Chapter 1

Translated by astrid83.

There was a new sales manager in the business department, surnamed Li.

He was not the same as the ones before.

He was very young and looked to be not even 30 years old. With a tall figure, handsome features, and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, he was gentlemanly, tender, and even treated others well. It was almost impossible to find fault with him.

Cheng Yanqing’s workstation was diagonally in front of him. As long as Manager Li lifted his head a bit, he would be able to see the danger zone of his computer monitor. Hence he silently observed him for half a month before he felt that he wasn’t a bad person, and thus let his guard down. Whenever he was free, he would play with his phone for a while in front of Manager Li.

—Though most of the time, he did not even have that luxury of time.

But which company’s finance would not have a few days of slow periods?

If one still had to pretend to be busy during slow periods……

That would be too tough.

This company was a small company and was also a typical family-owned business. It mainly did research and development in pharmaceutical reagents and had applied for several patients. They were under the high-tech category, operating on a small scale, but definitely earned a lot. Unfortunately, the company had been unable to develop and stayed in place 1 for more than ten years.

The chairman was past his 60s, the ambition in his heart had long faded away together with the passing of time.

He vacated his seat, leaving it for his son and daughter.

Therefore, the younger brother became the General Manager of this company, and his older sister as the HR Supervisor.

Unfortunately, the younger brother did not know management, while the older sister was not assertive and only listened to her younger brother.

In just one year, the company faced a decline.

Other than the General Manager, everyone was squeezed into one big office. Like this, it would also allow the HR Supervisor to secretly observe who was seriously working, and who was slacking off 2 .

Sales, Operations, Administration, Finance. Although on the surface they seemed to harmoniously coexist, there were actually fierce undercurrents. Mutual reporting, pushing work, gossiping…… These things happen more than once, almost every day.

Cheng Yanqing was a freshly graduated teller. When he first came to the company, he was unfamiliar with everything. Not knowing who spread rumours 3 saying “feel like he is pretty free” about him. In the second half of the year, he suddenly received large amounts of extra work that was not his responsibility. There were works from administration, HR, and operations. Luckily, he moved fast and was able to complete all of them on time. But he was still as busy as a bee 4 , after knocking off he would be so tired that he would fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He simply did not have any leisure time.

After his first lead finance manager quit, Cheng Yanqing also determinedly typed out his resignation letter.

There were only two people in the finance department.

As they could not make their finance manager stay, the General Manager was afraid that the payments would be thrown into chaos. In a rare generous move, he added a full thousand to his pay and kept Cheng Yanqing in the company.

But the office wars would not stop.

It still rages on every day.

Wu Lin, the operations supervisor, was a middle-aged woman who was nearing retirement, good at sowing discord between people and sweet-talking. Every day, other than working, she would be buttering up the HR Supervisor and insinuating that the sales department was not doing their best to run the business.

After chasing away two sales managers, she naturally entered a latent observation period when Manager Li came.

Exploiting any tiny openings 5 was her speciality.

Seizing a tiny insignificant wrong and exaggerating it was her speciality among all her specialities. However, in the long 3 months of his probation period, she could not even find a single one of Manager Li’s weaknesses.

Just like that, although Wu Lin was not convinced, there was nothing she could do.

Cheng Yanqing watched all of this surreptitiously and let out a sigh of relief in his heart.

Manager Li was safe for now.

……

It did not take long before the undercurrents started in the little office again.

The new finance manager, surnamed Ni, was reticent and did not like to make conversation. Nevertheless, she was skilled in what she did. He heard that she used to work as the finance supervisor of a listed company for 10 years, not lacking any of the credentials she was supposed to have.

Recently, the HR supervisor had been hinting at her being too free, and she needed to take on more work.

Maybe some attendance management, or foreign contracts —

Work that was not related to finance at all.

It was later revealed that she had been caught looking at stocks at work.

Ni-jie 6 had her own way of working.

She used her lunch break to churn out the numbers; sometimes during work, she would slack off; then she would stay back when it was nearing the time to knock off to continue working.

The company was small and thus had no overtime pay, hence it was nothing much if she did this. Unfortunately, there were too many pairs of eyes in the office; being free during work hours was a cardinal sin 7 , the others simply did not care about the work you did after work or during lunch break.

Cheng Yanqing started to get nervous again.

