Chapter 19#

Fu Jinchi sat for half an hour in a bar booth that had no one coming to fill it, and understood that he had been played.

More precisely: he had known it before he arrived.

Why would someone like Ben invite him out for drinks, out of nowhere?

This was a form of wordless protest. Or perhaps a complaint.

Directed at one chief assistant who had been played first.

Still, Fu Jinchi had come. The night was long and he had nothing better to do. When a server came over to politely remind him that the booths had a minimum spend, he obliged like a perfectly ordinary, budget-conscious office worker and moved to a stool at the bar.

He sat with his drink, and a steady stream of brightly dressed people made their approaches — some attracted by his face, some by the labels on his clothes. They came like waves breaking against a rock at sea, and each time retreated.

Fu Jinchi thought of a face that always seemed composed and effortlessly unhurried, yet cold as frost — and lost all interest in anyone else.

He had, of course, made an enemy of the man this time.

Stirring up trouble, creating turmoil, utterly pointless — Fu Jinchi had a clear-eyed view of his own behavior.

Fu Jinchi was, in his bones, a disruptor. Yan Zishu’s old assessment of him as a born troublemaker was, in this respect, entirely accurate.

There were many times when he didn’t feel that life had particular meaning — but he reliably found he couldn’t stand to see Fu Weishan prosper.

And he didn’t much like watching someone make Fu Weishan their entire world, either.

The bar was playing an old song: Since you’re no immortal, you can’t be free of desires — put morality aside and put profit in the middle…

Fu Jinchi listened for a moment, and something genuinely warm and easy surfaced in his expression.

He drank his way through a few more glasses alone. The evening was more or less spent.

On his way out, Fu Jinchi left the server a thick stack of tips.

The server was astonished enough to feel genuine regret for having moved him from the booth: “Oh — thank you, sir! This is far too much!”

Fu Jinchi smiled and gestured vaguely. “You have a tear-shaped mole that looks just like a friend of mine. Consider it fate.”

*

Inside Yinghan Group, the Dongyun Bank partnership project moved forward in an orderly fashion.

The project team was by now mostly assembled. Like any collaborative team, it contained people who worked with exceptional diligence, and naturally also people who coasted. Particularly in a company this saturated with family culture, Yan Zishu had no realistic way to root out every ineffective party.

But his management style was as measured and exacting as his character, and that carried a certain weight with the team.

There were, of course, those who resisted being managed.

Chief among them was the project’s deputy general manager, Zhang Yan.

Zhang Yan was, in fact, the candidate Li Chang’an had attempted to install. Having failed to land the top position, he had nonetheless been inserted into the second slot. Which meant that Zhang Yan — quite evidently — would rather have been the first slot.

Ben, with suppressed fury: “Whenever there’s even a small issue with an approval document, the legal department sends it back without making a single correction, without even saying which part has the problem — the whole thing has to be resubmitted from scratch. And every time it turns out it was Zhang Yan’s team whose data hadn’t been updated. Last time I saw Zhang Yan buying a whole pile of milk teas to butter up the legal department — he’s clearly in with them. I think he’s deliberately colluding.”

Yan Zishu glanced at him. “Evidence for that?”

Ben muttered: “Just venting… it’s the secretarial office walking all the procedures. We’re the ones taking the heat.”

Yan Zishu issued a mild, dispassionate rebuke: “Then don’t go around saying that casually.”

Early on, when Yan Zishu told him to be quiet, Ben would be thoroughly chastened and turn it over conscientiously.

Later, he realized the implied meaning was: revenge is a dish best served cold. Don’t advertise.

Zhang Yan, for his part, greeted Yan Zishu every time they crossed paths with theatrical warmth — hand on shoulder, the whole performance.

The typical scene: Zhang Yan calling from across the corridor, “Oh, Director Yan!” — Yan Zishu replying, “Drop the title — call me Lao Yan or Xiao Yan, anything but Director.” — Zhang Yan insisting: “Absolutely not, can’t mess with the hierarchy, ha ha!”

Excruciating for bystanders to witness.

In practice, Yan Zishu had begun to notice it himself: having become project general manager, he naturally spent less time physically at Fu Weishan’s side. And Fu Weishan, having given the project with a degree of inner resistance, was slowly producing that particular sense of growing distance.

