After lunch, Xu Ye went straight to the office.
While he’d still been in the cafeteria, Jiang Wei had called to say she’d already hired a receptionist for the company, and asked whether Xu Ye wanted to come meet her.
With nothing else going on this Sunday, Xu Ye naturally went over — and when he got there, sure enough, there was a girl in the office. She looked oddly familiar.
Seeing Xu Ye arrive, Jiang Wei stood up to introduce her. “This is Ruan Xiaolu, a third-year from the insurance school.”
Xu Ye said, puzzled, “Why does she look familiar to me?”
Jiang Wei was about to explain when Ruan Xiaolu laughed. “Because we’ve crossed paths before. At the welcome party, I was up on stage dancing with Jiang Wei, and you were down below the whole time sneaking looks at Jiang Wei’s—”
“Nonsense.” Xu Ye panicked and cut her off at once. “What do you mean sneaking looks? I was looking perfectly openly. Don’t make me out to be some creep.”
Hearing that, Ruan Xiaolu covered her mouth and giggled, saying, “Jiang Wei, you were exactly right, his skin really is thick.”
“So you’d better think it through — if you actually join our company, you’ll have to be this guy’s coworker from now on, and he’s a real handful.”
Ruan Xiaolu waved a hand. “It’s fine, it’s fine, as long as he’s good-looking… Well, if there’s nothing else, I’ll head back.”
“Mm.”
Ruan Xiaolu said her goodbyes, grabbed her bag, and got ready to leave. Passing by Xu Ye, she even shot him a smiling wink.
Once she was gone, Xu Ye immediately said, “Pulling your own friend into the company — you know that’s called using connections, right?”
Jiang Wei scoffed. “There are only a handful of us in the whole company, and they’re all either your roommates or your classmates. As far as I know, Qin Zhiwei is the agent at Shanghai Institute of Technology. If I’m using connections, then what does that make you?“
Xu Ye was left with nothing to say, and quickly changed his tune. “Actually, I think Ruan Xiaolu’s pretty great. Good looks, good figure — more than qualified to be a receptionist.”
“I’ve already posted the hiring notices for the customer service lead and the salespeople on the job sites and the school forum’s work-study section. Plenty of people are interested. I’ll screen a batch of résumés first, then do interviews.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“You’re the company’s boss now. You should mind your personal image from now on.”
“Personal image?” Xu Ye said, puzzled. “Didn’t you just hear Ruan Xiaolu say I’m good-looking?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what?”
Jiang Wei gave him a look. “Don’t let your eyeballs go rolling all over the place the second you see a pretty girl.”
“How could I — when I see a pretty girl, I always look at her eyes first. Only if she isn’t looking at me do I look elsewhere. Generally nobody notices.”
“Oh, just shut it.”
Xu Ye was about to say something when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out for a look, and instinctively glanced at Jiang Wei — because the message was from Jiang Chao.
“Right, I’ll head back. Message or call me when you need me — I’m on call anytime.”
“Mm.” Jiang Wei didn’t even look up. Xu Ye didn’t linger where he wasn’t wanted; phone in hand, he walked out of the office, and as he headed out of the gym, he dialed Jiang Chao.
Xu Ye: “Hello, Uncle Jiang.”
Jiang Chao got straight to it. “I’ll push you a WeChat contact card in a bit. Once you add him, he’ll tell you what to do. Fudan has four campuses — you can move into the Handan and Fenglin campuses first. As for the Zhangjiang and Jiangwan campuses, I’ll notify you later.”
Xu Ye: “Understood.”
Jiang Chao: “The finance university side should get back to you this week too. Wait for my word.”
Xu Ye: “No problem.”
Jiang Chao: “How’s my daughter been at school lately?”
Xu Ye: “We applied to the school for an office, and she’s spent the last few days happily buried in setting it up. She seems really cheerful.”
Jiang Chao: “Mm. Let me know if anything comes up, and come to me if the company runs into any problems.”
Xu Ye: “Will do, thank you, Uncle Jiang.”
Jiang Chao chatted a few more sentences and hung up. None of what he was doing had much to do with Xu Ye, really — it was all for his daughter.
