>He began to wonder if this seemingly submissive "ornament," if dragged by him into that quiet old western-style house, could really remain this well-behaved during those endless winter nights.</narration> <action>Gu Jinyan set down his teacup, the porcelain colliding with the solid wood table with a soft clink.</action> <action>He did not force 你 to give an immediate answer. Instead, he took a dark green cardholder from his coat pocket and slid out two heavy cards.</action> <action>One was his personal business card, and the other was a lifetime black gold card for this club.</action> <action>Gu Jinyan held the cards between his index and middle fingers and slowly pushed them toward 你. In the process, his slightly calloused fingertips made a faint, heart-trembling sound against the tabletop. That posture exuded a suffocating desire for dominance beneath its elegance.</action> <message>"(He wrote the final sentence on the screen:)</message> <message>('No need to answer now. You can use this card to try and get in touch with my social circle, or buy anything you think will make you feel balanced in this relationship.')</message> <message>('Once you've made up your mind, put the card away before the minute hand on that watch points to the next hour.')"</message> <narration>The sound of the gears in the tea room continued. This extreme quietness made one's breathing noticeably distinct.</narration> <narration>Gu Jinyan did not look for topics like a typical blind date partner. He just sat there quietly, like a marble statue guarding the end of time.</narration> <narration>He had already completed his part—stating the conditions, showing sincerity (in the Gu family's way), and then giving the other party a choice. His large, powerful hands were crossed and rested on his lap, with an expensive mechanical watch peeking out from his shirt cuff.</narration> <narration>He did not worry about rejection, because the person who could reject Gu Jinyan had not yet been born in this world—or rather, someone who could reject this "stability" would be the greatest variable he had never encountered in his life.</narration> <narration>In this silent confrontation, he felt a hint of what could be called "amusement" for the first time. This feeling, surprisingly, gave him a faint illusion of accelerated blood flow, even more so than calibrating a complex 19th-century watch dial.</narration <choice_group> <choice id="1">Take the card first but don't reply</choice> <choice id="2">Reply saying okay</choice> <choice id="3">Directly rub his calf with your toe under the table</choice> </choice_group>