Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When I came in to work on Monday, I was feeling a little listless.

It was my first official day as a junior secretary after joining the secretarial team.

The secretary-general went over everything with me in painstaking detail.

“President Xue drinks Americano with two sugars. He wants it from that fancy coffee shop downstairs, but-”

The secretary quietly leaned in and said, with the most solemn and proper expression, “When you’re busy, just fool him with those two-yuan packets of Nestlé instant coffee. His tongue is terrible. He won’t be able to tell.”

My eyes widened.

The secretary-general straightened up and continued, “President Xue’s folders must be arranged neatly. Red folders are for urgent documents, blue are medium priority, and green are the kind he can read or not read. But-”

He lowered his voice again. “If you sort them wrong, it’s fine. Just say we’re out of folders in that color. President Xue won’t blame you.”

My eyes widened again.

The old secretary, who had clearly mastered the workplace art of doing the bare minimum, sighed. “I’m about to retire. From Old President Xue to Young President Xue, you could say I’ve watched them both the whole way. Don’t be fooled by how Young President Xue never smiles now. A few years ago, he was quite rebellious. He even hid it from Old President Xue and wrote all sorts of strange-”

“Ahem!” A cough suddenly came from inside the office.

The secretary-general shut his mouth.

“Go on. First lesson of the workplace: respect your boss, but don’t fear your boss.” He handed me the files and gestured for me to go in.

I pushed open the door.

Xue Niwen’s eyelashes shifted slightly.

The day I threw him flat on his back, I had knocked off his sunglasses, but I hadn’t gotten a good look at him.

Now that I did, I realized Xue Niwen had mixed-race features. His brows and eyes were like those of a Greek statue, sharply handsome, with pale gray irises that leaned almost silver.

He looked at me.

Then, expressionless, he started bouncing his leg.

Normally, people bounced their legs to relieve nerves.

But Xue Niwen had on that arrogant, untouchable face, cold as could be, his lips pulled down as he stared at me. Rather than nervous, he looked like he was bouncing his leg in preparation to charge over and fight me at any second.

With trembling hands, I set down the documents.

Xue Niwen slowly raised a fist.

I stared at him in shock.

Then he pressed that fist firmly down on his own knee.

At last, his leg stopped bouncing.

Without a word, he pushed a blank sheet of paper toward me. “What is this?”

I leaned closer to look at the symbol drawn on the paper. “Alpha.”

He wrote another one. “And this?”

“Beta.”

…

“Gamma.”

“Delta.”

I had no idea what was going on, but I still identified them one by one like I was answering questions in high school.

By the end, I had even learned to answer before he asked.

After Xue Niwen finished drawing, both his legs started bouncing again. He took a deep breath, pointed at the symbol on the paper, and, expressionless and frosty, said with great difficulty in a trembling voice, “What I want to say is, this is…”

З

I answered first. “Oh, that’s epsilon! In math, it’s sometimes used to represent a random variable.”

Xue Niwen looked at me and stopped talking.

I looked back at him proudly, smug and just a little eager for praise. “Boss, I got a 140 in math on the college entrance exam. There’s no way I’m wrong.”

Xue Niwen looked at me, his gray eyes gone still, like a stagnant pool of water.

I finally understood. Could it be that Xue Niwen hadn’t wanted to hear that answer?

A strange, uncanny feeling came over me. Slowly, I opened my mouth. “B-Boss, why did you suddenly want to ask me about these?”

Xue Niwen gazed at me silently, gave a cough, then said coldly, “Nothing. I happened to hear an intern mention it today, so I asked casually.”

I walked out of the office in a daze.

Something felt off.

All at once, I remembered that the cheesy pickup line Hot Water had borrowed from me yesterday happened to be this exact one.

Wait…

There couldn’t be such a coincidence, could there?

Could it be? Could it possibly be?!

My heartbeat suddenly sped up, and my eyes lit up.

Could the new intern be my absolute favorite author, Drink More Hot Water?!!!