Fortunately, Yan Xuexin was somewhat reliable now. She smiled at Yan Muzhou and said, "Just some sisterly gossip—not telling you."
Yan Muzhou clearly had no interest in their "gossip" and didn't bother asking. He simply stood by the cabinet, flipping through the document he had just pulled out.
Yan Xuexin craned her neck. "Brother, you're back so soon. You haven't eaten yet, have you? Want to join us for a meal?"
An Yao stayed silent, sitting upright on the sofa.
Yan Muzhou took the booklet and turned toward the door, saying flatly, "Already ate. I still have people to meet. You two go ahead."
"Hey, wait."
Yan Xuexin called out to him again. "When will you be back? I have something to ask you too."
Yan Muzhou recalled his afternoon schedule. "It'll be late. I have a meeting with a business partner this afternoon."
Yan Xuexin let out a sigh. "So busy."
"Then can you give me a key card for this building? The security guards downstairs don't recognize me. Every time I come, I have to ask Assistant Fang to come down and get me, and he's pretty busy himself."
Yan Muzhou pushed the door open and called in the "pretty busy" Assistant Fang, briefly instructing him to bring two cards from the CEO's office.
Assistant Fang was efficient. He went back to his workstation outside the office and returned with the cards, handing them to his boss.
Yan Muzhou handed one card to An Yao and one to Yan Xuexin.
An Yao glanced down and noticed the card looked different from her usual employee badge. It had gold-gilded edges and only featured Yaowei's logo along with the words "CEO's Office."
Yan Muzhou said evenly, "It'll get you to the 36th floor, but it won't open my office door. If you need to come in, let me know beforehand."
"No problem."
Yan Xuexin accepted it cheerfully and slipped it straight into her bag.
An Yao pushed the card back, pressing her lips together. "…I don't think I need one. I can already get through the downstairs access, and I won't be coming to the 36th floor often."
Yan Xuexin spoke up first with a smile. "Just take it. A card doesn't take up much space. Maybe I'll come looking for you again next time—the top floor is way more spacious than the other levels."
An Yao's hand hovered in midair for a long moment. Seeing that Yan Muzhou and the assistant beside him showed no intention of taking it back, she reluctantly slipped it into her pocket for now.
Yan Muzhou lowered his head and scanned Yan Xuexin's outfit, frowning slightly as he scolded, "Wearing so little in this cold weather, bare legs like that—aren't you afraid of getting rheumatism?"
Yan Xuexin tugged at her short skirt and made a face at him, refusing to be disciplined. "I just came back from Sucheng. It's hot over there."
Yan Muzhou then shifted his gaze to the other young woman in the office.
An Yao was dressed warmly enough—a proper hoodie and jacket over jeans.
But when Yan Muzhou looked up, he still noticed something else. In the same tone, he said to her, "Stop staying up so late. You were like this back in high school. Some bad habits never change."
"…?"
There were still people waiting in the reception area to discuss business with Yan Muzhou. With that, he took long strides and walked out of the office.
It took An Yao a good while to process what he meant. She raised her hand and instinctively touched the area under her eyes.
Oh. She had noticed those two dark circles when she looked in the mirror this morning.
Her sleep schedule wasn't exactly regular, but since starting her internship, she'd been forced to get up early on workdays—much better than her college days.
These dark circles had only made a comeback because she'd been up all night with insomnia.
The large office was once again left with only the two girls.
Yan Xuexin pulled her back to the sofa and shook her head. "My brother's always been like this. He's only four years older than me, but I often suspect his mental age is forty years older than mine."
An Yao gave a faint, emotionless tug at her lips. "Maybe it really is."
At lunch, the two sat facing each other on the sofa, and Yan Xuexin asked again, "Is college really that busy for you? You don't even come back to Beiyang during winter or summer break. Last winter, when I invited you to Hawaii, you wouldn't come with me either."
An Yao answered truthfully, "The classes aren't too many, but I usually take on some illustration commissions on my own, and during breaks I also help out at a studio run by a senior from school. I really can't spare the time."
"Juggling so many jobs? Is your living allowance not enough?"
Yan Xuexin propped her chin on her hand and started criticizing Yan Muzhou again. "But my brother really is old-fashioned. He always thought that if we had too much money in college, we'd easily go astray. You know how much he gave me back then?"
An Yao wasn't really curious, but she went along with it. "How much?"
Yan Xuexin crossed two fingers to show a number. "Just a hundred thousand a month, believe it or not. He didn't even give me another card to use."
An Yao: "…"
Yan Xuexin continued complaining, "I remember back then, if I went shopping with my friends even once, it was basically all gone, and I didn't even dare buy too much."
Indeed, An Yao looked at Yan Xuexin's current outfit.
