Su Yicheng had always snubbed Luo Xiaoxi and treated her with disdain. But seeing her appearance right now, he could not even bring himself to snub her.
Luo Xiaoxi stood up and stomped into the bathroom angrily. Before she closed the door, she told Su Yicheng, “Answer the door when the delivery gets here.”
“Mm,” Su Yicheng said. She closed and locked the door. Looking into the mirror, she noticed how swollen her eyes were. After a bout of self-mocking, she came to a resolve and began to salvage a semblance of her appearance by applying some of her skincare products. After that, she drew herself a bath and slid into the bathtub.
Half an hour later, a knock was heard on the bathroom door. Following the knock, Su Yicheng’s voice sounded. “Xiaoxi, I don’t have cash on me. Where’s your purse?”
“You can find some cash in the leftmost drawer of the TV cabinet.”
Su Yicheng opened the small drawer and saw a litter of cash and coins in it. He did not even have to ask her to know that Luo Xiaoxi had no idea how much money contained in the drawer.
After paying for the delivery, Su Yicheng took the food into the dining room. She had ordered four different dishes with a well-balanced proportion between meat and vegetables. There were also two bowls of carrot beef soup, which looked absolutely tantalizing and gave out an enticing aroma.
Well, at least Luo Xiaoxi would never screw up when it came to food.
He laid out the bowls and chopsticks on the table. “Luo Xiaoxi, how much longer are you going to take?”
“I’m done!”
Luo Xiaoxi emerged from the bathroom. It appeared that she had just finished soaking in the bath and was now casually dressed in a pale blue loungewear. Her long, curly tresses were tied together haphazardly with a black rubber band. Her face was free of any makeup. Right now, she was a complete contrast to her usual glowing and glamorous self. Still, her beautiful face looked totally lush and creamy, as if the creaminess of her skin could drip off her face if he reached out to touch her. She looked like a typical 24-year-old woman, full of youthful energy and vigor.
Su Yicheng could not help but do a double-take.
“What, starting to think that I look like your wife?” Luo Xiaoxi asked smugly.
Su Yicheng answered her comment with a cold sneer. He tore open the packaging of the chopsticks and handed a pair to her.
Luo Xiaoxi took the chopsticks with a confused look on her face. “What was that laugh supposed to mean, hm?”
Su Yicheng did not have the mood to discuss the topic any further. He took a sip of soup. “Where do you plan to go this afternoon?” he asked.
“Nowhere. I’m going to stay home and catch up on sleep!” Luo Xiaoxi said. “I have to do a photo shoot for Vogue tomorrow,” Luo Xiaoxi went on. “My manager will strangle me to death if she saw me right now.”
“If you sleep during the afternoon, will you be able to sleep at night?” Su Yicheng said, mocking her intelligence.
“Hm, guess that’s kinda true,” Luo Xiaoxi thought. If she was unable to fall asleep tonight, she would look even more terrible tomorrow.
She bit her lip hesitantly. “Su Yicheng, what are you suggesting?”
“Come with me to the company after brunch,” Su Yicheng said. “I need you to translate a doc.u.ment for me. It’s written in j.a.panese.” Luo Xiaoxi was fluent in quite a number of foreign languages. Aside from English, the j.a.panese language was another language that she excelled in; she could totally become a corporate translator if she chose to.
“What happen to your company’s translator?” Luo Xiaoxi asked curiously.
“Took a sick leave,” Su Yicheng said. “I need that doc.u.ment tomorrow.”
“Why should I help you?” Luo Xiaoxi said, sneering inwardly. “It’ll look like I’m there just because you asked. What about my pride and dignity?”
“You owed me a favor. I brought you home this morning, remember?” Su Yicheng stared at her. “If it weren’t for me, you’d probably wake up in Lu Boyan’s garage today.”
Luo Xiaoxi smiled. “But aren’t you forgetting something? If you ask me to be your translator, don’t you think you’ll be giving your employees the wrong idea about us?”
A smirk tugged at the corner of Su Yicheng’s lips. “They would most probably think that you’re the one who kept pestering me to give you a job.”
“F*ck you!” Luo Xiaoxi was enraged, this time for real. “Su Yicheng, can you not act like such a profiteer for once in your life?! I’m warning you. If I see Zhang Mei, I’ll tell her that you and I had spent the night together. h.e.l.l, I’ll tell her that we had spent the morning together too!”
Su Yicheng picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth. It was like he did not have a single care in the world. “You can tell her whatever you want. Hurry up. We’ll leave in fifteen minutes.”
