The offer arrived faster than the promised three business days.
The next afternoon, Chu Yiran received the employment notification email from the Human Resources Department.
“Congratulations on passing the interview. Please bring your ID card and original academic certificates to the 37th floor at 9 a.m. the day after tomorrow to complete the onboarding procedures.”
Chu Yiran stared at the email three times, confirming it wasn’t a scam before letting out a long sigh of relief.
Counting the days, the three-day deadline Shen Yu had given her was tomorrow.
She had to completely dismantle her online dating persona before the deadline expired and before officially starting her new job.
That evening, she drafted a long message to send to S.
The gist was: allergies had triggered complications, requiring treatment in another city. She wouldn’t be able to meet or contact him in the short term, and her phone might be turned off at any time.
She spent forty minutes carefully wording it, revising and editing it seven or eight times.
In the final version she sent, she softened her tone as much as possible, ending every sentence with apologies and reluctance.
After sending it, she didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she immediately muted notifications for S’s chat window.
Then, she did something the original host would never have done.
She permanently deleted all the secretly taken photos of Song Qingwan from her phone.
Not a single one remained.
When deleting the last photo, her finger paused.
It was a picture of Song Qingwan smiling in profile at a café. The lighting was perfect, and it was genuinely a beautiful shot.
Chu Yiran pressed delete.
“Sorry, Miss Song. I didn’t do this, but I’m the one who has to clean it up.”
After clearing her phone, she also deactivated all the alternate accounts registered with Song Qingwan’s photos on social media platforms.
Search history, browsing history, cache—she deleted everything she could. Her phone’s storage space cleared up by several gigabytes.
Only after doing all this did she feel a little more at ease.
Even though the 14 million yuan debt still loomed over her, at least no new incriminating evidence would be created.
The day she started her job was sunny.
Chu Yiran wore the same black shirt and gray trousers from her interview two days earlier, carrying a canvas backpack. She arrived at the lobby on the first floor of the Shen Building at 8:45 a.m.
After completing the onboarding procedures, she received her employee badge, access card, and an absurdly thick employee handbook.
She glanced down at her photo on the badge. It wasn’t very flattering, but her name was printed clearly:
Chu Yiran, Administrative Department, Affairs Specialist.
Someone from Human Resources escorted her to the 35th floor and pointed to a desk by the window in the corner.
“This is your workstation. Your system account and email have been activated. The password is in the envelope on the desk.”
“Take some time to familiarize yourself with the environment. The Administrative Department has a morning meeting at ten. The deputy director will introduce the specific job responsibilities.”
Chu Yiran sat at her desk and looked around.
The Administrative Department on the 35th floor wasn’t large—twelve people in total, all arranged in uniform cubicles.
Everyone was busy with their own tasks. No one made a special effort to greet the newcomer.
The atmosphere was colder than she had imagined.
She noticed that several people had takeout containers and half-finished coffee cups on their desks, already cold, as if they had been working nonstop since the night before.
At 9:55 a.m., a woman in high heels walked over from the end of the hallway.
Her voice arrived first.
“Which one is Chu Yiran?”
Chu Yiran quickly stood up. “Me, that’s me.”
The woman stopped in front of her.
In her mid-thirties, tall and slender, she wore a burgundy dress with her hair meticulously pinned up and her lips painted in a classic red shade.
Around her neck hung a delicate chain, from which dangled a small but clearly expensive diamond.
Her employee badge read: Deputy Director of Administration, Sun Wanqing.
This was the direct superior Zhao Ling had mentioned, the one who had been in a bad mood lately.
Sun Wanqing didn’t smile. She looked Chu Yiran up and down, her gaze lingering on the canvas bag for an extra two seconds.
“What time did you arrive?”
“Eight forty-five.”
“Arrive before eight thirty from now on.”
“Okay.”
Sun Wanqing said nothing more and turned to walk toward the conference room.
The morning meeting lasted forty minutes.
The main focus was the recent work arrangements.
The administration department was responsible for coordinating the logistics of a large-scale business summit next month, organized by the Shen Group and multiple partners. Everything from venue setup to guest reception, meal arrangements to material procurement, would be handled by the administration department.
The workload sounded substantial but not unreasonable.
She spoke quickly, with extremely clear requirements, and every task milestone was precisely scheduled down to the hour.
At one point, a colleague suggested adjustments to the plan, but she shut it down with a curt “Do as I say.”
The atmosphere in the entire conference room was tense.
After the meeting, Sun Wanqing kept Chu Yiran behind.
“Do you understand your job responsibilities?”
