The mixer’s seating was arranged in an S-shape — the women stayed seated, while every three minutes the men rotated clockwise. Cheng Yao sat diagonally opposite Qian Heng, moving counterclockwise from him, so after the first three minutes, Qian Heng shifted one seat over, putting a bit more distance between them.
From that distance, Cheng Yao could no longer hear what Qian Heng was saying, only see his devastatingly handsome but ice-cold face, paired with his suit — the two of them looked less like they were doing a three-minute speed date and more like conducting a death-sentence interview…
Before she knew it, Cheng Yao had chatted with several more male lawyers.
Though it was billed as a mixer, everyone here was part of the same professional circle, and most approached it with a casual “why not make a friend” attitude. Cheng Yao had no real intention of finding a partner, and stayed relaxed, chatting with a few male lawyers from different practice areas — it was actually rather eye-opening, and they exchanged contact information.
“Attorney Qian Heng, I’ve heard so much about you.”
At the mention of the name “Qian Heng,” Cheng Yao gave a start and looked up, only to realize that thanks to the S-shaped seating, Qian Heng had once again ended up sitting not far from her.
This time, across from him was a completely different type of female lawyer — she looked delicate, gentle, with an air of being sweet and easygoing. Cheng Yao took her in — though petite in build, her figure wasn’t lacking, dressed in a rather artsy style, and her questions leaned toward the romantic and wistful.
“If you were dating, where would you take your girlfriend for dates?”
“The office.”
Who knew Qian Heng was into forbidden office role-play — how thrilling!
Sure enough, the woman across from him blushed a little. “So, um — what would you do in the office?”
“Work overtime together.”
“…”
“So, if you were dating, do you think lawyers — being so busy — should meet at what frequency, ideally?”
“Once every six months, I’d say.”
“…”
Qian Heng thought about it, then added, “If there’s free time, you can email.”
“…”
The three minutes weren’t even up before the female lawyer across from Qian Heng got up and left…
Still, Qian Heng’s deceptively enticing face remained highly effective bait. Next round, another eager, shy female lawyer took her seat across from him.
“Hi, Attorney Qian — I’d like to get to know you a little better…” This one was quite pretty too, with long legs. After a bit of opening small talk, she naturally steered toward his views on partner selection. “So, do you think of yourself as a proactive person in relationships?”
“No.”
“So if you met someone of the opposite sex you really felt a connection with, what would you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Huh?”
Qian Heng said, as if it were obvious, “I’d just wait for her to pursue me.”
“…”
The female lawyer still seemed determined to salvage things. “Some people are very outstanding but also have some personality flaws. If you met a girl who could accept all your flaws, would you treasure her especially?”
“No.”
“Why not???”
“Because I don’t have any flaws.”
“…”
Cheng Yao checked the time — one minute, thirty-four seconds. This round’s female lawyer also got up and left…
Cheng Yao watched the parade of women come and go across from Qian Heng — every one of them arrived shy and hopeful, and every one of them left looking as if poisoned…
Finally, the rotation was drawing to a close, and by the final order, Qian Heng ended up sitting across from Cheng Yao.
“…”
Cheng Yao looked at her handsome boss across the table. Her boss looked back at her too.
“Boss…”
Before Cheng Yao could finish her sentence, Qian Heng cut her off again, mercilessly. “Don’t go thinking that participating in this mixer means anything. Cheng Yao, control yourself. I’m an anti-marriage person. Don’t get your hopes up.”
Cheng Yao had no doubt at all — if excessive self-regard were a crime, Qian Heng’s offense was severe enough for a death sentence, at minimum!
Unfortunately, she only dared say this inwardly. To Qian Heng’s face, she asked respectfully instead, “Is it because you’re anti-marriage that you deliberately answered those female lawyers’ questions like that just now?”
She thought to herself — that must be why, so they’d get the hint and back off; after all, most women who came to something like this were hoping for a warm family someday, and Qian Heng probably didn’t want to waste their time but was too awkward to just say so directly, so he sacrificed his own image and used such extreme answers to reject them?
“No.” Qian Heng said, as if it were self-evident. “Aside from the virgin part, everything else I said was just the truth.”
Alright, Cheng Yao thought — if being a chauvinist pig and having excessive self-regard could both be charged as crimes, Qian Heng’s combined offenses were so severe that two hundred executions wouldn’t be enough.
