Blossom through the Cloud - Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Right now, the car was parked by the roadside in a residential neighborhood. Pedestrians were few and far between, and the surroundings were so quiet that the only sound was the distant honking of a car horn.

Looking through the car window, Ruan Sixian observed Fu Mingyu's profile as he stood there in solitude. A cigarette was held between his lips, and with a quick flick, his lighter flared to life. He tilted his head to ignite the cigarette, and wisps of white smoke began to curl upward in front of his face.

While she was still feeling puzzled, Fu Mingyu glanced back at her. Their eyes met, but he quickly and nonchalantly looked away.

???

Leaning close to the window, Ruan Sixian was filled with a head full of question marks.

What on earth is wrong with this man?

So what if I answered a phone call? Where did this inexplicable temper of his even come from?

At that exact moment, her phone rang again.

Ruan Sixian's instinctive reaction was to decline it once more, but thankfully she took a second glance—it was a call from the bank.

It was a financial product salesperson. After a brief, unenthusiastic exchange, Ruan Sixian used being busy as an excuse to hang up.

At the same time, Fu Mingyu turned back around. The cigarette between his index and middle fingers had only burned down halfway.

Sensing that he had something to say, Ruan Sixian rolled down the window.

Yet after staring at each other for a long moment, neither of them spoke a word.

When the cigarette finally burned down to the very end, Fu Mingyu stubbed it out and turned to get back into the car.

As he fastened his seatbelt, he asked, "Done chatting so soon?"

???

What was there for me to chat about with a financial telemarketer?

Ruan Sixian had endured more than enough of his inexplicable cold-shouldering today, and she didn't want to tolerate it anymore.

Since you don't want to bother with me, fine—I won't bother you either.

Thinking this, Ruan Sixian reached for the car door to step out, but the moment her hand brushed against the seatbelt, a sudden thought flashed through her mind.

She raised her head to study him closely. The thought in her mind gradually solidified, and a faint smile slowly bloomed in her eyes.

No wonder he had been acting so strange the entire day—could he possibly be jealous?

It is seriously sour inside this car!

Inside the vehicle, one person wore a dark, sullen expression while the other smiled with absolute nonchalance. The contrast was so stark that the brooding one grew all the more irritated.

Fu Mingyu slowly put the car in gear and pulled out onto the wide-open avenue. Raising one brow slightly, his gaze fixed on the traffic light ahead as he said with feigned casualness, "Was chatting on the phone really that happy?"

Happy?

Isn't it just that you're too hilarious? A man your age getting jealous like a primary school student.

"Are you jealous? Are you jealous of a phone telemarketer?"

He said nothing, while the corners of Ruan Sixian's mouth threatened to split all the way to her ears. Fearing that the person beside her would notice her unbridled grin and, in a fit of insulted rage, resort to murder, she bent forward and buried her face in her hands.

Even so, her amusement still leaked out from between her fingers.

What Ruan Sixian didn't realize was that, from Fu Mingyu's perspective, her transparent attempt at covering it up served no purpose whatsoever.

—Instead, it just poured fuel on the fire.

Fu Mingyu pressed hard on the accelerator, and the car lurched forward abruptly. Caught off guard by the inertia, Ruan Sixian snapped backward with a loud bang, tumbling heavily against the seat. The bangs tucked behind her ear flew loose and fell across her eyes, leaving her a disheveled and thoroughly humiliated mess.

???

Ruan Sixian stared blankly at the strands of hair in front of her face, thoroughly shell-shocked and unable to recover for a long time.

What kind of psycho temper is this? Are you pursuing me or am I pursuing you?

You haven't even won me over yet and you're already throwing this kind of tantrum? Once you actually seal the deal, are you going to fly straight up to heaven?

Is this seriously how you court someone?

Until they reached Mingchen Residence, Ruan Sixian did not utter another single word to Fu Mingyu.

The moment she slammed the car door and stepped out, Fu Mingyu immediately drove off.

Bai Yang was still waiting for him at the World Airlines headquarters. The final executive meeting regarding the flight quality monitoring reform was scheduled for tomorrow, with all senior company executives required to attend.

To this day, the decision was practically set in stone, but pockets of opposition still remained.

Noticing Fu Mingyu's dark, gloomy expression, Bai Yang felt a flutter of apprehension as he nervously handed over tomorrow's meeting agenda for review.

Fu Mingyu took the papers, but right at that moment his phone chimed, prompting him to set the agenda aside and check his notifications.

Zhu Dong had sent a few messages regarding newly added flight routes out of Lincheng Airport for the upcoming autumn-winter transition, hoping to discuss them when they had time.

Fu Mingyu replied with a simple "Alright." As he exited the chat window, he noticed a little red dot over his Moments tab.

Almost on an impulse, he tapped into it, and sure enough, Ruan Sixian's small avatar appeared in the top right corner.

