Chu Yiran barely slept all night.
At three in the morning, she got up to drink a glass of water and spent half an hour practicing her speech in front of the bathroom mirror.
She tried several different voices.
A half-tone lower, deliberately muffled, slightly nasal, and one pretending to have a cold.
She recorded a segment of each and listened back, feeling more and more that something was off.
Lowering it too much sounded unnatural; being too muffled risked making the other person think her attitude was problematic; pretending to have a cold would clash with her previous allergy persona.
In the end, she settled on a compromise: slowing her speech, keeping her volume at a normal but slightly lower range, enunciating clearly but without force—overall sounding like a somewhat introverted new employee in the workplace.
The same voice, spoken in different ways, could create vastly different impressions.
That was what she was betting on.
At seven in the morning, she left home and bought a hot Americano on the way.
After arriving at the company, she first went to the 35th floor and sat for a while, reviewing the supplementary materials requested by the external audit team yesterday, and jotting down a brief outline for her report in her notebook.
She rewrote the outline three times, each version more concise than the last.
The final version was condensed into five key points: audit progress, list of submitted materials, pending documents to be supplemented, cooperation from the administrative department, and preliminary issues discovered so far.
She hesitated for a long time over the last point—whether to include it or not.
If she mentioned the missing cooperation evaluation records for Hengyuan Trading in front of Shen Yu, it would be like stabbing her direct supervisor in the back in front of the boss.
But if she didn’t mention it, the external audit team would eventually include it in the formal report.
By then, if Shen Yu discovered she had concealed critical information during her report, his impression of her would only worsen.
Chu Yiran tapped her pen tip on the paper twice before finally writing down four words: “Report truthfully.”
No embellishments, no proactive guidance—just relaying whatever the audit team had asked.
She was a messenger, not a judge.
At 9:45, she closed her notebook and stood up.
Lin Yuan peeked over from the neighboring cubicle: “Running errands again?”
“Yeah, I’ve been called upstairs to report on the audit coordination.”
“Upstairs where?”
Chu Yiran didn’t answer, picking up her canvas bag and stepping into the elevator.
As the elevator ascended, she used the stainless-steel door as a mirror to give her appearance one final check.
Her shirt collar was neat, her hair tied back tidily, and her expression appropriately tense.
It was a normal reaction for a new employee, less than two weeks into the job, to be called to the CEO’s office for a report.
The hallway on the 62nd floor looked just as it had last time—quiet, luxurious, with a faint scent of central air conditioning in the air.
The receptionist recognized her and immediately notified Wang Yan.
Wang Yan appeared two minutes later, as gentle as before.
“Mr. Shen just finished a conference call. Please wait in the reception area for about five minutes.”
Chu Yiran sat on the sofa in the reception area, unconsciously fiddling with the edges of her notebook.
Five minutes later, Wang Yan returned.
“Alright, follow me.”
As Chu Yiran stood up, her knees felt weak for a moment.
She tensed her legs and followed Wang Yan deeper into the hallway.
The door to the CEO’s office was half-open, and Wang Yan gestured for her to enter.
The moment Chu Yiran stepped over the threshold, her breathing pattern automatically shifted.
The office was large, even larger than she had imagined.
A dark solid wood desk stood by the window, its surface holding little more than a laptop and a few documents.
It was almost excessively clean.
Shen Yu sat behind it.
This was Chu Yiran’s first time seeing this man head-on.
Last time, in the backstage of the briefing, she had only caught a glimpse of half his profile through a crack in the door.
Now, he was just three meters away from her.
Her first impression wasn’t about whether he was handsome—it was a sense of pressure.
His features were sharply defined: high brow bones, a pronounced jawline, and eye sockets deeper than most, which made his gaze seem particularly piercing.
When he sat there without speaking, he resembled an unsheathed blade.
Chu Yiran’s eyes lingered on his face for less than a second before she deliberately looked away.
Too dangerous. She couldn’t look too long.
“Mr. Shen, this is Chu Yiran from the Administrative Department,” Wang Yan introduced briefly beside her.
“Sit.” Shen Yu raised a hand, gesturing toward the chair opposite.
