What’s Wrong with Sleeping for One Night
Eerie. Truly eerie.
Apart from this word, Gu Jiahe had no other thoughts.
The room was over thirty square meters, with two single beds measuring 1.2 meters each, and a sizable balcony.
Li Zhao was half-lying on one of the beds, holding a book in his hand and a deck of cards. He seemed disconnected from everything around him.
Gu Jiahe glanced at the book cover, a large word: “Walden.”
He clicked his tongue softly. If it weren’t for him finding his luggage too heavy today, he’d have brought along Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” for a showdown.
Gu Jiahe tidied up the luggage while opening the window for ventilation. Li Zhao, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to any sound, flipping through the pages of his book without changing his posture.
Gu Jiahe finished his tasks and found himself neither sitting nor standing comfortably. Looking at Li Zhao’s lifeless face, he felt that he couldn’t stay here any longer.
After some thought, he pushed the door and walked out, then turned back to softly say to Li Zhao, “I’m off, Manager Wu asked me to visit the new factory.”
Li Zhao didn’t lift his head, just uttered a sound of acknowledgment.
Gu Jiahe lied again. Manager Wu was busy socializing and enjoying himself at a dinner party; who would be looking for him at this time?
Gu Jiahe walked to the hotel lobby, intending to take a taxi to the new factory. However, after trying for a while, he couldn’t find one. He decided to tough it out and walk there instead.
Walking from the hotel to the company’s new factory required crossing two intersections and passing through a stretch of wide road without any shade. Just the traffic lights alone took more than 60 seconds.
Gu Jiahe walked along that road under the scorching sun, feeling like a piece of melting rubber. If someone pushed him now, he would surely stick to the asphalt on the road.
Gritting his teeth, Gu Jiahe thought fiercely that if it weren’t for those two thousand five hundred, he would be in his room right now, enjoying the air conditioning and watching a soccer match.
When he had money, he would stay in the most expensive presidential suite here. No, he would book two rooms—one for the first half of the night, and the other for the second half.
With these thoughts running wild in his mind, time seemed to pass faster.
Finally, he arrived at the entrance of the new factory and called the administrative supervisor here.
Fortunately, the administrative supervisor at the new factory was very enthusiastic and quickly came out to welcome him.
“Manager Gu, why are you here so early? Manager Wu told me you weren’t coming until tomorrow,” the person said, holding up a black umbrella to shield him from the sunlight.
“Uh-huh,” Gu Jiahe certainly couldn’t say that he couldn’t stand staying in the hotel and had run out. “I came early to check the training process to avoid any delays tomorrow.”
“You’re quite thoughtful,” the administrative supervisor nodded repeatedly.
The main purpose of Gu Jiahe’s visit to the new factory was to provide on-site training for a new batch of management personnel who were not well-versed in the company’s risk control and compliance. Wu Mou asked him to come over to give them some on-site training to prevent problems in the future.
He spent the afternoon in the new factory’s office area, so bored that he even sorted out the scattered paper clips on the table for them. As a result, he was praised by the administrative supervisor, who said that people from headquarters were meticulous in their work.
As Gu Jiahe watched the sky darken outside, he estimated that Li Zhao had already gone to dinner, so he decided to return to the hotel.
He lightly swiped the room card to open the door, finding the room dimly lit, with only a bedside lamp on.
The laptop on the desk was closed, and there was a paper coffee cup beside it. Gu Jiahe walked over and touched the cup, feeling it was cold and empty. He casually threw the coffee cup into the nearby trash can.
Feeling relieved, he took off his shoes and casually lay down on his small bed. Five-star hotels were indeed five-star; the mattress was just right in terms of softness and hardness, much better than the budget hotels.
Creak—
The sound of the door being pushed suddenly came, startling Gu Jiahe, who immediately sat up.
Li Zhao walked out of the bathroom.
“Damn it,” Gu Jiahe was almost frightened into a sweat. Li Zhao hadn’t gone to dinner.
“Aren’t you having dinner?” Gu Jiahe asked him softly.
“I already did,” Li Zhao walked straight to the small table by the bed, pulled out a chair, sat down, and opened his laptop.
Still with that poker face.
Li Zhao sat there for almost two hours, sitting upright. Except for occasionally answering a work call, he didn’t say a word the rest of the time.
Gu Jiahe sneered inwardly, thinking what a good worker he was, sitting like that for so long without feeling sore.
Unable to lie down anymore, he got up from the bed, opened the wardrobe at the entrance, and took out some clean clothes to prepare for a shower.
