Blooming Flowers on the Sh.o.r.es
Meanwhile at the branch company of Yu Lei Entertainment in Beijing, Deputy Director Zhuang Feng rushed into the recording studio upon hearing the news from his a.s.sistant. A few music producers and Hui Lin’s manager Downey were all in the studio.
Looking at Hui Lin sing in the recording studio, Zhuang Feng asked anxiously, “Mr Downey, why is Miss Lin Hui still singing here right now? According to her schedule, shouldn’t she be at the concert venue to rehea.r.s.e with her dance crew?! How is it that she is still here and that I caught wind of the rehearsal being cancelled?!”
Downey shrugged and said, “Deputy Director Zhuang, we are doing as Mr Yang requests. He needs Miss Lin Hui to help him with something, so Miss Lin Hui is preparing for it.”
“Mr Yang?!” Zhuang Feng was surprised, “Is it Director Yang? Bu—but how can he mix personal matters with official ones? Does he realize the implications of his actions?!”
Downey said in a serious tone, “Sorry, Deputy Director Zhuang. Miss Lin Hui’s future prospects and her job might be important to us alright, but our priority service target is Mr Yang. If Mr Yang requests something, we will satisfy it unconditionally. None of us here has the slightest bit of courage to go against his will.”
Zhuang Feng was stunned. His worldview was toppled in an instant. Although he had already heard of Yang Chen’s frightening background, seeing these international celebrities work at his service like his servants just made him sigh.
Not the slightest bit of courage? Could it be that Yang Chen would kill them all just because they fail to satisfy one small request of his?! Zhuang Feng thought. He had no idea that this was indeed what Downey and the rest thought.
In the city center of Zhonghai, as Yu Lei International was one of the leaders among international fas.h.i.+on businesses, they had a large piece of empty s.p.a.ce on the east side of its building. It was especially eye-catching in the city center, where every single inch of land was as precious as gold.
Traffic was busy around the area, yet a huge garden style plaza occupied the center.
A magnificent man-made fountain that operated all year round stood in the center of the plaza. Lots of citizens exercised, strolled or rested in this plaza regardless of morning or dusk.
Around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, a team of construction workers arrived at the side of the plaza with various moving trucks.
Drivers and pa.s.sengers who pa.s.sed by, as well as employees in the office building were all baffled at what they saw before them. This team of construction workers was using the materials that they had brought with them to build some structure on the plaza.
Naturally, such an abrupt event attracted the attention of many. Yu Lei International was the most symbolic business in Zhonghai after all. Constructing such an illegal building right in front of Yu Lei International was an unacceptable action in the eyes of many of the company employees.
Yu Lei International’s security team strode forward to ask the construction workers about it, and immediately restrained their originally fierce att.i.tude when they heard what the workers had to say. This made many others all the more shocked and curious to know what the reason behind this was.
In the CEO’s office, Lin Ruoxi had recollected herself from the awkwardness from earlier. She had many matters to attend to after all, so she didn’t want to overthink. She was concentrated on reading some doc.u.ments.
At this moment, someone knocked on the door from the outside.
Lin Ruoxi responded, and Wu Yue walked in with an odd expression on her face.
“What’s the matter?” Lin Ruoxi asked flatly.
Wu Yue was still finding it difficult to accept the fact that Lin Ruoxi was married to Yang Chen. Upon seeing Lin Ruoxi, she dazed out a little before she said softly, “Boss Lin, a team of construction workers are building something in the plaza outside.”
“What?!” Lin Ruoxi thought that she had heard wrongly. She stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and gazed downwards. Indeed, a group of people were working at full capacity, seemingly in the midst of building something.
Lin Ruoxi turned around with a hint of fury in her face and said, “Where’s the security team?! I did not hire the lot of them to not do their jobs when it mattered!”
Wu Yue’s expressions looked awkward as she said, “The security team had already confronted them, bu—but they dare not interfere…”
“Why?” Lin Ruoxi frowned. “Is it some activity arranged by the government?”
