Work

Qian Cancan’s attention was elsewhere.

“You just said Li Lan agreed to let you join the variety show?”

Zhu Qing was holding her phone and scrolling through videos. At the question, she nodded eagerly. “Yeah!”

“You’ve really made up your mind?” Qian Cancan asked, conflicted. On one hand, she had already accepted the shocking fact that her best friend had married a famous star; on the other, her best friend was still basically a private citizen and hadn’t truly been exposed to the public yet. Going on a variety show would still affect her life.

Zhu Qing lay on the bed, watching the first two episodes of the show on her phone. Her tone was firm. “If I’m going to pursue Li Lan, then of course I have to get familiar with her work. You have no idea how busy she is. I once looked at the schedule Qian Chu sent her, and it was packed so tightly she could barely squeeze out a single day off in a month. She doesn’t even have fixed rest days.”

Qian Cancan thought of how Zhu Qing had been after the marriage. “Even though your job is really stable and you work nine to eight every day, the two of you still barely get to see each other... Wait, you want to pursue Li Lan?”

“If not, then what have I been doing these past few days, playing house?” Zhu Qing flipped over and sat up. In all seriousness, she said, “Help me think. What else can I do? I need to make Li Lan give up on divorcing me for good.”

From Zhu Qing’s words, Qian Cancan caught a hint of something slippery and asked suspiciously, “This isn’t your real reason for insisting on joining the variety show, is it? Once the two of you are public, Li Lan won’t be able to dump you. Damn, you’re really devious!”

Zhu Qing lifted her brows smugly, all pride and no confession. “That’s only part of it. Of course, the most important thing is that I can’t bear the six million yuan penalty fee.”

Qian Cancan rolled her eyes. “You’re not the one who has to pay the penalty. They couldn’t even scrape together six million if they sold you piece by piece.”

“If you put it that way, then if I ever get kidnapped one day, I’m definitely leaking your bank card password first!” Zhu Qing exploded.

Qian Cancan felt threatened and smoothly changed the subject. “Then what about your job?”

Zhu Qing froze. She hadn’t thought about that yet.

Qian Cancan immediately knew she had her opening and said quickly, “Let me make this clear first: you really like this job. No matter how hard I tried to talk you out of it before, you wouldn’t quit. Now that you’ve just lost your memory, are you really going to expose yourself and get forced to resign?”

Zhu Qing couldn’t answer. After losing her memory, she had only come into contact with Li Lan, and then confirmed that she didn’t want a divorce. The importance of this job was obviously nowhere near Li Lan.

“Perfect timing, I need to go to the kindergarten anyway,” Zhu Qing said after checking the time. “Xiao Bao won’t arrive until tonight. Come with me and take a look at the kindergarten? If this job really isn’t worth it, I’ll quit. Anyway, I can always find another one.”

Qian Cancan wasn’t very willing to let Zhu Qing go back to the kindergarten, but between the two evils, she chose the lesser one and grabbed her keys to go out with Zhu Qing.

The kindergarten was nearby; it took ten minutes to drive there. Right now it was the long break, when the children were having snacks, so the place was quiet, with neither teachers nor kids outside.

“Zhu, is that you?” a fluent British accent sounded beside them.

A beautiful British foreign teacher walked over and asked in surprise, “Has your illness gotten better?”

Zhu Qing was a little surprised, but she quickly replied in fluent English, “No. I don’t remember anyone or anything here now. You are?”

A regretful, sorrowful look appeared on the foreign teacher’s face. “Eos. You can call me Yi Xi. I’m so sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Zhu Qing glanced inside the kindergarten and said in a low voice, “I want to see my old desk. Can you show me around?”

Yi Xi agreed at once. “Of course. Your desk is right next to mine. I’ll take you around.”

After speaking, she went to the entrance, used face recognition to get in, and stepped aside to let Zhu Qing inside. Qian Cancan followed as well.

“This is my friend; we’re here together,” Zhu Qing introduced Qian Cancan.

Yi Xi nodded and smiled at her. “Hello.”

“Hello.” Qian Cancan curved her lips; her voice rose slightly compared with usual, which could be described as a little affected. She stepped forward, extended her hand, and said warmly in a carefully polished voice, “You must be Zhu Qing’s foreign teacher. Thank you for taking care of Ah Qing. My name is Qian Cancan; you can call me Can. If you have time, would you like to have a meal together?”

