When Lin Jianqing arrived at Lingqi Network the next day, his mood was relatively calm.
Of course, that calmness was only relative. Ever since he had gotten tangled up with Shen Huaixue, his standards for a “normal day” had been forced down significantly.
In the past, he thought going to class, working part-time, and returning to the dorm was normal, even if it was a bit tiring; now, as long as Shen Huaixue didn’t suddenly message him early in the morning to go to the office and accept some strange arrangement, he could briefly think that the day might still be manageable.
This thought was pretty spineless, but there was no other way. To be honest, ever since meeting Shen Huaixue, Lin Jianqing’s wallet had grown thicker, but his sanity value had been dropping.
After all, Shen Huaixue was a person who couldn’t be judged by normal standards.
She might have been at home the day before, holding up a row of women’s clothes and asking if he liked them, only to sit in the office the next day, looking serious while reading documents, as if the person who had treated him like a dress-up game character the night before wasn’t her at all.
Lin Jianqing swiped his card, walked to his desk, sat down, and turned on the computer.
There was no breakfast on the desk. He glanced at it, then quickly looked away.
‘There shouldn’t have been any, what was he expecting?’
A few days ago, when Shen Huaixue prepared breakfast for him, that had been strange. The clean desk today only showed that the world had briefly regained a bit of order. But it was fine; he had bread from the convenience store downstairs in his backpack.
Lin Jianqing’s standard of living had visibly improved over the past few days. Not long ago, he could only afford the small group-buy bread from Pinduoduo.
Now, his wallet could handle the “beautiful bread” from the convenience store that looked particularly delicious.
Archive. But when he took out the morning’s bread from his backpack, tore open the wrapper, and took a bite, he fell silent.
This bread was absurdly dry. Lin Jianqing chewed a couple of times and almost suspected it had been contemplating life on the convenience store shelf for a long time.
He took a sip of water to wash down the dryness, and somehow his mind wandered back to the hot porridge and soy milk Shen Huaixue had prepared a few days ago.
‘Great, before I even got used to enjoying it, I’m already finding convenience store bread hard to swallow.’
‘This isn’t a good sign. It’s easy to go from frugal to lavish, but going from Shen Huaixue’s breakfast back to bread… not that hard either.’
Lin Jianqing sat at his desk and silently stuffed the rest of the bread into his mouth.
‘Can’t think about it anymore. Maybe the bread just tastes like this.’
The morning’s work wasn’t too much. Zhang Jie sent him a few material sorting sheets, asking him to categorize them by label and reorganize several design reference files.
These tasks were trivial but not difficult.
Lin Jianqing worked with his head down for a while, then suddenly remembered that he still needed to submit a set of internship confirmation materials for school.
Guan Ju had reminded him yesterday that it would be best to turn them in before 5 PM today, or it might affect his credit statistics later.
Lin Jianqing fished out the forms from his backpack.
Most of the content was already filled in; only the company head’s signature and official seal were missing.
He looked at the two blank spaces and felt a headache coming on.
‘Who is the head of Lingqi Network?’
‘Shen Huaixue.’
The moment that name popped into his head, Lin Jianqing felt an urge to stuff the forms back into his bag. But the forms weren’t Shen Huaixue; he couldn’t just give up his credits because he didn’t want to see her.
He stared at the paper for a few seconds, then ultimately took the forms to the President’s Office. After knocking, Shen Huaixue’s voice came from inside.
“Come in.”
Lin Jianqing pushed the door open. Today, Shen Huaixue looked the part. White shirt, sleeves rolled up to her forearms, long black hair loosely pinned with a clip, and a pair of thin-framed glasses on her nose.
She sat behind the desk, reading documents—cold, beautiful, and giving off a distant air that was hard to approach.
If Lin Jianqing didn’t know her so well, he might have thought she was just a shrewd, proper female CEO. Unfortunately, there was no “if.” This woman was fine as long as she didn’t speak. The moment she opened her mouth, the filter shattered completely.
Shen Huaixue looked up at him, her gaze pausing on the forms in his hand.
“Looking for me to stamp something?”
“Yeah, it’s the internship confirmation material for school. I need the person in charge’s signature and the company seal.” Lin Jianqing handed over the forms. “I have to submit it this afternoon, so please hurry.”
Shen Huaixue took the forms and glanced over them. Lin Jianqing stood in front of the desk, waiting for her signature.
‘He had originally thought this would take at most a minute. Sign, stamp, then done—what a normal process.’
‘But someone like Shen Huaixue was best at turning normal processes into abnormal events.’
She looked at the position column on the form and let out a soft laugh.
Lin Jianqing’s eyebrow twitched.
‘Trouble.’
“This part isn’t written very accurately,” Shen Huaixue said, tapping the column with the tip of her pen. Lin Jianqing looked down. Position: Design Assistant Intern. He thought those words were completely fine.
“Where’s it inaccurate?”
“Design Assistant Intern.” Shen Huaixue read it slowly, then looked up at him. “Lin Jianqing, are you sure that working here for me is just being a Design Assistant Intern?”
Lin Jianqing paused. He could already sense something was off.
“The school form is an official document.”
“But I tend to respect the facts.” Shen Huaixue smiled calmly. She leaned back in her chair and twirled the pen between her fingers.
“How about we write something more truthful? For example, Shen Huaixue’s Private Actor, Temporary Cross-dressing Model, Stand-in Observation Target, or… a pretty boy kept by me?”
“Stop, stop, stop!” Lin Jianqing reached out to grab the forms back, but Shen Huaixue moved them half an inch away. There was a smile in her eyes, obviously deliberate.
“What’s the rush? I haven’t settled on the most appropriate wording yet.”
“This has to be handed in to the school.”
“That’s exactly why I need to be meticulous. What if the school finds out I’ve falsified documents?”
“Shen Huaixue, can you be normal for once?”
“I’m perfectly normal right now.” Shen Huaixue looked down at the form, as if seriously considering it.
“What do you think of ‘Special Image Assistant’? Sounds more tactful, not too embarrassing. The school should think it’s a pretty high-level job, right?”
Lin Jianqing watched her spout utter nonsense with such a serious face, and even his temples twitched.
‘He really wanted to know how Shen Huaixue managed to say such absurd things with such a straight face. Had she been trained for this since childhood?’
“Then why don’t you go ahead and write down your strange fetish too?” Lin Jianqing couldn’t hold back, his tone a bit sharp. “Aren’t you the one who said we should respect the facts?”
The office fell silent for a moment.
Lin Jianqing regretted it as soon as he said it. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Shen Huaixue, but saying something like that coming from his mouth was a bit too bold.
Shen Huaixue looked up at him. After a few seconds, she smiled. It wasn’t a cold smile, nor was it anger. It was as though a toy she had always cherished had suddenly come to life and even started biting her.