“Eating melons until they fall on your head, what kind of experience is that?
Rong Yi: Thanks for asking, feeling confused as if one is in a melon field and suddenly being hit by a melon, not knowing how to react.
Mo Yunning looked at the intense Fang Xingze over there, then at the bewildered Rong Yi beside him, showing an excited look of curiosity: ‘What’s going on? Rong Yi, do you know Fang Xingze?’
The squad leader also had a similar question:
‘… I’ve invited you to the alumni association many times, never heard you mention Rong Yi. Suddenly you know her?’
‘If you look down on me and want to embarrass me, just say it directly, no need to beat around the bush.’
‘Carrying Rong Yi’s thigh, using women to enter the company, aren’t you ashamed to say that?’
Fang Xingze didn’t feel offended at all, with a nonchalant look:
‘Back then, I was arrogant and thought I could achieve success in the industry on my own. It was Rong Yi who represented WBD and brought me in, allowing me to achieve my current success.’
‘So, why is it wrong to say I used her to enter the company?’
‘She is a high-ranking executive in the company, with her keen eye she discovered me. Does it matter whether she is male or female?’
The squad leader was stunned: ‘Rong Yi is – a high-ranking executive in the company?’
‘Isn’t she just a small accountant?’
Fang Xingze gave him a look as if saying, ‘What do you think?’
‘Now, are you ready to apologize to her for your nonsense?’
The squad leader’s face turned red, he valued his dignity, but Fang Xingze made him lose face in a situation where he should have had it.
Without apologizing, he couldn’t face it.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have randomly created this situation…’ The squad leader walked up to Rong Yi amidst everyone’s gaze, bowing, ‘… General Rong.’
Rong Yi didn’t want to reveal her real job to her old classmates, fearing such situations.
She didn’t want to stand out at the alumni gathering, didn’t want to engage in business, just wanted to relax, catch up with old friends, and casually enjoy the embarrassing sight of the famous Fang Xingze surrounded by everyone.
‘Hey, my bad for not explaining clearly, it’s okay.’
Rong Yi waved off the squad leader, everyone tacitly ignoring the awkward situation, and the hall resumed its lively atmosphere.
Mo Yu Ning was still enthusiastically inquiring about the relationship between her and Fang Xingze, but Rong Yi didn’t want to lie to her friend or let them misunderstand anything between them, trying hard to refine her words in her mind…
‘Tap, tap.’ Pale fingers tapped on the table in front of her.
Fang Xingze, looking down at her covering her stomach and curling up in her seat, frowned, ‘Just out of the hospital, thinking of going back again?’
He picked up the small bowl in front of her, ladling a bowl of steaming mushroom soup.
Rong Yi glanced up at his pale face, raised the mushroom soup towards him, ‘You too, just recovered from fever and now drinking, testing the AI doctor’s recovery rate?’
She pushed a chair beside her for him, ‘General Fang, sit. Thank you just now.’
‘You’re welcome, General Rong.’ Fang Xingze sat down, picked and piled a plate of dishes in front of Rong Yi, straightforwardly saying, ‘Eat.’
Rong Yi slowly stirred the piping hot mushroom soup, ‘How can I accept this kind gesture?’ So she also stood up and prepared a nutritious big platter of dishes for him, ‘Both of us are patients, there’s no reason for me to eat while you watch.’
Fang Xingze chuckled for some reason, raising his glass as if lifting a plate full of food towards Rong Yi, ‘Cheers!’
Rong Yi: … Oops, others will find out that our company’s CTO is a fool, will our stock price drop?
‘Cheers.’ She took her plate of food, and both Rong Yi and Fang Xingze buried themselves in eating.
With a four-figure bill, can we rely solely on drinking to recoup it?
Mo Yun Ning’s eyes widened, elbowing Rong Yi, asking softly, ‘Wow! Why do you pretend not to know each other when you have such a good relationship?’
Her eyes seemed to say: If there’s any untold emotional entanglement, tell me, I’d like to hear!”
Rong Yi coughed, then realized and poked Fan Xingze, “Hey, let me introduce my friend, Mo Yuning.”
“Colleague, Fan Xingze.”
The two nodded at each other. Fan Xingze suddenly exclaimed, as if he remembered something.
Rong Yi teased him, “What, did you have a crush on someone during school days?”
He quickly denied, “No. Just, I know her.”
Mo Yuning widened her eyes, “You know me? I don’t even know you! Not like, I don’t know you at all, just that we had no interaction during school!”
