Chapter 3#
The Cowardly Corporate Slave 3#
Shen Anyu felt that Shen Xifu had lost her mind.
Otherwise, how could she refer to Jian Lixu as “that wild man” and believe that her own husband had cheated on her?
After watching Shen Xifu go through his phone inside and out, and pulling out quite a few things he had never reported to her beforehand…
Shen Anyu, for the first time, somewhat regretted why he had given himself the “language impediment” setting.
Now he couldn’t even explain himself.
His hands fluttered about frantically for a long while, only to see Shen Xifu’s expression growing darker and darker.
Past experience told Shen Anyu that he was done for.
Fortunately, as an injured party, he currently enjoyed benefits like paid sick leave and not having to go to work.
Otherwise, if he had to go through the process of begging Shen Xifu to let him leave the house again, Shen Anyu feared he’d be fired by the company for yet another extended absence.
A sleepless night.
Shen Xifu seemed to always know exactly how to make Shen Anyu suffer.
“Aren’t you going to explain?” Shen Xifu asked in the darkness.
Shen Anyu kept his gaze lowered, his long lashes already wet with tears. He was so sleepy, his head spinning, yet Shen Xifu was still waiting for his response.
Clearly.
He was the husband…
·
Three whole days.
Shen Anyu spent all of them trying to figure out how to explain to Shen Xifu why he hadn’t reported to her before, and that he truly hadn’t cheated.
After all, besides her, who would ever take a liking to someone as worthless as him?
Shen Anyu still remembered the shock in the eyes of friends who received their invitation cards when he, fresh out of university, married Shen Xifu.
As if they couldn’t believe that Shen Anyu, an ugly duckling, had somehow climbed high enough to reach Shen Xifu, a white swan.
Congratulations, mockery, and jealous remarks abounded.
More than anything, there was the certainty that within no more than a year of marriage, Shen Anyu and Shen Xifu would go their separate ways.
After all, between Shen Anyu and Shen Xifu, there was not only a difference in temperament, but also in family background, appearance, and more.
But no one had expected that the two of them would, step by step, walk through three years together.
Throughout it all, Shen Anyu remained just as quiet and withdrawn, completely lacking in presence.
Merely transitioning from an invisible man on campus to a pitiful corporate slave in the workplace.
But only Shen Anyu himself knew exactly what he had paid.
During those three days.
No matter what method Shen Anyu used to explain to Shen Xifu the fact that he hadn’t cheated, she ignored it.
Unable to make a sound, he seemed to have completely become Shen Xifu’s puppet.
So long as she didn’t want to know the answer, she could ignore everything, using this as an excuse again and again to make him answer.
If it weren’t for the fact that this morning, Jian Lixu had sent a message in advance saying he’d come by in the evening, Shen Anyu didn’t know if he’d be able to leave the room at this moment at all.
“Husband.”
Standing in front of the refrigerator, Shen Xifu in a white nightgown was pondering what to eat tonight. “There’s a guest coming later. Is there anything you’d like to eat?”
Shen Anyu shook his head, but realizing Shen Xifu might not see it, picked up his phone from the table and typed: 【Nothing.】
“Is that so?” Shen Xifu asked. “Then do you know what President Jian, who drove you home that day, likes to eat? I’ll make something to properly receive him.”
Shen Anyu nodded, instinctively wanting to type a reply.
After all, in the original novel, it was like this too—the female lead was always very serious about the male lead’s arrival.
But after tapping a few keys, he suddenly realized something and looked up, only to see Shen Xifu in her slip dress standing in front of the refrigerator, staring at him coldly.
“What’s with that look?”
Shen Xifu pulled at the corner of her lips, asking with feigned confusion: “Husband?”
A person’s instinctive reactions cannot deceive others.
Shen Anyu’s subconscious action proved that he knew Jian Lixu’s taste.
Regardless of where he had learned it from, in the eyes of a wife who already suspected him of cheating, it appeared extremely suspicious.
