The Early Spring - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - Someone as Foolish as You

Shang Zhitao remembered the coffee matter, and the next morning right after getting off the bus, she went straight to the coffee shop. She didn't previously have a habit of drinking coffee, and back in school, she only ever crammed for exams by drinking a few packets of instant coffee to stay awake. Her thought process was very simple: she wanted her mentor to drink coffee bought by her, allowing her to hold her head up high in front of everyone.

Just as she paid and stood there waiting, standing ramrod straight, she added a touch of solemnity to the relaxed surroundings.

The clerk called out to her: "Your coffee is ready."

"Thank you." She turned sideways to grab the coffee and caught sight of Luan Nian standing at the cashier counter. Flustered for a moment, she hurriedly said, "Morning, Luke." She completely forgot to offer to buy her boss a cup of coffee.

"Morning," Luan Nian replied, saying nothing more. Feeling a bit awkward and a little scared, Shang Zhitao blurted out a parting phrase: "Goodbye, Luke."

She turned and bolted.

She didn't even have the emotional intelligence to offer Luan Nian a cup of coffee.

She truly was as foolish as they come.

Today was the orientation day for campus recruits.

Shang Zhitao sat in the training classroom, watching the promotional video for new recruits. She had expected to see an aggressively motivational company history, but she had forgotten that she was working at Limelight. Limelight never bothered with empty pep talks; they preferred to lay bare the brutal reality.

In its final part, Limelight's orientation video listed the attrition rates of campus recruits over the past decade, a sight that left viewers chilled to the bone. At the very end was a line of text: "If you feel you aren't cut out for this, there is no shame in it. Stand up, walk out of this training classroom, and you will still receive two months' salary as severance."

Remembering Luan Nian advising her to resign, Shang Zhitao now felt that he might actually have been looking out for her.

The promotional video finished playing, and the training classroom fell into dead silence.

Tracy smiled at everyone. "There's no need to be this solemn. For today's second sharing session, we are honored to have the company's creative consultant and head of the planning department, Luke. Although Luke just turned twenty-eight, he won a major international commercial award at twenty-two and is hailed by the industry as a creative genius. Now, please join me in welcoming Luke with a round of applause."

What kind of bullshit introduction was that? The frown on Luan Nian's brow clearly conveyed his displeasure with Tracy's cheesy introduction.

He really wasn't a man with a good temper.

Shang Zhitao sat in the back row watching him, thinking to herself that Lumi was right—she should keep her distance from him in the future. But the content of his presentation was genuinely fantastic. He spoke about Limelight's creative principles: minimalism, sophistication, elegance, and aesthetic appeal. His PowerPoint slides also strictly embodied Limelight's principles, with every single page looking breathtakingly gorgeous.

Listening to him present was nothing short of an absolute treat.

He was also crisp and decisive, finishing his forty-minute presentation without a single word of fluff. Once finished, he was kept at the front by Tracy to take questions. Kitty's hand shot up the fastest: "May I ask if Luke is single?"

Everyone burst into laughter. Ignoring them completely, Luan Nian said with a blank expression, "Next question." He utterly despised making untimely jokes in such settings, as wasting everyone's time was tantamount to murder.

"Then may I ask if the company allows internal colleagues to talk about love?" another colleague asked.

"The company doesn't forbid employee romances, but there are two principles: they cannot be in a reporting relationship, and they cannot be in conflict-of-interest departments," Tracy answered the question before prompting the group, "Surely someone has professional questions to ask Luke? Such an opportunity is rare."

Everyone fell silent.

Shang Zhitao actually had plenty of questions, but she didn't dare ask Luan Nian. She was afraid he would advise her to quit in front of everyone, which would be entirely too humiliating. So she lowered her head and marked them down in her notebook, planning to ask Lumi about them later.

Looking at the people seated below, Luan Nian suddenly felt a bit disappointed in this batch of campus recruits. Not a single one of them had any edge, and the most cowardly one looked ready to bury her head straight into her knees. He shrugged at Tracy, turned around, and walked out of the training classroom.

Shang Zhitao didn't know it back then, but corporate life was probably like this: if you missed the optimal window for asking questions, waiting any longer made it exceptionally difficult. By the time she finished her training and returned to her workstation, Lumi had already headed off to a meeting venue. She sat at her desk to continue chewing through the industry basics she hadn't finished that morning, the paper beside her densely covered in writing.