Without a word, Zhu Qing dragged Qian Cancan into the kindergarten, then turned back and gave Yi Xi a polite smile. She translated, “She’s thanking you for taking care of me.”

Yi Xi laughed. “I should be thanking you. Chinese is too hard to learn, and you’ve helped me a lot.”

Yi Xi led them to Zhu Qing’s desk. Zhu Qing was Yi Xi’s assistant, and the two of them worked in the same office.

Zhu Qing’s desk was very neat. There was only an office computer and a stack of paper files on it, in sharp contrast to Yi Xi’s desk, which was piled high with lesson plans.

“What exactly do I usually do?” Zhu Qing asked after looking around and not finding any familiar feeling at all.

Yi Xi smiled. “Help me translate and revise lesson plans.”

“How many classes do you teach a week?” Zhu Qing asked.

Yi Xi thought for a moment. “Ten classes, mostly in the mornings.”

Zhu Qing said, confused, “That doesn’t sound like a heavy workload.”

Yi Xi said seriously, “That’s right. Your salary is too low, so I don’t give you much work. You can finish everything in an hour or two a day.”

Zhu Qing glanced at Qian Cancan. She remembered Qian Cancan saying she worked from nine to eight every day; why did it sound like she was very free if she listened to Yi Xi?

If she only had to work two hours a day and still make three thousand yuan a month, that was still low compared with her previous hourly wage, but it sounded much more acceptable.

A job couldn’t be both exhausting and badly paid. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she just do translation work, which was easy and paid quickly?

But if it was simply low-paying and easy, Zhu Qing wasn’t that resistant to it.

“What would I do after I finished my work?” Zhu Qing asked.

Yi Xi shook her head. “I don’t know. You usually only come to the kindergarten in the morning. Of course, so do I.”

Zhu Qing felt that something was off, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She flipped through the lesson plans for a while, roughly understanding what her job involved, then followed Yi Xi outside for a walk.

The kindergarten wasn’t small. It had its own playground, and there were two teaching buildings, one for classes and one for offices.

“The number of children keeps going down,” Yi Xi said. “When I came to China years ago, each grade had at least three classes. Now there’s only one left, and the whole kindergarten only has one hundred and thirty children.”

Zhu Qing listened earnestly and nodded from time to time. Her English was very good, and she could hold deep conversations with Yi Xi. As they talked, Zhu Qing’s expectations for this job kept dropping.

Qian Cancan put her hands in her pockets and looked around. “There. That’s where you fell.”

The stairs were brand new and wiped spotless. Because of what had happened last time, the handrails were wrapped in a layer of soft plastic that looked like acupressure mats, meant to keep the children from lying on them and playing.

For a bilingual kindergarten that followed elite education, it wouldn’t make much difference whether Zhu Qing was there or not.

She no longer disliked the job as much as she had at first, but she still hadn’t found a reason to stay.

Qian Cancan asked, “So?”

Zhu Qing didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to join the variety show.”

To her, work was something external; nothing mattered more than a person. She wanted to stay with Li Lan more.

Qian Cancan looked as though she’d expected that and nodded. “Alright. I respect your choice.”

Now that she had made her decision, Zhu Qing felt much lighter. She carefully observed and recorded everything in the kindergarten, memorizing it as a farewell.

When they reached the edge of the playground, Zhu Qing suddenly saw a building.

“What’s that?”

The building was hidden at the end of an alley. It had black stone walls and white tiles, and looked very run-down.

Yi Xi thought about it. “It should be a welfare home. I remember you mentioning it before. It was built early on, with an old brick-and-concrete structure. The pipes and electrical system inside are badly aged. The children are all crammed into one big dormitory; it’s hot in summer and cold in winter. There are only two special education teachers there, and a lot of things have no one to teach them.”

She had mentioned it before?

Zhu Qing had no memory of that at all. She looked more closely at the welfare home hidden deep in the alley.

Moss and dry vines crawled along the base of the walls, making the main building seem even more dilapidated. Several windows had been broken and were only barely sealed with tape and cardboard, like pairs of exhausted eyes quietly watching the world beyond the grounds.

The whole building gave off an abandoned feeling. Not deserted, but hanging on by a thread.

An indescribable feeling rose in Zhu Qing’s heart.