“It’s not the government.” Wu Yue said with much difficulty, “They said that they’re here on Director Yang’s orders…”
Lin Ruoxi widened her eyes in shock and paused for quite a while before she put her hand on her forehead. She looked a little awkward in front of Wu Yue and was muttering to herself softly, clenching her teeth, “What is he thinking?”
“Boss Lin, now the entire company knows that Director Yang is your husband. Because he is the one to do something like this, it’s only natural that the security wouldn’t dare to stop them,” Wu Yue said softly.
Her words made Lin Ruoxi feel even more troubled.
Wu Yue saw that Lin Ruoxi was lost in her thoughts. She couldn’t hold it in anymore and said, “Boss Lin, Why did you hide the fact that you and Director Yang are husband and wife from everyone? Even if you didn’t tell anyone, you shouldn’t have kept it from me. You made me mis-judge him. Turns out I was the one who was making a fool out of myself.”
“He is a bad guy.” Lin Ruoxi snorted angrily and said, “I understand the situation now. I’ll contact him. Relay my words to everyone to do what they ought to do. Don’t let me hear of any rumors. If anyone were to be distracted from gossip, ask them to leave before I fire them!”
Wu Yue sighed and nodded before she left the room.
The moment Wu Yue left, Lin Ruoxi picked up her phone immediately and dialed Yang Chen’s number.
But the only response that she got was that Yang Chen had turned off his phone!
Obviously, Yang Chen had turned off his phone beforehand, knowing that Lin Ruoxi would definitely confront him about it.
Lin Ruoxi almost threw her phone at the floor in anger. She stomped on the carpet furiously and said with her teeth clenched, “d.a.m.n Yang Chen, stupid Yang Chen. You’re always so reckless in everything you do. You’ll be the death of me!”
But once she thought about the wedding anniversary present that Yang Chen had mentioned, Lin Ruoxi couldn’t help but feel a tinge of antic.i.p.ation.
What exactly is that fellow planning to do? Filled with antic.i.p.ation and frustration, Lin Ruoxi slumped back against her chair helplessly.
Time pa.s.sed by quickly. The plaza had always been a crowded area. More people caught eye of the odd scene that was going on and started discussing about it.
Soon it was evening. It was cloudy and the sunlight gradually turned dim.
The construction that was going on in the plaza had finally taken form. It was revealed to be a stage, several hundred meters long!
This was a wonder-filled day for all the employees of Yu Lei International. First, they had suddenly learnt that Boss Lin was secretly married to the director Yang Chen! Then, Yang Chen, the CEO’s husband had started building a stage in the plaza below the building for no reason!
The employees in the Yu Lei International building were all preparing to knock off soon. Many were curious about the purpose of building that stage.
Yet at that moment, employees from every level of the building started letting out cries of surprise.
The employees enquired each other and realized that many of them had received an email from Yang Chen in their inbox!
The contents of the email was very clear. It was an invitation for all the employees of Yu Lei to watch the wedding anniversary special gift between Yang Chen and Lin Ruoxi after work.
Wedding anniversary?!
There was a clamor among the employees. This was yet another shocking information. After all, Lin Ruoxi had always been lofty and overly secretive as a CEO. Thus any news about her was of interest to everyone.
Yet they had not only found out today that she was already married, but that it was her wedding anniversary!
All of the employees no longer had any intention of knocking off from work. They were even making phone calls to invite their friends to the plaza to watch this ‘wedding anniversary present’ together!
In the CEO’s office, Lin Ruoxi was on the brink of a breakdown. Looking at the email that she had also received in her inbox, her face was red with helplessness.
“This shameless guy, what exactly does he plan to do?” Lin Ruoxi walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked down at the stage that had already been set up in the plaza below in a daze.
As more employees learnt about the news, a huge crowd of Yu Lei employees had all run out of the building onto the plaza. They surrounded the stage and were all waiting for the ‘present’ to appear.
