The Early Spring - Chapter 69

Chapter 69 - Taotao 

When Shang Zhitao returned home, Sun Yu happened to be there as well, busy making an outfit for Luke. In her words: "Autumn is almost here, shouldn't our Luke have a handsome trench coat too?" Sun Yu dug out an old trench coat of her own, held it up against Luke's body to measure, cut it down to size, ran the wider seams through her small sewing machine, and handled the finer details by hand, stitch by stitch.

"Luke has got to be the happiest dog alive. Its autumn wardrobe is custom-made by a heavyweight in the matchmaking industry."

Sun Yu patted Luke on the head and asked her, "How come you're back so early today?"

"I have a business trip tomorrow, so I came back early to pack my luggage."

"Are you sending Luke over to Luan Nian's place again?"

"Not this time. Luan Nian is coming on the trip with me, but fortunately, Sun Yuanzhu is coming back tomorrow morning." With that, Shang Zhitao sat down facing Sun Yu and announced, "I don't like your new boyfriend."

"As if I like him either." Sun Yu let out a giggle. "Let's not talk about that. I need to head to Shanghai bright and early tomorrow morning for an entrepreneur training camp. A ton of people attend that camp to network with industry giants and secure funding. Our company pooled resources to send me to fulfill this monumental mission. Where are you heading tomorrow?"

"To Dunhuang. Leading S-tier clients on a 108-kilometer trek. Four days and three nights, six days round trip. Well, your trip to Shanghai really does carry the heavy burden of the entire company's rise." Shang Zhitao thought for a moment before asking Sun Yu, "Do you have any startup projects you're pitching?"

"We do. Why?"

"I happened to overhear Luan Nian on the phone once, and it sounded like he has a friend who just moved into investment banking. I'm not sure which firm, but they handle overseas deals. I can ask around for you."

"Would that be convenient?"

"Convenient. Just give me the details. Didn't you say it yourself? Connections are meant to be used. I don't have any use for them normally, so what's wrong with letting my friend borrow them?" She burst into bright laughter.

The two of them chatted like that for a long time. Growing a bit hungry, Shang Zhitao went to the kitchen to cook a batch of Sun-style hot and sour noodles, dishing out a bowl for herself and one for Sun Yu. They ate while discussing the progress of Sun Yu's company. Things were finally starting to pick up, and the online traffic metrics were on the rise. Sun Yu's main headache was figuring out how to screen out problematic practitioners from registering on their platform, so she had allocated a budget to hire dedicated information moderators to review bad content every day. Business was built brick by brick through actual grinding; troubles that couldn't be anticipated beforehand gradually sought you out on their own. Every single day was a battle to level up, forcing Sun Yu—who had started out in sales—to rattle off material and content compliance regulations like a seasoned expert, practically forged into a specialist by sheer work pressure.

After chatting for a long time, Luke's trench coat was finally finished. Sun Yu pulled the puppy over, slipped the coat onto it, and meticulously checked the fit, treating it just like a child. That night, when Shang Zhitao opened her suitcase to pack, Luke instantly realized its owner was leaving and planted itself inside the empty suitcase to block her from packing, its big eyes brimming with pitiful sorrow: If you're going, take me with you!

Shang Zhitao patted its head. "Will you wait for me to come back? Brother Yuanzhu will walk you and feed you." It took a considerable amount of effort to lift Luke out of the suitcase. Sun Yu left bright and early the next morning, and just before Shang Zhitao was about to head out, Sun Yuanzhu returned.

It felt like she hadn't seen Sun Yuanzhu in nearly two months. He had lost some weight, his skin tanned and weathered by the wind and sand. Luke bounded over to welcome him, and he scooped the puppy up and spun it around in a circle, holding it as if it were a girlfriend.

"Didn't you say you'd be back later?"

"I changed my flight." Sun Yuanzhu pulled a bag of jujubes out of his luggage and handed them to Shang Zhitao. "For you guys." His fingertips felt rather warm to the touch.

"Are you running a fever?" Shang Zhitao hurried into her bedroom, retrieved a thermometer, and said, "Check your temperature."

"I don't have a fever," Sun Yuanzhu shook his head.

"You definitely have a fever, just check it." Shang Zhitao insisted.