"Give you a ray of sunshine and you beam, give you a flood and you overflow, give you a cotton jacket and you sweat, give you a broken basket and you climb inside to lay eggs!"

Fu Mingyu stared at the text for a long while, unsure whether to be infuriated or amused.

Who this Moments post was cursing out didn't require asking.

Ruan Sixian likewise assumed that Fu Mingyu would understand perfectly.

Yet two minutes later, she noticed a familiar avatar appear in the likes list.

A like?

He's actually liking it?

How on earth did Ruan Sixian manage to read a vibe of "The Emperor has perused this memorial, but the Emperor does not care" straight out of a simple thumbs-up?

Does this man have zero self-awareness?

I am literally cursing you out, Aisin Gioro Mingyu!

On top of that, Bian Xuan left a comment: Who are you cursing out now? [Confused][Confused][Confused]

Before Ruan Sixian could even type a reply, Xiao Xiaozhen beat her to it and responded to Bian Xuan: Who else could it be?

Bian Xuan: Fighting again?

Xiao Xiaozhen: What fighting? They're just flirting.

Bian Xuan: Treating your Moments feed like a dating base, I'm muting them.

Xiao Xiaozhen: Same here, I can't take it anymore.

Ruan Sixian: ?

Is this what you call flirting?

This is genuine, heartfelt verbal abuse, okay?

Ruan Sixian solemnly decided to give Fu Mingyu the cold shoulder for two days to cool down his boiling water, otherwise he'd get so high on himself he'd bring the pot to a rolling boil without a single clue.

However, over the next two days, Ruan Sixian didn't even catch a glimpse of Fu Mingyu, leaving her with zero opportunity to signal her attitude.

He didn't call or text her either.

He certainly held onto his petty grudges.

The next time Ruan Sixian saw Fu Mingyu was two days later, right outside the main conference room of the flight operations department.

That afternoon, after completing her return flight, she was dragging her flight case past the area when she saw a dense crowd of people streaming out. Some wore expressions of jubilation, while others had their brows tightly furrowed.

Walking at the very front was Fu Mingyu. His expression remained calm and unreadable, save for a faint trace of exhaustion hidden deep within his eyes.

After filing out of the conference room, the attendees dispersed back to their respective offices, while Fu Mingyu walked down the opposite corridor accompanied by Bai Yang and a few assistants.

Since they were far apart, Fu Mingyu didn't notice Ruan Sixian at all.

A few surrounding colleagues were whispering amongst themselves. Pulling her gaze away from Fu Mingyu, Ruan Sixian stepped closer and asked, "What are you guys talking about?"

Captain Fan: "Didn't you read the group chat?"

Ruan Sixian shook her head.

Captain Fan said, "Hasn't the flight quality monitoring reform been the talk of the town for months? The final verdict kept getting delayed."

Ever since Copilot Yu's emergency diversion due to acute cholecystitis a few months ago, every single pilot at World Airlines had been silently tracking the progress of this initiative.

Yet tracking it was all they did; nobody held out much hope.

Past attempts at reform had always fizzled out due to obstacles involving manpower, logistics, and stubborn practical realities.

And the person spearheading it this time was Fu Mingyu.

It wasn't that they didn't trust him—everyone had witnessed his operational competence firsthand—it was simply that they figured if even former Assistant Hu couldn't push it through, Fu Mingyu clearly wouldn't achieve any miraculous breakthroughs.

Besides, even Chairman Fu had maintained a neutral stance on the reform this time around.

Someone pointed toward the conference room doors and chimed in, "Word was that yesterday's meeting was supposed to finalize it, but after battling it out for seven or eight hours straight with people still objecting, they had to reconvene again today. Who knows if it actually passed?"

After a flurry of speculative chatter, Captain Fan delivered the closing summary: "Alright, stop guessing. This isn't something we get to decide anyway, we'll know the results soon enough."

With that, he turned and strode away, muttering under his breath with his hands clasped behind his back, "Sure hope President Fu really did overturn the old system, sigh..."

Ruan Sixian glanced back down the glass corridor, where Fu Mingyu's tall, slender silhouette was faintly visible.

After watching for a good long while, she vaguely sensed that Fu Mingyu really had lost weight recently.

No wonder he looked so utterly drained today—enduring two consecutive days of marathon meetings, is he even human?

Ruan Sixian gnawed on her knuckle, looked back toward the glass hallway one last time, only to find that Fu Mingyu's figure had already vanished.

Two hours later, the release of two official documents set every employee chat group in the World Airlines flight department ablaze.

One was the Flight Quality Monitoring Management Regulations (2019 Trial Version), and the other was the Flight Data Application Negative List.

After carefully reading through both documents, Ruan Sixian opened her WeChat chat window to find that several group chats were already overflowing with "99+" messages, a clear testament to everyone's bubbling excitement.