Cheng Yao became convinced — Qian Heng was truly never going to find a partner in this lifetime.
“Anything else you want to ask?” Qian Heng gave a short snort. “If you have any personal questions, ask now while you have the chance. I won’t hold it against you.”
Cheng Yao waved her hands quickly. “No, nothing I want to ask.”
“Oh, well I have a few questions for you, then.” Qian Heng glanced at Cheng Yao. “How many male lawyers did you add just now?”
“Huh?”
“Probably six or seven, I’d guess.” Qian Heng’s voice was flat. “The mature-and-steady type, the sunny-and-athletic type, the lively-and-innocent type, the gentle-scholarly type, and the smiling-tiger type too. Cheng Yao, do you collect stamps?”
During the three-minute speed rounds, Cheng Yao had been straining her ears eavesdropping on Qian Heng, not realizing that Qian Heng had also been unconsciously watching her out of the corner of his eye.
Qian Heng had watched Cheng Yao chatting cheerfully with every male lawyer, watched how, pretty and young and lively as she was, almost every one of them had treated her with such warmth. He’d watched her exchange WeChat contacts with them one after another, and for some reason, he’d felt increasingly irritated.
Wu Jun was right — this really was femme fatale material. A woman this pretty had no business being a good lawyer, Qian Heng thought; better to get this connections hire cleared out of Junheng soon.
He could have let it go without a word, but in the end, he’d still asked Cheng Yao that slightly barbed question.
The moment the words left his mouth, Qian Heng regretted it — that wasn’t like him at all. But apologize?
Those two words didn’t exist in Qian Heng’s dictionary.
He simply pressed his lips together and looked at Cheng Yao.
Just as he braced for Cheng Yao’s face to flush red with a wounded expression, she instead burst out excitedly, “Boss, you got the number wrong! I added eight! Eight is my lucky number! Also, how did you know I like collecting stamps? I really do! I’ve collected stamps since first grade — I have tons of valuable ones, the really expensive kind! I don’t usually tell people about it!”
“…”
After lunch came the main event of the mixer — outdoor activities.
The bar association had chartered a bus and carted a whole vehicle full of lawyers out to a 5A-rated scenic park on the outskirts of the city.
The air out in the suburbs was excellent, the sky bluer than in the city, and with the beautiful, breezy weather, even Cheng Yao felt like the trip had been worthwhile. Her supreme boss, however, still wore a face that said “approach at your own risk.”
“This afternoon’s activity is boating in pairs,” the association’s organizer, the older lady, announced cheerfully. “This lake covers a wide area — everyone will set out from the dock, and we’ll see which team makes it to the pickup point on the other side first.” “We won’t officially assign the pairs — you all got to know each other a bit this morning, so pair up yourselves. Of course, in principle, mixed male-female teams work best, but if you two of the same gender hit it off, that’s fine too.”
She looked around at everyone with a smile. “This is just for fun, but we did secure some prize money. First team to the other side gets a thousand yuan, second place gets five hundred, third gets two hundred. Good luck, everyone!”
At the news of free pairing, everyone, without a word, sprang into motion, and soon the matchups became clear.
Some lawyers had hit it off during the morning’s speed-round mixer and paired up with mutual interest, some had bonded over lunch and formed same-gender teams — but there were exceptions too.
Cheng Yao, for one.
Five male lawyers now stood around her, all eyes gleaming, eager to team up with her.
There was, of course, another exception as well.
Qian Heng — with his enviable face, his outstanding physique, his rare-among-lawyers thick head of hair, plus his unstoppable professional skill and massive assets — had, through his own suffocating conduct, successfully driven off every single admirer, becoming the only male lawyer in the whole gathering left standing with not a single soul beside him.
…
Qian Heng, standing alone with no one around him, glanced over at Cheng Yao, surrounded by five people.
“Cheng Yao.”
Her boss deigned to speak.
Cheng Yao felt a distinctly ominous premonition…
Qian Heng smiled, calm and composed. “Come here.”
“Huh?”
“Team up with me.”
I don’t want to! Cheng Yao screamed internally. Team up with you and drift on a lake together for however long — wouldn’t that basically be a supreme experience in suicide by poisoning?
