The Early Spring - Chapter 39

Chapter 39 - Silence

When a woman falls in love with a man, does she inevitably plunge into endless fantasies? At least Shang Zhitao was like that. In her daydreams, Luan Nian harbored a little bit of affection for her. Even if this fondness left no trace behind, she preferred to believe it anyway.

Her workday on Friday did not end particularly late, yet she lingered at her workstation, refusing to leave. Perhaps, just like before, she would head out very late, and Luan Nian would happen to drive by and, out of sudden kindness, offer her a ride. In her mind, she rehearsed many times what she should say once she got into his car, or perhaps say nothing at all—they shared enough tacit understanding that Luan Nian would simply take her home.

Yet Luan Nian left. He emerged from his office, looked straight ahead, and walked right out. In Shang Zhitao's heart, it felt as though a cat's paw was scratching at her—a faint, itchy pain that was bearable, but deeply unpleasant nonetheless.

She sat a little longer before finally packing her bag and heading out, just in time to catch the very last bus. Along the way, her bus passed through an intersection and happened to stop right beside Luan Nian's car. She saw him smiling while talking on the phone, though she had no idea to whom. Shang Zhitao put on her earphones and turned her head away, feeling that falling in love with a man beyond her grasp was truly agonizing. Back then, she lacked such long-term vision; she only saw the present moment, where her current self was tormented by someone's hot-and-cold indifference.

This grueling night stripped away her capacity for independent thought. As the late-night bus rattled through the city streets, that hollow, drifting sensation crushed twenty-two-year-old Shang Zhitao and ignited a streak of rebellion within her.

She announced that she wanted to treat her roommates to dinner over the weekend. When she arrived home and found everyone present, she pulled out a small notebook and began taking a poll: "What does everyone want to eat?"

"Beef, beef!" Sun Yu declared.

"Pork belly!" Zhang Lei announced.

"Chicken wings!" Zhang Lei added.

"Live shrimp!" Sun Yu chimed in immediately.

Everyone shouted out their favorite dishes, and item after item turned out to be meat. Sitting nearby, Sun Yuanzhu silently worried over Shang Zhitao's wallet. He symbolically suggested onions and lettuce leaves, and then offered, "I'll go with you tomorrow."

"Huh?"

"Afraid you won't be able to carry it all."

Watching them, Sun Yu gave a knowing chuckle. "Let's all go together. It'll be lively."

Shang Zhitao had always been a person whose worries floated right on the surface; no matter what troubled her, it would quickly pass. Distraught over Luan Nian's elusiveness the night before, she woke up the next morning as cheerful as if nothing had happened. The four of them headed to the farmers' market chatting and laughing. On a couple of occasions when Sun Yuanzhu tried to pay, Shang Zhitao slapped his hand away. "Not allowed! I'll get mad."

"Then I'll treat you next time," Sun Yuanzhu said earnestly. He felt that a girl like Shang Zhitao had it hard—coming to this big city all alone, holding such a weak starting hand, and treading as carefully as walking on thin ice.

"Alright then." Shang Zhitao smiled at him. "How about I treat you and Long Zhentian to roast duck sometime? Every time class ends, Long Zhentian treats me to dinner; my tuition fees aren't even enough to cover what he spends on my meals."

"He just loves making friends, so you don't need to feel indebted to him. He's utterly ruthless when it comes to skinning other people in business."

"That's taking loving to make friends to another level." Shang Zhitao burst into a giggle.

"How are your studies going?" Walking beside her, Sun Yuanzhu took the heavier bags from her hands, leaving her to carry only a small pouch as a token gesture. Shang Zhitao gave him a grateful look. "Long Zhentian says my progress has been huge. He says at this rate, I'll be ready to graduate on my own in another year."

"You're truly amazing," Sun Yuanzhu praised, as if he had never encountered a brilliant girl before. Yet the people around him were anything but ordinary; surrounded by graduates from top-tier institutions at home and abroad, the people in his circle constantly talked about reaching for the stars and vast oceans.

