The signal still hadn’t come back, and the internet was down too. Shu Yuwei couldn’t pay with her phone, but thankfully, she’d brought enough cash.
She found Auntie Lan and paid for one night’s lodging, then took a quick look around the house.
There weren’t many rooms, but apparently, to protect against typhoons, the two small rooms and the little living room were piled high with dried seafood. It was the fishermen’s livelihood.
The few remaining rooms were for people to sleep in. The children’s grandparents shared one, while Auntie Lan and the three children squeezed into another.
There really weren’t any spare rooms.
Shu Yuwei played with Xiaoyunduo for a while, then took the room key card back.
Inside, Fu Rongzheng had already showered and changed. He was rubbing his hair dry with a towel while going through the file of contracts he hadn’t had time to finish reading.
With no internet, he was making his notes by hand with a fountain pen.
Shu Yuwei looked at him.
“Boss, what happened at headquarters? Secretary Zhao and several senior executives rushed back there in such a hurry a couple of days ago.”
Now that they had a moment, Shu Yuwei finally remembered to ask.
Fu Rongzheng gave a cold snort. “Nothing more than a few crooked executives who take the money without doing the work. They weren’t happy with the way I’ve been running things, so they made a scene at headquarters.”
Shu Yuwei nodded.
“Boss, several of them have a lot of power. Will making such a fuss affect you?”
“It will.”
Fu Rongzheng admitted it without mincing words. “But I have to settle accounts with them and deal with them. I can’t let them keep greedily bleeding the company dry.”
Shu Yuwei understood what he meant.
Just as Fu Rongzheng had told her a few days ago, once a group grows to a certain size, greed and corruption are bound to take root. If no one steps in, it can easily start going downhill, turning from prosperous to declining.
Was that probably why Fu Rongzheng, the Fu Group’s heir, had suddenly been transferred to a branch by the chairman?
It was both a trial by fire and his responsibility.
The pressure and turmoil involved were easy to imagine.
Yet Fu Rongzheng had remained calm and composed throughout. Even now, trapped in this little fishing village, he was unfazed, simply carrying on with whatever needed doing.
No wonder he was the boss.
From the bottom of her heart, Shu Yuwei admired Fu Rongzheng’s exceptionally strong nerves.
Just then, thunder crashed overhead.
The lights went out at once.
“Boss! The power’s out!”
Shu Yuwei fumbled for the flashlight. Before she could switch it on, she saw, through the window and under a flash of lightning, the typhoon bearing down with terrifying force, raging everywhere.
The wind tore trees up by their roots and lifted corrugated-metal sheds into the air.
The typhoon swept everything up, sending objects crashing into one another before hurling them to the ground, where they broke and twisted out of shape.
The lightning’s blinding white glare was accompanied by thunderclaps that exploded in their ears again and again.
Shu Yuwei’s heart raced, and her face went pale.
“Boss… the typhoon’s here…”
Fu Rongzheng switched on his phone’s flashlight.
The dark room was filled with light.
But the typhoon was growing more violent by the minute.
Outside, tree after tree was ripped up and toppled by the wind. The doors and windows rattled under its force, letting out a series of mournful howls.
Shu Yuwei could even feel the house shaking. Her body stiffened; she didn’t dare move a muscle.
Fu Rongzheng immediately drew the curtains, blocking out the scene beyond the window, which looked like the end of the world.
He turned to Shu Yuwei and held out his hand, hesitating before he spoke. “If you’re scared, you can hold on to me.”
Shu Yuwei looked up at him, stunned.
“I… I’m not scared…”
“Bang—!”
As thunder cracked overhead, a tree outside was blown over by the storm and crashed heavily onto the roof with a piercing boom.
Shu Yuwei had just stubbornly insisted she was fine.
Now the noise made her legs go weak, and she nearly collapsed.
Fu Rongzheng caught her steadily and led her to sit on the bed.
“Thank you, Boss…”
Shu Yuwei gripped the flashlight tightly.
In all her life, she’d never been this close to a typhoon. It was terrifying.
Fu Rongzheng, on the other hand, didn’t seem the least bit rattled by such extreme weather. He hadn’t even furrowed his brow.
