I work in the Finance Department, partly because I had previously interned at an accounting firm and was familiar with the field, and partly because this was where Mom started when she and Dad first established their business. She excelled at finance and capital operations, while Dad was skilled in production and marketing. Back then they were a perfect pair, but now everything had fallen apart.

There wasn’t much to say about the work in Finance. The section chief assigned a veteran employee named Ou Qiqi to guide me. My current job consisted of pulling up a chair to watch her do the accounting, familiarizing myself with various processes and financial software, learning from their previous reports, and so on.

Surprisingly, the company provided dormitories – two rather impressive high-rise buildings, probably because the land was cheap when they bought it. Of course, housing fees were still deducted from our salaries. When I learned about my salary and those of most factory workers, I felt the deduction was excessive. Whenever I heard colleagues complaining about it, I felt inexplicably guilty…

The employee dormitory had a cafeteria on the first floor, so daily life became a simple routine: walk out of the dorm to work – walk back for meals – walk out to work – walk back to sleep.

Yin Jie complained: “Who knew working would be even more restricted than school? In college it was a three-point routine, now it’s just two points. At least the university was close to downtown – here you can’t even see a convenience store when you step outside.”

Yin Jie was my new roommate from the Management Department, and there was also Wan Yuhua from Marketing – both fresh graduates who joined at the same time. The three of us lived in a four-person room, with one bed vacant…

Yin Jie had a sweet face and was a quick, straightforward girl from Shandong. Wan Yuhua was the quiet type, originally from Chengdu, and surprisingly didn’t like spicy food…

Work was neither good nor bad, but the cafeteria food was detestable. After eating there for a few days, I deeply realized I had been wrong – I had wrongly accused our school cafeteria…

It wasn’t the worst cafeteria in China.

The worst was waiting for us right here~~~

So going out for good food became one of the main themes of our lives.

I had only been working for a few days when I called Mom to complain about the terrible cafeteria food, demanding that she prepare a table full of delicious dishes for me when I returned for National Day.

But I soon discovered how naive I’d been – Finance was truly one of the world’s most unfortunate professions. During major holidays, we were always stuck doing month-end closing while other departments could leave early. We had to work through the end of the month and the first two days of the new month.

So I could only go home after finishing work on the second. According to national regulations, working during National Day meant triple pay, but I unhesitatingly exchanged all my overtime pay for compensatory leave. I shamelessly chose four days off, which the section chief approved with a frown. I happily rushed back to Mom’s embrace – more importantly, to her cooking – and stayed for a full nine days before returning. When I got back to the company, I found I was already behind the times.

When had the cafeteria conversation shifted from complaining about the food to collectively swooning over someone?

“First-hand news! I heard the new vice president used to be a surgeon, handsome with great charisma and particularly graceful.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“Well, you know my classmate works in HR at Shengyuan headquarters in Shanghai, right? She called last week saying their Manager Lin was being transferred here. She was so jealous and heartbroken, haha. So I got all the gossip.”

“Why would he quit being a doctor to come here?”

“How would I know? Just heard he used to be a quite famous surgeon, then somehow quit and became a department manager at Shengyuan headquarters, and now he’s suddenly being transferred here to be in charge.”

“Hey, being transferred from headquarters to here – is that a promotion or demotion?”

“That’s hard to say.”

“Oh, who cares about that! The important thing is he’s handsome!”

The girls eating at our table were all recent graduates who still maintained their student-era passion for gossip, though not as uninhibited as they would have been in school. When it came to superiors, everyone was more sensitive about sharing their thoughts. But the implications were clear to everyone.

Going from department manager at headquarters to vice president of a branch company – it didn’t sound like a promotion no matter how you looked at it.

Chewing on the practically tasteless fried fish, I eagerly listened to their whispers and couldn’t help quietly asking Yin Jie: “Have you already gone to check him out?”

Yin Jie said proudly: “Vice President Lin is my direct superior, okay? I don’t need to go sneak peeks – I can look whenever I want!” After showing off, she added: “Besides, he hasn’t even arrived yet. What’s there to check out?”

I was speechless – so after all this excitement, he wasn’t even here yet? Wasn’t this getting excited too early? Though come to think of it, with the company’s leadership all being middle-aged or older, suddenly having a young executive who was supposedly so handsome…

Ah~~

I couldn’t help feeling a bit anticipatory myself.

Despite the widespread anticipation, the handsome vice president had yet to arrive. After the topic circulated for a while, it died down, and we returned to our routine of work and cafeteria meals. The company was located in a remote part of the industrial park with nowhere interesting nearby to visit. The employee dormitory didn’t even have internet, so finding something to do after work became a troublesome issue.

Later, we learned from our seniors to download legitimate TV shows and novels during work downtime to watch back at the dorm.

It might sound boring, but I found I quite enjoyed this kind of life – it felt particularly peaceful and pure. Colleague relationships were good, and I was learning things at work.

One evening after work, I was crouching in the dorm browsing on my phone when Yin Jie pulled me and Yuhua over to watch a drama starring her idol. I didn’t usually watch TV dramas, finding them tiring, but this one was surprisingly good – tight-paced and suspenseful. I was completely drawn in.

But at the most exciting moment…

It ended…

Yin Jie shouted: “Ah! How did I miss downloading one episode? Am I a pig?!”

“…” Yuhua and I nodded in agreement.

“Rock, paper, scissors! Loser goes to the office to download it.”

Yuhua and I both objected, “It’s your idol’s drama, why should we go download it?”

Yin Jie looked at us painfully: “You’ve watched several episodes for free, and now you’re complaining about downloading one episode? Sisters, you can’t be like this!”

…Fine, rock, paper, scissors it is…

And I lost…

I sneaked into the office with the hard drive. It wasn’t month-end, so the Finance Department was relatively quiet with no one working overtime. I didn’t turn on the lights, quietly pulled out a chair, turned on the computer, and started downloading the drama.

According to the company’s unwritten rules, good computers went to senior employees first. We new employees used old computers discarded from who-knows-which branch company long ago, so they often had small problems.

Sure enough, halfway through the download, the network suddenly disconnected – the network cable must have come loose again. I had to crawl under the desk to replug the cable behind the computer tower.

Just as I crawled into the desk space and my hand touched the network cable, suddenly “click” – the lights blazed on.

I was startled by the sudden brightness. Instinctively, I stayed crouched under the desk, then heard steady, composed footsteps approaching, and crisp dress pants appeared in my line of sight.

Feeling guilty like a thief, I looked up, and my gaze met a pair of deep, dark eyes.

Perhaps because I was looking up at him from under the desk, his gaze felt particularly intimidating. He stared at me for a while without saying anything.

We just silently looked at each other.

How much longer was he going to stare…

With this thought, I suddenly realized I was still crouching under the desk. I hurriedly scrambled out, coughed, and guilty attempted to question him: “I don’t think I’ve seen you before – you’re not a company employee, are you? What are you doing here?”

Maybe it was my imagination, but after I said this, his expression and eyes seemed to darken instantly.

“Haven’t seen me…” He stared at me, seemingly enunciating each word, “Of course you haven’t seen me.”

After saying this, he withdrew his gaze and turned to leave without warning…

I stared dumbfounded at his straight retreating figure until the computer’s “ding” reminded me the download was complete, finally snapping me back to reality.