Chi Na’s villa was an old building over ten years old with terrible insulation and drafty on all sides.

Yu Shixuan lay inside with the air conditioning running twenty-four hours a day, yet her face remained pale without a hint of color.

I asked, “What are you planning to do?”

“At least wait until Chi Na’s sentence is handed down,” she said quietly. “Still don’t know if he’ll get the death penalty…”

He was involved in smuggling, intentional homicide, illegal possession of firearms… and a whole host of other charges. It probably wouldn’t be a good outcome.

“Aren’t you planning to go home?”

She smiled bitterly. “What home do I have? My father severed ties with me, my mother deleted me on WeChat. Continue as an architectural assistant? It’s a small circle…”

We both fell silent. After a long while, Yu Shixuan said, “Pass me my computer.”

“You’re not going to work, are you? Focus on recovering first!”

She shook her head. “There’s no time. I need to complete the later-stage renovation plan for the villa complex.”

I was shocked. “You still want to continue renovating this?”

She nodded, her slender fingers tucking her hair behind her ear as she looked down at the computer.

In that moment she resembled a bit that girl who used to work at Red House Architecture Institute.

I was somewhat speechless and said tactfully, “For your promise with Chi Na? It’s really not necessary…”

“For myself,” she said softly. “I originally had no opportunity to work as a lead designer. This project will be my signature work as an architect.”

I looked at her in shock. After a long pause, I said, “But the money needed for the project might be more than you think.”

Yu Shixuan’s design style was very different from Cheng Xia’s—extremely retro and dreamlike. This meant that from raw materials to contractors, everything had to meet high standards for her blueprints to truly be realized.

In other words, it was very expensive.

“It’s fine,” she said. “The initial payment has been settled. Chi Na left quite a bit of property and savings under my name. If I scrape it together, it should be enough to pay for the later stages.”

She gently raised her head and said quietly, “Now, I need an excellent budget estimator.”

I looked at her for a long time and said, “I am the most excellent budget estimator.”

Many things couldn’t be said openly—for instance, Chi Na did so much illegal business that running into trouble was only a matter of time.

But the issue was, if she hadn’t sent me that WeChat message, their lives would have been fine.

She saved me at the cost of ruining her own life. I couldn’t not help her.

During that period, I worked during the day and stayed at her place at night, taking care of her while working on the budget. It was actually a project manager’s job, just on a smaller scale.

Most of Chi Na’s assets were seized. She had put all her own money into it, but it was still barely enough. We drove to transport cement ourselves, did our own electrical and plumbing work, painted walls, did tile grouting.

Overwork forced me to chew coffee powder during the day just to stay alert.

But it was good this way—I didn’t have to think about Cheng Xia, and I didn’t have to think about… my work.

Without Chi Na’s interference, our work entered a stable period—we just needed to proceed steadily step by step.

And at this time, the company sent a senior engineer, Engineer Zhou, to serve as deputy project manager, assisting Old Feng.

His position was higher than mine, his qualifications deeper than mine. He sidelined me effortlessly.

Yes, I had taken the risks and suffered the losses. When I had nearly lost half my life for this project, someone came to take my project away from me.

Even the reason was ready-made: “You’re injured and need to rest.”

Logically, I should have had a big fight about it, but I just felt it was absurd.

I had worked desperately, given up everything I could give up, only to be erased so easily—was this my career?

I didn’t fight. I didn’t even go to Old Feng. I just mechanically completed all the trivial tasks.

Then I resumed my habits of running and listening to online courses. I thought that if there was a chance, I’d take the exam for a full-time master’s degree. Yu Shixuan could guide me perfectly.

During her college entrance exam, she only lost three points on English—even higher than Cheng Xia.

She just didn’t have as good a temper as Cheng Xia. When she found out that someone who had spent six years abroad couldn’t figure out attributive clauses, she directly threw the test paper at my head. “Even middle schoolers know this and you don’t! What graduate school are you taking!”

“I didn’t listen in middle school!”

“What were you doing?”

“Dating.”

Yu Shixuan rolled her eyes. How humiliating—to be rolled at by someone with love-brain!

Days passed slowly like this. My work basically became being Engineer Zhou’s assistant, helping him run errands.

After discovering I had no real authority, people’s attitudes toward me began to subtly shift.

For instance, those workers went from being respectful when they saw me to always grinning and telling dirty jokes.

Old Feng saw all of this but never intervened.

Only the elderly of Wuleji didn’t understand these things and still treated me like their own granddaughter, stuffing me with food and drink whenever they saw me.

