Chapter 6

By sharing a meal, Wei Xiaolu and Tao Wei established a solid lunch-partner friendship.

That was how she defined the relationship between the two of them. But in the afternoon, when Tao Wei asked her to eat together again and Wei Xiaolu refused on the grounds that she had to bring dinner back for CEO Shen, Tao Wei’s gaze toward her was no longer quite so pure.

“CEO Shen wants you to bring her food?” Tao Wei sized up the two lunch boxes in Wei Xiaolu’s hands.

“Yeah, she’s busy,” Wei Xiaolu said.

“What is she busy with?” Tao Wei kept pressing.

Talking about the boss behind her back didn’t seem like a big deal, but Tao Wei’s tone and expression still made Wei Xiaolu feel a little uncomfortable. After hesitating for two seconds, she said, “Just that smart financial-tax thing our department’s working on.”

“Right now all the users are saying they want to scrap that version’s functions, and the tech department says they can’t maintain it. Both sides are difficult. What’s she planning to do?” Tao Wei asked.

Wei Xiaolu gave a silly grin as she paid. “I don’t know.”

After buying the food, Wei Xiaolu received a message from CEO Shen telling her to go straight to the parking garage; Shen Siyan said she would wait for her in the car.

But Tao Wei was like a suction-cup tentacle, sticking to her the whole way and asking this and that, trying to pry some background information about Shen Siyan out of her.

Annoying, yes; more importantly, though, Wei Xiaolu herself knew nothing about Shen Siyan either!

“Weiwei, CEO Shen is waiting for me,” Wei Xiaolu said, pointing toward the parking garage. “You should go home first.”

“It’s fine, I’ll wait for you. My place is close to your apartment, so I can ride you back on my bike,” Tao Wei said.

Wei Xiaolu felt a little at a loss.

“Well...” she said cautiously and uneasily. “CEO Shen is waiting for me... we’re going back together.”

The smile on Tao Wei’s face faded for a moment.

Then Tao Wei quickly put on another, brighter smile; probably her mindset had shifted from, “This person works beside the minister, I need to dig up something useful,” to, “Holy crap, this person seems to have a special relationship with the minister, I’d better be more respectful.”

“Oh wow, the minister doesn’t live in the apartment too, does she?” Before Wei Xiaolu could answer, Tao Wei smiled and bumped her shoulder. “Xiaolu, do you know which room she lives in exactly?”

In this situation, kind-hearted as she was, Wei Xiaolu still couldn’t help feeling a little secretly pleased.

“If I get the chance, I’ll help you keep an eye out,” Wei Xiaolu said, straightening her chest.

Tao Wei denied it again. “Ah, no no no, I was just asking.”

“Mm-hm.” Wei Xiaolu waved at her. “I’m heading over.”

“Bye, Xiaolu. We’ll eat together tomorrow morning,” Tao Wei said warmly in farewell.

When she reached the parking garage and found Shen Siyan’s car, Wei Xiaolu didn’t know what possessed her; before getting in, she knocked on the window and door like she was entering the office.

Normally, at a time like this, she should have heard Shen Siyan’s cold “Come in,” but CEO Shen, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, put down her phone, turned her face toward her, leaned over, and personally opened the door for her.

Wei Xiaolu was a little flattered.

Was this the treatment someone like her, a useless scrap at the edge of the company, was supposed to enjoy?

“...” Fine; she’d thank her first.

But before the formulaic “thank you, beautiful” could leave her mouth, Shen Siyan spoke first.

“Why were you gone so long?”

“I ran into a colleague from our department on the way and chatted for a bit,” Wei Xiaolu said. Then she suddenly seized the chance to claim credit, and it became harder to hide the corners of her mouth. “Ah, CEO Shen, that colleague even asked me where you live. I protected your privacy properly; I didn’t tell her a thing.”

Shen Siyan seemed to smile faintly.

How rare.

In the process of racking her brains to please her superior, Wei Xiaolu bizarrely understood the same feeling as the ruler who had once set beacon fires to amuse the princes.

To win a beauty’s smile, it really wasn’t easy.

But Shen Siyan soon came over and slapped her face with reality.

“That isn’t personal privacy,” Shen Siyan said as she drove. “If someone wants to know, they can check the HR department and find it.”

Heh, haha.

Wei Xiaolu gave two self-mocking laughs and hurried to salvage the situation. “What they can find in HR is just a cold, hard room number. What I’m protecting is your private space.”

After she said that, the car fell silent; even Wei Xiaolu herself froze.

Damn.

Damn, damn it.

She’d overdone it by accident.

