The pleasant weekend had come to an end, and Monday was here again.
At eight in the morning, the alarm went off.
Cheng Mingjiao pulled the silk sleep mask off his face, rolled over, and lazed in bed for a while longer before finally getting up from his high-end custom-made bed.
He stared blankly into space, washed up, did his skincare routine, then slowly made his way downstairs.
“Good morning.” Wearing an apron, Zhang Xiyue waved at him brightly from the first floor.
Fresh out of bed, Cheng Mingjiao remained expressionless. “What are you being so obsequious for?”
Zhang Xiyue’s smile vanished in an instant. “President Cheng, Assistant Zhou is injured and has taken leave. Starting today, I’ll be temporarily taking over his position and handling your personal and work-related affairs.”
Cheng Mingjiao, who had already known about this since Saturday morning, merely said, “Oh.”
He hadn’t explicitly objected, which allowed Zhang Xiyue to breathe a sigh of relief.
The story went back to Friday night. After Zhou Ce had composed his leave request, everyone else fell into a strangely heavy silence.
Zhou Ce put on an insincere show of reassurance. “It’s fine. Three months at most. I’ll be back in three months.”
“Three months… By then, my corpse will have decomposed into bones,” Li Dong said woodenly.
Sun Nian asked, “So what do we do? Quit?”
Fangfang wore an expression of pure agony. “I can’t do that!”
While everyone looked as though they were mourning the dead, Zhang Xiyue hesitantly raised her hand. “Um… What if I did it?”
The moment she said that, everyone turned to look at her, including Zhou Ce, who had still been basking in the joy of getting leave.
Zhang Xiyue smiled and asked again, “Can I do it?”
“Did you take out a loan from a loan shark?” Fangfang asked, completely out of left field.
Zhang Xiyue looked baffled. “No.”
Li Dong continued, “Did your investment fund get frozen? Did you lose money in stocks? Is your family patriarchal and forcing you to make a ton of money to go home and build a house and marry off your useless brothers?”
Zhang Xiyue: “...No.”
Sun Nian said, “Then is it because…”
“None of those,” Zhang Xiyue interrupted helplessly. “I just want to challenge myself with the position.”
She had already been at Yuhuang for a week, yet her mission had made no progress at all. If she could become Cheng Mingjiao’s executive assistant, she might be able to find a breakthrough.
“I really want to give it a try,” she said sincerely.
And so, she was given the opportunity to try.
Thinking back on the emergency training everyone had given her over the past two days, Zhang Xiyue exchanged a few pleasantries before turning around, crossing the luxurious living room, and pulling out the chair at the dining table.
Cheng Mingjiao usually lived alone. His private chef only came on weekends, so on workday mornings, breakfast was prepared by his assistant. He ate lunch and dinner outside.
“President Cheng, breakfast is ready.” She invited him over with a faint smile.
Looking at Zhang Xiyue seated at the dining table, Cheng Mingjiao’s beautiful lips pressed into a thin line.
He didn’t like change, nor did he like the process of readjusting after things changed.
When he had first heard that Zhou Ce was taking leave, he hadn’t felt much of anything. But now that he was looking at Zhang Xiyue, who had taken over for Zhou Ce, his instincts made him distrust her.
He stood on the stairs and refused to move.
Zhang Xiyue said, “I made fish maw and black chicken soup.”
Zhou Ce had mentioned in the group chat last night that Cheng Mingjiao liked this soup. However, since it was complicated to make, she could prepare it for him occasionally. Most of the time, she just needed to toast two slices of bread, give him some milk and eggs, and then endure a few complaints.
Since it was Zhang Xiyue’s first day, she had deliberately made the soup to leave him with a good impression.
Sure enough, Cheng Mingjiao’s expression softened slightly, but he still remained where he was. “This soup needs to simmer for at least three hours before it’s barely drinkable.”
Zhang Xiyue didn’t say how long she had simmered it. She merely hinted that it should taste pretty good.
Cheng Mingjiao glanced at her once, then again. In the end, he moved toward the dining table with great reluctance.
Zhang Xiyue set the soup tureen on the table, then brought over toasted mantou slices and a small dish of ham, making it two dishes and a soup.
