“Huh? Where’s my phone?!”
In the darkness, Cheng Yao finally remembered her phone. After that fall earlier, she had no idea where it had landed or what was covering it—she couldn’t even see the glow from its flashlight function. For a moment, the room was pitch black, and it really was hard to find.
“Boss, can you call me?”
After fumbling around for a while, Cheng Yao finally turned to the silent Qian Heng for help.
Qian Heng ignored her, but at least he pulled out his own phone and dialed the number.
The familiar ringtone sounded from a pile of clutter near Qian Heng’s feet. Cheng Yao let out a breath of relief. Seeing that the phone was close to him, Qian Heng bent down directly to pick it up…
Cheng Yao had been relaxed until she saw this motion from Qian Heng, and suddenly she remembered something. She struggled desperately to stand up and grab it herself, but her sprained ankle made her movements sluggish, and just at that moment, Qian Heng had already picked up her phone. Out of habit, he glanced at the lit-up screen…
Death warning ahead!! Death warning ahead!!!
In that instant, Cheng Yao felt as if these words flashed through her mind, feeling that things had gone terribly wrong, that all was lost…
Sure enough, after glancing at the phone screen, Qian Heng stopped. He narrowed his eyes slightly, a dangerous expression crossing his face. He gave a cold laugh and held the phone screen up in front of Cheng Yao.
“Explain.”
Qian Heng’s phone hadn’t hung up yet, so Cheng Yao’s phone was still vibrating because of it.
She stared at the three characters “Stinking Idiot” on the screen, feeling that in this scene, she could probably perform a live three-second cardiac infarction and die on the spot…
“I…” Cheng Yao stammered, “This is my term of endearment for you, Boss. Only for people I’m close to do I use a nickname like this. Look, in the words ‘idiot’—if you really savor it, don’t you feel there’s a faint sense of doting affection and helplessness in it? And adding the word ‘stinking’ on top gives it an irreplaceable emotional quality. On the surface it’s ‘stinking,’ but deep down it’s actually ‘sweet.’ For example, look, lots of parents call their kids ‘stinky baby,’ right? That one word ‘stinky’ carries so much love that’s hard to say out loud…”
Qian Heng said expressionlessly, “So you call your own close parents that too?”
“…”
“Or are you just hopelessly in love with me?”
“…”
Even though Cheng Yao usually bantered and talked nonsense freely, at this moment even she was at a loss for words. Saving her boss’s phone number as “Stinking Idiot”—how could she possibly spin that? There really was no way to spin it!
The atmosphere grew somewhat awkward for a while, but fortunately Qian Heng finally spoke. This time his emotions had clearly calmed down; he no longer had that feeling of being about to ascend to heaven from anger like before.
“Get out.”
“Huh???”
Qian Heng gave a cold snort. “We’re basically done covering trust law—if you’re not leaving, what, do you want to camp out in my room?”
No way! I’m not leaving! The power’s still out! No matter what, I’m not going back!
Although Qian Heng would definitely still chase her out if they talked about other topics, when it came to discussing professional matters, he seemed quite engrossed!
So Cheng Yao said, “Boss! It’s a long sleepless night ahead—we’ve finished trust law, why don’t we discuss the impact of insurance law on family wealth succession? Talk about family insurance policies these days? And some of the difficult points in handling family insurance disputes?”
“No. Get out.”
This time, Cheng Yao had misjudged Qian Heng’s mood—he refused without any hesitation at all.
“Then how about we discuss the practical dilemmas in inheritance law?”
“Cheng Yao.” Qian Heng pressed his lips together. “Go back. Sleep.”
“Boss, the day you’re moving out is getting closer and closer, and the time I have left to bask in your glow is getting shorter and shorter. I… I was wondering if I could sleep in your room tonight?” Cheng Yao pushed through despite the awkwardness. “I’ll just sleep on the floor. Getting to breathe the same air as you a little longer would be an honor for me…”
Qian Heng crossed his arms. “Speak like a normal human being.”
This man was completely unmovable…
Cheng Yao struggled on regardless. “Boss… tonight I really, really want to sleep on your floor. A fortune teller told me I’m due for a blood disaster, and I have to sleep on your floor to ward it off…”
Qian Heng laughed, baring his teeth in a chilling smile. “Cheng Yao, what makes you think I’d let you sleep on my floor? Oh, is it because of the sentiment behind saving me as ‘Stinking Idiot’?”
“…”
Cheng Yao wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but Qian Heng had pronounced “that sentiment” with deliberate emphasis on each word, as if he were gritting his teeth…
In response, Cheng Yao could only keep improvising under pressure: “I sprained my ankle… I can’t walk…”
“Do you need me to carry you out like a sack of rice?”
Qian Heng leaned against the wall and began undoing his cuffs, looking every bit ready to scoop Cheng Yao up and toss her out.