“Boss, have you been through a typhoon before?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
Shu Yuwei didn’t ask anything else.
She’d almost forgotten—this was Fu Rongzheng, after all!
He was the sort of person who could stay calm and unflustered through any sudden crisis or brutal business battle.
If she had the same composure as her boss, what couldn’t she succeed at?
Shu Yuwei sighed and let herself fall back onto the bed.
“Boss, it’s almost midnight. Are you going to sleep?”
“Yes.”
Fu Rongzheng took a summer quilt from the cabinet and set it beside her. “It’s cool tonight. You can use this.”
Shu Yuwei took it. “What about you, Boss?”
“I don’t need one.”
“Oh.”
Shu Yuwei pressed the quilt between her fingers.
She had to admit, Fu Rongzheng was an exceptionally gentlemanly man.
She couldn’t bring herself to dislike him at all.
“Then, Boss, I’ll make you a bed on the floor!”
Shu Yuwei got off the bed and went to fetch the mat leaning in the corner.
The moment she touched it, she realized something was wrong.
“Why is it… all wet?”
She looked up and shone the flashlight toward the corner.
Water was dripping steadily from the roof.
“Oh no, the roof’s leaking!”
She hadn’t been able to see clearly when the power first went out, but now she could make it out: not only was the mat wet, the water leaking through had soaked the floor too.
“Boss, the documents! The contracts!”
Shu Yuwei looked toward the document bag.
Fu Rongzheng opened it to check, then put everything away again. “They’re dry.”
“It’s only leaking in the corner.”
“Thank goodness.”
Shu Yuwei breathed a sigh of relief. She and the boss had spent several days on the business trip getting everything inside sorted out.
It would have been a complete waste of effort if it had all been ruined.
But… what about the boss?
“The floor’s wet. We can’t sleep on the mat…”
Shu Yuwei looked at the six-foot bed, then at Fu Rongzheng.
Fu Rongzheng had evidently realized what that meant too, and looked at her.
There was only one way to solve the problem of where they would sleep tonight.
They both arrived at the same conclusion, then hesitated.
They stared at each other, neither one speaking first.
After a long while—
“Boss…”
“Shu Yuwei…”
“Are we going to sleep?”
“How?”
“Just… like this… and then… well…”
“Like this? What do you mean?”
“We just… sleep together… and put the suitcases between us to separate us…”
“Mm…”
“It’s an unusual situation, Boss… You lie down first…”
“Do you want the inside or the outside?”
“I… either is fine… Boss…”
“Mm… Then you lie down first?”
“No, you go first, Boss…”
Several feet apart, the two of them carried on an awkward, pointless conversation.
They kept deferring to each other, neither daring to look the other in the eye.
An hour later, Shu Yuwei and Fu Rongzheng resigned themselves to lying in the same bed, sharing a long, double-width pillow embroidered with a pair of mandarin ducks.
Even with several suitcases separating them, they were still very, very close, each lost in their own awkward thoughts.
After a while, Fu Rongzheng asked, “Should I turn off the flashlight?”
Shu Yuwei nodded quietly. “Oh, yes, please, Boss.”
The flashlight went off, and the room plunged into darkness. Neither of them spoke again. A deathly silence settled over them.
Shu Yuwei lay stiff as a board, not daring to move a muscle.
Half an hour passed. Then an hour…
Her legs were getting so stiff they were almost numb. Carefully, she stretched one out, only to accidentally kick the man beside her. Startled, she hurriedly pulled her leg back.
“I’m sorry, Boss!”
“It’s all right. Get some sleep.”
“Okay…”
Shu Yuwei answered softly, feigning calm. In reality, her mind was screaming at full volume.
Get some sleep? Aaaah! How could she possibly sleep?
Who was she? Where was she? What was she doing?
She’d only gone on a business trip with her boss. How had she ended up in the same bed as her cold-faced boss?!
When they got back, was he really not going to have her killed in secret?
Would she even be able to keep working as his assistant?!
Aaaah, help! The sky was falling!
Could someone please come hit her over the head with a club so she’d wake up tomorrow with amnesia?!