Shang Zhitao felt a tinge of shame.

As they walked and chatted, Sun Yuanzhu consciously kept to the outside, guiding Shang Zhitao to walk on the inner side of the pavement. When they crossed an intersection, his hand shot out to grab her wrist and pull her backward, narrowly keeping her from being clipped by a passing car.

Walking behind them, Zhang Lei witnessed the scene and nudged Sun Yu. "Does Shang Zhitao have a boyfriend?"

Sun Yu wanted to say yes, but then reconsidered, deciding that her boss was probably an absolute scoundrel who pants-and-runs without taking responsibility. Sun Yuanzhu was miles better than that kind of man, so she shook her head. "No."

"Well, that's great. They should couple up; they suit each other so well."

"They really do match," Sun Yu agreed with a nod.

Young people gathered together find it easy to have fun. The group busied themselves washing vegetables and chatting amidst a lively commotion. Because Zhang Lei and Sun Yu were the energetic sort who could never sit still, Shang Zhitao missed her phone ringing continuously in the background. It wasn't until Sun Yuanzhu went to grab a drink and noticed the screen flashing that he called out to her, "Your phone is ringing."

"Could you help me answer it?" Shang Zhitao was in the middle of washing vegetables with soapy water and couldn't free her hands.

"Sure."

Sun Yuanzhu answered the call and offered a gentle, "Hello?" He was the kind of person whose voice remained remarkably soft even when uttering a single word.

Taken aback for a second, Luan Nian pulled his phone away to check the number—he hadn't dialed the wrong one. "I'm looking for Shang Zhitao."

"Alright. Please hold for a moment," Sun Yuanzhu said softly. At that exact moment, Zhang Lei cracked a joke, and everyone burst into laughter. Walking over to Shang Zhitao, Sun Yuanzhu held the phone out. "It seems to be someone looking for you. Do you want to take it?"

"Can you help me hold it to my ear?" Shang Zhitao turned her cheek toward him. "My hands are all wet."

"Of course." Sun Yuanzhu pressed the phone against Shang Zhitao's ear. Her voice still carried a trace of lingering laughter as she asked, "Who is this?"

"It's me," Luan Nian stated flatly, giving Shang Zhitao no time to react. "The suppliers have provided feedback on all project briefs. Take a look at the brief you submitted yourself."

"Understood."

Luan Nian hung up abruptly without waiting. Shang Zhitao wiped her hands, grabbed her phone, and saw that Luan Nian had sent her a message: "If you can't even draft a basic brief, what use do we have for you?"

Panicking, Shang Zhitao hurried to her bedroom, opened her laptop, and pulled up the email she had sent out. She had made a complete mess of it—both the data channels and data models were entirely wrong. And the suppliers had already begun harvesting the data.

She had never committed a mistake of this magnitude before, and panic momentarily paralyzed her.

Still seething with anger, Luan Nian sent her another text: "This constitutes a Level-One operational incident. I've already informed Tracy and Alex: no promotions or pay raises for a year, and your bonus for this quarter is halved. Come up with a remedy plan right now."

Sitting before her screen, Shang Zhitao suddenly burst into tears.

She felt profoundly aggrieved. That day, she had lost her focus because of Luan Nian, which in turn led her to make such a fatal blunder. A deep sense of injustice washed over her, and she even began regretting ever starting anything with Luan Nian in the first place. If they had never crossed that line, she would still be that diligent, hardworking Shang Zhitao, and she certainly wouldn't have botched her work like this.

Sun Yu knocked on the door and pushed it open, finding her in tears. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing." Shang Zhitao wiped away her tears. "I need to make a phone call." Problems had to be solved; she couldn't just grind to a halt. Her first call went to Alex. She confessed her mistake honestly, but Alex was understanding and comforted her, "To err is human. Don't take to heart what Luke said to you—he's just blowing off steam; he won't actually block your raise."

"It's not about the pay raise." What broke Shang Zhitao's heart was his strictly professional, impersonal attitude. His harsh tone hadn't softened by even an inch despite the fact that they had spent two intensely intimate nights together; if anything, he was treating her worse than before.