Then she was overwhelmed by the joy of being recognized by the neighboring class’s amazing individual, which overshadowed her gossiping hopes. She rushed to her boyfriend’s side, boasting about “Fan Xingze knows me,” only to be teased by her boyfriend’s jealous remarks and playfully tapped on the head.
Watching her old friend happily feeding her dog, Rong Yi was in a joyous daze. Without paying attention, she peeled the oil-braised prawns and popped the meat into the bone plate, stuffing the shrimp shells into her mouth.
Fan Xingze quickly grabbed her wrist, “…You’re drunk, I’ll take you home.”
After drinking hot soup and eating, feeling warm and comfortable with the alcohol, Rong Yi swayed in her seat, her flushed face smiling, “It’s still early, I only have a video call at ten.”
Being very economical, Fan Xingze picked up the prawn meat from the plate with chopsticks and handed it to her, “What video call? A video conference?”
“No —” Rong Yi leaned in and whispered in his ear, and Fan Xingze suddenly smelled a strong scent of alcohol. She mysteriously said, “I’m finally going to video call with my boyfriend!”
Fan Xingze asked, “How long have you been in an online relationship with this boyfriend of yours? Haven’t you video called yet? What if he’s some internet scammer?”
Annoyed, Rong Yi stuffed the shrimp into her mouth, then angrily hit him and glared, “Always speaking ill of him, endlessly!”
“I’m going to fire you, fire you!”
Fan Xingze sighed, looking at the prominent oily fingerprints on his custom-made suit worth five digits.
As the alcohol wore off, Rong Yi’s usual cold demeanor melted away, making her look soft and cute. Fan Xingze, seeing her like this, couldn’t bear to scold her, and gently persuaded her with his kindest voice:
“I have something to do at ten tonight. I remember your home is in the new city area, right? It’s far from here. I’ll drop you off and then go back, still making it in time.”
Rong Yi was already bad with directions, and in her current dizzy state, her grasp of time and distance was even more blurred. She nodded, half-believing him.
Rong Yi wasn’t a big drinker despite being a heavy smoker. Often, she didn’t participate in drinking games at the table. If it wasn’t for the long-unseen old classmates, she wouldn’t have downed three shots on an empty stomach.
As the alcohol was almost out of her system, she at least remembered to pick up her bag. As she stood up, she swayed.
Mo Yuning turned around and saw this, hurriedly rushing over to support her friend and scolded the class president for not being considerate.
Fan Xingze’s hand, already extended, awkwardly froze in the air. Luckily, no one saw.
Mo Yuning helped Rong Yi into Fan Xingze’s car, instructing him to ensure she gets home safely and placed the two bags of alumni souvenirs she got earlier inside, then watched them leave with her boyfriend.
“Why does he know me after all?” Mo Yuning watched the discreet and elegant tail lights of the car departing, still puzzled by the question.
Her boyfriend beside her pinched her cheeks, “I forbid you to mention him again.”
“Forbid, mentioning, him!”
The car drove smoothly on the road. Half-asleep, Rong Yi seemed to be asked about the exact house number.
“…I won’t tell you…” she replied warily without opening her eyes.
Soon, she fell back asleep.
Fan Xingze sighed, parked by the roadside, took out the laptop from the back seat, and in three minutes, hacked into the company’s employee database to retrieve Rong Yi’s file.
Asking is just a formality. He didn’t really need to ask to know.
When Rong Yi was startled awake by her phone alarm, it was already exactly 10:00 at night. She lay on her bed fully clothed in her own bedroom, a night light casting a soft glow, with a box of hangover pills and a glass of water on her bedside table.
There were no messages, no notes. She rubbed her temples, picked up her phone to see a WeChat message from Mo Yuning, then remembered that it was Fan Xingze who had escorted her home.
Just as she finished reassuring Mo Yuning, she saw a video call request promptly popping up from her younger boyfriend.
Rong Yi immediately answered, pointing the camera towards the ceiling: “Just a moment!”
She rushed to the bathroom, removed her makeup, washed her face, and then hurried back to pick up her phone from the bed.
Since the first time her younger boyfriend escorted her home, he had seen her bare face, so there was no need for makeup.
Excited, she enlarged the screen on her boyfriend’s end and placed her face in the corner.
“Little Ai?” she asked softly.
There was no response. The screen displayed a dim beach scene, with the sound of waves crashing on the shore.
