Baige had run into a difficult problem with one of its data models. It had been stuck for two full days with no way to crack it, and Zhang Tingting had been assigned to this group.
The people in the department had no particular opinion about this young lady. They’d heard she came from Aurora, but over these past few days, aside from being pleasant to deal with, they hadn’t seen anything remarkable about her. She always quietly went about her own business. But today, this string of code was too thorny, even the technical engineers they called in had no solution. If this string couldn’t be cracked, then they would either have to keep grinding away at it, or scrap the entire theory and write something new from scratch. And this was a project that had already kept the whole department up late for nearly two months.
Giving up felt unbearable, but they couldn’t solve the bottleneck. Zhang Tingting volunteered, quietly raising her hand: “Let me try.”
An engineer with glasses and hair streaked with gray glanced at her. The work badge before him bore the word “Aurora.” He adjusted his glasses. “Well, it’s a shot in the dark anyway, and things can’t get much worse than they are now. Go ahead and try.”
Zhang Tingting let his earlier remarks go in one ear and out the other. She knew some companies were exclusionary, but she only needed to do her own job well. She nodded. “Okay.”
Baige’s data code was chaotic and disorganized, like a tangled ball of yarn written without regard for the foundations laid before it. The code was a mess with no traceable source, and modifying it was indeed troublesome, but not impossible. Her fingers flew like a blur, never pausing for a moment.
The engineer’s eyes suddenly lit up. Perhaps the hope that had been snuffed out could reignite. None of them wanted to see everything they’d worked on for so long go to waste.
Zhang Tingting was fully absorbed, her brow furrowing at times, her gaze sharpening at others. Even the entire department had gone completely silent.
They gathered around to watch her work forgive the expression, but this method of solving it was truly eye-opening.
Jiang Yi arrived quietly and watched her operations. Strings of numbers scrolled by, glowing green, densely filtered through the reflection in her pupils.
The movement stopped. Her brow was tightly knitted, her finger hovering over the enter key and the moment she pressed it, everyone’s hearts rose into their throats.
However, the code data did not display a successful repair.
Data error, error warning error. A red × appeared on the screen.
The engineer had already been utterly awed by her skill. The last time he’d seen this kind of operation was from a senior classmate of his, who was now a national-level classified technology officer. He pushed up his frames and squeezed out a smile. “It’s alright. We were planning to rewrite it anyway.” Getting this far was already impressive.
Someone else spoke up: “Right, this really is too difficult. Even all the elite members of our group combined couldn’t crack it.”
Someone said dejectedly: “If I’d known, I would’ve buried a backdoor key when we wrote it.”
Zhang Tingting’s expression turned grim. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and fat drops of it fell from her jaw to the floor. Which part had gone wrong? This wasn’t right.
What she needed wasn’t encouragement. In data code writing, there were only two outcomes: finished or unfinished. So which part exactly had gone wrong? It shouldn’t have turned out this way.
Jiang Yi patted her on the shoulder, and Zhang Tingting came back to her senses: “Jiang Yi.”
“Mm.” Jiang Yi leaned over, and Zhang Tingting turned her computer toward her. Jiang Yi clicked the mouse and scrolled down to check the comparison results, going through everything from bottom to top.
The data reflected in the woman’s pupils, her expression extremely focused.
Less than two minutes later, her movements suddenly stopped. Jiang Yi spoke up: “Here, a line got scrambled, which caused the data to shift out of place.”
Zhang Tingting’s eyes lit up instantly. Just now her finger had stuttered for a moment and the data had reversed. She quickly tapped twice to correct it, and six large green characters appeared on the screen: “Data restoration successful.” As her heart leapt with joy, she called out, “Jie!” Turning around, she found a crowd had already gathered behind her.
She looked a little dazed, seeming to catch a glimpse of Assistant Cheng’s figure. Jiang Yi turned back and smiled at her, an encouraging look. Zhang Tingting’s heart warmed. She knew Jiang Yi was far more skilled at these operations than she was.
They say every trade has its masters. Zhang Tingting had studied this technology specifically, but Jiang Yi was the one who had written it. So in Zhang Tingting’s eyes, Jiang Yi good-tempered, gentle, beautiful, and without any of those executive airs was practically a goddess in her heart, an omnipotent being.
The engineer thanked her: “Good thing you were here. This has been a huge help to us.”
“Yeah, who would’ve thought someone so young would be better than us old-timers.”
“Whew! That scared me half to death. I really thought we’d be rewriting everything and working until dawn. Our line of work really does make you go bald.”
Zhang Tingting felt a little guilty accepting the praise, but she quietly kept this kindness in her heart. She would remember how good Jiang Yi had been to her, and today’s incident gave her career an extra warning: never grow arrogant.
Shen Siyao had just arrived at the company, and before she could even settle into her office, she was met with this scene: the woman bent over, leaning extremely close to someone that someone she recognized, apparently an employee of Jiang Yi’s company named Zhang Tingting.
Jiang Yi’s gaze was fixed intently on the computer screen, her lips moving slightly. Today Jiang Yi wore slim, straight-cut blue suit trousers with a fitted waist, a white tank top tucked into the waistband, and a striped shirt over it with the sleeves rolled up to her forearms dashing, clean, and bright.