That wasn’t what she meant. She was just trying to say that knowing the room number was useless; if anyone really came looking, she could help cover for Shen by saying CEO Shen didn’t live there.

Why had she talked without thinking it through? Shen Siyan wouldn’t really brand her as a sycophant, would she...

Soft music flowed through the car. Shen Siyan glanced in her direction and let out a low laugh.

“Our,” Shen Siyan said after a pause, “private space.”

Wei Xiaolu was already sweating buckets; at this point, whatever Shen Siyan said, she would respond to. “Right, right, CEO Shen. We live together, so it should count as our space.”

The way she said it was downright silly. After hearing it, Shen Siyan laughed again and then said nothing more.

Under the rather chilly atmosphere, Wei Xiaolu made it through the rest of the trip with her heart pounding like drums.

Once they got back to the apartment, Wei Xiaolu handed Shen Siyan today’s dinner.

She had thought she could finally escape Shen Siyan’s line of sight, but Shen Siyan simply carried the lunch box to the dining table, took two bottles of milk from the refrigerator, and placed one opposite her.

“Come eat,” Shen Siyan said.

Wei Xiaolu walked over with a smile.

But inside, she was complaining bitterly: Don’t I deserve a little private space too?

That sincere wish vanished halfway through the meal.

Wei Xiaolu was quite good at forgetting her roots.

At first, she really had resisted eating with CEO Shen, but Shen Siyan was good at finding topics to talk about. They ended up reminiscing about the food in the company headquarters, which made Wei Xiaolu crave it, and before long she was also sharing stories about the legendary delicacies in her school cafeteria.

“That beef noodle place is still there?” Shen Siyan’s chopsticks paused near her mouth. “When I was in school, I used to go there a lot. Is it still seven yuan a bowl?”

“You like it too!” Wei Xiaolu bounced on her seat in excitement. “It’s nine yuan now. Still okay, I guess, not too expensive, but the taste is really insanely good!”

Shen Siyan looked at her. “Can’t forget it.”

“If I go back to school, I’ll bring some for you,” Wei Xiaolu said. Then she looked up and met Shen Siyan’s eyes, suddenly realizing she had crossed a line. She coughed in panic. “Whenever you want to eat it, I’ll go back and buy it for you.”

Shen Siyan seemed to smile faintly again, then politely and courteously said, “Okay, thanks in advance, little sister.”

“You’re welcome, beautiful.” Wei Xiaolu realized she could now say that to Shen Siyan quite naturally.

However, at the same time, Wei Xiaolu also discovered another problem.

It seemed she only called Shen Siyan beautiful when the two of them were alone. As long as a third person was present, Shen Siyan was simply “CEO Shen.”

She paid special attention to this at work the next day and discovered it wasn’t just her; Shen Siyan was the same. When handling proper business, she called her Xiaolu; only when chatting idly did she call her little sister.

That discovery deepened her conditioned response to the two characters in “Xiaolu.”

Because those two characters meant work was coming.

Just after lunch, when she wanted nothing more than to hug Biqi and lie facedown on her desk for a nap, one “Xiaolu” from Shen Siyan below her sent a clear message: today’s lunch break was dead.

“This afternoon I’m going to announce that we’re abandoning the old version and rebuilding the product from scratch,” Shen Siyan said, curling a finger at her. “Come over and help me write a few documents.”

A vicious boss who drained people’s sleep.

Wei Xiaolu walked over resentfully. “What documents, CEO Shen?”

“The design plan for the new version,” Shen Siyan said.

“Got it, CEO Shen.” Wei Xiaolu glared and forced herself not to feel sleepy.

What was the hardest thing to act? Maybe it was making a person as drowsy as a wandering ghost act like an energetic, enthusiastic laborer.

Anyway, Wei Xiaolu couldn’t do it.

Her drowsiness affected Shen Siyan to a certain extent too. After catching her yawns, Shen Siyan ordered two cups of coffee and had Wei Xiaolu go fetch them.

“Drink it or don’t; up to you,” Shen Siyan said, setting a latte beside her and glancing at the clock on the wall. “Just help me write for another half hour. I have a meeting this afternoon; you can catch up on sleep in the office.”

For some reason, those words had a magical effect. Wei Xiaolu wasn’t sleepy anymore after hearing them, and with her assistance, Shen Siyan successfully prepared the materials before the meeting.

At 2 p.m., Shen Siyan gathered half the department and went to the conference room to announce the heavy news.

As someone already in the know, Wei Xiaolu did not attend the meeting; instead, she sat at her desk cultivating sleepiness. But just as drowsiness began to creep over her, she was woken by Zeng Cui barging through the door.