Up and down, in the distance, rhythmic and spectacular.
Is her younger boyfriend’s top-secret project located by the seaside?
At that moment, the camera moved, and Rong Yi’s heart skipped a beat.
The view turned to the beach, where the sand shimmered with strange colorful lights under the dim sky, with “Rong X” written on it, enclosed in a heart.
Rong Yi: …So childish.
But so cute.
She chuckled, “Little Ai, learn from your namesake, respond when I call you.”
After a while, a hoarse and low voice that didn’t sound human came from the other end: “Hey.”
Caught off guard in her sweet emotions, Rong Yi was startled by this voice, despite being indoors in the warmth, she shuddered involuntarily.
“Is there something wrong with your voice?” she asked.
After a rustling sound, the camera turned to another part of the beach, showing: “Can’t speak, tonsillitis.”
“Oh, I see. Let me see you,” Rong Yi said.
There was another rustling sound, the camera shifted to another line on the sand: “Can’t show my face, allergic reaction, face swollen like a pig’s head, ugly, don’t look.”
Rong Yi added an adjective in her mind to her boyfriend’s list of cute, dependable, quick to respond traits: fragile.
Being sick during an overseas assignment was nothing new for her. She had traveled far and wide without ending up in such a sorry state.
Listening to the howling sea wind, she felt sorry, “If you’re sick, don’t stay outside, you can video call from the hotel.”
Suddenly, the camera angle changed — originally it seemed like someone squatting on the beach writing something, but now the view was standing — a bit too high, in fact.
Rong Yi thought her cute and fragile boyfriend was around 1.7 meters tall at most, similar to her height, but the view kept rising to almost two meters!
Was he holding the phone above his head?
Maintaining that perspective, the view moved forward, stopping at the edge where the waves crashed.
Then the view descended rapidly, making Rong Yi, who had just sobered up, feel dizzy with her phone in hand.
“Sssh, sssh.”
Her boyfriend wrote on the beach: But I want to show you this.
The waves rhythmically washed the shore, and as if foretelling, after the third wave receded, the beach revealed a dazzling rainbow light!
Rong Yi exclaimed in amazement, “What is that?”
After a while, her boyfriend finally extended a pale, stiff hand. It was almost twenty minutes into the video call, and this was the first time Rong Yi saw his body on screen.
“It does match well with the pale abdominal muscles from before.
It seemed to be chilled by the sea breeze, as this slender and fair hand was not very agile.
Clumsily, he dug up that shining mass, which turned out to be a shell as big as his palm!
“So beautiful!” Rong Yi was almost mesmerized by the dazzling colors, staring straight at the screen.
But the young boyfriend was stingy, allowing her only a few seconds to look before burying the conch back in the sand.
“Do you want to send it back to me?” Rong Yi asked. The degree of beauty was beyond her understanding of natural creations.
After a moment, the young boyfriend wrote on the beach: “I’d love to, but I can’t. This is a national treasure of this country, and I’d go to jail if I took it out of the country.”
Rong Yi, full of regret, replied, “Okay.”
Seeing her crestfallen expression, the young boyfriend quickly wrote, “There are other beautiful shells, although we can’t take any of them, they are all very lovely. I want you to see them all!”
He was like a beachcomber, running around the vast beach, occasionally digging up a beautifully bizarre shell that left Rong Yi speechless.
Sometimes he would make mistakes and unearth some strange sea creatures – some looked like starfish with wriggling tentacles, some seemed to have their insides growing outside, some were large arthropods with legs so numerous that just one look made your legs go numb.
Facing these bizarre creatures, the young boyfriend surprisingly showed great courage, swiftly burying them in the sand to erase them from sight without showing any sign that once a cockroach made him cry and whine to Rong Yi for half an hour over WeChat.
Gradually, Rong Yi regained her senses from the overly strange visual experiences, and asked in confusion, “Which country are you in now?”
“Why are you the only one on the beach?”
“I’ve never seen these creatures before, what are they called?”
“Such a magical beach, not even recommended for tourism, a loophole in the tourism economy?”
The young boyfriend responded with a few hoarse coughs that didn’t sound quite human.
“My allergies and cold seem to have worsened.”
He wrote on the beach: “Let’s video call when I feel better, okay?”
The screen trembled pitifully, and Rong Yi finally relented, “Okay. Hurry back to the hotel and drink more hot water.”