“Yes, mainly managing conference rooms, registering supplies, and handling internal document transfers.”
“There’s more than that.”
Sun Wanqing pushed a document toward her. “Before the summit, you’ll also serve as the administrative liaison for the summit preparation team.”
“All supplier quotations, draft contracts, and logistics documents will be sorted and compiled by you before being submitted to me for approval.”
Chu Yiran flipped through the document—it was nearly two centimeters thick.
“This was left unfinished by the previous administrative specialist who resigned.”
“Sort through all of this today, categorize it by supplier, and file it accordingly. Send it to my email by nine tomorrow morning.”
Today. Chu Yiran glanced at the thickness of the document, then at the clock on the wall.
It was ten forty-five.
“Any questions?” Sun Wanqing asked.
Chu Yiran smiled and said no.
Back at her desk, she began sifting through the pile of documents.
The mess left by her predecessor was chaotic.
Quotations and contracts were mixed together—some stamped, some not, some with incorrect dates.
A male colleague from the adjacent workstation leaned over quietly and whispered, “The person in your position before lasted only three weeks before quitting.”
Chu Yiran looked up at him.
The male colleague was Lin Yuan, and his employee badge identified him as an administrative specialist, one rank above her.
He appeared to be in his late twenties, wearing thin-framed glasses, with a knowing, sympathetic smile at the corner of his mouth.
“President Sun is always like this with newcomers. Don’t stress too much—just get through the first month.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” Chu Yiran smiled at him and went back to work.
She spent an hour going through all the documents, then started creating spreadsheets on her computer.
Categorizing, numbering, verifying dates, and checking supplier information—she handled each step meticulously and thoroughly.
She didn’t even have time for lunch. Lin Yuan brought her a set meal from the cafeteria and placed it on the corner of her desk.
“Eat a little first. There’s still plenty to do this afternoon.”
Chu Yiran chewed her rice while looking at the numbers on the computer screen and taking notes in her notebook.
At four in the afternoon, she discovered a problem.
On one supplier’s quotation, the unit price and total price didn’t match.
And it wasn’t a simple decimal error—it was clearly an extra charge. The remarks column listed an expedited service fee of 380,000 yuan.
But there was no expedited clause in the contract.
Chu Yiran placed the quotation and the contract side by side, comparing them three times to confirm she hadn’t misread anything.
After hesitating for a moment, she stood up and walked toward Sun Wanqing’s office.
She knocked three times.
“Come in.”
Chu Yiran placed the two documents on Sun Wanqing’s desk and pointed to the discrepancy. “President Sun, this supplier’s quotation includes a 380,000-yuan expedited service fee, but I checked the corresponding contract, and there’s no such clause.”
“We might need to confirm with the supplier if it was a mistake.”
Sun Wanqing picked up the documents and glanced at them, then her expression changed.
She stared at the number for several seconds, her lips tightening and her eyes narrowing.
“Got it.” She closed the file. “Leave this with me for now. Continue with the rest.”
Chu Yiran acknowledged and turned to leave.
Back at her desk, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Sun Wanqing’s reaction had been odd.
But she didn’t dwell on it.
Right now, the most important thing was surviving the first month and getting her first paycheck.
At 7:30 p.m., Chu Yiran finally finished organizing all the documents and sent them to Sun Wanqing’s email as required.
She shut down her computer, rested her head on the desk for two minutes, then packed up to leave.
The 35th floor was nearly empty.
The hallway was lit only by the faint glow of emergency lights and the low hum of the central air conditioning.
Carrying her canvas bag, she stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor.
The elevator stopped on the 28th floor.
The doors opened, and someone walked in.
Chu Yiran moved aside, habitually looking down at her phone.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the newcomer was tall, wearing a dark suit jacket, his leather shoes making soft sounds on the elevator floor.
A faint, cool woody fragrance drifted over.
The elevator was quiet for a few seconds. She could feel his gaze sweep briefly in her direction before quickly withdrawing.
Ding! The first floor arrived.
As the doors opened, Chu Yiran walked out without looking up.
It wasn’t until she passed through the revolving door of the lobby and stood in the night breeze that she belatedly realized something.
The person who had just entered the elevator came from the 28th floor.
What department was on the 28th floor?
She recalled the floor plan she had seen earlier that day.
The 28th floor—the Lingang New District Project Preparation Office.
That was the location of the Shen Group’s most critical project team at the moment.
The project leader was said to be Shen Yu himself.
Chu Yiran’s steps faltered.
She slowly turned around and looked at the brightly lit glass curtain wall of the building.
No way.
It couldn’t be that much of a coincidence, could it?