Faced with the sheer terror of being left alone in the endless darkness, Cheng Yao completely forgot about dignity in her urgency. She flopped down with a thud at Qian Heng’s feet and grabbed onto his calf.
“I’m not leaving!”
Qian Heng was momentarily stunned—he hadn’t expected Cheng Yao to actually cling to his leg so shamelessly, and in the most literal sense too.
He lifted his leg trying to shake her off, but worried about her injured ankle, he didn’t dare use force. Locked in this stalemate, Cheng Yao only clung tighter and tighter.
“Cheng Yao!” Qian Heng’s voice was clenched through his teeth. “If you keep this up, I’ll report you for sexual harassment tomorrow!”
“Go ahead and report me. The success rate for filing sexual harassment cases is low to begin with, because the evidence is hard to prove. Besides, if you want to report me, you don’t have any evidence anyway.”
As Cheng Yao argued back, she thought for the first time in her life that studying law was actually quite useful at critical moments!
Facing someone who also understood how the law worked, Qian Heng was practically fuming. He said, enunciating each word: “You. Get. Up.”
“I won’t! I want to sleep on the floor!”
…
Qian Heng looked down at the fuzzy head clinging to his leg and felt a headache coming on.
“Boss, don’t kick me out—I’ll tell you the truth!” Cheng Yao said, on the verge of tears. “I watched a horror movie tonight, and I’m afraid of the dark. Please, I’m begging you! I’ll stay quietly in the room, like I don’t even exist. I’m scared of ghosts, I don’t want to go back to my room alone! I’ll volunteer to work five days of unpaid overtime in exchange for the right to sleep on your floor! Really, Boss, please!”
Actually, the moment she said this real reason, Cheng Yao had already braced herself to be packed up and thrown out of the room again by Qian Heng. But to her surprise, not only did he not throw her out, he actually stopped.
“You’re afraid of ghosts?”
“Of course I am! Aren’t you?”
Qian Heng’s voice was full of disdain. “If you haven’t done anything to feel guilty about, why be afraid of a ghost knocking at your door?”
This has nothing to do with feeling guilty!!!
Cheng Yao wanted to roar internally. Of course Qian Heng wasn’t afraid—with a man this fearsome, even ghosts would probably be scared of him!
“Watch fewer of these feudal, superstitious ghost movies in the future.” Qian Heng’s voice remained as calm as ever, as if he were commenting on whether tonight’s dinner had been tasty. “Fine, get up. I’m going to sleep. You sleep on the floor on the left side.”
Huh???
Wait a second…
Qian Heng glanced at the dumbfounded Cheng Yao and raised an eyebrow, though his expression looked slightly unnatural. “I’ve already granted your wish to sleep on the floor. Are you going to push your luck even further?”
Cheng Yao still couldn’t quite believe it. “Y-you’re really letting me sleep on the floor?”
“You’d rather sleep on the bed?” Qian Heng turned his head away. “A tiger doesn’t share its den—haven’t you heard that saying? Who gave you the nerve to think you could sleep with me?”
“…” Cheng Yao scratched her head. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just, in most TV dramas, in this kind of situation, doesn’t the man usually offer up his own bed and let the woman sleep in it?”
“Go to sleep early. You can dream up all those plot points you’re thinking of.”
“…”
Regardless, through Cheng Yao’s sheer persistence, she finally fought her way through and won the precious (?) opportunity to sleep on the floor of her boss’s room.
Unfortunately, after all that commotion, Cheng Yao was now wide awake.
She lay on the mattress on the floor, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
And on the bed, Qian Heng also seemed to be tossing and turning…
Cheng Yao tentatively called out, “Boss?”
“What?”
Sure enough, Qian Heng wasn’t asleep either. Whether it was some trick of the night, his voice carried a hint of helplessness.
Cheng Yao cleared her throat. “Since neither of us can sleep, why don’t we chat? We’ve lived together this long and never really had a proper conversation. Didn’t you say you wanted me to enjoy the feeling of chatting with you being worth a fortune a day? I want to enjoy it one last time…”
Qian Heng paused for a long time before speaking. His voice sounded a bit dry, but he didn’t actually refuse, just carrying a hint of awkwardness: “Talk about what?”
“Talk about your experiences and insights from all your years practicing law? I’ve genuinely wondered sometimes—did a successful lawyer like you ever go through the same struggles that we newcomers face? How did you get through them?”
After asking, Cheng Yao felt it was somewhat inappropriate—even if Qian Heng shared his professional insights from all these years, they probably wouldn’t have much reference value for her. Her abilities and his abilities were completely different, and the difficulties they’d face would probably be completely different too.
Qian Heng was silent for a long time. So long that Cheng Yao thought he’d fallen asleep, when she finally heard his voice—
“It was rough at the start of my career too.”
Huh??? Cheng Yao immediately perked up. She sat up from the floor, craned her neck, and looked toward Qian Heng. This answer was truly unexpected. In Cheng Yao’s mind, Qian Heng seemed to have been born powerful, as if he’d never experienced the kind of struggles she was going through…
“My family opposed me becoming a lawyer.”