Ever since Jiang Chao married his current wife, Jiang Wei had never taken a cent from him. At first he’d give money to his brother to pass along to her, but once Jiang Wei found out, she’d stopped taking anything from Jiang Ping too.
Jiang Chao had always worried about Jiang Wei’s finances. A young girl with no source of income, her grandmother long past being able to work — and even though her late mother had left her a sum of money, she’d never touched it. After the gaokao, she’d even gone and worked two months as a waitress at a café.
Several times, Jiang Chao had secretly watched her from outside that café, and hadn’t been able to keep his eyes from reddening.
For a while, it had been Jiang Ping and his wife serving as go-betweens, but they had their own jobs, saw little of Jiang Wei, and couldn’t really know how she was living. Now Xu Ye had, in effect, taken their place, becoming the intermediary between Jiang Chao and Jiang Wei.
This way, it benefited all three of them. Jiang Chao could learn more about his daughter. Xu Ye, through Jiang Chao’s help, could scale up the company. And Jiang Wei, as a company shareholder, gained a direct benefit as well.
Xu Ye added the WeChat contact card Jiang Chao pushed over. Jiang Chao must have already arranged everything, because the moment Xu Ye added him, the man told Xu Ye to come by sometime this week to lock down the machine locations, so he could arrange for an electrician to modify the wiring. Xu Ye agreed, of course, setting it for Tuesday afternoon — he’d take the Handan campus himself, and send Zhang Xinzhou to Fenglin.
With everything settled, Xu Ye happily rode the scooter back toward the dorm — only to run into all four girls from Wang Shiyu’s dorm on the way.
The moment Xu Ye spotted them, they spotted him too.
“Shiyu, look, that’s Xu Ye, isn’t it?”
“That’s him.”
Wang Shiyu followed her roommate’s pointing finger and glanced at Xu Ye. In the past, she’d have gone up to say hello without hesitation, but after that conversation the other night, her first instinct upon seeing Xu Ye was, of all things, to pretend she hadn’t.
Xu Ye, however, braked his scooter himself and greeted them with a smile. “Where are you lovely ladies headed?”
“It’s not raining, so we thought we’d wander around off-campus for a bit.”
“Got it, see you around, bye-bye.”
“Bye~”
Wang Shiyu didn’t say a single word the whole time. But once Xu Ye rode off, she couldn’t help watching his retreating figure for a long while.
“He’s long gone and you’re still staring.”
“I am not.”
“What was that just now? You didn’t even say a word to him.”
Wang Shiyu said quickly, “He already has a girlfriend. We shouldn’t get too close to him, or people will get the wrong idea.”
“Ah, so that’s it.”
…
Xu Ye got back to the dorm and told Zhang Xinzhou about the Fudan development.
Zhang Xinzhou was stunned. “Holy — how did you pull that off?”
“Don’t ask. Anyway, Tuesday afternoon we split up — you take Fenglin, I take Handan. Let’s get this locked down fast.”
“Got it.”
“Also, Second Industrial University needs an agent too. You handle that.”
“That’s easy. There’s no shortage of students looking for work-study. I just post a notice and I’ll find someone.”
Xu Ye nodded, sat down, and had just pulled out his phone to ask whether Chen Qingqing was back yet when his cousin Wang Yuxin sent over an image.
Wang Yuxin: [Image]
Wang Yuxin: “Xu Ye-gege, do you know how to do this problem?”
Xu Ye glanced at the image and quickly typed, “My English has always been terrible. Ask me anything else and I might know it, but English I’m completely clueless about.”
Wang Yuxin: “This is math!“
Xu Ye: “This is math? Why is it all letters?”
Wang Yuxin: “I entered the middle-school division of the Math Olympiad. This is an Olympiad problem.”
Xu Ye: “…”
Wang Yuxin: “You really are dumb as a rock.”
Xu Ye: “…”
Wang Yuxin: “Forget it. I’ll just ask my teacher when I go back to school tomorrow.”
Xu Ye: “…”
Wang Yuxin: “No wonder Qingqing-jiejie calls you dumb pig. You really are a fool.”
(End of Chapter 141)