Song Xinya arrived at the company and began preparing to take leave for New York.
She was the kind of person who did everything in an orderly manner. She needed to take time off, but she couldn’t let her work suffer either.
She sorted her tasks by priority and urgency, dividing them into three levels.
Level One: Red Alert—must be handled immediately.
Level Two: Yellow Alert—must be completed before her leave.
Level Three: Green Alert—could wait until she returned.
Once she had categorized everything on her desk, the entire workload became clear and manageable.
Without wasting any time, Song Xinya immediately began dealing with the Level One red-alert tasks.
At lunchtime, Chen Siyan called out to her, “The company cafeteria has Australian rock lobsters today! They’re worth 250 yuan each, but employees don’t have to pay—a free meal! There are only three hundred, so whoever gets there first gets one. Come on, let’s hurry and grab ours!”
With Chen Siyan’s salary, he could easily afford to eat Australian lobster three times a day.
But no matter how much money you had, nothing tasted as good as something free.
Chen Siyan pulled a Ninebot self-balancing scooter out from under his desk. With an agile hop, he planted both feet on it and shot over to Song Xinya’s side as though riding the Wind-Fire Wheels.
“Hey, sis, hurry up. Let’s go eat free lobster!”
Song Xinya kept her head down, focused on her work. “You go ahead. I still have things to finish.”
Chen Siyan said, “Why work so hard? Just because you’re working yourself to the bone, does that mean you’re going to help the boss live the life he wants?”
Then he thought about it. She and the boss were married, so the fruits of her hard work belonged not only to the boss, but to her as well.
Chen Siyan rode his Wind-Fire Wheels toward the door. “You work. I’ll grab some lobster for you!”
At that moment, his hair was neatly styled in distinct layers, his white shirt immaculate, and pinned to his chest was a Tiffany Bird on a Rock brooch worth 35,000 yuan.
Half an hour later, Chen Siyan came riding back on his scooter.
His hair had completely collapsed, hanging limply against his scalp. One button had popped off his white shirt, revealing a pink nipple.
That was the result of fighting through a crowd of people pushing and shoving over the lobsters.
Chen Siyan said, “Good news: I got one of those 250-yuan Australian lobsters.”
“Bad news: My 35,000-yuan Tiffany Bird on a Rock brooch is gone.”
“I lost 35,000 yuan just to get a 250-yuan lobster.”
“I feel like a complete idiot!”
“You see? There’s no need to plan your life. Just muddle through it. The more you plan, the more the heavens will find ways to mess with you.”
Chen Siyan placed the lobster he had fought for on Song Xinya’s desk. Song Xinya felt it was far too valuable and said, “Manager Chen, you should eat it.”
“No, you eat it,” Chen Siyan said. “Eat the whole thing, and drink every drop of the broth. You have to make my dead brooch worth it.”
After work, the two of them headed out of the company together.
At the entrance, Song Xinya saw five or six people gathered in a group. They were swearing angrily and looking aggressive, and one of them was carrying a basket of rotten eggs.
They were all former colleagues—people whom Yuan Jingcheng had recently fired.
“Where there’s a grievance, there’s someone responsible,” Chen Siyan said. “They’re obviously here to block Yuan Jingcheng.”
Seeing that the group looked ready to cause trouble, Song Xinya asked, “When Mr. Yuan fired them, didn’t he have evidence of their wrongdoing?”
“With Mr. Yuan’s ruthless efficiency, he definitely had evidence,” Chen Siyan replied. “But evidence of wrongdoing can be big or small. It’s like breaking the law: some people get off with a warning and a little education, while others get sentenced to death.”
“These people who’ve come to make trouble must feel wronged and resentful. They think they’ve been treated terribly, so they’ve come looking for trouble with Yuan Jingcheng.”
A colleague passing by said, “If they really think they were treated unfairly, they should apply for labor arbitration.”
Song Xinya hit the nail on the head. “They aren’t entirely innocent either. They did violate company regulations and damage the company’s interests. Even if they applied for labor arbitration, they wouldn’t receive any compensation. They know their offenses aren’t serious enough to warrant the death penalty, so they’re trying to get some benefits by making a scene.”
In this world, besides distributing things according to how much work people do, there was another method: distributing things according to who made the biggest fuss.
Once a matter became a major public spectacle, ordinary onlookers who didn’t know the truth would generally sympathize with these so-called “vulnerable groups,” especially when faced with the wealthy and powerful Qin corporate empire.
Whoever seemed weaker was automatically considered to be in the right.
Because once these people started making a scene, Qin Group would be the first to suffer.
And Qin Group was closely tied to Qin Yuhe.
Song Xinya did not leave immediately. Instead, she stood to one side and kept a close eye on how things developed.
Chen Siyan loyally stayed with her. At one point, he went out and bought two Beijing-style chicken wraps, one for each of them, to serve as dinner.
The daylight quietly faded. The sky gradually darkened, and night finally enveloped the earth.
Yuan Jingcheng still showed no sign of leaving the company.
Song Xinya sent him a message: [Mr. Yuan, have you left?]
Yuan Jingcheng replied: [No. I’m sleeping at the office tonight.]
Chen Siyan said, “What a brilliant move by Mr. Yuan. He simply doesn’t show up, so there’s no one for these people to make trouble with.”
For the next week, Song Xinya saw the same group standing outside the building every evening when she left work.
Yuan Jingcheng did not go home for an entire week. He slept at the company every night.
When the employees arrived at work in the mornings, they saw him wandering around the office in his pajamas, with shampoo foam covering his head.
Even after being caught looking so disheveled, Yuan Jingcheng showed no embarrassment whatsoever. He said casually, “The water stopped halfway through my shower.”
Then, still wearing his pajamas and with foam all over his head, he calmly walked downstairs to buy bottled water before going to the men’s restroom to wash his hair.
When he came out of the men’s restroom, he was wearing a spotless white shirt and black suit trousers. Dressed in a sharp business suit, he once again looked every inch the elite executive.
Chen Siyan said, “No wonder he can be general manager. Look at that mental fortitude. He’s even tougher than Guo Degang—seriously tough.”
Song Xinya was puzzled. Would simply hiding really make those people stop causing trouble?
That evening, after returning home, Song Xinya video-called Qin Yuhe.
She asked him, “Do you know that some people are making trouble outside the Qin Group building?”
“I know,” Qin Yuhe replied calmly.
Although he was overseas, he knew everything that was happening within the group back home.
After years in power, he had already cultivated his own trusted people and established his own sphere of influence.
Song Xinya asked, “How are you planning to handle this?”
“Not handling it,” Qin Yuhe said.
What?
Why?
If the matter escalated and the news media reported on it, it could affect Qin Group’s stock price.
It could also damage his reputation.
Song Xinya thought about it. Perhaps Qin Yuhe was overseas and couldn’t conveniently deal with matters back home.
As his wife, she wanted to do her part for him, so she asked, “Do you need my help? What can I do for you?”
When he faced other people, Qin Yuhe’s eyes were as sharp as an eagle’s. He was calm and composed, as cold as ice that had remained unmelted on a snowy mountain for thousands of years.
But when he looked at his wife’s face on the screen, his gaze became as gentle as the warm sunlight of spring.
“I need you to eat well, sleep well, and live happily. I need you to be happier than anyone else.”