In the last two meetings, Zhang Yan had deliberately taken contrary positions, and Fu Weishan had shown a visible tendency to side with him.

The psychological pattern seemed to be: the more directly someone appeared to speak their mind and challenge the leadership, the more they looked like a loyal official.

So, in the margins of project work, Yan Zishu gave Ben his second task for a petty person to carry out.

He mentioned, as though in passing: “The secretarial office is a bit short-staffed lately. If I count the time, Ji Chen should be due back around now, shouldn’t he?”

Ben, hearing the request, was genuinely startled. Nothing in Yan Zishu’s manner had ever suggested he had any fondness for Ji Chen.

Yan Zishu, of course, had no particular fondness for Ji Chen — only this decision had nothing to do with personal preference.

He patted Ben on the shoulder, the way the vice president had patted him. “You only need to follow instructions.”

His tone was so self-assured that Ben gave up trying to think it through and simply did it.

If there was a philosophy for being a manager, there was equally a philosophy for being a subordinate.

The philosophy of subordinates: if your boss has lately been looking at you with less warmth, either do something that makes them happy, or redirect their attention elsewhere. The first approach dissolves the friction; the second displaces it.

So: it was sufficient for Fu Weishan to be pleased to have Ji Chen back.

When Ji Chen had raised the idea of resigning, Fu Weishan’s response had been to offer him a “study leave” for final exams.

Which meant that Fu Weishan had always intended to bring Ji Chen back eventually.

To borrow Fu Jinchi’s logic: if Ji Chen was coming back one way or another, why couldn’t Yan Zishu turn it to his own advantage?

From the plot’s perspective, it was in any case not inconsistent with whatever he might need to do to Ji Chen later.

As for the altercation: there had been three people involved, Ji Chen included. Ben quietly paid a visit to the slightly more civil of the two colleagues. The next day, this man went to HR and said that, on reflection, Ji Chen’s striking out had been provoked by deliberate instigation — there had been cause for it.

There were no security cameras in the emergency stairwell, and the events of that day came down entirely to each person’s account.

Ji Chen had previously insisted only that the others had been “verbally abusive,” but had refused to repeat exactly what had been said. The fact remained that he had undeniably thrown the first punch, and the outcome had been a split ruling — with Ji Chen bearing the greater share of responsibility.

Now, however, the civil colleague produced a short audio recording. When Ji Chen had stumbled upon them gossiping, the man had instinctively opened his phone’s recording function — he hadn’t thought too carefully about why, but it now served its purpose — capturing proof that the other party had said something like apologize to your grandmother and other explicitly insulting language.

As for the civil colleague’s own words: once he’d started the recording, he had said only something like let’s both take a step back, nothing inflammatory, nothing he needed to worry about.

With evidence now in hand demonstrating that Ji Chen had been provoked by a colleague’s abusive language, his decision to punch the man became something far more sympathetic.

Not merely sympathetic, in fact — elevated to its logical conclusion, it proved that Yinghan had a senior-employee-bullying-intern problem.

The investigation that had been quietly shelved was suddenly very much back in play, and very much in Ji Chen’s favor.

Yan Zishu went with the HR director to brief Fu Weishan.

The HR director mopped his forehead. “This truly was a failure of employee management on our part… Yinghan has always prided itself on its culture, and to find that this kind of behavior toward a new employee had been occurring — it simply cannot stand. But the critical thing is, thanks to CEO Fu’s timely judgment in supporting the intern through this period and preventing him from leaving impulsively, there’s still an opportunity to make this right — otherwise the reputational damage to the company would have been far worse.”

The first half of this speech established the seriousness of the incident. The second half made Fu Weishan look decisive and farsighted.

Seeing Fu Weishan give the smallest of nods, the HR director exhaled.

Yan Zishu added: “I’ll go personally to explain the outcome of the investigation to Ji Chen and offer him an apology.”

Fu Weishan agreed.

Ji Chen was fetched from the study room by his black-glasses roommate.

When Yan Zishu delivered essentially the same message as the HR director, Ji Chen looked startled and mortified: “No, no, it was partly my fault too—”

Yan Zishu said: “Actually, I also owe you an apology.”

“For what?” Ji Chen looked confused.

“I was cold toward you sometimes, before—” Yan Zishu adjusted his glasses. “It was because of how you affected CEO Fu’s judgment.”