“Weird. He really doesn’t seem all that worried about what Zhang Mei will think,” Luo Xiaoxi thought. “But isn’t Zhang Mei his girlfriend? If I act like a scheming b.i.t.c.h and deliberately cause a misunderstanding between him and Zhang Mei, shouldn’t he be strangling me by now and warning me not to mess around with his woman?”
d.a.m.n. The imposing, overbearing heroes portrayed in those 8 o’clock soap operas were outright lies!
“Fine, whatever! I’ll go!” Luo Xiaoxi set down her chopsticks with a loud smack. “If you yourself aren’t afraid, what’s there for me to be worry about?”
She returned to her bedroom to get changed. She put on light makeup too. When she came out, she realized that Su Yicheng had changed into a business suit as well. Unable to keep her curiosity at bay, she asked, “Don’t tell me you brought a change of clothes yesterday for the match.”
“Nope,” Su Yicheng said as he adjusted his necktie. “Xiao Chen brought it here just now.”
Ka-Boom! Luo Xiaoxi felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck her right where she stood.
Xiao Chen was Su Yicheng’s a.s.sistant. He was also the one whom Luo Xiaoxi was most familiar with among Su Yicheng’s numerous employees. Apparently, she was familiar enough with Xiao Chen for him to know her address. If Su Yicheng had asked Xiao Chen to send a change of clothes to her apartment…
“Oh, d.a.m.n!” Luo Xiaoxi sagged to the floor and heaved a sigh. “This time, there’s no way I can avoid suspicion now, not even if I dive straight into the Yellow River.”
“Isn’t this what you want before?” Su Yicheng was far more composed compared to her. He pulled her to her feet and said, “Let’s go.”
…
Cheng An Group.
After he had brought Su Yicheng a change of clothes, Xiao Chen returned to the company. By the time he got there, he was still in a puzzled state. That was when he ran into the vice manager.
As Su Yicheng’s special a.s.sistant, Xiao Chen was always calm and composed. He would always be able to keep a cool head regardless of the kind of situation that was thrown at him. That was why it was rare to see him in such a confused state. “Special a.s.sistant Chen, what’s the matter with you?” asked the vice manager.
“Do you know that I went to send President Su a change of clothes just now?” Xiao Chen said, grasping the vice manager’s arm. Then, Xiao Chen unloaded all the suspicion he was feeling to the vice manager. “But do you know where President Su was? He was at Ms. Luo’s home!”
Not a single hint of surprise could be detected on the vice manager’s face. “Oh. I thought you already know. I think President Su and Ms. Luo are an item.”
“Huh?” Xiao Chen was still in a blur. “Where did you hear that from?”
“I saw it!” said the vice manager. “The day before yesterday, I saw President Su buying breakfast for Ms. Luo at our apartment’s cafeteria. I didn’t know where they went last night, but this morning I saw President Su carrying Ms. Luo back to her apartment. Will they act so intimately around each other if they aren’t an item?”
It took Xiao Chen quite a while to process everything. “Man, the rules of the game change so quickly in this world. I mean, he was still giving her the cold shoulder just a few days ago! And now he’s suddenly dating her?”
The vice manager patted Xiao Chen’s shoulder. “Well, just get used to it.”
That was how the news that Su Yicheng was currently dating Luo Xiaoxi made it to the company’s grapevines.
Not that Su Yicheng did not have girlfriends in the past; he had dated powerful businesswomen, beautiful show hosts, and clear-headed lawyers. Still, the most highly discussed aspect of his personal life involved the one and only woman who had pursued him – Luo Xiaoxi.
There were some employees in the company who had long since predicted that Luo Xiaoxi would eventually win over their President Su and become their Mrs. President. On the other hand, there were some who thought that things never work out between Su Yicheng and Luo Xiaoxi.
Now that those two were finally together, one could imagine the ruckus such a news would cause.
Unsurprisingly, Zhang Mei found out about the rumour as well.
Ever since Zhang Mei was transferred to the Marketing Department, people had been talking behind her back, saying that her plans to seduce Su Yicheng had failed. People were mocking and laughing at her behind her back, she knew at least that much. Still, for the sake of remaining by Su Yicheng’s side, she had silently endured.
Now that there were rumours claiming that Su Yicheng was dating Luo Xiaoxi, Zhang Mei was no longer the subject of other people’s teasing. Instead, people were now looking upon her with pity.
Bulls.h.i.t! They could all shove their pity up their a.s.ses!
