Cosmic Love Affair

Chapter 14 Oort Cloud Six

This guy is so naive, Xie Li thought. He was so angry that he felt like he was about to burst, folding his arms and staring at Tan Ke. So Tan Ke laughed even more cheerfully. Professor Fang came out of the bedroom and saw her nephew, looking very disgusted, “Why are you here again?” Xie Li ran over to help Professor Fang go downstairs. Tan Ke also stood up, “I heard that the old man has come here again, so I came to see my aunt.” Professor Fang looked understanding, “Your aunt must have called you,” she sat down, “Don't worry, my father-in-law has been much better recently. And the doctor said that being with family helps stabilize his emotions. I'm at home all day, so I just had them send him over when they have time. It's better than him running around by himself.” Seeing that Professor Fang was determined to take care of the old man, Tan Ke had nothing to say, “Then I'm relieved. But if my aunt needs anything, give me a call. I have some things to deal with at the company, so I'll leave first.” Professor Fang stopped him, “Hey, could you give Little Xie a ride? It's so hot today, and the kid has been running around, it's quite tiring for him.” Xie Li wanted to refuse at first, but then changed his mind and agreed. He got into Tan Ke's car, a very common Audi A6, with ordinary standard interior. Xie Li didn't know much about cars, but he recognized the one Tan Ke had taken to the observatory last time, which was obviously much more luxurious and high-end than this one. The car drove out of the courtyard and turned onto Falin Road. Clusters of yellowwood trees were intertwined, occasionally casting speckles of sunlight. “Mr. Tan, could I trouble you with something?” Xie Li had been rehearsing in his mind for a long time, and finally spoke up. Tan Ke was driving and casually hummed in response. “The man in sportswear I saw in Changjing last time happens to be a neighbor of my teacher. He promised to help me find some materials and pass them to me through my teacher, but it seems my teacher hasn't met him recently either. And I don't have his contact information. Could you please mention this matter to him for me?” Xie Li felt a bit embarrassed, as if he was urging the other person. But if it weren't for having no other choice, he wouldn't have taken the opportunity of this alone time to make a request. Tan Ke didn't say anything, his sunglasses covering half his face, making it impossible to read his expression. Xie Li couldn't fathom his meaning, and only felt the silence was very awkward. He speculated to himself that perhaps Mr. Tan didn't want to have much interaction with him. After all, there was Song Yi in between, and speaking of which, the other party must also feel quite uncomfortable. So he spoke again, trying to make the atmosphere less awkward, “If you don't happen to see that man recently, it's okay. I'll just look for it myself.” Tan Ke glanced at the passenger seat under the cover of his sunglasses, the young boy looked very wronged, hanging his head, listless. “What materials do you need, and why do you have to get them from him?” he finally asked. Xie Li hesitated a bit, “Well, just some English speaking practice materials.” Tan Ke pushed up his sunglasses, “Fang Xian went to London at the age of nine, his English was all soaked up there for more than twenty years, what kind of speaking practice materials could he give you?” Xie Li didn't expect the reality to be like this, and couldn't help but let out an “ah” sound. In Tan Ke's eyes, this was just too silly. A silly little fellow. With the last way also blocked, Xie Li felt more and more desperate, thinking there was really no way out. He clenched his fingers, thinking about how to find an excuse to talk to Shen Zhichuan and say that he couldn't go. His delicate eyebrows were knitted together, and his lower lip was bitten back and forth, turning a deep shade of cherry red. A wet cat crouching by the roadside, meowing softly to people, would always catch the attention of a soft-hearted passerby. Tan Ke felt he was that passerby, and couldn't help but ask, “What's the problem with your spoken English?” Xie Li was silent for a while, “...It's just, I speak very poorly.” “How poor is very poor?” Tan Ke steered the wheel, turning off the expressway. “It's very poor...” It was embarrassing to explain this to others, and if the person was Tan Ke, Xie Li felt even more embarrassed. He struggled, biting his lips, “I don't read well, and I get nervous when there are people around.” Tan Ke nodded, “How nervous?” Xie Li didn't say anything. Tan Ke reached out and took off his sunglasses, “The most basic thing is, if you want to ask for help from others, you should at least clarify your problem.” He turned his head to look at Xie Li, who instinctively opened his mouth, “I also don't...” “What? Don't plan to ask for help?” Tan Ke raised his eyebrows, “You can't solve it by yourself, and you don't plan to ask others for help. So what do you plan to do? Don't you need to go abroad for academic exchanges in your research?” Xie Li didn't speak, feeling unhappy inside. The reasons all sounded good, but everyone was busy, who had the time to care about his matters. He turned his head, staring out of the window without making a sound. Tan Ke was used to being not very polite when talking to his subordinates, and he regretted a bit that his tone was not good. He originally intended to suggest that the kid find a language training class, but he didn't expect to make the person feel closed off with just a few words. This young boy clearly looked very lively and outgoing, but at certain