However, as he approached the bathroom, he exchanged the pair of shorts in his hand for a pair of trousers.
The bathroom in this hotel was well-designed, with a three-part layout, each area separated by frosted glass partitions, so there was no need to worry about bathing privacy.
Finally, Gu Jiahe enjoyed a precise temperature-controlled shower and couldn’t help but spend a little extra time. He felt all the exhaustion of the past few days being washed away. After finishing his shower and drying his hair, he walked out of the bathroom. Li Zhao was still sitting there working.
Gu Jiahe’s pajamas were still the set he wore in college, with a print of small monkeys on the beige cotton fabric. Although it was a bit childish, he had been wearing it for so many years without changing.
Li Zhao turned his head when he heard Gu Jiahe’s movements, but quickly turned back, continuing to focus solely on typing on the keyboard.
Gu Jiahe leaned against the bedside, glanced at his phone, and saw that it was almost ten o’clock.
But Li Zhao showed no intention of turning off the lights and going to sleep.
Gu Jiahe was about to lock his phone when he received a call. The number displayed was from a landline in Beishi.
He hesitated for a moment before answering, “Hello? Who’s this?”
“Oh, this is from the budget hotel,” Gu Jiahe realized after listening to the other party’s self-introduction. It was a call from the front desk of the budget hotel he stayed at in Beishi, saying that he had left a short-sleeved shirt in the room and asking him to come back to pick it up when he had time.
“Okay, got it,” Gu Jiahe replied repeatedly before hanging up the phone.
Li Zhao, who had been sitting upright, suddenly turned his head, his eyes somewhat strange.
After a while, he softly said, “Do you know that many budget hotels don’t meet hygiene standards?”
Gu Jiahe felt that he was simply unreasonable today. What did it have to do with him which hotel he stayed in? Truly incomprehensible.
The frustration Gu Jiahe had been holding in all day immediately flared up, and he retorted, “What’s wrong with sleeping for just one night?”
After hearing a certain phrase, Li Zhao glanced at Gu Jiahe’s arm and suddenly chuckled coldly, “Yeah, sleeping for just one night won’t hurt.”
With that, he turned back to his keyboard and began typing again, but this time the typing sounded louder, as if his fingertips were about to smash through the keys.
Madman. Gu Jiahe cursed inwardly.
The sound of the keyboard continued until 11 o’clock without stopping. Gu Jiahe was starting to feel drowsy, and he reached out to turn off the light, but seeing Li Zhao still sitting there, he withdrew his hand.
Then he thought of Li Zhao’s poker face all day and felt even more annoyed, so he gritted his teeth.
Snap! He finally mustered the courage to turn off the light completely.
The room was suddenly enveloped in the faint glow of the laptop screen.
Not long after, even that faint light went out. The whole room plunged into absolute darkness.
Unable to see anything, Gu Jiahe’s hearing became unusually sensitive.
He pulled the blanket over himself, listening as Li Zhao pulled out the chair and removed his shirt. A dark figure passed by his bed and then entered the bathroom.
After a while, the sound of water in the bathroom quieted down. Li Zhao came out.
Then came the sound of pulling back the covers.
Five seconds later, the entire room fell into complete silence. This silence made Gu Jiahe feel a bit relieved.
He pulled the blanket up over his head, burying himself in it, gradually falling asleep.
Early the next morning, Wu Mou called him and asked him to come to the new factory for training at noon. If he had nothing to do in the morning, he could rest at the hotel.
Li Zhao, on the other hand, got up very early. Gu Jiahe glanced up to see him standing shirtless at the bedside, putting on a shirt.
His muscles stretched with each movement, broad shoulders and narrow waist, the well-tailored trousers hugging his waist, making Gu Jiahe’s head spin.
No peeping. Gu Jiahe buried his head back into the blanket.
Li Zhao buttoned up his shirt meticulously. Then he picked up his phone and answered a call, probably from He Xiao.
After a brief conversation, they hung up. He straightened up and prepared to leave, without even glancing at the person in bed.
They were probably going to visit the company’s clients today.
Gu Jiahe thought for a moment and, out of professional ethics, poked his head out and asked, “Do I need to accompany you on the visit?”
Li Zhao’s footsteps halted, and he glanced back to Gu Jiahe’s bedside. “When visiting clients on behalf of the issuer, relevant personnel from the issuer should avoid attending. Don’t you know such a simple thing?”
Gu Jiahe gritted his teeth, hating himself for speaking out of turn. But he couldn’t back down: “Fine, I have my own things to attend to anyway.”
“That’s for the best,” Li Zhao said briefly, then opened the door and left.