From what she knew, just the small handbag she had set aside was worth more than that amount.
An Yao had felt this kind of wealth gap countless times since high school, but she also knew Yan Xuexin wasn't deliberately showing off or trying to prove anything.
It was just that, with the spending habits she'd grown up with, in her view, that money really wasn't enough.
Once Yan Xuexin's floodgates opened, she couldn't stop. After talking about financial matters, she immediately moved on to discussing the financial situation of her streetwear brand over the past two years.
Before she had a chance to ask about An Yao's current situation, An Yao's phone rang.
It was Yara asking where she was, telling her to come back early to help print a few poster mock-ups.
An Yao had just finished eating anyway. After explaining to Yan Xuexin, she stood up. "Then I'll head back to work first. We can catch up another time."
"So early?"
Yan Xuexin glanced at the time and reluctantly walked her to the door. "It's not even the end of the lunch break yet. Interns really get squeezed dry."
An Yao explained, "It's the end of the quarter lately, and National Day is coming up soon, so everyone's pretty busy."
Yan Xuexin patted her shoulder. "Then I'll find you to hang out during the National Day holiday. You absolutely can't refuse me this time. We haven't seen each other in so long, and I still have so much to talk to you about."
An Yao gave a faint smile in response and went to take the elevator.
Almost everyone in the Publicity Department had returned to their posts, each busy with their own work.
An Yao took the USB drive Yara had given her and was about to head downstairs to print when she ran into a senior colleague from the same department in the elevator lobby—Sister Wang, the head of the Client Group.
As she pressed the elevator button, Sister Wang had just put down her phone, looking thoroughly irritated.
Seeing An Yao approach, she couldn't help complaining, "Those people in the President's Office really are something. That Xiao Zhao asked me to bring a document for him to sign when I go to Chenxin Media today, and now he won't reply to messages and his phone goes unanswered."
An Yao wasn't in the same group as Sister Wang, so in the past few days, they'd only been nodding acquaintances who recognized each other's faces. She offered a token consolation: "Don't worry, maybe they're just busy over there."
Sister Wang irritably ran her fingers through her hair. "Isn't this just wasting time? I'm in a hurry too, and the elevator to the top floor needs a special card to swipe. If not for that, I'd have run up there to ask ages ago."
An Yao blinked, her hand brushing against the card in her coat pocket.
She almost pulled it out to help, but immediately remembered that given her position and department, she shouldn't have a card with that kind of access anyway.
An Yao was new to the workplace, but she wasn't stupid. She knew that if she casually handed it over, she'd have to make up a whole string of excuses to cover for it.
So she pulled her empty hand out of her pocket and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I guess it's for safety reasons."
Sister Wang: "Safety my ass. I think whoever designed it that way was just bored. We live in a society ruled by law, in broad daylight—are they really worried someone's going to blackmail or kidnap President Yan up there?"
"…"
Just then, Sister Wang's phone rang with an incoming call, and An Yao's elevator going down arrived at the same time.
She politely said, "I'll head down first," and stepped into the elevator.
It was almost quitting time when Yan Muzhou finally returned to the office. The sky outside had already darkened.
When he pushed open the door, he found Yan Xuexin still there, slouched lazily on the sofa watching anime on her phone.
"Why haven't you left yet?"
Yan Muzhou walked behind his desk, turned on the computer, and asked in a casual tone, "Where's An Yao?"
Yan Xuexin looked up. "Yaoyao went back to work ages ago. I said at lunch that I had something to ask you, and I happen to have dinner plans nearby tonight, so I figured I'd hang around for a bit."
Yan Muzhou asked what it was about.
Yan Xuexin pulled up a document on her phone and hurried over. "I'm about to open my first store in Suzhou. I talked to Uncle Zhao, the one you introduced me to last time. Both of these malls are willing to let my store in—can you help me pick?"
Yan Muzhou took the phone she handed him. His slender fingers swiped across the screen a few times, and in less than three minutes, he tapped on one page and said, "This one."
Yan Xuexin took the phone back and glanced at it, asking with some skepticism, "Why? The rent here is way more expensive than the other one—almost double. And didn't you say before that with a physical store, I definitely won't recoup the costs in the short term?"
Although Yaowei was in the beverage FMCG business, which wasn't quite the same field as clothing.
But Yan Muzhou, a Harvard Business School graduate who managed such a massive conglomerate, could easily pick a location for her little clothing store—it was a piece of cake.
Yan Muzhou said flatly, "That's true, but the cheaper mall is all mid-to-low-end brands. Your pricing won't have an audience there. Besides, the whole point of your physical store is advertising effect over profit margin, so of course you pick the one in the CBD."
"Oh… then let's go with that one."