Moving closer to the stage, the employees realized that not only lighting had been set up on the stage, there was also a set of audio-visual equipment which included a large piece of cloth for projecting video. It seemed as though he had planned some sort of video for her.
As more onlookers joined the crowd, even pa.s.sersby and cars stopped to see what was going to take place.
The white-collared workers in the nearby buildings were also curious about what the Yu Lei International employees were waiting to watch.
With that, the plaza that wasn’t very big was now completely filled with people!
When the Yu Lei employees told the other onlookers that it was a special event prepared for their Boss Lin Ruoxi and her husband’s wedding anniversary, the crowd became even more excited.
Many were shouting for the performance to start quickly, and some others were yelling for Lin Ruoxi to come down from the building!
Besides Wu Yue, Mo Qianni and Liu Mingyu were also gathered in Lin Ruoxi’s office right now.
But not one of them spoke a word. They were all standing before the window scoping the crowd below them.
Finally, about half an hour after work, a figure made his way through the crowd easily and climbed on stage amidst everyone’s antic.i.p.ation!
This figure was naturally Yang Chen who had spent the entire afternoon preparing for this!
Yang Chen didn’t seem to pay any attention to the onlooking crowd. After going through the various equipments on stage, he opened an audio box and took out a microphone. He adjusted the volume so that it could be heard by everyone in the crowd before he let out a cough and said proudly, “I believe that many of you have already explained on my behalf to the others about what is going on here. Actually, I’m quite the shy person. But since it’s our first wedding anniversary, I was afraid that my wife would find me insincere and unromantic. That’s why I had no choice but to do this. But if anyone intends to pay for the performance after watching, I wouldn’t blame them for it.”
The crowd laughed out in response, and Yu Lei employees were shrieking excitedly.
Even those women from the public relations department and Yang Chen’s subordinates like Zhao Teng and w.a.n.g Jie were among the crowd, and they were all laughing uncontrollably.
Yang Chen raised his head and look at the top floor of Yu Lei building, saying, “But it seems like my wife is even more shy than I am. She refuses to come down from her office.”
Immediately everyone roared in response to his words, yelling, “Come downstairs! Come downstairs! Come downstairs!”
Although they were a few dozen of floors apart, it was easy to know what was going on downstairs even from the faint voice that they heard through the opened window.
Lin Ruoxi’s face was as red as a tomato. Her heart was beating crazily out of control. She didn’t even have the energy to blame Yang Chen for being reckless right now. She lost all energy in her body and she even had difficulty breathing.
Mo Qianni who was standing beside her pulled at Lin Ruoxi’s hands albeit being a little jealous. She said, “Go down. If you don’t go down, it would break his heart. Of course, if you would like to give Mingyu and I an opportunity to take advantage of, we are glad to do it too.”
Liu Mingyu rolled her eyes at Mo Qianni, “Why drag me into it? I’ve never thought of anything like that.”
Lin Ruoxi glanced at them and pursed her lips, “I’m not over-sensitive like you think I am. I just don’t want to make him lose his face.”
As she finished her words, Lin Ruoxi walked out of the room, looking like she had finally mustered enough courage to do so.
Mo Qianni and Liu Mingyu exchanged glances with each other. They shook their heads at each other and smiled bitterly. They would be lying to say that they weren’t jealous. But they knew that Yang Chen did this for Lin Ruoxi and Lin Ruoxi alone.
A few minutes later, Lin Ruoxi appeared at the entrance of the building.
Yu Lei employees made way to a huge empty s.p.a.ce for her automatically and applauded loudly. When they saw that even Lin Ruoxi could blush out of embarra.s.sment, many even whistled at it.
Although she wasn’t very near to the stage yet, Lin Ruoxi could already get a good look at Yang Chen who was on the stage and hear his sound from the speaker clearly.
Lin Ruoxi tried to ignore the crowd around her and just looked at Yang Chen from afar. She was grumbling in her heart about how terrible he was and how she would deal with him after this, but still, she couldn’t hide the antic.i.p.ation that she held from within.