Ha Rina still brought me meals every day. When she discovered I went to Yu Shixuan’s house every day, her face grew longer than her little white horse’s.

“Next time don’t eat our family’s pork rib soup—go eat at the snake woman’s house.”

“The snake woman doesn’t have these skills. I still have to go back every day to cook.”

Ha Rina got even angrier, snapping the lunch box shut. “Then you’re just a pushover. I don’t feed pushovers!”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, coaxing her. “Are you really angry? What’s there to be angry about… She saved me. Isn’t it right for me to help her?”

“I’m so angry! They’re all saying behind your back that you’re doing side jobs! I’m so angry!” She said “so angry” several times in imperfect Mandarin.

I was stunned. This was the first time I knew about this.

Our company strictly prohibited employees from taking outside work. The penalty ranged from salary reduction to dismissal—this was quite a serious accusation.

“Whatever. If it really comes out, they can check my accounts. I haven’t taken a single cent.”

Ha Rina became even angrier at this. “Why shouldn’t you take money!”

“One reason is that if I took money, the nature of it would change,” I said. “Another is, I’m making a friend in her.”

“What’s so good about her? Can she summon spirits?”

“She’s very smart. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel like she’ll make it big someday.”

The feeling was subtle.

She was very fragile. At first I looked down on girls like that. I always felt that to climb up, you had to live more like a man than men.

But she had always been good at using her feminine charm, making people softhearted, making people want to take care of her.

At the same time, when things happened, she would cry heartbreakingly when she needed to, but it didn’t prevent her from being decisive and making the most correct decisions.

Like the abortion.

And like how she insisted on completing this villa complex renovation under such great pressure.

“For architects, it’s all about seniority. Honestly, her design style isn’t what clients like. Continuing to compete in the provincial institute, it’s hard to stand out,” I said. “But if she can have independent works plus one or two significant awards, that’s different.”

This was probably something she had already thought through when she first started dating Chi Na.

Ha Rina didn’t understand, blinking her big eyes at me. “What does that have to do with you?”

“In construction, you have to maintain good relationships with all kinds of people,” I said. “Otherwise, what do we do in the future?”

She still didn’t understand, just obediently opened the soup for me to drink.

After a while, she asked, “Am I your little sister, or is she your little sister?”

Because she was speaking Mandarin, there was a cute clumsiness to it.

I was amused and said, “Of course it’s you!”

“Who are you closer to!” She still asked stubbornly with her neck stretched.

I sighed and tapped her head. “Why do I work so hard to earn money? After this project is done, I have to take you to S City and send you to school. Did you forget?”

She brightened up, pursing her lips and saying quietly, “I can work part-time.”

“Study,” I repeated. “Now, immediately, go study right away.”

She left, her figure light as a little butterfly.

Actually, I hadn’t figured out what to have her study. Her academic coursework was even worse than mine—she probably hadn’t studied properly since middle school. But she was quite interested in English. I bought her online courses to study first, then she could get an adult self-study diploma later.

She didn’t really care what she studied. For her, being able to leave and go to a big city was already exciting enough.

—

Old Feng wasn’t as easy to placate as Ha Rina. Or rather, he had been waiting for a chance to give me a good scolding for a long time.

That evening he called me to his office and asked, “I heard you haven’t been staying in the dorm lately. Is that true?”

“My friend isn’t feeling well. I’ve been taking care of her.”

He said, “You’ve been working for several years now. Do I still need to teach you! Devote yourself fully to work and don’t give anyone a chance to gossip!”

“Yes, I’ll move back from now on.”

“Who do you think you are!” He suddenly flew into a rage. “You’re just a piece of scrap! Still dreaming of transferring to headquarters—don’t go embarrass yourself!”

I didn’t speak, just kept my head down and took the scolding.

“Don’t let me see you slacking off again! Otherwise, get out directly. This isn’t a place for coasting by!”

He scolded me for a full hour. I suddenly felt exhausted, that kind of soul-deep exhaustion that made me lose all control.

Fine, let it all be destroyed. Let the whole world be destroyed.

“I haven’t delayed work a single day, haven’t been late, haven’t left early,” I said. “I don’t know what coasting by means.”

This was the first time I’d talked back to Old Feng. He looked at me in shock, and only after a long time did he give a cold laugh. “Ren Dongxue, do you resent me?”

I really didn’t have any resentment. I just felt especially tired.

“At the end of the day, you’re just bitter that Engineer Zhou came?” He slammed the table. “I’ve given you chances more than once—which time did you do well? And you still have the face to blame others here!”

“Your divorce is your own business,” I said. “Aren’t you also blaming me?”