Unable to win the argument against her, Sun Yuanzhu tucked the thermometer under his arm and sat down on the living room sofa.

Thirty-eight point four degrees Celsius—Sun Yuanzhu was genuinely sick. There was no fever-reducing medication left in the house, so Shang Zhitao dashed out to buy some. Glancing at the time and realizing she wouldn't make her flight, she messaged Lumi: "I've got a personal matter to take care of and need to change my flight."

"Go right ahead. The other colleagues will keep an eye on things; today wasn't even your main event anyway."

"Got it."

Shang Zhitao had developed a habit: even when an event wasn't her primary responsibility, she would always arrive early to help her colleagues out as an assistant. But today she couldn't; Sun Yuanzhu was sick. She rushed back home with the medicine she bought at the pharmacy and found Sun Yuanzhu fast asleep on the sofa. Waking him up, she made him take his medicine and insisted he go sleep in his own bedroom.

She placed the medicine on his desk, and seeing that he had drifted off again, she searched his desk for a pen and paper to write down the dosage instructions.

Sun Yuanzhu turned over in his sleep and murmured her name: "Taotao."

Shang Zhitao froze mid-stroke, staring down at him. His eyes were half-open, the light within them flickering as if about to extinguish completely. It was the first time he had ever called her Taotao, and it sounded heartbreakingly sorrowful. Shang Zhitao felt as though something had pierced her heart, sending a sharp pang of pain through her chest.

"What is it, Sun Yuanzhu? I'm right here."

After a long, drawn-out silence, Sun Yuanzhu finally whispered, "Don't worry about me. Go on."

"I changed to an evening flight," Shang Zhitao said. "I'll make you something to eat at noon, and Zhang Lei will come over after he gets off work this afternoon to look after you."

Sun Yuanzhu nodded and told Shang Zhitao, "In my backpack, there are some jujubes I brought back from the Northwest for you guys."

"I'll go wash some to eat right now then."

"Alright."

Shang Zhitao went to his backpack, retrieved the jujubes, washed them, and when she checked on him again, he was already fast asleep. That utterance of "Taotao" from moments ago felt almost as if he hadn't spoken it at all. Sitting down in the living room, Shang Zhitao opened her laptop to handle work matters.

Lumi messaged her: "I was going through security earlier so I couldn't ask properly. What happened? Everything okay?"

"Sun Yuanzhu is sick."

"Your angelic roommate?"

"Mn."

"Well, you should definitely take good care of him then. Go look after him! See you tonight."

Putting her phone away, Lumi noticed that the bosses had all arrived at the boarding gate. Dony and Luan Nian were standing together, seemingly discussing something. Luan Nian even offered a faint smile.

Stubborn donkey, Lumi thought to herself, why don't you actually make a move!

What Dony was discussing with Luan Nian was the new strategy. The board was locked in a fierce internal struggle, and nothing had been finalized yet. He wanted Luan Nian to take a clear stance. Luan Nian deflected with vague pleasantries: "Last year's strategic adjustments and new projects underwent seven rounds of reporting and seven revisions. The board is the board—if it were easy to coordinate, it wouldn't be the board. We still need to keep communicating."

"If we keep communicating, this whole year will slip by."

"There's plenty of time ahead." Luan Nian patted him on the shoulder, scanning his surroundings without spotting Shang Zhitao.

When Shang Zhitao arrived at the hotel, it was nearly ten o'clock. Dony was standing at the entrance speaking with someone. Shang Zhitao nodded at him, walked past, and didn't stop. She wasn't a fresh graduate anymore; she no longer felt the need to bow and scrape to everyone in the workplace. She had learned a crucial lesson: if you don't like someone, screw 'em.

She genuinely despised Dony.

Not only because of that inexplicable remark he had made to her and the way he looked at her, but also because he kept overstepping his bounds and radiated overt hostility toward Luan Nian.

In her heart, Shang Zhitao stood firmly on Luan Nian's side. She felt that her stance here didn't need to be strictly rational—it simply stemmed from the fact that she slept with Luan Nian, and they had shared that bottle of water called "Of One Mind."

Checking into her room swiftly, she found that Lumi had already changed into her pajamas and was putting on a facial mask. Seeing Shang Zhitao walk in, Lumi asked, "Did the angel's fever break?"

