One Glance, Ten Thousand Years

Professor Ji Xiunian of Ning University’s College of Art is gentle and refined, her grace like an orchid’s. Every one of her classes is packed to overflowing, students crowding just to watch.

A slender waist, a willowy figure—

—this isn’t attending class; it’s lining up to feast their eyes, honestly.

Until a tall, coldly beautiful woman leaned against the windowsill and sent her assistant to throw money at the problem: no one was to watch her dance.

The overcrowded dance studio emptied out soon after.

Rumor had it that Professor Ji had recently been marked by some wealthy figure, coveted endlessly.

Zhou Lang smiled faintly at the gossip, and told her closest friend over drinks: “She abandoned me sixteen years ago. It’s not as if I’m heartless—how could I still love her? I only want to make her suffer, watch her cry, watch her regret it. Only then will the score be settled.”

Later, she discovered… that some kinds of cruelty are addictive.

—

At first, Zhou Lang offered to fund a new building for Ning University, her reasons impeccably noble: giving back to her alma mater, polishing the company’s public image.

Then her colleagues noticed this Honorary Vice Dean making Ji Xiunian’s life difficult at every turn—waylaying her in corridors, forbidding students from attending Professor Ji’s dance classes, never once sparing her dignity in public.

Some speculated the two of them must share a deep and bitter hatred.

Until one day, everyone saw the refined, delicate Professor Ji cornered against a wall, as the aloof, untouchable Dean Zhou said in a voice drained of warmth: “Tell me. Whose child is it?”

“For your sake I set the bar of my life so high that every joy this world could offer became, to me, nothing but loss.”

—André Gide, 《Strait is the Gate》