Chapter 58 Chapter 58: Reality Under the Microscope
After finishing his chat with Nan Sheng, Ji Yehao habitually stared at the stock chart on his screen, lost in thought.
Huaxin Tech’s shares kept falling—hardly encouraging. Though he knew they would rebound eventually, the current trend revealed his poor timing.
He had invested heavily, hoping to profit, not suffer. The decline proved his inexperience.
“Sigh… I’ve got a long way to go,” he muttered.
He wasn’t a novel’s protagonist, able to dominate markets. The stock market was risky, and against giants his power was tiny.
Meanwhile, Su Yuan shut down her computer to sleep. Glancing at Yehao’s troubled face, she grew curious, waved a hand before him. “Hey, what’s on your mind?”
“Here, look.”
She leaned in, then laughed. “Still studying Huaxin Tech’s stock?”
The chart plunged endlessly. Last time she asked, he said he’d bought in, insisted it would rise next week. Yet it kept falling.
No wonder he looked so grim. She patted his head. “There, failure is success’s mama! It’ll be fine.”
Yehao stared. “It’s ‘failure is the mother of success.’ What strange phrasing.”
“Same thing. I’m comforting you!” She grinned. “Tell me—how many shares, how much loss? Let me advise you.” Her eyes gleamed mischievously, face full of schadenfreude.
Even clay idols have temper. Yehao stood abruptly, grabbed her arm, pressed her down, hand at her neck.
“Yehao, let me go!!” Su Yuan struggled, glaring.
“You laughed at me?” he asked coldly.
“No! I didn’t! Petty!”
“You call yourself generous, yet you laugh at my suffering. Some friend.” He ruffled her hair roughly, then released her.
Su Yuan fixed her hair, huffed. “Fine, I’ll forgive you since you’re upset.”
She lay down, but minutes later returned, restless. “Tell me—how much did you buy?”
Yehao sighed. “A thousand…”
Su Yuan nodded. “A thousand yuan on a falling stock. No wonder you’re upset.” She patted his shoulder smugly.
Satisfied, she went back to bed. But Yehao murmured, “Not a thousand yuan. A thousand lots…”
One lot was 100 shares. At 55 yuan each, that was 5.5 million yuan.
His entire fund. Already down 800,000, only 4.7 million left. No wonder he brooded.
…
The next day, the dorm basketball team won again, reaching the top twenty. A good achievement.
As usual, Su Yuan didn’t play—only Yehao, Gao Jun, and Yang Xiaowei.
The next round would wait until after National Day.
Toward evening, Su Yuan went to the biochem lab. At room 203, she saw Xia Linfei in a white coat, busy.
“Summer Jie, I’m here!” she called.
Approaching, she recalled yesterday’s prank advice to Gao Jun, stifled a laugh.
“Su Yuan, you came,” Linfei said, writing notes.
“Yes.” Su Yuan peeked at her neat, flowing script. “I heard Gao Jun wanted to confess yesterday. Did he come?”
Linfei’s body stiffened slightly. Su Yuan’s eyes lit up. “He did, didn’t he?”
She sat eagerly. “Tell me—how did he confess?”
Linfei glared. “Was it you who taught him?”
“What?” Su Yuan feigned confusion, but inside panicked. Did Gao Jun betray me?
She had told him to use dominance—half prank, half exaggeration. The result: Linfei furious, Gao Jun beaten.
Linfei suspected rightly. Gao Jun wasn’t bold enough to invent such moves. Yehao was too refined. Only Su Yuan had mischief.
But seeing Su Yuan’s puzzled look, and recalling Gao Jun’s fiery kiss that afternoon, Linfei blushed, dropped the matter.
“Forget it. You came for chromosomes, right? Wait here.”
She fetched a culture dish of cells grown for three days.
Adding colchicine, she explained: “It disrupts spindle fibers, freezing cells in metaphase. Chromosomes are clearest then.”
Su Yuan watched curiously.
Linfei added distilled water. “Low osmotic pressure swells cells, reducing overlap.”
“Now staining. Chromosomes are so named because they take up dye.”
She fixed cells with methanol and acetic acid, stained with carmine. The process was long.
“Alright, ready to observe.”
She handed Su Yuan the slide.
Su Yuan placed it under the microscope, adjusted to oil immersion, searched intently…
Minutes passed. She sighed, lifting her eyes.
Among forty‑six chromosomes, she found no trace of a Y. Only X, V, J shapes.
“Does this mean I’ve lost all male genetic marks?”
Her heart was heavy.
Linfei asked gently, “What’s wrong?”
Su Yuan shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You look serious. Couldn’t find the cells?” Linfei smiled, checked herself.
Su Yuan murmured, “If genes don’t match, that’s trouble. At least now, inside and out align—it’s easier to face society.” She smiled suddenly.
She didn’t know if her sex chromosomes had always been X, making her a tomboy for twenty years, or if Y had turned into X later. If the latter, science couldn’t explain it.
Yet she felt calm, smiling brightly, feet swinging on the chair…
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