Yan Xuexin put away her phone and watched as her brother opened a spreadsheet on the computer—he'd just gotten back and was already slipping into work mode.
She sometimes felt that Yan Muzhou was like a tireless work robot, with some kind of "die if you don't work" program implanted in his brain.
"There's one more thing."
Yan Xuexin was about to go back to watching anime when something occurred to her. With a slightly troubled look on her face, she said in a low voice, "Have you noticed that Yaoyao hasn't really wanted to be around us since she started college?"
Yan Muzhou lifted his gaze and only spoke after a moment: "She's quite independent, has strong self-esteem, and her own opinions. Besides, your social circles were never the same to begin with. Once the distance grows, things gradually fade."
Yan Xuexin had been pampered since childhood and was rather thick-skinned when it came to reading between the lines. She scratched her head, puzzled: "But I really did consider her a good friend…"
"I was wondering this afternoon whether it was because she felt wronged when she stayed at our house back then."
Yan Muzhou was silent for a moment, but he also stopped scrolling through the documents and spreadsheets on his computer.
Yan Xuexin pressed further with another guess: "Is it because Xu Chengyang talked trash about her back then? But didn't you already teach him a lesson for that?"
Xu Chengyang was their younger cousin—a typical spoiled rich kid who never thought before he spoke or acted, always believing his family background made him superior to others.
He was in the same year as An Yao and had been arranged to attend the same high school back then.
Xu Chengyang matured early and had developed some romantic interest in her. He'd tested the waters several times, but An Yao ignored him every time.
That made him unhappy in turn, and he started badmouthing her to his circle of friends outside, saying she was a fake prude—that her ambitions were sky-high, that she looked down on the scraps they had to offer, and that she only wanted to climb the tallest tree, which was Yan Muzhou.
Their social circle was small, and those words passed through several hands before reaching Yan Xuexin's ears.
After she relayed them to Yan Muzhou, he had disciplined the young cousin.
He was beaten according to family rules and confined for several days.
After a moment, Yan Muzhou said evenly: "It's not because of that incident itself."
Yan Xuexin tilted her head: "Then what is it?"
Yan Muzhou: "If she hadn't come to the Yan family, hadn't come into contact with people like us, she wouldn't have encountered these troubles. Before, she had no choice. Now she has the right to choose, and of course she also wants to have the ability to choose."
"Huh?"
Yan Xuexin didn't understand at all—in fact, she completely misinterpreted it: "What do you mean, you don't want her to have contact with us? How can you be like this? How can you be so cold-blooded?"
"…"
Yan Muzhou pressed his brow bone and used the last bit of his patience to explain: "That's not what I meant. Never mind. In any case, she has her own thoughts. It's not because she dislikes you that she's keeping her distance. Don't overthink it."
Yan Xuexin glanced at him: "How can you understand her thoughts? She didn't tell me, and she definitely hasn't told you either."
"At least I understand her better than you do."
Yan Muzhou didn't want to waste more time and said flatly: "I still have work. If you're going to stay here, keep it quiet."
"…Oh."
It was only after she finished asking that Yan Xuexin remembered something she had nearly forgotten—her brother's true background.
She sat back down on the sofa, lost in thought.
Perhaps Yan Muzhou truly did understand An Yao better than she did.
In a certain sense, they seemed to be the same kind of people.
But even so, Yan Xuexin still couldn't fully understand the reason An Yao had distanced herself from her, nor was she convinced by Yan Muzhou's explanation.
So, a few days later during the National Day holiday, she sent An Yao a message anyway, asking her to go out and have some fun.
When An Yao received the message, she had just finished the last overdue illustration, rubbing her sore lower back as she collapsed face-down on the bed like a corpse.
This time, she didn't hesitate long before agreeing.
For one thing, Yan Xuexin had invited her many times and she had refused every time. Now that she was in Beiyang and it happened to be the holiday, she would feel bad about herself if she refused again.
Second, although the location Yan Xuexin had chosen was a bar, that evening it was hosting a cosplay event, and she had invited many well-known cosplayers. An Yao had seen promotional posts for it before and was somewhat tempted.
Most importantly, with this kind of anime cosplay-themed event, Yan Muzhou definitely wouldn't show up.
An Yao had been taking illustration commissions on the platform over the past few days, and the wages from helping at her senior's studio had also come through. After setting aside several months' rent, she still had some money left over.
It was time to go out and relax a bit.
She had basically come to terms with things too—she was already in Beiyang, and the people and things from her past weren't something she could avoid just by wanting to. She might as well keep a level head.
Otherwise, she might trigger the Murphy's Law effect of "whatever you fear will come to pass."
On the evening of the fifth, An Yao wore a cute-style dress and met up with Yan Xuexin at a mall near the bar street.