Yang Chen scanned around from the stage. Seeing that Lin Ruoxi had no intention of getting any nearer to the stage, he just let her be. He ran to the side and turned on the visual equipment on the stage.
In the crowd’s puzzled gazes, a clear image appeared on the cloth on stage.
What surprised many of them was that the image was actually from a video call. And the person that had appeared in the video was the super rookie Lin Hui who had rapidly gained popularity throughout the country within the recent two days.
Lin Hui looked rather nervous in the video call too. She was all the way in Beijing but the video call in front of the crowd still made her nervous.
Many onlookers were all Lin Hui’s fans. Seeing their idol appearing before their eyes, they exploded into deafening shrieks of excitement!
Yang Chen said to the crowd, “Now, I will sing a duet with Miss Lin Hui, whom I believe many of you are familiar with. Although this song was not written by me, I feel that it describes our time spent together for the past year perfectly. Now may everyone please be quiet as we start.”
The audience were surprisingly cooperative. After all, it was Lin Ruoxi and Yang Chen’s wedding anniversary, and what’s more she was Yu Lei International’s CEO. Of course they had to give her some face. They settled down immediately.
Lin Ruoxi was surprised enough to see Hui Lin. When she heard that Hui Lin was going to sing a duet with Yang Chen as a present for her, she was extremely touched. She knew that Hui Lin had definitely squeezed time out of her busy schedule for this.
On the other hand, Lin Ruoxi wasn’t too surprised to see that Yang Chen had chosen to sing for her. Back then when they went to the karaoke with Yuan Ye and Tang Tang, she had already witnessed Yang Chen’s superb singing skills. It was also then that she had given away the fact that she was tone deaf.
Standing behind Lin Ruoxi, Liu Mingyu asked Mo Qianni in puzzlement, “Qianni, why didn’t he let Boss Lin sing a duet with him? Wouldn’t that have made for a much better show?”
Mo Qianni gave her a curious smile and said softly right beside Liu Mingyu’s ears, “Ruoxi has been famous for being tone deaf even since she was in school.”
Luckily, Lin Ruoxi’s attention was completely focused on the stage. Otherwise she would have run away immediately upon hearing the conversation between the two behind her.
Right then, the music accompaniment started playing and Yang Chen finally started singing with Hui Lin through the video call screen.
…
The road traversed, like magic,
Turned all the good and bad things into mine
The bitterness in my heart- even if I forgot about it
Dissolved in a glance- turning into a song
…
And you’re like the sound of water flowing into a poem
Knocking at the door of my heart and entering, embracing all the hate within
Nouris.h.i.+ng its dryness and believing that I could belong to you
…
It’s as if I can still see that sorrowful face of yesterday
Joy could sometimes be as spicy as a slap to the face
But it was you who reminded me not to be afraid to imagine,
Thinking of the desire that I was used to hiding in my heart
…
It’s as if I could see that corridor of tomorrow that will have two sets of footprints
By you, sorrow could at times be made to taste like candy
It’s you who held me tight, striding forward and looking
At the blooming flowers on the sh.o.r.es of my heart…
[TL note: Lyrics translation taken from here.]
…
The light and cheerful melody echoed throughout the plaza.
As Yang Chen’s high-pitched, clear voice combined with Hui Lin’s ethereal, well-modulated voice, everyone was immersed in memories of their own relations.h.i.+ps.
It wasn’t a comical situation and it rang through in the crowd. No one laughed or shrieked.
It was as though every single person there could see the married couple’s life together. There were sweetness and sadness, good days and bad days, but because of their support and encouragement for each other, they had made it so far.
Still standing in the same spot, Lin Ruoxi had covered half of her face with one hand. Her tears were streaming down uncontrollably.
Perhaps, the two of them would still have cold wars and arguments, not to mention countless problems awaiting them after tonight.
But, just like what’s written in the song, no matter what happens, they would write each other into the lyrics of their hearts because of their love for each other.