In a corner of a café near W University, Bai Li handed a new contract to Sang Ying. Sang Ying opened it and took a look. The contract was no longer a partnership agreement, but a standard labor contract unilaterally hiring Sang Ying and Ding Han as streamers.
“VW will no longer provide you with the production and sales for all ‘Qingdeng’ products,” Bai Li said. “Future livestreams will also not offer your products as free gifts to consumers. You and Ding Han will simply be VW’s sales streamers. CEO Xia said that business is business. Your streaming results have been good, so your salaries will be calculated as 0.08% and 0.05% of the total monthly sales from the livestream room for you and Ding Han, respectively.”
The new contract was a standard labor agreement, consisting of only a few simple pages. Sang Ying finished reading it in a few minutes. The salary was high, and there was nothing inappropriate about it.
She gripped the edge of the contract with a pen right at hand. Initially, she had signed the contract with Xia Tingwang for the sake of Qingdeng. She should have refused this new contract, yet after a mere twenty-plus days, her feelings had shifted.
At this moment, she did not want to give up the contract. Once she walked away, she would likely never have any connection to Xia Tingwang again, even though Xia Tingwang’s attitude last night suggested she probably did not want to see her.
Sang Ying had not slept all night over this.
Ding Han tugged on her sleeve. “You do not want to sign it?”
“No.” She picked up the pen and scribbled her name.
“Did you bring the old contract?” Bai Li asked.
Sang Ying slowly opened her backpack and took out the old contract. Bai Li also opened the copy she held and let her look at it; it was indeed the one Xia Tingwang had kept.
“Good, as long as it is confirmed.” Bai Li put the two copies of the old contract together and tore them to shreds in front of them.
Click. The crisp sound of tearing paper felt as if it had ripped away Sang Ying’s first heartache.
It was crisp, but it could not be brought into the light of day. Sooner or later, just like this old contract, it would all be torn up and thrown into the trash.
Sang Ying took something out and placed it in front of Bai Li. “Please return this car to CEO Xia.”
“Oh, I am sorry.” Bai Li glanced at the car keys. “CEO Xia did not tell me to take the car back, so I cannot make that decision.”
The car keys were handed back to her.
Bai Li took out her phone, operated it for a moment, and said, “I have transferred a sum of money to you. It is VW’s employee New Year bonus; everyone gets one. The first livestream of next year is set for the eighth day of the lunar new year, so you must be back by the seventh day at the latest.”
After saying this, Bai Li reached out and shook hands with both of them. “Well then, I wish you a happy New Year, a safe trip home, and I will see you next year.”
Watching Bai Li leave, Ding Han did a rough calculation on her phone. Turning to look at Sang Ying, who looked wilted, she reached out to wrap her arms around her shoulders to comfort her. “We only did six livestreams in these twenty-some days, and I just estimated the total sales to be in the seven figures. 0.08% of that is still tens of thousands. We only need to stream two days a week, and the rest of the time we can still work hard for our Qingdeng. We do not even have to worry about money anymore! What a great deal! Do not be sad.”
However, Sang Ying was not comforted by these words. Ding Han continued, “I know you still regret what happened last night. I regret it too; it was such a good opportunity. Well, what is missed is missed. I know about your persistence, but CEO Xia did not know that. She is a dignified CEO, and after being angered by you like that, she only changed the partnership into a unilateral labor hire and even offered such a high salary. CEO Xia is actually quite a good person.”
Yes, Xia Tingwang was a very good person. It was Sang Ying herself who was not good enough to match her.
Sang Ying put away the contract and the car keys. “If we do not go now, we will miss the bus.”
“Let us go!” Ding Han pushed out her suitcase from the corner. “I cannot wait to get home and eat the dumplings my dad makes!”
Pingcheng was a small city in the north. They needed to take a twelve-hour high-speed train from Wen City to the provincial capital, then another hour or so by train to Pingcheng, and finally transfer to a suburban bus for over an hour to reach the county.
It was already the next morning when they boarded the bus back to the county. Each trip back and forth drained most of their energy. They sat in the last row of the bus; Ding Han pulled her down jacket hood over her head and put on a mask before falling asleep immediately.
Perhaps because she was going home, Sang Ying’s gloomy mood improved slightly. Having slept enough on the train, she could not fall asleep now.
She made an appointment on her phone to go to the hospital the next day. The New Year bonus Bai Li had transferred was quite large. Added to her scholarship for the semester and the money she had earned, it was enough to buy her father a new prosthetic limb.
Finally, there was something good.
After getting off the bus, Sang Ying smelled the breakfast shops along the street, and her stomach let out a hungry growl. Ding Han had also sobered up a lot. She turned and ran in another direction. “I am going home first! We will talk on the phone if anything comes up!”
Their homes were very close, both on the same street. Originally, they were from the same village, but after the village was demolished, the residents all moved to this residential area by the road.
The snow on the road was very thick, a scene she would not see in Wen City. The crunching sound of footsteps on the snow was a unique memory of her homesickness.
Passing the third building behind the breakfast shop was where she lived. She lived on the first floor. When the apartments were allocated by lottery years ago, her father had chosen one on the fifth floor, but there was no elevator. Most of the villagers were simple and easygoing, so the occupant of the first floor immediately swapped with her father.
Pushing open the hallway door, she happened to run into a neighbor coming down the stairs. “Little Sang is back!”