After all, pilots had suffered far too many cases of disguised disciplinary penalties stemming from QAR data, with certain incidents even attributing accidents to the psychological shadows cast by QAR events and punishments.

Now that the reform package had finally dropped, completely tossing out the heavy-handed "punishment-in-lieu-of-management" approach that had persisted for nearly twenty years in favor of cultivating a healthy, supportive safety culture, who wouldn't be ecstatic?

The atmosphere in the colleague chat groups gradually transformed into an ode praising Fu Mingyu. Even when forwarding the Moments link, people made sure to express their heartfelt gratitude to President Fu, completely unbothered by the fact that he wouldn't even see it—they simply thanked him from the bottom of their hearts.

Ruan Sixian realized that her earlier passionate rant looked a bit bizarre amidst the chorus of praise, so she stealthily deleted the post.

Upon reflection, she still felt a prickle of guilt.

Fu Mingyu had been working day and night to reform the working environment for pilots like them, battling a room full of stubborn old foxes until he literally lost weight, while she had been throwing a petty temper tantrum over an accelerator pedal.

Seen in that light, merely deleting her previous post wasn't enough.

So, Ruan Sixian shared the link that Captain Fan had posted regarding the flight quality monitoring reform.

Just as she was about to hit send, Ruan Sixian paused.

If she just forwarded it blankly, Fu Mingyu might not recognize her sincerity.

So what should she do?

She couldn't possibly start spewing exaggerated, obsequious praise like the folks in the group chat, right?

She scanned through the text Captain Fan had attached, finding it quite balanced and grounded. It offered genuine, substantive praise for Fu Mingyu's actions—objective and sincere. Surely Fu Mingyu would appreciate that?

And so, Ruan Sixian casually copied Captain Fan's exact phrasing.

A few minutes after posting it, Fu Mingyu liked the status.

Seeing his avatar pop up in the likes list, Ruan Sixian curled her lips into a smile, and the lingering sense of guilt in her chest instantly dissipated.

The next second, Fu Mingyu sent her a direct message.

This was the first time Fu Mingyu had initiated contact with her in two days.

[Fu Mingyu]: Love me forever?

[Fu Mingyu]: Follow me forever?

Ruan Sixian: ?

What kind of unhinged nonsense is this man babbling?

[Ruan Sixian]: What bird language are you speaking?

Fu Mingyu didn't reply to her.

Ruan Sixian kept messaging him, determined to extract the rationale behind his madness.

[Ruan Sixian]: Did you send that to the wrong person?

After waiting a moment, still no response.

Ruan Sixian grew increasingly convinced that he had messaged the wrong person.

Spouting such ambiguous nonsense out of nowhere—who knows which other young woman he was flirting with?

The scumbag is actually running a fishpond?!

Ruan Sixian gnashed her teeth in fury, her fingers practically stabbing through her screen as she typed.

[Ruan Sixian]: Did you mass-blast your contacts?

[Ruan Sixian]: Sent it to some other little sister, huh?

[Ruan Sixian]: Fu Mingyu, your fishpond is truly massive :)

After sending those three messages.

Ruan Sixian waited for a full minute, but Fu Mingyu still offered no reply.

Ah, so the scumbag got caught running a fishpond and is speechless.

Go lie down in my blacklist, you jerk!

Ruan Sixian smiled coldly, preparing to block him when he finally fired back a message.

He sent a screenshot of the link Ruan Sixian had just shared, which featured her sprawling, hundred-word commentary attached—so long it didn't even fit inside the preview interface.

And he had tapped "Expand," specifically highlighting the final two sentences in bright red on the screenshot.

Seeing the screenshot, Ruan Sixian felt her skull go utterly numb with acute embarrassment.

——"World Airlines didn't have to wait for a catastrophic accident to trigger QAR reform—after all, no pilot or company could bear the cost of such a disaster! World Airlines' approach is the true, correct application of QAR for flight quality monitoring. Only through this can we genuinely achieve advancements in flight technique and aviation safety, rather than resorting to low-tier tactics like using QAR events to punish pilots. Such a magnificent tool was being abused. It's like handing a sharp blade to a soldier, only for the soldier to use it to slaughter the innocent. Thank you for your hard work, President Fu! Love you forever! Follow you forever!"

Ruan Sixian: "......?"

When she copied the text earlier, she had simply thought Captain Fan's praise sounded genuine and down-to-earth. She hadn't even finished reading it before hitting copy, completely missing the fact that Captain Fan had delivered an even more passionate and heartfelt expression at the very end.

Why is a man in his fifties still this dramatic???

While Ruan Sixian was drowning in mortification, Fu Mingyu sent another message over.

[Fu Mingyu]: Read a bit more carefully before you copy-paste next time.

Ruan Sixian: "..."

[Fu Mingyu]: Also, I don't have any other little sisters.

[Fu Mingyu]: Only you.