"Still burning. Zhang Lei is looking after him."

Lumi pressed her forehead against the glass pane, staring out at the northwest wind while complaining, "Our company is hilarious, launching some Dunhuang trekking expedition. Wouldn't it be better to just lie down on a beach somewhere?"

"They say S-tier clients love this sort of thing."

Lumi let out a scoff, then suddenly lurched forward, practically pressing her entire upper body against the window glass to look outside.

"What are you doing?"

"Which room is Dony staying in?"

"Huh?"

"Which room?"

Shang Zhitao recited a room number, only to see Lumi throw on a cardigan, grab her hand, and announce, "Let's go!"

Following her with a skeptical look, Shang Zhitao trailed Lumi up the stairs to the corner of Dony's floor. Lumi stopped, whipped out her phone, switched it to recording mode, and poked the camera lens around the corner.

...

Shang Zhitao felt utterly bewildered. Lumi held a finger up to her lips. "Shh."

After an indeterminate amount of time, Shang Zhitao heard a door click open and shut. Pulling her phone back, Lumi dragged Shang Zhitao back to their room, locked the door behind them, and tossed the device to Shang Zhitao. "Here, take a look."

Shang Zhitao opened the video. Filmed from a low upward angle, the footage showed Kitty standing outside a hotel room door. As the door swung open, Shang Zhitao watched a hand reach out, grab Kitty by the waist, and haul her inside.

She widened her eyes in shock. "You... how did you..."

"How did I know? I've helped my girlfriends catch cheating bastards before."

"No, I mean how did you know Kitty would go looking for him?"

"Intuition."

Pure intuition. When Kitty had walked past earlier, Dony's eyes had lingered directly on Kitty's rear end—and that was certainly not a respectable look. Lumi had caught it crystal clear from upstairs.

"That bitch Kitty, I knew she'd pull something like this. Dressing up like that every single time she went into Luke's office—her intentions were as obvious as a billboard. The reason I like Luke is precisely because Luke refuses to play along with her."

"What if he had?"

"Kitty? A person like her, if she actually slept with Luke, she'd go around broadcasting it to the entire world."

"Oh, oh, oh, oh."

Shang Zhitao let out a string of understanding nods, then asked Lumi, "What should we do with this video?"

"Keep it." Lumi collapsed onto the bed. "Sooner or later, it'll come in handy."

"My mentor is seriously formidable." Shang Zhitao gave her a thumbs-up. Lumi giggled. "That's what she gets for poking her nose where it doesn't belong!"

Lumi was fiercely unforgiving of wrongdoing, and Shang Zhitao had picked up quite a few tricks working alongside her. Turning off the lights, they lay in the dark chatting, eventually drifting back to the topic of Dony. Shang Zhitao told Lumi, "I hate him because back in his office, he asked me if I had a boyfriend and mentioned he was single. I thought it was extremely flirty and disrespectful."

"He actually asked you that?"

"Mn."

"This scumbag is truly unbelievable. He looks like a normal human being, but he's rotten to the core—you can tell just by how quickly he ended up in bed with Kitty."

"Why is he so devoid of fear?"

"Probably because he's never taken a hit in this area before, or maybe because his backers are extremely powerful. Hard to say."

"Oh."

If his backers were extremely powerful, would that mean Luan Nian was going to get the short end of the stick? Shang Zhitao felt a wave of worry for Luan Nian. Yet Luan Nian didn't seem to be taking Dony seriously at all, continuing his daily routine as usual, merely looking a bit more relaxed than before.

Shang Zhitao hadn't mentioned Dony asking her about her relationship status to Luan Nian; she felt it was completely unnecessary, as she was fully capable of handling it herself. The bottom line was simply refusing to bend the knee to him.

Feeling a sudden wave of drowsiness, she picked up her phone and messaged Luan Nian: "When we head out tomorrow, are you supposed to share a car with President Jiang?"

"Are you out of your mind?"

Luan Nian replied.

Shang Zhitao sent back a grinning emoji: "I'm serious, our meeting this afternoon arranged for you two to ride in the same vehicle."

...

Closing her eyes to drift off to sleep, Shang Zhitao heard that murmur echo in her ears: "Taotao."

For reasons unknown, her heart gave a sudden, tender ache.