Chapter 4
Chapter 4
I followed behind Qin Duo and listened as he called ahead to reserve a table.
“Qin… Senior,” I asked in a small voice, “isn’t it kind of inappropriate for the two of us to have dinner in private?”
Qin Duo turned back to look at me. “What’s inappropriate about it?”
I answered with utmost honesty, “Since I got in through the back door, shouldn’t I keep a low profile?”
The man in front of me clearly hadn’t expected that. He fell into a strange silence.
After a long moment, I heard him say, “Zhong Shuyu, you’re a talented professional I pulled strings with our professor to specially recruit. The one who used connections was me, not you.”
“…”
That sounded like the same thing I’d said, yet somehow it had become completely different.
Song Yao had been right to cram me on Chinese back then. Otherwise, my brain wouldn’t have been able to keep up right now.
Not until we were seated at the table did Qin Duo ask about how my life had been lately.
“At the company, I’m your superior. In private, I’m your direct senior. If anything comes up, you can talk to me.”
I hadn’t even been with the company for a full year, and I had never expected Qin Duo to be this caring in private.
I was sincerely moved. “Senior, you’re such a good person. No wonder Senior Ye is always telling me you’re nice.”
“Ye Bozhou?”
I nodded.
Ye Bozhou was two years ahead of me and was also Qin Duo’s direct junior.
He worked at the same company too, just not in the same department as me.
Qin Duo asked, “Do you two keep in touch often?”
“Sometimes we meet up for meals.” Especially when I had first joined the company, Senior Ye had taught me quite a few workplace survival tips.
But then the man across from me suddenly asked, “We’re both your seniors. Why do you only ask him out to eat? Isn’t that playing favorites?”
“…”
This kind of either-or question felt strangely familiar.
“Senior, you’re busier. How could I bother you?”
Mainly because we weren’t that close.
Qin Duo suddenly smiled, like ice and snow melting away.
“I’m kidding.”
After saying that, he added, “If you run into any problems in the future, just come to me. Ye Bozhou just started dating not long ago. Don’t bother him.”
My eyes widened. “Senior Ye is dating someone?”
What happened to our promise to stay single together until thirty?
Was he just going to betray our revolutionary friendship like this?
Qin Duo nodded.
The server brought the food over, and I chewed gloomily.
The friends around me were either falling in love or breaking up. Being alone was still the most carefree.
“This morning, I heard you talking about either your dad or your mom. Did you have a fight with your parents?” Qin Duo put some food on my plate and asked the question as naturally as could be.
Now this was a massive misunderstanding.
I shook my head.
“No, no. It’s my two good friends. They’ve been in the middle of a breakup lately.”
Song Yao and Xu Jingnian both tried to make plans with me the second the weekend came around, as if they could judge whether I was with the other person based on my schedule.
On this front, Song Yao had an absolute advantage, because she could come straight to my place and sleep with her arms around me.
When they were dating, they thought I was a third wheel. Now they treated me like some precious commodity.
Those two troublesome friends of mine.