After dawdling through dinner, Yan Xuexin insisted on dragging her around for more shopping. By the time they reached the bar, it had already been lively for quite a while.
Just as they arrived at the entrance, Yan Xuexin ran into a slightly tipsy friend and was pulled aside to chat and drink.
"Yaoyao, I booked a VIP room on the second floor—Room V3. Go in and sit for a bit; I'll come back and take you down to the first floor to look around."
An Yao looked very well-behaved, and even her rebellious phase in high school had been quite limited. She probably hadn't been to many bars or clubs during college.
Yan Xuexin was worried she might get lured away by some dyed-haired guy downstairs.
An Yao indeed rarely came to places like this, so she followed the waiter who had led them in up to the second floor.
Unlike the crowded, noisy crowd downstairs, the second floor was much quieter, with fewer people and all private rooms.
Yan Xuexin had said she'd only invited An Yao this time—just a private gathering between the two of them.
But just as An Yao reached the door of V3, a tall young man staggered out of V2 next door. He was stylishly dressed and appeared to have already had quite a bit to drink.
"Hey, isn't this little sister Yao? I'm not mistaken, am I?"
An Yao turned at the sound, taking a moment to recognize him.
The person calling her was Cheng Shijia, a close friend of Yan Muzhou's and a local rich kid from Beiyang. But his personality was the opposite of Yan Muzhou's—usually carefree and unserious, he hadn't inherited the family business and instead ran his own shop outside.
Back in high school, when she went out with Yan Muzhou, she'd seen him many times.
Although this guy was a bit of a slacker and always liked to tease her, he was still Yan Muzhou's friend, so his character was solid, and he was decent in all respects.
But even so, An Yao and this guy just didn't click. They'd never gotten along well before.
Cheng Shijia laughed and clicked his tongue: "You ungrateful little thing. You're back in Beiyang and didn't even say a word. I used to take you out plenty."
An Yao wasn't about to let that slide and shot him a glare: "That was all just tagging along with Yan Muzhou. I never asked you to take me anywhere."
Cheng Shijia was quite handsome too, but unlike Yan Muzhou's reserved and steady demeanor, his was a kind of rakish, roguish charm.
"True enough."
Cheng Shijia said with a smile: "You're grown up now, so you don't need anyone to show you around. But how did you learn to come to bars? That's not a good habit."
An Yao had never liked his condescending way of teasing her like a kid, and she liked it even less now.
Besides, this guy looked like he'd had quite a lot to drink.
An Yao stepped into the private room V3 that the waiter had opened for her, deciding not to bother with him anymore. She shot back one last jab: "I'm an adult, why can't I be here? Is the bar your family's business or something?"
Cheng Shijia raised an eyebrow. "It is mine."
"…"
An Yao: "Well, you still can't control me."
This was truly bizarre—from Yan Muzhou to his circle of friends, why were they all so fond of meddling?
Seeing her about to go inside, Cheng Shijia asked with a teasing smile, "Since you're at my bar, I should probably give President Yan a heads-up. Did you tell him before you came?"
An Yao was speechless. She turned her head and said, "Why would I tell him? I'm not a person with limited capacity for civil conduct."
"So you didn't tell him, huh."
Cheng Shijia smiled and picked up his phone, tapping on the screen a few times as he walked toward the far end of the hallway, raising his voice: "President Yan, Yao's little sister is here at my place. Yeah, drinking—drank a lot, she's out cold now."
"???"
Even the always-refined An Yao let a curse slip from her lips.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Cheng Shijia walked off like that, glancing back every couple of steps, looking like he had no intention of saying anything more to her, and leisurely made his way downstairs.
An Yao initially took a couple of steps after him, but quickly realized—he'd already made the call, and it was most likely hung up by now. Chasing after him wouldn't change anything.
She could only take a deep breath to steady herself and turned back into the private room.
Nothing she could do—she hadn't checked the almanac before going out, so she'd run into every kind of bad luck.
But then again, she was in Beiyang, out with Yan Xuexin. Even if she was certain she wouldn't run into Yan Muzhou, bumping into people from their circle wasn't exactly surprising.
Yan Xuexin still hadn't come back. An Yao calmed herself for a moment, then pulled up Yan Muzhou's number from her contacts and dialed.
About half a minute passed before the other end picked up.
Yan Muzhou's voice was low: "What's wrong?"
An Yao's voice came out at the same time as his, overlapping, rushed: "I just came to the bar to hang out, I didn't drink much—no wait, I haven't had a single drop yet. Don't listen to Cheng Shijia's nonsense, he's drunk and being a lunatic."
There was a silence of two or three seconds on the other end.
Yan Muzhou asked slowly, in a flat tone: "You're at Cheng Shijia's bar?"
"…"
An Yao was completely defeated.