Ni-jie’s workstation was right behind him, which was also beside Manager Li’s. Even though it was more hidden as her back was against the wall, the only one who was able to monitor Ni-jie’s every movement would be Manager Li.

Although he had no evidence, Cheng Yanqing suspected that Manager Li was the one who snitched to the General Manager. Hence he proceeded to live days of apprehension and cautious observation.

Sometimes when Cheng Yanqing secretly turned his head back, a four-eyes-meeting dilemma 8 would occur. Manager Li’s eyes were beautiful, indifferent and tranquil like the ocean; when they made contact, a teasing 9 look seemed to flash past those dark brown pupils.

With this glance, Manager Li was actually quite handsome.

A person with handsome looks did not mean that they had a good heart too.

But he had absolutely no resistance towards people with this kind of look.

Cheng Yanqing fell into a daze.

Then he regained his consciousness and forcefully lowered his head, heart thumping wildly.

What was going on……

Cheng Yanqing slapped his cheeks hard, trying to keep himself clear-headed.

The one panicking should be Manager Li instead……

Fortunately, he, for the most part, was out on business.

Every now and then, very occasionally,

He would also invite Cheng Yanqing to join him for lunch.

When they had lunch together, Manager Li would pretend to ask without much thought: “Little 10 Cheng, when you’re working here, do you make at least 5000 dollars 11 a month?”

Despite the beauty in front of him, Cheng Yanqing remained vigilant and replied vaguely: “More or less.”

In actual fact, he earned 7000 before taxes.

After all, in addition to doing finance, he did many odd jobs as well.

The salary was naturally a bit higher than that of an outside teller.

Manager Li wanted to ask further.

Cheng Yanqing had already put up an attitude of “no talking while eating, no talking before sleeping” 12 .

The previous teller had inadvertently disclosed her exact salary to Wu Lin, the operations supervisor.

Wu Lin pretended to be cordial and deliberately had a good relationship with her; in truth, she was just tricking her into revealing information. The Finance and Administration departments had holiday bonuses, while the Operations and Sales departments did not, therefore Wu Lin thrust this matter towards the General Manager.

The next year, no one got holiday bonuses.

The teller who revealed her salary became an outcast and eventually resigned as she could not stay at the company any longer. Instead, Wu Lin was still able to muddle through and do well.

Seeing Cheng Yanqing’s face full of vigilance, the corners of Manager Li’s eyes curved.

Cheng Yanqing lifted his gaze and said bewilderedly: “What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing, your noodles are clumping up. Eat it quickly ba.”

Cheng Yanqing thought Manager Li was trying to trick him into revealing his salary and added another layer of suspicion and vigilance onto him in his heart.

But handsome men look good in everything they do, easily making people let their guards down.

Hence, every time Manager Li called him to have lunch together, Cheng Yanqing resisted in his heart, but his body would always agree unconsciously 13 .

Hello everyone! This novel will be really short and simple since the author used this as a practice for writing and to get past her writer’s block.

I probably would not update this too often, but when I get tired of tl-ing the other novel AHHAHA. The language use is quite different in both novels, so I guess this can be sort of a brain-stretching exercise for me ^^; I would probably accumulate a few chapters before posting.

If you like this novel or my translation, do leave a comment down below! Or you could

Stay safe everyone! Cheerios! ~astrid83 <3

Footnotes

Literal translation: stepping on the original spot. Literal translation: groping fish. 上眼药 — literally apply eye medication. Has the meaning of snitch, but also telling tales. Originated from if you have eye problems and you apply the medication, you would feel better. If your eye was fine but you still apply it, your eye would be worse off. Original: spinning top. 见缝插针 — literally see a gap and stick a needle in it. Meaning to make use of every unit/given opportunity. 姐 — referring to an older woman/sister. Here the author wrote original sin, which didn’t really fit in here, so I changed it to something similar. Just means their eyes would meet and awkwardness ensures. The main meaning of the phrase meant ridicule, but the more modern meaning of it is tease/make fun of (more friendly). 小 — used to address someone younger and relatively close to you. Placed in front of a surname or (one character of) their name This is in RMB btw, ~772.44 USD. The average starting pay for university graduates is around 5400 RMB. 食不言，寝不语 — literally means this. In this case, CYQ clams up. 神使鬼差 — as if one was ordered/controlled by gods/ghosts, unconsciously doing things one did not think of doing in the first place.