Shang Zhitao did have one distinct merit.

She had gorgeous handwriting.

When she was in elementary school, a sudden craze for learning calligraphy swept through Ice City. After school, children with their backpacks on would line up to take calligraphy classes—brush calligraphy, pen calligraphy. The only extracurricular class Shang Zhitao ever took in her life was handwriting. She showed much more resilience in learning it than others, and by middle school, when the calligraphy craze faded and everyone else stopped studying it, she would still go to her teacher's home after school to practice writing copybooks.

Thus, her handwriting truly stood out.

Every single stroke possessed style and grace. Even random scribbles on a piece of paper carried a sense of aesthetic beauty. She used her fine handwriting to take notes on the industry basics, writing with utmost earnestness and even forgetting to eat. By the time she had finished comprehending the knowledge and raised her head, she saw the moon high in the western sky. Glancing down at her wrist, she saw it was 10:30 PM; if she hurried, she might still catch the last bus.

She sprang to her feet, shouldered her backpack, and dashed out, disappearing from the office like a gust of wind. Even after boarding the bus, her mind was still filled with those obscure and difficult terms. ATL, BTL, AE, brief, PR... Many of these words had been seen in books and explained by teachers, but putting them into actual work was a completely different story. Shang Zhitao thought of Kitty; she truly understood everything, shining brightly like the sun.

During her first week at work, Shang Zhitao's brain was crammed full of knowledge. Such high-frequency learning efficiency far surpassed studying at school. She felt everything was going great, except for Luan Nian. Lumi had dumped the tasks coordinating with Luan Nian onto her, and Shang Zhitao tried to decline, claiming she wasn't capable. But she was cut off by Lumi: "You must never say you aren't capable, especially in front of Luke. Watch out, if he hears that, he'll have HR process your resignation the very same day."

"Besides, you need to think of it this way: if you can handle a boss like Luke, what kind of monsters and demons could possibly defeat you in the future? Right?" Lumi brainwashed Shang Zhitao. As a recipient of lucrative property compensation settlements who roamed freely through the capital's inner city, Lumi only worked to have something to do; if she could avoid seeing Luan Nian's stinky face, that would be simply wonderful.

"Then how did you manage to handle Luke?" Shang Zhitao asked, seeking genuine guidance.

Lumi burst out laughing. "I haven't handled him at all, so up you go! Hang on, let me get our boss to give him a heads-up first, and then you can charge in."

Trembling with trepidation, Shang Zhitao sent a message to Luan Nian via the internal chat software: "Hello Luke, because my mentor Lumi recently has to handle the Guangzhou-Shenzhen city crossover campaign, she asked me to take charge of wrapping up those upcoming projects from the planning department. Please offer me your guidance."

She raised her head and peeked secretly at Luan Nian's office; he was sitting right in front of his computer. Beads of sweat seeped into the palms of Shang Zhitao's hands. After a long while, Luan Nian's avatar lit up, and he typed just two words: "Change people."

Truly completely unsurprising.

Shang Zhitao ran into a snag on Friday night of her very first week at work. How was she supposed to proceed if he demanded a replacement? She called Lumi, but Lumi was already at a nightclub, shouting into the phone: "Hey, babe! I'm living my weekend! Even if the sky falls, see you on Monday!"

"But that document—" Shang Zhitao hadn't even finished her sentence when Lumi hung up the phone. Yet the document hadn't been signed yet, and finance was breathing down her neck. Having finished that sentence to herself, Shang Zhitao let out a wail and slumped face-first onto her desk. It took a long time before she mustered up the courage to stand back up, taking the folder to find Luan Nian. His secretary had already left for the day, leaving Shang Zhitao with no one to pass the message through, forcing her to brave it on her own.

If he refuses to sign, I'll just drop the folder on his desk and say I'm done dealing with this!

If he tells me to resign again, I'll say you aren't even my boss!

The naive Shang Zhitao drafted every single script for her battle against Luan Nian in her mind, and with the determination of someone facing execution, she knocked on his office door. Then she heard his deep voice: "Come in."