“…” Shen Anyu silently put down his phone.
【System, is this the ’true, good, and beautiful’ female lead from the original novel, who was willing to submit to the male lead for the sake of her husband?】
Did she really not break character?
9106 scratched its head, confused: 【Isn’t the female lead kind?】
【She’s just curious about what the male lead’s taste preference is, that’s all.】
Shen Anyu watched Shen Xifu not far away, who, set against the rainy backdrop outside the window, exuded not a trace of human warmth. After a moment of silence, he said: 【…I really envy you having such a new brain, 9106. It should fetch a pretty good price, right?】
9106 wasn’t stupid; it understood that its host was calling it an idiot. 【QAQ.】
At the same time, Shen Xifu also spoke up. “What is my husband thinking about?”
Her voice was not soft like an average girl’s, but a coldness deliberately lowered.
Shen Xifu slowly walked over to stand before Shen Anyu, looking down at her dull, cowardly husband from above.
Only she knew what kind of face was hidden beneath the overlong bangs of the person before her—
Beautiful, timid.
It made one always want to see him cry, yet unable to bear exposing even a hint of this contrast of his to outsiders.
Contradictory and morbid.
Day after day, it tore at her sanity.
Coldly observing Shen Anyu’s nervousness and helplessness, Shen Xifu asked: “Since when did my husband learn of President Jian’s preferences?”
“…”
Shen Anyu’s Adam’s apple shifted slightly. The gaze from above, with its overwhelming presence, made him realize that Shen Xifu had begun suspecting him again.
Or perhaps, from the very start—from when she stood before the refrigerator and spoke her first sentence…
Shen Xifu had been setting the stage for the scene before him.
In this situation, Shen Anyu couldn’t tell Shen Xifu that he knew Jian Lixu’s taste preferences only because, at noon that day, unable to finish the bento she had made, he had hidden in the break room and forced himself to eat, accidentally overhearing colleagues discussing Jian Lixu’s dining preferences.
Looking down at his own food, he had happened to discover they corresponded with the dishes in his bento box, and so he had noted them down.
Extremely half-hearted.
But it happened to be the truth.
Only that afterward, he had coincidentally run into Jian Lixu, and a few times had even been invited by him to his office to discuss projects while eating, during which Jian Lixu had discovered that his taste was quite similar to Jian’s—that was even harder to bring up.
Fortunately.
While Shen Anyu racked his brains over how he should answer to reduce Shen Xifu’s suspicion of his infidelity, a few “ding-dong—“s broke the stagnant atmosphere of the room.
Walking to the entryway.
Shen Xifu opened the door, and Jian Lixu and his assistant stood right outside.
“Sorry to intrude,” Jian Lixu said gently. “Since work was completed ahead of schedule, and there’s also an impromptu meeting this evening, my assistant and I decided to come earlier. I hope it hasn’t caused any inconvenience.”
Shen Xifu looked at him. After a long moment, she slowly moved aside, leaving a gap. “Of course not.”
From Shen Anyu’s perspective, he could see that Shen Xifu and Jian Lixu were nearly the same height, and the strange atmosphere between them.
It didn’t resemble a young couple in the throes of romantic tension.
Rather, it seemed like old enemies who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.
However, all of this was attributed by 9106 to the unique way the male and female leads flirted.
Shen Anyu sat on the sofa, his lips pale from the tension of earlier.
Many times, he actually rather envied 9106’s innocence.
Because what kind of poor eyesight would it take to fail to notice that “Shen Xifu,” as the original novel’s female lead, had an attitude toward the male lead as cold as ice, and a height almost the same as theirs?
Shen Anyu remembered that in the original text, the description of the dominant male lead was that he was nearly 1.9 meters tall, with striking, cold features—a figure who stood out even among a crowd of celebrities, like a crane among chickens.