In fact, the two of them hadn’t done anything intimate. It was just that Zhang Tingting was petite while Jiang Yi was slightly taller, so when she bent over she could only steady herself on the chair, and from that angle it looked almost as if she had the girl wrapped in her arms.
And from Shen Siyao’s overlooking vantage point, the two looked intimate and pressed so close together. That little flame in her heart burned even larger, a dazzling, indescribable suffocation.
She had originally planned, after that day, to give Jiang Yi the cold shoulder for a few days and take a short business trip besides. But after listening to Cheng Le’s reports day after day with no movement from that side, Shen Siyao found she couldn’t sit still.
So she rushed over in the afternoon to put in an appearance at work, only for this scene to meet her eyes. Smiling so happily at someone else? So she was the only one feeling uncomfortable and ill at ease? Why should that be?
She was unhappy, and she didn’t want that person to be so at ease either. Letting go was too bitter to swallow, but forgiving her was a knot in her heart she couldn’t get past. Right now, Shen Siyao just wanted to find something to make herself miserable.
The Eldest Miss did as she pleased. With a cold smile at the corner of her lips, she pressed the intercom and ordered: “Call her up here for me.”
The only person who could make the Eldest Miss so mercurial was Jiang, and Jiang alone. Cheng Le sighed inwardly, silently apologizing to Jiang Yi: “Yes, ma’am.”
Jiang Yi lowered her eyes, but the faint curve at the corner of her lips still betrayed her good mood.
Shen Siyao was back, and she had called for her.
Only when she arrived at the office did she sense that something seemed off.
The Eldest Miss sat imperiously in the black leather chair, legs crossed, fingers lightly tapping her arm, red lips slightly parted in a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “In a good mood today?”
Long lazy curls, bright eyes glancing down with disdain. Today she wore a red romper dress, its halter straps baring her neck, the smooth skin of her shoulder blades exposed, a semi-formal blazer tossed carelessly to one side and her legs were beautiful too. Jiang Yi allowed herself only a couple of glances before looking away.
Well, Jiang Yi thought, her mood was considerably better than yesterday’s. But seeing the vaguely accusatory look on Shen Siyao’s face, she had no idea what she’d done to offend her.
“Mm, it’s alright.”
“Heh. Well, my mood is terrible.”
She wanted to ask why, but as she pondered, she worried that overthinking it might only cause a misunderstanding, so Jiang Yi reined in her thoughts. Shen Siyao’s expression simmered with anger, and as long as Shen Siyao didn’t speak, she just stood there as though serving out a punishment.
Jiang Yi lifted her eyes and, in mild exasperation, simply asked outright, “Then what would put you in a better mood?”
Shen Siyao’s anger was, surprisingly, smoothed over considerably by this. What she wanted was the attitude.
But once Jiang Yi gave her the attitude, she still felt it wasn’t quite enough. It wasn’t that she was easy to appease, she herself didn’t know what she wanted Jiang Yi to do. Nothing satisfied her. Jiang Yi standing there, dissatisfying. Jiang Yi leaving infuriating. Jiang Yi getting close to someone else aggravating to watch. And if Jiang Yi wasn’t by her side, she wanted nothing more than to seize her and lock her up.
But if Jiang Yi went all tight-lipped and said nothing, she got furious instead.
So she said, “I’m thirsty.”
A tickle rose in Jiang Yi’s throat, a tingling, numbing sensation. “Mm. Then what would you like to drink?”
What would she like to drink? Shen Siyao’s lips curved up slightly. “Cappuccino.”
So Jiang Yi went to the coffee corner and made her a warm cappuccino. Shen Siyao rejected it: “Too warm. I’m not used to it.”
So Jiang Yi ran off to add ice.
“Too cold.”
“Too hot.”
“Too bitter.”
“Too sweet.”
“Suddenly I’m craving a flat white.”
“Latte.”
“Caramel macchiato.”
“Black tea.”
“Americano.”
“Espresso.”
…And so Jiang Yi went in and out more than thirty times, dutifully letting Eldest Miss Shen order her about. The Baige employees who witnessed this asked Assistant Cheng, “What’s going on with her?”
Cheng Le: “…Don’t ask. Just mind your own work.”
And so, that very afternoon, rumors came flooding out once again saying that Shen was displeased with the head of Aurora, that a rift still stood between the two of them. And according to the Baige employees Shen had originally brought over to Aurora, there did indeed appear to be some truth to it.
One tells ten, ten tell a hundred, a hundred tell a thousand by the time the story spread through all of Baige, it had become: Shen absolutely, absolutely, absolutely loathed Vice President Jiang of Aurora. Supposedly she was even giving her grief, making her serve tea and fetch water, deliberately making things difficult for her, in short, she simply couldn’t stand the sight of her.
Oh, they understood now. In truth, when Jiang Yi had first arrived, she’d gotten along with them just fine, they’d even taken a liking to her. But now their hearts were full of pity, and they quietly kept their distance. Best not to get too close to Vice President Jiang of Aurora, or they’d be caught up in it too.
Who would be willing to offend Shen Siyao? At least at Baige, no one wanted to be the one to stick their neck out. Although Shen could have a bad temper at times, she treated them well enough, and no matter how nice Jiang Yi was, to Baige she was still an outsider. Everyone had their own measure in their hearts.
The difficulty was indeed real, but Jiang Yi accepted it willingly and without complaint. Seeing her attitude, Shen Siyao feigned concern: “Tired?”