In the end, the young boyfriend formed a heart shape on the beach with dazzling shells, and Rong Yi couldn’t help but take a screenshot for memories.
When she checked the time, it was already 2 AM – four hours had unknowingly passed. Watching those overly beautiful and strange shells and creatures, time seemed to stand still, and she even forgot the main purpose of the video call, to see what her young boyfriend looked like.
It was as if those magical, bewitching shells could enchant the heart…
Rong Yi had been observant, trying to guess which country the young boyfriend was in based on the types of creatures. So, not just the final heart shape, she took screenshots of several close-ups of shells and beach creatures throughout their conversation.
For professional matters, she left it to the professionals and sent these screenshots in a package to Zhang Haiyang.
The next few days went by as usual, with work occupying Rong Yi’s time. To prevent being consumed by games for long periods again, she made some adjustments to her work by delegating many responsibilities to Linda and the others, retaining only some decision-making authority for herself.
What she didn’t expect was that Fan Xingze was doing the same thing.
“I haven’t been feeling well lately,” Fan Xingze said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his brow, looking exhausted. “I can’t sleep well at night, and I often feel disoriented.”
“It’s all because you capitalists exploit too harshly,” he said to Rong Yi.
Rong Yi, without looking up from the reports, chuckled coldly, “You own shares too, so why not play the part and exploit yourself?”
Talk aside, laughter aside, joking about one’s health was not taken lightly. Adhering to the belief that “if the company’s flagship goes down, the stock price will surely plummet,” Rong Yi took Fan Xingze for a thorough check-up.”
The doctor not only didn’t find any problems, but also praised with a sentence, “Young man, you’re really healthy.”
Rong: Are you saying he’s indirectly asking for a raise?
She asked for her young boyfriend’s opinion. He was not one of the company insiders but often gave her more objective and reliable work advice. She trusted him a lot because of that.
X: It may not necessarily be about a raise. You also said he really doesn’t care about money.
X: I guess, just a guess, he might be seeking attention.
Rong: ?
X: People who have just recovered from a serious illness tend to be more fragile, and since he lives alone and you’ve been kinder to him lately, he might feel he can receive more care from you.
X: [Blind analysis.jpg]
Rong: What’s this? A kindergarten kid looking for a teacher’s love concept?
X: You could say that… From your description, he seems like an external elite but emotionally immature.
X: Just be more understanding of him!
Rong: Lately, you’ve been really leaning towards Fan Xingze.
Rong: Are you preparing to recruit me, or are you interested in him?
X: [I don’t understand, it’s just a cat.jpg]
“Rong,” the second in command from the collaborating company approached. The previous project had been settled, and he was here today to sign the final contract.
Rong put away her phone, smiled, shook hands with him, and invited him to sit in the meeting room.
“Oh, I felt carsick on my way here, wanted to find a place to smoke slowly.” Familiar with the routine, he pulled out a cigarette and offered one to Rong.
Just as Rong was about to take it, she suddenly shivered!
Today marks the seventh day.
She was in sports attire, cautiously withdrawing her already extended hand:
“No, thanks.”
Almost everyone who had interacted with her knew Rong was a heavy smoker. The second in command paused, then smiled, “Not used to this brand?”
“No, no, no.” Rong smiled apologetically, “I’m planning to quit.”
She would tremble after a single drag. She feared that smoking would lead her back into addiction, casting a shadow over her.
The second in command didn’t mind. Holding the cigarette, he asked, “Where can one smoke around here?”
The working environment at WBD was very eco-friendly, with smoking prohibited throughout the building; even Rong had to sneak to the restroom for a smoke.
But she couldn’t possibly invite the collaborator to the restroom, could she?
“On the rooftop, nice view, just windy.”
She led the second in command to the rooftop. Upon opening the door, the wind was indeed strong, too strong that her eyes couldn’t stay open, her clothes rustled, and she could barely stand steady!
…Isn’t this too much wind? Is there a typhoon on the rooftop?
Before Rong could react, there was no sign of the second in command beside her.
She realized she was standing on a vast deck, with salty sea breeze blowing in her face, under a sky filled with dark clouds and tumultuous waves of the sea.
The deep sound of a ship’s whistle echoed through the sky: “Woo—”
Rong: …Goodbye, Mom, tonight I sail far away.
Author’s Note: My disguise plan failed, didn’t manage to switch it.
Entering the game now, but this level definitely requires a disguise! Absolutely must! (Raises clenched fist)
