Chapter 151 - A day in the office
Lu Chen and Xiu Mei were thrown into back into work the very next day. Gone is their free time to flirt and being laidback once in a while. Even though they"ve already pacified the public"s anger and barely dodged being called to the court to explain themselves, they still have to do some fix the aftermath left.
"Good grief!" Xiu Mei glanced at her a.s.sistant who groaned almost banging her head on the table. "I need coffee! I need caffeine, or I"ll die."
Then she stood up from her seat and began running towards the pantry to get herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee that she wanted. Xiu Mei followed her to the pantry to prepare a cup of tea for her and Lu Chen.
"How"s it progressing on your side?" Xiu Mei casually asked while she grabbed the tin can of tea leaves at the storage cabinet.
"Terrible. I haven"t gone through with all the emails I"ve received since yesterday. I don"t think we can finish it by today, Ms.Xiu." Her a.s.sistant complained, pulling out two mugs for Lu Shao and her own.
Recalling that unread emails in her inbox, she felt like crying with no tears.
"That"s fine then. Just submit a summarized list for me once you"re all done so I could report it to the president. I haven"t even gone through with some of the emails too."
"Is the aftermath that bad?"
"We"ll have to wait for the other branches to revert to us to answer that."
"Who could do such a terrible thing ah?! Don"t they know that we"ll have to pull a week of overtime to completely resolve the problem?! Ahhhhh!! I"m so done with overtime."
"Well, I could give you three minutes alone with the culprit once we find out who he is. You can beat him up by then." Lu Shao suddenly appeared behind them, walking straight to the snack storage.
"Red Bean Jelly? Or do you want the Crispies?" He added asking the two females in the room.
Seems like the three of them would have to make do with biscuits for lunch.
"Should we go for delivery?" Xiu Mei suggested. At this rate, they"ll die from hunger instead of overworking for the week.
"That"ll take another hour to arrive." Lu Shao said.
"And we have a meeting in the next hour." Her a.s.sistant added after him. "Ah, it"s a deadly schedule!"
"Oh, then let"s just eat the food after the meeting. I"ll inform the reception to keep it for us first since we can"t let any of the staff below to come up here for a while." Xiu Mei suggested, remembering that they strictly controlled the authorized people who can come to their floor.
"I"ll go bring this in first." Then she carried the tray with teapot and 2 cups and brought it to the president"s office.
"Thought you might need a cup." Xiu Mei uttered as soon as she entered Lu Chen"s office. The first thing she saw though was the stack of reports on his table and some are even stacked on the center table.
Seeing the current situation in his office, she nodded her head and affirmed. "You really need a cup."
After drowning himself in the reports and continuous conference calls for the past five hours, seeing his wife"s figure smiling and bringing him a cup of tea surely relieved some of his pent up stress. He didn"t think twice and closed the folder he was looking at and walked towards the couch.
In front of him is a freshly brewed black tea that he likes to drink every afternoon.
Lu Chen pulled his wife to sit beside him when she served his cup. Xiu Mei didn"t argue with him either and settled beside him.
"Do you want to take a short nap?" Lu Chen asked as soon as he saw her face bring his hand under her eyes. He saw the dark circles under her eyes and he thought that it might have been because they didn"t have proper sleep yesterday.
She caught his hand and placed it down. "I"m fine. It"s just temporary that it will be like this. Besides," She narrowed her eyes at him and pouted.
"...you don"t point out a woman"s dark circles carelessly like that. Especially if it"s your wife." She warned barely suppressing herself from clicking her tongue.
Because Lu Chen pointed it out to her, she felt slightly over conscious and worried.
If it"s that obvious, maybe she has to redo her make up before the meeting later? It would be very embarra.s.sing to look like a zombie when she attends the meeting later.
Xiu Mei took note of that in her mind. She picked up the cup of tea and took a sip.
"I"ll remember that next time. Sorry, wife." He helplessly smiled at her as he smoothened out her hair. Just like him, his wife was having a rough day as well since she came to her office with some of her hair looking a bit out of place today.
"Is Lu Shao not done yet?" He asked, picking up his cup. He smelled the tea first as a habit before drinking it.
"Not yet. He narrowed the list down to three but we still can"t find conclusive evidence that they did it or figure out the motive at all. He was so stressed and annoyed about it that I actually saw him glaring at his laptop and the papers almost an hour ago. Right now, he"s having his shot of caffeine with my a.s.sistant in the pantry. They"re both going crazy with all the work." Xiu Mei casually shared, chuckling at Lu Shao"s poor figure and her a.s.sistant who looked like she was gonna cry any moment now.
Then her mood quickly dampened. She threw an apologetic look at Lu Chen and uttered, "Sorry, we wouldn"t have gotten into this if I took proper measures when I wrapped up the incident back then."
Even though no one was blaming her, she still felt somehow guilty and responsible for not preparing a contingency plan just in case things like this happen after that data leak incident. Then they wouldn"t be caught off guard and get this much work to do after that.
She"s been Lu Chen"s secretary for four years but even if she"s been working that long for him, she would always find herself still making mistakes and needing to improve herself even further.
However, Lu Chen thought differently.
"No, don"t blame yourself on this one. I should be the one apologizing since when this incident happened, I just disappeared without even telling you at all and left you alone to clean up the mess. If I just properly supervised everyone before leaving, this wouldn"t have happened." Lu Chen replied. He pulled her by the waist and made her lean her body on his chest. He brushed her hair from time to time while a.s.suring her that it wasn"t her fault.
"I wonder if Lu Qiang will get mad if we don"t tuck him in tonight…" She said in pa.s.sing while thinking whether to stay at the office for overtime or bring all her work at home.
"Don"t worry, he"s used to it."
Xiu Mei pinched the meat in Lu Chen"s waist for his remark. He groaned when he felt the sting from her nails. Annoyed, she raised her head to glare at him.
"Don"t make him get used to it. He"s still a kid. At his age, normally the parents would accompany him right now to go play on the playground or go somewhere for leisure. But look at us, both working in the day so Lu Qiang has no choice but to play alone in the morning until afternoon."
Lu Chen didn"t retort and humbly apologized. What the wife says is always correct. And she does have a point so now he"s feeling slightly guilty.
Though he thought that Lu Qiang would be probably too busy playing with his gadgets and going on technical instead of missing them. Since that was the routine he grew up with ever since he was little.
The two of them casually talked about some mundane topics during their ten-minute break. Picking up the tray, she left the office and put it back in the pantry.
"Xiu Mei, come here." Lu Shao suddenly called for her before she could even return to her workstation.
Baffled, she approached his table. "Do you need my help?"
"Kinda. Look here." Then he pointed something at his screen. She crouched a little bit to get a good look at what he"s pointing at and saw a familiar face. Not just one face, but two faces.
"Oh my G.o.d, isn"t that the Planning Director and Linda Yang?" She leaned a bit closer to the screen to check that she wasn"t misperceiving it.
On the video flas.h.i.+ng on Lu Shao"s screen was two different videos. On the other side, it was a video of the Planning Director and Linda Yang exiting a room hotel together and the other one… ehem… it was a video of them getting a bit steamy in the elevator.
"...What a d.a.m.n b.i.t.c.h. Oops." She quickly covered her mouth to stop herself from uttering anymore vulgar words. She was too surprised with what she saw that her cussing in her mind almost slipped out of her mouth.