The chicken soup was clear and glossy with a rich aroma, but Cheng Mingjiao still frowned.
Unfortunately, after nine hours of sleep, his stomach really did need food. He kept a stern expression as he confronted the soup for quite some time, but eventually picked up the spoon.
Zhang Xiyue watched as he took a difficult first sip and immediately relaxed. The corners of her lips curved up slightly. “President Cheng, how does it taste?”
Cheng Mingjiao glanced at her. “Passable.”
When the Emperor said something was “passable,” it was equivalent to an ordinary person saying, “It’s so delicious that even if the chef were my sworn enemy, I’d cry as I disowned my own father and son for the sake of another bowl.”
In other words, it was the highest praise imaginable.
The corners of Zhang Xiyue’s lips rose another pixel. She thought to herself, As expected, the Emperor has never eaten ready-made food.
Yes, the soup was ready-made.
She wanted to leave the male supporting character with a good impression, but that didn’t mean she was going to get up three hours early to simmer soup for him. She was just an employee, not Wang Baochuan. She didn’t have that much time to put on a tragic romance.
While heating up the chicken soup, she had picked out all the cheap ingredients, replaced them with the expensive ones from Cheng Mingjiao’s refrigerator, and adjusted the seasoning again. Unless someone was a professional chef, there was absolutely no way they could taste the difference.
Cheng Mingjiao, who had won the national youth boxing championship at the age of fifteen, was clearly not a professional chef.
So he lowered his eyes as he drank the soup and thought, Actually, occasionally changing assistants and letting a little variety into life isn’t so bad.
The dining room fell quiet. Every so often, the only sound was the soft clinking of the spoon against the soup tureen.
Cheng Mingjiao wore a somewhat loose, light-colored silk pajama set. His hair hung messily over his forehead, and his eyes were lowered. His entire person gave off a languid air Zhang Xiyue had never seen before.
Yet even in such a lazy state, his back remained straight. He made no sound while eating, and his excellent table manners were practically engraved into every movement he made.
No wonder he was the kind of man who could only exist in a novel.
Zhang Xiyue was staring at him, fascinated, when the phone in her pocket suddenly vibrated several times.
Seeing that Cheng Mingjiao hadn’t noticed, she immediately pulled out her phone.
It was a message from Sister En in accounting.
[Xiyue, it’s the first of the month today, so it’s payday.]
[You came for your interview on May 20. According to company policy, employees who are successfully hired are paid starting from the day of their interview. Your pay for May 20–29 is calculated according to the salary for a Level-One Executive Assistant. Your pay for the 30th and 31st is calculated according to the salary for an executive assistant. Please check your payslip and reply if everything is correct.]
[Regular assistant salary: 9,977.5]
[Executive assistant salary: 9,677.4]
[Total: 19,654.9]
Zhang Xiyue had joined Yuhuang solely to get close to the yandere male supporting character and hadn’t paid any attention to the benefits or compensation. Seeing the payslip now, she couldn’t help letting out a small cry of surprise.
Cheng Mingjiao turned at the sound, frowning at her.
Zhang Xiyue said, “President Cheng, I’m looking at my payslip.”
A person with a sense of boundaries would have left it at that, but Cheng Mingjiao had no sense of boundaries whatsoever. He held out his hand.
Zhang Xiyue had no choice but to show him her phone.
Cheng Mingjiao stared at the screen for several seconds before saying, “There’s a mistake.”
Zhang Xiyue also thought there was a mistake. Leaving aside the exact amounts, the 30th and 31st had been Saturday and Sunday. She had only started taking over Zhou Ce’s work today, so logically, she shouldn’t have been receiving the second line of pay at all.
“Should I discuss it with accounting?” Zhang Xiyue asked, seeking his opinion.
Cheng Mingjiao simply took the phone from her and held down the voice-message button. “She handed over her work with Zhou Ce on Friday night. You only calculated two days of pay for Saturday and Sunday. You didn’t include Friday night’s overtime. Calculate the overtime according to Zhou Ce’s rate.”
Sister En replied instantly: [Okay.]
Then the salary increased by another five hundred.
Zhang Xiyue: “...”
She finally understood why her coworkers refused to quit, no matter how much pressure they were under.