She would not believe that Su Yicheng and Luo Xiaoxi were an item unless she saw them with her own eyes!
Of course, there were also rationalists among the employees who shared Zhang Mei’s view regarding the veracity of the rumor. Unlike others who believed in the rumor, this group had insisted that the lie would eventually crumble on its own. But an hour later, Luo Xiaoxi and Su Yicheng showed up at the company together.
This time around, it was obviously not the case that Luo Xiaoxi had come to him, but it was Su Yicheng himself who had brought Luo Xiaoxi here instead!
Just like that, the rumors had been verified; Zhang Mei nearly broke the pen in her hand.
Luo Xiaoxi had a weird feeling the moment she arrived. She had been here many times before, but today… it seemed to her that all the employees were giving her strange looks.
Before this, everyone had always greeted her with the usual “Oh, you’re here?”. But today, what she got from them were meaningful and pointed smiles, all of which confounded her to no end. There were even some who told her, “Xiaoxi, congratulations!”
She was completely befuddled. Was this about the bet she had placed on Germany yesterday? Did they find out that she had won some money from the bet yesterday?
She had no other choice but to smile politely at those greetings and respond with, “Thanks, thanks.”
Once they got into the elevator, Luo Xiaoxi could no longer hold back her curiosity. She asked Su Yicheng, “What’s going on with your company’s employees? Are you encouraging a new company policy where the employees should ‘smile at others strangely’?”
Actually, Su Yicheng knew precisely what was going on. Then again, Luo Xiaoxi would not understand it even if he told her now. Considering her personality, she would probably run around the entire company just to explain herself if he told her.
Yeah. As if he would allow her to destroy all the effort he had put in to contrive these circ.u.mstances.
“You’re overthinking,” Su Yicheng said flatly. “They’ve always acted like this. You haven’t been here for quite a while, so maybe you forgot.”
“Is that so?” Luo Xiaoxi did not bother to dwell on it any further. “Fine, then. Maybe I am overthinking it.”
They entered Su Yicheng’s office where he gave her a laptop and a folder. Opening the folder and scanning its contents, she noted that the papers contained a lot of confidential information about Cheng An Group. Her heart jumped at what she read and she stared at Su Yicheng. “You’re giving me access to such an important doc.u.ment? Aren’t you afraid that I would spill all your secrets?”
Su Yicheng sat down nonchalantly and smiled at her. “Luo Xiaoxi, you don’t have the guts to do that.”
Luo Xiaoxi cursed at him. “Slight me again, and I’ll reveal this doc.u.ment’s contents to your compet.i.tors!”
Su Yicheng gave her a pointed and cryptic smile. “This time, my compet.i.tor is Qin Wei,” he said.
For a brief moment, Luo Xiaoxi was at a loss for words. When Su Yicheng was acting like this, she could not help but feel that there was a deeper meaning when he told her that his compet.i.tor was Qin Wei.
“Nah… There’s no way it’s what I think it means,” she thought.
She chuckled. “Oh? What a coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence at all,” Su Yicheng said. “Cheng An and Qin Enterprise had always been compet.i.tors. The compet.i.tion between us this time is inevitable.”
“So, this time…” Luo Xiaoxi asked hesitatingly. “Who will win?”
Su Yicheng answered with his own question. “Who do you hope will win?”
Qin Wei was her good buddy. Su Yicheng was the man she loved the most. Luo Xiaoxi had no idea whom she wanted as the final victor. She rolled her eyes at Su Yicheng. “You know what? I hope for world peace and for everyone to live in prosperity. Satisfied?”
She could not come up with a good answer, so she changed the subject.
Su Yicheng did not try to make things difficult for her. “Translate the doc.u.ment,” he said. “I’ll treat you to dinner tonight.”
Luo Xiaoxi clicked her tongue. “Now that’s more like it.”
Her mastery of the j.a.panese language was by no means inferior to her mastery of English. In fact, her education in the j.a.panese language was centered around the corporate domain. That was why translating the doc.u.ment did not pose any difficulties at all; she translated two pages with ease.
Su Yicheng sat behind his desk and watched her work. The Luo Xiaoxi in front of him right now was serious, quiet, and completely devoid of her usual zest and enthusiasm. Although she still looked beautiful, he had to admit that he preferred it more when she was smiling and jumping around.
Perhaps she had been right to choose a career in modelling rather than settling for a monotonous 9-to-5, office job which involved sitting in an air-conditioned room for the whole day.