「One afternoon.」
"Qi Xiaowan? Is she here?"
Inside the sun-drenched office building, the light gray floor seemed to absorb the color of the light.
The director of the Planning Department, who should have been relaxing in her office drinking coffee and chatting with her best friend on the phone, suddenly appeared in the crowded studio, her high heels clicking on the floor.
Everyone was a little surprised by the director’s arrival.
It was a small game company. All told, Qi Xiaowan had been working here for over three years. She had spent most of her time since graduation in this modestly-sized studio, earning a salary to cover her living expenses and fund her cosplay hobby.
Her job was as a game planner. It was a tough line of work, and the pay wasn’t great, but finding a stable job these days wasn’t easy.
Upon hearing her name called, Qi Xiaowan, huddled in her cubicle, lifted her head.
"Director... you called for me?" she asked, a little dazed.
"Yes. Wan, come out here for a second."
"Oh, okay."
The moment she got up from her seat, Qi Xiaowan’s mood could only be described as despair. She had eaten lunch at her desk because the previous draft she’d submitted had been rejected. The director hadn’t been happy with it at all.
Now that she was being called over, Qi Xiaowan couldn’t imagine any reason other than she was about to get chewed out.
She braced herself and walked out into the hallway.
A far cry from her usual lively and cute self at cosplay conventions, Qi Xiaowan was currently wearing large, black-framed glasses and her hair was tied up in a bun. The glasses alone covered half of her face, and she’d deliberately used her bangs to hide even more.
As someone with extreme social anxiety in the workplace, these accessories were her form of camouflage.
"Director... actually, I..." Qi Xiaowan was about to explain that the next draft was almost ready and that she was working hard to implement all the requirements mentioned that morning.
But to her complete surprise, the director asked a question that left her utterly baffled.
"Be honest with me, Wan. Do you have some kind of connection to the company’s President He?"
"Huh?"
"So you don’t know him? In that case, did you get into some kind of trouble recently?"
"No, really," Wan was still processing the previous question, but this one snapped her out of her daze. She waved her hands frantically. "I’ve barely even seen President He, and I haven’t gotten into any trouble. I’ve just been quietly doing my job."
"Alright then. Go to President He’s office. It’s the last one at the end of the hall on the ninth floor. He wants to see you about something. Remember to watch what you say."
"Uh... Got it, Director."
Hearing this, Qi Xiaowan grew even more confused. The director left after giving her instructions, leaving her to stand alone in the hallway with a frown on her face.
President He was one of the company’s partners, mainly in charge of external communications. He was usually elusive, and she’d barely seen him more than a handful of times. ’What could he possibly want with me?’
Wan couldn’t make any sense of it. All she could do was timidly make her way to the ninth floor and knock on the office door. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
"Come in."
"President He, you were looking for me?"
The moment she opened the door, Qi Xiaowan instinctively glanced at the figure in the executive chair behind the desk. But the person who met her eyes wasn’t the slightly portly President He. It was a strange man in leather shoes, with one leg crossed casually over the other.
"Wan." A somewhat familiar voice called out from the sofa.
She turned to look.
Smiling at her from the sofa was none other than Chen Yuan.
"Yuan? What are you doing here!" she cried out in surprise. A moment later, she realized she’d been unprofessional and quickly shut her mouth.
"Wan, why didn’t you tell us you were old acquaintances with President Pei and President Jiang?" Another figure on the sofa turned his head to face her. "We went to so much trouble looking for investors last time. With this connection, we wouldn’t have had to jump through so many hoops!"
This middle-aged man was the real President He. He was looking at Wan with a warm expression, as if they were the best of friends.
In reality, he didn’t even know she was an employee.
"Alright, President He, let’s you and I go grab some coffee and talk about the investment. We can let President Jiang and Wan have a nice chat here."
"Well... alright, fine. Let’s go get some coffee."
President He let out an awkward laugh, reluctantly accepting this brazen takeover of his office by the two newcomers. But what could he do? They were from a major corporation, a potential dream client.
He had to play along, no matter what.
With a CLICK of the closing door, there were finally no outsiders left in the room.
Chen Yuan quickly gestured for Qi Xiaowan to come sit on the sofa.
"Wan, I went to great lengths to find you! First, I went to that old maid cafe—the one that’s a specialty shop now—and got an employee’s contact info. Then, through them, I found out where you work and rushed right over."
"Yuan, why go to all that trouble to find me..." Wan sat down, her tone much more relaxed. She’d thought it was something serious, but it turned out to be a false alarm. "If you really needed to find me, you could have just asked Yaoyao for my number, right? Why go all the way around like that?"
Qi Xiaowan looked at her best friend’s increasingly charming boyfriend, unable to understand his reasoning for a moment. But her earlier nervousness instantly dissolved. She knew Chen Yuan came from a powerful background, and she knew most of his romantic history with the two sisters—she’d heard it all from Jiang Yao.
So, even though Wan had only met him a few times, she felt like she knew him well and had a good impression of him. She knew what kind of person he was, so she wasn’t nervous talking to him like she was with her bosses.