Staring at her phone, her thoughts began to wander again.
In Cheng Mingjiao’s eyes, however, it looked as though she had been rendered speechless by the salary.
For once, he seemed to be in the mood for a chat. He amiably made small talk with his employee. “When I hire people, I like to hire poor ones like you. Give them a little extra money and they’ll be so grateful to the company they’ll practically worship it. Unlike those useless rich second-generation types who slack off all day—they’re ungrateful and don’t even work properly.”
When Zhang Xiyue came back to her senses, she heard his outrageous declaration. Her usually well-controlled expression twisted ever so slightly, and she finally understood why the executive assistant’s salary was so much higher than an ordinary assistant’s, yet no one else was willing to take the job.
Bowing ninety degrees for five pecks of rice was easy. Doing a standing forward bend, however, was simply too difficult.
And grateful enough to worship him? Zhang Xiyue maintained her smile. “Of course. We poor people just love bosses like you.”
Cheng Mingjiao nodded in satisfaction and picked up a slice of grilled mantou from the plate.
Standing beside him, Zhang Xiyue stole another glance at her payslip. She suddenly suspected that Cheng Mingjiao had gone bankrupt from paying his employees too much, and that was why he had gone from a president to a yandere.
But she immediately dismissed the thought. The First Law of the Universe stated that the more generous a boss was toward his employees, the more successful he was. It was the stingy bosses who were more likely to go bankrupt, suffer calamity, and meet a miserable end.
…Well, perhaps he had discovered that his employees weren’t actually grateful enough to worship him, and had turned yandere in a fit of rage.
While she was lost in her wild thoughts, Cheng Mingjiao had already finished eating and set down his chopsticks with practiced elegance.
The silver utensils clinked softly. Zhang Xiyue followed the sound with her eyes and saw that he had finished the soup, the ham, and the grilled mantou slices as well.
It was her first time making breakfast for him, and she hadn’t known how much to prepare. To be safe, she had made enough for two people.
…What a hearty appetite for a yandere.
Zhang Xiyue put on a smile. “President Cheng, shall we go to the office now?”
“No.” Cheng Mingjiao turned and headed upstairs. “I’m going to rest for two hours, then work out.”
Zhang Xiyue: “…”
He had eaten and drunk his fill, and now he was saying he wasn’t going to work?
No wonder he had gone from a three-story detached villa spanning more than 1,700 square meters to a mere 400-square-meter luxury apartment in just three months. With an attitude like that, he practically deserved it!
Zhang Xiyue felt like the mother of a high school senior who had spent an entire year accompanying her child through his studies, only for him to go to an internet café on the day of the college entrance exam. For a moment, indignation welled up inside her.
Two hours and twenty minutes later, that indignation vanished without a trace.
Cheng Mingjiao set down the dumbbells. His lips parted as he looked at her, his breathing unsteady. “Come here. Wipe this off.”
After a high-intensity workout consisting of twenty-minute sets, the tank top he had just changed into was damp with sweat, faintly revealing the contours of his chest muscles. His muscular arms, freed from the restraint of the fabric, bulged with sensual lines. His entire body radiated a vigorous, powerful energy.
…What a strong yandere.
If she hadn’t been certain that the male supporting character was named “Cheng Mingjiao,” she would have suspected for the ten-thousandth time that she had found the wrong target to pursue.
Zhang Xiyue took the towel and stepped forward, wiping the sweat from his jaw.
Cheng Mingjiao visibly moved, but Zhang Xiyue paid no attention and continued wiping downward along the contours of his muscles.
The Emperor might be difficult, sharp-tongued, and impossible to please, but his muscles were friendly and cooperative. Even through the towel, she could feel their warmth and enthusiasm.
Mmm. Toasty.
When Zhang Xiyue reached the Mercedes emblem on Cheng Mingjiao’s chest, she felt that he had absolutely no sense of personal boundaries for letting a female assistant wipe his sweat. At the same time, she wiped the Mercedes emblem several extra times.
When she finished, she raised her head and met Cheng Mingjiao’s silent gaze.
Sensing something was off, she turned to look at the dumbbell beside them.
The clear impressions of his fingers on the dumbbell were unmistakable, practically mocking her to her face.