Wei Xiaolu looked at him with deep resentment. “CEO Shen’s in a meeting. If you need her, wait a bit.”

“I just passed by the conference room and heard it,” Zeng Cui said.

He clasped his hands behind his back and walked around the office twice, looking here and there the whole time as if he’d arrived at some tourist attraction.

In the end, he drifted to the front of Shen Siyan’s desk and did something that made Wei Xiaolu’s eyes go wide with a snap.

Zeng Cui sat down directly in Shen Siyan’s seat.

For some reason, Wei Xiaolu always felt that every person’s workstation was a very private place. Sitting casually in someone else’s seat seemed like either a display of having greater authority and power than that person, or a way of showing an unusually close relationship with them.

Wei Xiaolu felt it was probably the latter, because after Zeng Cui came into the office, he hadn’t closed the door; from outside, everything in here could be seen clearly.

“Xiaolu,” Zeng Cui said, leaning back in the chair and slowly spinning the office chair, “are you getting used to it over here?”

“Pretty much, Minister Zeng,” Wei Xiaolu said.

“Mm...” Zeng Cui nodded. “As long as you’re used to it. You’ve seen it too; aside from creative work like the research institute does, the rest of our work is basically just the same thing over and over. There’s not much to learn.”

Suddenly saying something like that out of nowhere was inexplicable, and Wei Xiaolu couldn’t figure out how to answer.

So she didn’t say much, just gave him a dry laugh.

“Then tell me, when it comes to moving up at a time like this, what do you think it depends on?” Zeng Cui said again.

Wei Xiaolu instinctively felt irritated.

I’m just an intern. Whether I stay or not isn’t even certain. What upward path am I supposed to be walking?

Seeing that she didn’t speak, Zeng Cui continued, “All the fresh graduates who come in here are the same. We don’t care at all what school you graduated from.”

She didn’t really understand, but it felt like this guy’s words kept changing from one moment to the next.

Earlier he’d said she was some kind of 985 talent; now he was saying everyone was the same.

“Mm-hm, the starting point for work is the same,” Wei Xiaolu agreed casually.

“Then why is it that some people can get promoted in two years, while others muddle along below for more than a decade and are still the same?”

This time, Wei Xiaolu understood.

Zeng Cui was implying Shen Siyan; maybe, like the Product Interaction Department before the online incident, he was suspicious of a twenty-seven-year-old young woman getting this position, and perhaps also a little resentful that he himself hadn’t managed to rise for so many years.

“It still depends on personal ability, right?” Wei Xiaolu said uncertainly.

Zeng Cui laughed. “That’s all stuff you look at when you first get in. In the end, whether you can move up depends entirely on your background and connections.”

Wei Xiaolu frowned in confusion.

“For example,” Zeng Cui put on the air of someone who saw through everything, tapped the desk in front of him, and said meaningfully, “her family isn’t simple.”

It was best not to pry into a leader’s business.

Wei Xiaolu understood that principle, but after Zeng Cui finished speaking, she didn’t know why she became so curious—so curious that she blurted out a question she shouldn’t have asked: “Then what kind of family is it?”

Zeng Cui immediately adopted a profound expression. Folding his arms, he clicked his tongue twice before saying, “Her mother is a deputy division chief at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; her father is the chairman of Hongjian Group. What kind of family do you think that is?”

Under Zeng Cui’s helpless and heavy tone, Wei Xiaolu heard the sound of her own heartbeat speeding up.

What an impressive background.

What a strange reaction.

In the past, when it came to people born with such outstanding backgrounds, she couldn’t say she hated them, but like most people, she would still grumble a little about fairness.

So why, when it came to Shen Siyan, did it become a kind of surprise... and a subtle admiration for the strong?

Wei Xiaolu was shocked by her own inexplicable excitement, but with Zeng Cui right there, she still put on a perfectly seamless look of confusion.

“Xiaolu, do you know how important your position is right now?” Zeng Cui seemed to be planning to draw her in, speaking with deliberate earnestness.

“Huh? My spot isn’t great either; it reflects light a bit, so it’s not very convenient for looking at the computer...” Wei Xiaolu really didn’t want to get involved and answered nonsense.

“I mean your position next to CEO Shen,” Zeng Cui said. “She’s under a lot of pressure right now. All the vice presidents, department heads, and all of you employees are watching her. At a time like this, she can easily make the wrong decision.”

Wei Xiaolu looked at him, noncommittal.

“I just heard her in the conference room say she wants to redo this software,” Zeng Cui said with a smile. “She’s still young; it’s only natural to be naive at first and not understand how much is tied up in a project. This is too risky.”