“Boss, did the swimwear go live today?”
In her office, Pei Youwei was smiling. “It’s live, it’s live. I’m looking at the backend figures now, but we’ve only had a few orders so far.”
Xu Ye: “Don’t rush it. The higher the sales figures go, the better it sells. I’ve noticed the reviews have been climbing pretty fast lately. The lingerie sales are holding fairly steady, aren’t they?”
Pei Youwei: “Mm. At least five hundred orders a day now, and on a good day it can go over eight hundred.”
Xu Ye: “Let me give you one more suggestion.”
Pei Youwei: “Go ahead.”
Xu Ye: “We could set up a fan group and turn the customers into people we can reach directly. Then whenever there’s a new product, the link goes into the group first.”
Pei Youwei: “Mm. I’ll have them set that up.”
Pei Youwei agreed without a moment’s thought. Xu Ye had never once been to the factory, but a great deal of the credit for getting the Youwei brand off the ground was his, and she trusted him now.
Xu Ye: “I’ve got finals at the end of the month. How about I come back and work for you again over the summer?”
Pei Youwei: “I’m not putting you on the payroll.”
Xu Ye: “Ha. I’m not short of money these days.”
Pei Youwei: “Neither am I.”
Xu Ye: “But you’re short of a man.”
Xu Ye: “Want me to introduce you to a young, good-looking puppy?”
Pei Youwei: “I’m not looking to be an old cow eating young grass.”
Xu Ye: “It’s fine. Haven’t you heard the saying — reading ten thousand books is worth less than walking ten thousand li, and walking ten thousand li is worth less than running into a rich lady. I’ll definitely find you a puppy who’ll volunteer to be a kept man.” [TL: 读万卷书不如行万里路 — “reading ten thousand books is not worth walking ten thousand li” — is a classical maxim about experience over study. The third clause is a modern internet addition that inverts it into a joke about marrying money.]
Pei Youwei: “Get lost~”
That kind of joke was something only Xu Ye dared make with Pei Youwei these days. The two of them made fun of each other a few more times and then hung up the video call.
Xu Ye saw the red dot glowing on Moments and opened it in passing.
The item at the top was Zhang Ruowei’s.
Yay~ another jin down.
Underneath it was a photograph of a scale, the number on it reading 49.
Xu Ye read it and left a comment while he was there. “Get Qingqing to weigh herself too.”
Comment posted, Xu Ye kept scrolling down Moments.
Since he hadn’t added many classmates on WeChat, and most of his contacts were people he’d met since starting university, it wasn’t long before he came to a post Zhao Ming had just put up.
A line of text, again, with a picture under it.
This job is not fit for human beings.
The picture below was a shot of his workstation at the office. Xu Ye gave it a like first, and just as he was about to comment he noticed that Zhang Ruowei had already replied to his comment. He opened it and took a look.
Zhang Ruowei: “She doesn’t dare weigh herself. She says if you knew she’d lost weight you’d tell her off.”
Xu Ye typed his reply with a smile. “Since when has she ever been scared of me?”
Comment answered, Xu Ye backed out of Moments, found Zhao Ming in his message list and messaged him first. “Young master Zhao. How’ve you been lately?”
About half a minute later, Zhao Ming replied. “Worse than being dead.”
Xu Ye: “How’s that? Didn’t your uncle put you in a decent position?”
Zhao Ming: “He’s got me rotating through every department.”
Zhao Ming: “This week it’s HR.”
Zhao Ming: “A whole pile of crap.”
Xu Ye: “Want me to come see you tomorrow?”
Zhao Ming: “Sure.”
Xu Ye: “Right, I’ll come over in the morning.”
Zhao Ming: “Come early.”
Zhao Ming: “And don’t change your mind on me at the last minute.”
Xu Ye: “Mm.”
…
The next morning Xu Ye drove over to the foot of Lisheng Capital’s headquarters building.
It was right at the hour when people came in to work, and there were a great many of them going in and out of the ground-floor entrance. Xu Ye parked the car and walked toward the doors along with the flow.
He got into the lobby without difficulty, and just as he was about to take the elevator up with everyone else, he was stopped by a turnstile that only let you through if you swiped a card.
The security guards posted on either side of it saw that Xu Ye hadn’t swiped anything for a while, and one of them stepped forward. “What are you here for?”