“Yes, Auntie Wang.” Sang Ying held the door for her.
The neighbor passed her carrying trash and looked her up and down. “Tsk, tsk, you are getting more and more beautiful.”
“Thank you, Auntie Wang.”
“This child is just too polite.” The neighbor wiggled her chubby bottom as she walked away. Sang Ying let go of the door and gently closed the hallway entrance. Just as she walked to her front door, it was opened from the inside.
Her Oga father sat in his wheelchair and smiled at her. Sang Ying laughed and carried her luggage inside, then crouched down to hug her father. “Dad.”
Her father had the familiar smell of medicine about him so much so that his pheromones were permeated with the scent of long-term medication, but she found it comforting.
Her father patted her shoulder, his face full of love. “It was a hard journey.”
“It was not hard,” Sang Ying stood up and looked him over. “Why have you lost so much weight?”
She video-chatted with her father almost every two days. On the screen, her father would put his whole face up to the camera, so Sang Ying had not noticed that he was much thinner than the last time she saw him.
“I have not lost weight,” her father rubbed her cheek. “It is you who is thin; I cannot see any meat on your face.”
Her father was so thin that his t-shirt hung loosely on him, and his two arms were nothing but skin and bone. Sang Ying’s heart ached, but she did not dare to show it on her face for fear that her father would worry. She smiled. “I think I smell Zha Jiang Mian.”
“Yes, I made it just in time. Eat quickly.”
Sang Ying took off her down jacket and scarf. On the dining table sat a bowl of noodles and a bowl of sauce. She washed her hands, sat down, and skillfully mixed the noodles while her father sat to one side, smiling at her.
She lifted a large pair of chopsticks full of noodles and stuffed them into her mouth, chewing indistinctly. “Too delicious!”
“No one is rushing you, eat slowly,” her father’s face was filled with wrinkles of laughter. “There is plenty more in the pot if it is not enough.”
“I do not need it even if there is,” Xia Tingwang sat on the porch swing, dangling her legs. In front of her, Nemo was running around the living room. “Do not you worry about it.”
Wang Shaoyong sighed. “Then what kind do you want? You do not want a male Alpha, and you do not want me to introduce you to a female Alpha. Yinyin, you are not young anymore; your uncle just wants you to find an Alpha quickly to take care of you.”
Xia Tingwang wrapped the small blanket over her legs tighter and smiled. “If you think the dozen servants in my house are not enough, I will have Butler Xu find two more after the New Year.”
“Who is talking to you about this? Servants can take care of your daily life, but can they take care of your soul?”
Xia Tingwang looked at Wang Shaoyong with curiosity. For a man nearly sixty, the words he was saying were enough to make one’s teeth ache.
“All these that your aunt has gathered,” Wang Shaoyong flipped through the book of single Alphas on the table that her aunt had found God-knows-where. “Their family backgrounds and educational qualifications are a match for you. You should at least take a look.”
Wang Shaoyong pulled out the information on the male Alphas and placed the folder containing only the female Alphas on Xia Tingwang’s lap. “Here, the female Alphas you wanted.”
Xia Tingwang flipped through them casually. Just as Wang Shaoyong said, these Alphas were all from prestigious families, some older than her, some younger. She looked at a few but felt no interest, so she closed the book. “Does it really have to be a match made in heaven?”
“It is not necessarily that it must be an exact match,” her cousin-in-law poured her a cup of milk and placed it in her hand. “If two people are worlds apart, they will not have common topics. You might be attracted to a specific trait for a while, but marriage is about living a long life together. That is when you realize the differences in habits, personalities, worldviews, and perspectives caused by different upbringing—all those big and small things you cannot see at first. That is why a match prevents many problems.”
Xia Tingwang took a sip of milk, lost in thought.
She had been attracted to Sang Ying’s voice, but their temperaments, personalities, and worldviews were indeed very different. Just two days ago, she had been so angry at Sang Ying that she had developed gum inflammation the next day.
Wait, why was she thinking about Sang Ying? They just slept together once. She had told Sang Ying she did not need to be responsible, and Sang Ying had agreed so readily and never mentioned it again.
What else was she thinking? It was as if she could not stop thinking about Sang Ying.
“What nonsense is this,” Wang Shaoyong dismissed her cousin-in-law’s view. He said, “Of course it has to be a match! Yinyin, you manage such a huge business alone. If you do not find someone who is an equal match, what if the other person is just after your money? Let me tell you, there are a lot of bad people out there now. You are innocent, Yinyin; what if you get cheated? Who would you turn to for justice then!”
Xia Tingwang rolled her eyes at this pedantic idea. Her cousin-in-law patted her hand and made a funny face at her.
Lying in bed that night, Xia Tingwang suffered from insomnia again. After falling in love with Sang Ying’s voice, she had to use it as a sleeping pill before bed. Ever since they had that argument, Xia Tingwang had forced herself not to listen to Sang Ying’s voice.
She refused to believe that she could not live a normal life without it.
Tonight was the third night, and the third night of insomnia.
Xia Tingwang sat up. The spacious room was so silent that she felt insecure. She picked up the remote control for the projector on the bedside table and clicked it on. Sang Ying’s face appeared, magnified to half the size of the wall.
She pressed her thumb again, and the wall went black. She threw the remote control away as if venting her anger.
Why? Why did she have to be so tormented?