Chu Yiran thanked him, her voice controlled within the range she had practiced half the night—steady, low, and devoid of unnecessary emotion.
After sitting down, she opened her notebook and placed it on her lap.
“Go ahead. How is the audit coordination going?”
Shen Yu’s gaze settled on her.
“The external audit team entered yesterday afternoon and has already submitted the first batch of document requests, covering four categories.”
She spoke a little slower than usual, leaving appropriate pauses between sentences.
“The documents already submitted include summaries of supplier contracts from the past six months, records of procurement approval processes, and detailed payment vouchers.”
“Some supplementary materials are still being retrieved.”
Shen Yu didn’t interrupt, one hand resting casually on the armrest as he listened.
“The Administrative Department is fully cooperating with the audit work and has not yet received formal feedback from the external audit team.”
After covering the first four key points, Chu Yiran paused at the fifth.
Shen Yu noticed the hesitation.
“And?”
Chu Yiran’s fingertip lightly traced the edge of her notebook before she said, “During document verification, the external audit team requested supplementary historical cooperation evaluation records for one supplier.”
“These records were not found in the Administrative Department’s existing archives. I have already emailed the Deputy Director of the Administrative Department to confirm the filing status and am currently awaiting a response.”
Her wording was identical to the explanation she had sent to Chen Zhi—objective, neutral, and without any judgment.
Shen Yu’s gaze lingered on her face for two seconds.
“Which supplier?”
Chu Yiran had expected the question, but when the name left her lips, she still felt a chill down her spine.
“Hengyuan Trading Co., Ltd.”
The office fell silent for a moment.
Shen Yu’s expression didn’t change, but his fingers on the armrest shifted slightly.
“Understood.”
Chu Yiran didn’t know what he understood, nor did she dare to guess.
But she sensed that this name was not unfamiliar to him.
“Any other issues?” Shen Yu asked.
“Not for now.”
“Then we’ll stop here. Report any further developments directly to Wang Yan.”
Chu Yiran stood up, gave a slight bow, and said, “Understood.”
As she turned to walk toward the door, a voice came from behind her.
“Is your voice uncomfortable?”
Chu Yiran’s steps faltered slightly.
She didn’t turn around, but she could feel Shen Yu’s gaze still resting on the back of her head.
“A little, my throat hasn’t been well these past two days,” she replied.
Her voice was steady, without a tremble.
“Drink more water.”
After saying these two words, Shen Yu didn’t look at her again. He lowered his head and opened the file on the desk, his attention already shifted away.
Chu Yiran walked out of the office and ran into Wang Yan in the hallway.
“How did it go? Everything go smoothly?”
“Smoothly,” Chu Yiran nodded at him.
Wang Yan adjusted his glasses and suddenly gave her an extra glance.
“Your voice does sound a bit hoarse today. If your throat is bothering you, you can go to the company clinic and get some lozenges.”
Chu Yiran thanked him and stepped into the elevator.
The moment the elevator doors closed, she finally unclenched the fist she had been holding tight.
Her palm was damp with sweat, and her fingernails had left four red marks pressed into it.
He had asked about her voice.
Was it just ordinary concern, or had he noticed something?
Chu Yiran leaned against the elevator wall, closing her eyes and thinking for a long time.
She thought it was probably the former.
For a new employee who had been with the company for less than two weeks, it was normal for a supervisor to casually ask if her voice sounded lower and hoarser during a report.
The elevator reached the thirty-fifth floor. Chu Yiran walked back to her workstation, turned on her computer, and sat in front of the screen for several minutes without moving.
Then she opened her notes and wrote a line under her self-preservation plan.
“Report completed. Unable to determine for now whether any associations were made.”
“Next step: Minimize all opportunities to speak in front of Shen Yu.”
“If there are more reporting tasks, find a way to pass them to Lin Yuan.”
She closed her notes and began processing the backlog of work emails.
As soon as she opened her inbox, the first unread email made her frown.
The sender was Sun Wanqing.
The body of the email was brief: “Today at 4 p.m., my office. Bring your report outline.”
Chu Yiran stared at the email, her fingers pausing on the mouse for a few seconds.