"Then what are you worrying about? It's fine. I've already spoken with the suppliers; we won't issue separate payments for this batch, and we'll withhold payment on upcoming projects to compensate. Just send them the correct brief."

"Thank you, Alex."

"Don't mention it, just make sure you don't pull a stunt like this again." Alex might not have been entirely forgiving of subordinate errors either, but since Shang Zhitao was a first-time offender and the stakes weren't catastrophic, Luke had simply blown things out of proportion. Alex couldn't quite fathom why Luan Nian was taking it out on her so fiercely, though perhaps, as office gossip suggested, Luan Nian simply had no tolerance for Shang Zhitao.

Shang Zhitao scrambled to correct the brief and fired the right version off to the suppliers.

Then she gripped her phone, debating for a long time whether to reply to Luan Nian, before ultimately tossing the device aside. She didn't reply at all.

Shang Zhitao refused to give him the satisfaction of an answer.

Fine, no promotion then. Fine, no pay raise then. Fine, dock my bonus then. After all, when it came to her career, she didn't have much left to lose anyway.

She didn't possess anything of real value to begin with.

Unable to tell whether she was rebelling against her boss or her bed partner, she simply knew she didn't want to spare Luan Nian a single word. So she left her phone behind in the bedroom and went back out to join the dinner. She refused to let one incident ruin her entire weekend.

Good food and good company could cure any unhappiness.

As Shang Zhitao dined with the others, Sun Yu brought up the matchmaking project she was managing, recounting amusing tales of men and women speed-dating online. She mentioned a male user who used a bald-headed photo as his profile picture and whose opening line to every single girl was: "Hi, I own two apartments in Mudanyuan, want to grab dinner together?" She told the story with an utterly mischievous lilt, then turned to Shang Zhitao. "If he said that to you, would you reply?"

"I... my mom told me to find someone tall and not bald," Shang Zhitao answered with absolute, deadpan sincerity, setting everyone off into another wave of laughter.

"Should I make a fake female account and go chat with him?" Zhang Lei laughed. "I'm just genuinely curious about what his properties look like..."

The group dissolved into helpless giggles. Afterward, Sun Yu let out a sigh. "The problem with our platform is that we're lacking quality male users. Can you guys register accounts to boost our user demographics?"

"Sure, sure, sure." Agreeing instantly, Shang Zhitao fetched her laptop, and the four of them huddled heads together to register profiles on the site. The registration required uploading a photo, which proved slightly awkward. Shang Zhitao asked Sun Yu, "Do we need real photos?"

"Yes, please."

"Doesn't your system use virtual bot users?" Zhang Lei asked suddenly. Working in commercialization, he was intimately familiar with all sorts of monetization strategies.

"We do use some... but..."

"Show it to me and Yuanzhu later."

"Consider it done!" Sun Yu beamed with delight. "My entire career rests on the three of you. Of course, you can leave your lifelong romantic milestones in my hands, too."

"Let me check out your female members first." Triggered by his commercial instincts, Zhang Lei began analyzing the business model of Sun Yu's project in earnest, asking her, "Are you planning to take this offline?"

"Of course. But it's too late to roll it out this year; we'll probably just run a single event around Christmas and scale it up widely next year."

"That sounds promising. Make sure to invite me when the offline events launch so I can go meet some eligible singles."

"I'm going too. I want to be a plant to help drum up numbers. Do you think I'd make a good shill?" Shang Zhitao raised her hand.

"You'd make a phenomenal shill. You're the exact archetype of the early-twenties, career-driven, attractive girl that successful men drool over!" Sun Yu teased her. "You guys are going to be my star attractions!"

"Isn't that just a professional dating scam?" Sun Yuanzhu remarked out of nowhere.

"Not quite... I mean, you're all single anyway..."

The meal carried on with lively chatter well into the evening, and Shang Zhitao successfully managed to push Luan Nian and his biting criticisms to the back of her mind.