Hmm… so was it something like “if you can’t make it as a lawyer, you have to come back and take over the family business” kind of worry… Cheng Yao thought. Sure enough, different social classes meant different worries…
“My parents cut me off financially entirely to force me to submit. I’d just graduated, didn’t have a cent to my name. My brother secretly wanted to help me out, but I guess my head wasn’t quite right back then—out of stubborn pride, I refused.” Qian Heng’s tone, as he said this, seemed to carry a hint of regret. “As a result, I ended up living in a basement, couldn’t even afford a Shaxian snack stall meal. One time I ate from a street vendor and got acute gastroenteritis, vomiting and having diarrhea for a whole week. And right then, I’d finally landed a client—except the client was in another district, so with my stomach in agony, I still had to run back and forth delivering documents and communicating, just to hold onto a client whose legal fee was only five thousand yuan. Freezing cold days, rain or shine…”
!!!
Qian Heng actually had a story like this??? This down and out??? It sounded so unreal.
“But from what Bao Rui said, it sounded like you, Boss, were glamorous and successful from the very start of your career?”
Qian Heng smiled, his tone quite indifferent, as if he weren’t talking about himself at all. “That was just me putting on a good act. Luckily, before my father cut me off financially, I’d already bought myself the most expensive suit I could find.”
“Actually, I was barely scraping by, but every day I still wore that suit I’d bought earlier, no matter the weather, no matter what kind of client I was meeting—I always showed up in a suit. A lawyer needs to present the most professional and polished image. And no matter how hard things get, it’s fine if other people look down on you, but you yourself must always respect yourself. Because if you can’t even respect yourself, who can you expect to respect you?”
“Unfortunately, my mentoring lawyer at the time really disliked me for this—dressed to the nines every day, he thought I was some rich kid playing at being a lawyer for show. He gave me a hard time constantly for it, deliberately intercepting important information clients gave me, or withholding certain facts and evidence, which nearly cost me several lawsuits.”
Cheng Yao was quite surprised—she could never have imagined that Qian Heng had gone through something like this.
“It was a large law firm. I don’t want to name it again—it had a large scale nationwide, with many branch offices. I went in full of hope, only to find that a lot of the lawyers there poured their energy into internal fighting, office politics permeating the work. Many senior lawyers spent their energy forming cliques and suppressing rivals, rather than thinking about how to improve their professional skills.” Qian Heng’s voice was calm. “That’s when I swore I would never join a large, corporatized firm like that again. Rather than become that kind of lawyer, I’d rather found my own boutique firm—lean staff, but united enough, a team with real cohesion, able to strike wherever pointed, able to push everyone’s professional abilities to their limit.”
Cheng Yao suddenly realized—so this was why the atmosphere at Junheng was always so good. This was why, among colleagues, there was only teasing and banter and never scheming against each other. This was why Qian Heng had always shared his professional knowledge with her without reservation, even taking the time to guide her through legal reasoning.
Because Qian Heng was exactly this kind of person—professional and forthright. Though he was sharp-tongued and never let anyone off easy, his heart was cleaner and purer than anyone’s.
“The current team at Junheng, they’re all the result of our screening. Anyone without real skill, who doesn’t want to put in the effort, who’s got crooked schemes in their head—we got rid of them a long time ago.”
This kind of working atmosphere was one of the important reasons Cheng Yao loved Junheng, and it turned out this firm culture wasn’t accidental at all—it was the result of Qian Heng deliberately maintaining it.
At the end of the day, whether it was the improvement in her professional abilities or the firm’s good atmosphere, the person Cheng Yao should thank was Qian Heng.
Because it was people like Qian Heng who provided her with such a safe, clean, orderly environment to grow in, letting her walk out of the blow and dejection of the Bai Xingmeng case, letting her see the strengths in every colleague, letting her rise to the challenge through mutual learning, letting her focus all her energy on professional growth without having to navigate complicated interpersonal politics.
“So, that mentoring lawyer who excluded you back then—how’s he doing now? Did you ever face him in court later and crush him completely?”
“Him?” Qian Heng gave a cold snort through his nose. “Never seen him again. Someone who spends all day scheming and excluding new people because he has no real ability of his own—how could he possibly survive when the tide sweeps through? Besides, his judgment was simply too poor.”
Cheng Yao suddenly felt quite indignant on his behalf, and decided to throw in a big compliment while she was at it: “Exactly! How dare he look down on you back then! Someone like you, Qian Par—any clear-eyed person could tell at a glance you were destined to rise above the rest sooner or later! He was just making an enemy for himself!”
“It’s not really about judgment.” Qian Heng’s tone was full of displeasure. “Was he blind? With my presence and manner of speech, how could I possibly be someone raised by an ordinary rich family? To actually think I was just some ordinary rich kid—simply unbearable.”
“…”