Now, looking at Shen Xifu beside Jian Lixu, nearly as tall as he was…
Shen Anyu faintly realized—was Shen Xifu, as the female lead, perhaps a bit too tall…?
But very quickly.
This doubt was dispelled by 9106’s words: “No one’s rule says the female lead has to be short.”
Early on, when Jian Lixu entered, Shen Anyu had already stood up, standing somewhat awkwardly in place.
“How have you been recovering these past few days?” Seeing him, Jian Lixu asked. “Have you been changing your dressings on time?”
Perhaps because he was visiting a subordinate, Jian Lixu hadn’t worn a too severe or formal suit today, but rather a somewhat refined black shirt, which maximally displayed his excellently proportioned figure.
—Yes.
Shen Anyu pressed his lips together, expressing himself clumsily with his hands.
Shen Xifu spoke on his behalf: “Changed three times. The wound is healing well.”
After hearing this, Shen Anyu nodded, lowering his gaze subconsciously, like the dull corporate slave in the original novel—unskilled in socializing, gloomy and withdrawn.
Shen Xifu spoke up at the right moment: “Let’s sit and talk.”
In the living room.
Shen Xifu and Jian Lixu, who had come to check on his subordinate’s injury, calmly discussed Shen Anyu’s condition.
And Shen Anyu, the subject of the conversation, sat beside Shen Xifu, quietly listening, playing the part of a qualified invisible man.
Midway through the conversation.
The assistant who had been silently accompanying Jian Lixu produced a contract at the appropriate moment, picking up where the conversation left off, and detailed the compensation plan for Shen Anyu’s injury.
To summarize.
Besides benefits like paid sick leave, there was also an additional sum of compensation.
This money had also appeared in the original novel.
But in the end, it had all been used by the female lead, “Xie Xifu,” as initial investment capital to get close to Jian Lixu.
As the one being compensated, Shen Anyu had never even seen this money from start to finish, let alone used it.
At present, Shen Anyu, who knew the full story, remained silent, only nodding twice when he needed to express himself, like a piece of wood being pushed along.
Withdrawn and weak.
“In that case, there’s nothing else.”
The assistant put away his pen and paper. When his gaze landed on Shen Xifu beside Shen Anyu, he paused briefly, as if he hadn’t expected that a colleague with so little presence in the company would have such a wife. “Shen… madam, do you have any other questions?”
“No.” Shen Xifu said. “Thank you.”
As if she hadn’t noticed the assistant’s odd look.
Afterward, the living room fell into a strange silence.
Shen Xifu, who as the host should have fulfilled her duties and invited the guests to stay for a meal, didn’t say a single word from start to finish.
And Jian Lixu, who realized that his subordinate’s wife did not welcome him, showed no intention of leaving.
Instead, it was Shen Anyu, seated on the sofa and unable to speak, who first noticed something was wrong. He carefully nudged Shen Xifu, gesturing, wanting her to do something—even just saying anything at all would be fine.
But Shen Xifu only looked at him without a word.
In her pitch-black pupils reflected Shen Anyu’s anxious appearance at that moment.
Shen Anyu pressed his lips together, uncomfortably averting his gaze. He knew that the question from before Jian Lixu arrived still hadn’t passed with Shen Xifu.
Now, no matter what he did, Shen Xifu would slap the label of suspected “infidelity” onto him.
But the guest was right across from them.
Shen Anyu lowered his head, typed a few lines on his phone, and placed it before Shen Xifu.
【Should we receive President Jian?】
【As for those matters, when night comes, I’ll explain slowly, alright? Xifu.】Shen Anyu softened his attitude.
Shen Xifu looked into his moist, pleading eyes.
As if she had already concluded that Shen Anyu was a husband who had strayed.
Across from them.
Jian Lixu, who had been observing them all along, finally spoke: “Since everything’s been discussed, we’ll be going now.” Having said this, Jian Lixu rose, but before turning to leave, he looked meaningfully at Shen Anyu and said: “Aren’t you going to see me off, Anyu?”