Gu Huaian's Childhood Friendship with Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng

Gu Huaian's Childhood Friendship with Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng is one of the clearest examples of continuity in Gu Huaian's life. The relationship begins in childhood rivalry, develops into a highly unequal but affectionate brotherhood, and survives education abroad, business success, marriage, and the friends' own anxiety about family expectations. Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng are not merely decorative companions: they provide Gu Huaian with a private social world outside his family and company, while their loyalty later makes them useful allies to both him and Shen Tang.

Origins in Childhood

Gu Huaian, Cen Songbai, and Fu Junsheng grew up together. Gu Huaian recalls that he performed well at school from an early age and was regarded by the adults around them as the model child. Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng initially disliked him and responded by ambushing him several times. Gu Huaian defeated them each time, reversing the balance between them; after those defeats, they became his followers. The account is comic rather than sentimental, but it establishes the relationship's enduring pattern: Gu Huaian occupies the commanding position, while the other two accept his authority without losing the intimacy of long familiarity.

Their friendship nevertheless rests on more than submission. When Gu Huaian went abroad for university and later began his own business, Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng followed him. Physical distance and the transition into adult professional life therefore did not dissolve the bond. Their continued presence suggests that the childhood hierarchy became a shared language of loyalty, with Gu Huaian as the capable leader and the other two as dependable, if less polished, companions.

Adult Reunion and Social Performance

The friendship becomes visible to Shen Tang at a gathering where Gu Huaian brings her to see the two men. The pair quickly put down their microphones when Gu Huaian and Shen Tang arrive, greet Gu Huaian as Brother Gu, and welcome Shen Tang as his sister-in-law. Their exaggerated casualness and generous gift of car keys make the reunion feel like a private performance of old familiarity rather than a formal social introduction. Gu Huaian tells Shen Tang to accept the gift because the two men have also benefited from him, while they immediately deny that their past reliance amounted to taking advantage, calling it brotherhood instead.

Shen Tang notices that Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng, distinguished by blue and red hair, do not look particularly intelligent. Yet the narrative balances this unflattering impression with Gu Huaian's judgment that they are good people worth befriending. Their apparent foolishness is thus contrasted with moral reliability. They may be socially noisy and less capable than Gu Huaian, but they occupy a secure place in his emotional and practical life because their loyalty has already been tested over many years.

Loyalty, Marriage, and Assistance

Gu Huaian's secret marriage changes the friends' position within their families. Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng had both remained lifelong bachelors, and their relatives had been pressuring them to marry. Before Gu Huaian married, they could use him as a shield against that pressure; once he secretly took a wife, they feared their families would discover that their last excuse had disappeared and would force them to find partners quickly. Their concern reveals how closely their adult lives remain coordinated: Gu Huaian's personal decision produces consequences for both friends, even when he has not intended to involve them.

The two men also become advisers when Gu Huaian asks them to help devise a proposal ceremony. Their role is significant because the marriage has moved beyond the private arrangement represented by the agreement. Gu Huaian's request places an intimate romantic problem in the hands of the friends who knew him before wealth, business, and public status. They are not portrayed as sophisticated experts, but their participation confirms their access to his private concerns and their willingness to assist when he needs them.

Their loyalty extends to Shen Tang. After the conflict involving YOYO, Shen Tang quietly asks Cen Songbai whether he really recorded the relevant incident. He confirms that he did, although the footage is unclear and therefore cannot immediately settle the matter. His attempt to preserve evidence gives Shen Tang at least some support in a situation where she might otherwise have been forced to endure an injustice. The protection is imperfect, but the gesture matters: the childhood friend does not remain neutral when Gu Huaian's wife is attacked.

Hierarchy, Affection, and Narrative Function

The friendship is structured by a stable asymmetry. Gu Huaian is the academically successful model child, the person who defeats the others in childhood, builds a company, and becomes the figure whose marriage can shield them from family demands. Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng are less intelligent and more openly comic, yet Gu Huaian does not discard them when he enters more powerful social circles. Instead, he continues to describe them as good people, and they continue to treat his needs as their own concern.

This contrast gives the relationship its particular warmth. Gu Huaian's authority does not erase affection, and the friends' dependence does not eliminate agency. They joke, offer gifts, advise him about the proposal, and preserve evidence for Shen Tang. Their relationship therefore operates both as brotherhood and as an informal support network: Gu Huaian supplies competence and protection, while Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng supply continuity, companionship, and practical solidarity.

In narrative terms, the pair also provide a backstage setting for Gu Huaian's public identity. At banquets and family-facing occasions, he appears as a powerful businessman and Shen Tang's husband. With Cen Songbai and Fu Junsheng, he can return to the older role of the capable boy whom two unruly companions once challenged and then followed. Their presence makes his adulthood legible as an extension of childhood rather than a complete reinvention. The friendship's decisive significance lies in that continuity: beneath Gu Huaian's status and controlled public manner remains a man whose oldest alliances are still governed by shared history, playful hierarchy, and proven loyalty.