Xu Ye answered promptly. “I’m here to see someone.”
The guard pressed straight on. “Do you have an appointment?”
Xu Ye shook his head. “No.”
The guard said, his tone very firm, “Without an appointment you can’t go up. Either call the person you’re here for and get them to come down, or make an appointment with the company first.”
Big companies really are a pain.
Xu Ye grumbled about it privately, then walked off to one side, took out his phone and dialed Zhao Ming’s number.
“Hello? The people at your company won’t let me up.”
“It’s fine, I’ll be right there. Wait for me a moment.”
“All right, then.”
Xu Ye sat down in the waiting area.
Ten minutes or so later, Zhao Ming came hurrying into the lobby in a pink shirt with a white suit jacket over it. The moment he appeared, the two young women at reception and the group of female employees walking beside him all stared straight at him.
By now virtually everybody in the company knew about his relationship with Zhao Wenhua, and on top of that Zhao Ming wasn’t bad-looking and had studied overseas. He was extremely popular in the company these days, and quite a few of the female staff were fantasizing about landing him one day and settling comfortably into life as a rich man’s wife.
“Xu Ye!”
Xu Ye rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “Yesterday you were telling me to come early, and here you are turning up later than I did.”
“Ha, there was some traffic on the way.”
Zhao Ming was about the same height as Xu Ye. He came over, put an arm around Xu Ye’s shoulders and walked him over toward the elevators.
The guard who had stopped Xu Ye a minute earlier saw all this and went cold.
Christ.
I just blocked young Mr. Zhao’s friend?
In the elevator, Zhao Ming asked, without being prompted, “This time of year, shouldn’t you have finals coming up any minute? How do you still have time to come see me?”
Xu Ye let out a laugh. “Do I look like a good student to you?”
“Ha.”
Zhao Ming was tickled at once. “You really don’t. You’re the same damn thing I am.”
“Bullshit. I’m a lot better than you.”
Zhao Ming hadn’t been at the company long before word of who he was got around, and ever since everyone learned he was Zhao Wenhua’s nephew, it wasn’t only the staff at the bottom — plenty of department heads and managers were extremely polite to him too. He found it deeply uncomfortable. Today, for once, he’d heard somebody take a dig at him, and far from being annoyed by it, he was thoroughly pleased.
“I’ll take you around the company’s departments first, then show you where I’m actually working right now.”
“Sure.”
Out of the elevator, Zhao Ming led Xu Ye off on a tour of the company, walking him through one department’s work area after another and keeping up a running commentary without pausing for breath. The people in the company, seeing this, assumed Xu Ye must be some senior figure parachuted in from outside, and when they came face to face with him some of them would even give him a slight nod out of respect.
“Apart from the general manager’s office, the company’s more important departments are Investment, Risk Control and Research. The one with the most going on is Investment. Our investment department is split into five groups — group one handles internet investments, group two traditional industries, group three technology, group four energy, and group five is the general group, which is where I’ll end up.”
“How do you mean?”
“Once I’ve done a rotation through every position in the company, I’ll finally go into the general group in Investment.”
At an investment company the investment department was naturally the core of the core, so Zhao Ming ending up working there was the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Come on, let’s go sit in my office.”
“Mm.”
Zhao Ming had just brought Xu Ye to the door of his office when a woman in glasses who looked about twenty-seven or twenty-eight came clacking over in a pair of high heels.
“Young Mr. Zhao, Director Wu’s away on business today, so the interviews will need to be your responsibility.”
“Just give me the résumés.”
“They’re already on your desk.”
“Right, got it.”
Zhao Ming pulled the glass door open and brought Xu Ye inside. He picked up the thick stack of résumés on the desk and sighed. “So much damn nonsense. Looks like I won’t get to slack off today either.”
Xu Ye laughed. “If your uncle found out you were slacking off at the company, how do you think you’d end up?”
Zhao Ming broke into a wicked grin. “He won’t find out. I’ve got my own way of being lazy.”
“What way?”
Zhao Ming didn’t answer. He just picked the stack up again, pulled out half of them at random, and dropped the other half straight into the wastebasket.
Xu Ye was left staring. “What are you doing?”
Zhao Ming shrugged and laughed. “Our company doesn’t need employees with bad luck.”
(End of Chapter 242)