“What? What do you mean?” Ji Chen’s eyes went wide.

“You should understand — someone in CEO Fu’s position, managing a group as large as Yinghan, is like the captain of a great ship. Sound, clear-headed judgment is the most important quality in a leader.” Yan Zishu said. “But since he met you, he has become someone who acts on feeling… The influence you’ve had on him is greater than you realize. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

If you took each sentence apart and examined it in isolation, none of it was technically false.

The emotional implication was entirely a matter of how one chose to read it.

Ji Chen’s eyes were very round. “I… I don’t quite understand. Are you saying CEO Fu—”

“I’m only sharing a very personal observation.” Yan Zishu said, in a calm and measured tone, speaking something that was, technically, the truth. “Take your time thinking it over. But if you were to come back, I imagine CEO Fu would be very glad.”

He left it at that, and extracted himself, leaving Ji Chen alone in the corridor once again with a great deal to untangle.

His black-glasses roommate was heading to dinner and found his roommate still standing by the teaching building entrance, staring into space: “Hey — what are you daydreaming about?”

“If someone told you that you affect their judgment — what would that mean?” Ji Chen asked him, with some bewilderment.

“Do you even have to ask?” The roommate scratched his head. “That sounds like a line straight out of a prime-time drama.”

He was, after all, a product of the drama society.

He offered his advice: “These days if someone comes at you with this kind of vague confession, watch out — could easily be a player.”

Ji Chen’s heart gave a small defensiveness at that, and he shook his head to Fu Weishan’s defense: “It wasn’t him who said it. And I know for certain he’s not that kind of person.”

Maybe people were just contrarian by nature. When his roommate, without knowing the full situation, casually labeled Fu Weishan a player, Ji Chen’s instinctive response was to feel offended on his behalf. An outsider didn’t have the context — it was too hasty to pass that kind of judgment. At least as far as Ji Chen was concerned: Fu Weishan had taught him the etiquette of fine dining, had made the trip to watch his performance, had arranged a car to take him home…

Thinking now of Yan Zishu’s downcast eyes and subdued tone, Fu Weishan took on a slightly vulnerable color in Ji Chen’s imagination.

And a voice kept nudging at him: Love starts with two people feeling something and trying it out, doesn’t it?

Ji Chen softened.

Caught in indecision, the weeks before summer break flew past — exam season, all told, was barely a fortnight.

When Ji Chen finally worked up the courage to return to the company, the HR director put him back in the secretarial office without a word of discussion.

It was a busy afternoon. Ben looked up and saw a good-looking young man, old-fashioned backpack in hand, following the HR director through the door. A dull-toned jacket a few hundred yuan at most — but the unremarkable clothes couldn’t hide the clear, luminous complexion, the apple-round cheeks, the cherry-red lips, the wide wet almond eyes. He looked for all the world like a high schooler who hadn’t quite grown up yet.

Or a small white rabbit that had wandered into the jungle.

Helen draped an arm over Ji Chen’s shoulder: “There were some misunderstandings before, but the company has dealt with what needed to be dealt with — we won’t be bringing any of that up again. Now, welcome back to our department, Xiaochen. We’re all going to look after each other, work hard, and make progress together.”

Ji Chen dipped into an enthusiastic bow: “…Now that I’m back, I’m going to work so much harder — please look after me.”

The bow was perhaps more vigorous than planned. His forehead connected with the corner of a desk with an audible thud.

He clapped a hand over his head. When he looked up, a red mark was already blooming on his pale skin, and physiological tears were beginning to fill his eyes.

The secretarial office immediately dissolved into a flurry of chirping: one person asking where exactly he’d hit himself, several others tripping over each other to say their welcomes.

Ben pressed his lips together. He had been annoyed a moment ago, and was now both annoyed and fighting an inappropriate urge to laugh. He surreptitiously snapped a photo and sent it to Yan Zishu — they’d established, early on, that for anything outside work, they used a separate messaging app that left no records.

Ben’s caption: Great. We’ve just adopted a household deity.

Yan Zishu’s reply: Just don’t antagonize him. I trust you to handle it.

Ben’s mood lifted marginally.

Then he switched to WeChat and found a second message from Yan Zishu, sent immediately after: Is the weekly meeting report deck done? When can I have it?

Ben: For f—