She glanced at Qian Heng. “Boss, it’s rare to have a chance to network across firms. We shouldn’t be too closed off — we should mix things up, socialize more with our peers, especially…”
“Cheng Yao, I’m ordering you to team up with me, using your year-end bonus as leverage.”
“…”
People will die for money, birds will die for food — the power of a year-end bonus is truly immense.
And so, in the end, Cheng Yao, wearing the expression of someone marching bravely to their doom, ended up on the same boat as Qian Heng.
The boat here wasn’t motorized — whoever rode it had to row the oars themselves.
Qian Heng sat at the bow, bathed in sunlight, his hair seeming to gleam in the breeze, every pore of him seeming to exude the fragrance of money from head to toe — his overly striking face, set against the scenery around him, gave off the illusion of a painting come to life.
Too bad Cheng Yao had no heart to appreciate any of it.
As Marx put it so well: from the moment capital came into the world, every pore of it drips with blood and filth.
The evil forces of capitalism — their glamour was all built on the exploitation of the proletariat!
Cheng Yao rowed furiously with the oars, sneaking furious glares at the other end of the boat, where Qian Heng sat idle, admiring the scenery.
Even though Cheng Yao was quite tempted by that thousand-yuan first-place prize, with a great useless lord like Qian Heng sitting on the boat doing nothing, no matter how hard she rowed, she still couldn’t compete with the other boats’ cooperating pairs.
As boat after boat overtook them, Cheng Yao finally couldn’t hold back. “Boss, look — we sit at the firm all day normally, and now that we finally have some outdoor activity, don’t you want to get some exercise? Rowing’s great for the body!”
Qian Heng glanced at Cheng Yao, showing not the slightest intention of moving even a finger. “Weren’t you having a great time at this mixer today?”
Cheng Yao looked utterly baffled — what did that have to do with rowing!
Qian Heng smiled, insufferably. “It’s fine for you to enjoy an event like this — but since you’re clearly enjoying yourself, you should naturally row with more energy and enthusiasm too. Show your good spirit through action.”
“…”
Cheng Yao thought that if someone could invent a spray that instantly turned people mute, they should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Still, for the sake of the prize money, Cheng Yao wasn’t one to give up easily. “Boss, don’t you hate losing? Look, if you keep going like this — not lifting a finger while we row together — we’re not just going to lose, we’re going to come in dead last! All the other boats have already passed us!”
“I don’t hate losing.” Qian Heng, unbothered by the provocation, merely smiled into the wind, looking almost wistfully melancholic. “I’d actually like to know what it feels like to lose a lawsuit. But I can’t lose those.”
“…”
“It might actually be nice to experience losing, just this once.”
Cheng Yao watched Qian Heng sitting there at the bow, utterly at ease, and felt a swell of frustration rising in her chest.
She glanced around — every other boat had passed them, no one in sight, no witnesses — and found herself, despite everything, starting to calculate the feasibility of pushing Qian Heng into the lake right then and there.
But maybe it was just Cheng Yao’s natural good luck.
The several boats that had been ahead of them and Qian Heng suddenly ran into all sorts of trouble and stopped in place. One boat had its oar knocked into the water during some horseplay, two others had collided and gotten stuck together, and another had drifted off course…
Counting it up, Cheng Yao only needed to pass two more boats to make it into the top three for the prize money!
Two hundred yuan wasn’t much, but even a fly’s worth of meat is still meat! And with a bit more effort, who knew — maybe she could even pull off an upset and take first place!
Cheng Yao perked up at this, rowing with all her might, muttering to herself the whole while.
“Catch up and overtake! Cheng Yao, you can do it!”
Sure enough, shouting that slogan seemed to work, and she really did pass another boat — she was now in second place! And not far behind first place, either!
But excitement led to disaster — Cheng Yao must have overexerted herself, because as she rowed and rowed, her hand suddenly cramped up. Her grip faltered, and the oar in her hands slipped and fell into the lake.
Almost on reflex, Cheng Yao reached out and leaned down to catch it — that motion threw off her balance completely, and she toppled headfirst into the water.
The instant she hit the water, Cheng Yao had no time to think at all — she just reflexively reached out to grab hold of something, and ended up seizing something warm.
And with that, she dragged her boss down into the water with her, using him as her cushion.