moments, he would suddenly shrink himself completely back into his shell, curling up, looking quite pitiful. “You...” Tan Ke seldom hesitated, but he was hesitating now as he spoke, “Do you know the youngest Wolf Prize winner?” He actually didn't expect Xie Li to really say it out, it was just a trick to start a conversation. But Xie Li thought carefully, “The one who predicted the deep nonlinear scattering scale? I know, the physicist from Princeton, Carson Hoss, right.” Tan Ke was still hesitating whether to mention his senior's matter, because Carson himself never mentioned it to others, and he had heard it from Fang Xian. But Xie Li had already been intrigued, looking forward to his continuation, staring at him with a pair of bright eyes. “Well, when he was a child, he had tension aphasia.” Tan Ke steeled himself, since his senior was separated from here by the Pacific Ocean, and there was also a Shen Zhichuan in between, it was unlikely that the young man would ever meet Carson in his lifetime, “At his worst, he didn't speak at all. The school teachers almost suspected that he had autism.” Xie Li's eyes widened, “Why?” “Bullying at school. He wasn't raised in the UK, and his English accent was very heavy, so he was ridiculed.” Tan Ke said, “The main reason was that he was a mixed-race illegitimate child, and the British upper class placed great emphasis on bloodline and background. His father sent him to a public school, originally to maintain family traditions, but the people at the school, especially his peers, were very hostile towards him.” Xie Li was very surprised. He had seen Carson Hoss's photos on the news. The youngest-ever Wolf Prize winner, who single-handedly paved the way for the identification of point-like components within nucleons in high-energy physics. Everyone was optimistic that he would win the Nobel Prize before the age of forty. Tan Ke slowed down the car, “That kind of bullying is terrifying. They don't use physical force, nor do they play childish pranks like throwing schoolbags or splashing ink. These people, who have been playing mind games with their cousins and illegitimate children since childhood, are very good at striking others mentally, bullying them by showing off their own superiority.” Tan Ke's mouth curled up in a smile, “The upper class.” Xie Li thought of his two teammates in the modeling competition, and suddenly felt a bit amused. He stretched out two fingers, bent them above his head, and imitated Tan Ke's tone, repeating, “The upper class.” Like a little rabbit with very mobile ears. Tan Ke couldn't help it and burst into laughter. That gesture was originally Carson's favorite, indicating quotation marks, meaning irony and sarcasm. It was usually used by Carson when he wanted to call someone stupid but couldn't say it directly. Shen Zhichuan, after mixing with Carson for a long time, also learned it. Now Shen Zhichuan has passed this on to his own students. But when Xie Li made this gesture, it didn't have the sharpness and bitterness of those two people. Instead, it was like a little rabbit amusing others with its own ears, making one want to ruffle its fluffy little head. Xie Li, comforted by the thought that “even great scientists have such pasts,” found a sense of empathy and unconsciously opened up. “Back in college when I was doing experiments, there were some instruments I had never seen before and didn't know how to operate,” he said. “A classmate liked to help me, but each time he would say things like, ‘How could you not know this? We had it in high school.’ I felt very uncomfortable. Later, my senior said that such people are not genuinely trying to help; they're just looking for a sense of superiority.” “Do they ridicule you?” Tan Ke suddenly asked, “Do they ridicule you when you speak English?” Xie Li clenched his fingers and nodded. Tan Ke asked again, “What do they ridicule you for?” “My pronunciation is very strange,” Xie Li reluctantly exposed his own scar, “It's very rustic, very unpleasant to listen to, they say they can't understand what I'm saying.” He had an inexplicable trust in his heart, knowing that Tan Ke wouldn't ridicule him, but he was still afraid that Tan Ke would say, “Then say a sentence for me to hear.” Fortunately, Tan Ke didn't. He just asked Xie Li, “Do you know how many people in the world use English?” Xie Li secretly let out a sigh of relief and shook his head. Tan Ke glanced at him, “If you don't know, then look it up.” Xie Li obediently took out his phone and searched on Baidu, then reported a number, “Nearly 1.4 billion.” Tan Ke hummed in acknowledgment and said, “But only 400 million are native speakers. Do you know what this number means?” Xie Li didn't quite understand his intention, but was still quick to do the subtraction, “It means that the remaining one billion people are not native speakers?” “Yes,” Tan Ke said, “These one billion people come from all over the world. Does each of them speak with a pure New York or London accent?” Xie Li was stumped by Tan Ke's question; he had never thought about this issue before. “So what if the pronunciation is not standard? Carson Cox speaks Latin American English, but when he speaks, the whole world holds its breath.” Tan Ke parked the car at the destination. He turned to look at Xie Li, “It doesn't matter if you speak poorly. What's important is what you say. Standard and fluent pronunciation is worth nothing; it's the content you convey that gives language its value.” It took Xie Li a long while before he finally spoke, “But what if what I say has no value?” Tan Ke squinted at him, “How do you know it has no value if you haven't even spoken?”