Parking the car in a designated spot, Yueyi pulled out the car key and glanced at the keychain that was flashing with colorful lights. Confirming this was indeed the right place, she meticulously buttoned her cuffs.
A well-tailored suit enveloped the woman’s entire figure. She took measured steps, her heels clicking rhythmically against the ground as she walked.
Standing before the door of the reserved private room, faint sounds leaked through the gap of the door that had not been fully closed.
Resting her palm flat against the metal door panel, she anticipated the scene waiting inside even before stepping through.
A quiet smile formed in her heart. Applying pressure with her palm, she slowly pushed the door open.
A deafening wall of music came crashing forward, striking Yueyi’s ears so directly it felt as though it might shatter her eardrums.
The next second, the music cut off. Inside the private room, figures dressed in professional attire stood up straight, their faces plastered with uniform, practiced smiles.
Devoid of any genuine soul.
“Director Yue,” a chorus of greetings rose from around the room.
Yueyi stepped into the room, glanced at the person standing beside the song selection screen, and smiled. “Today is a departmental gathering. Everyone, please have fun.”
With that, she walked unprompted toward a single-person sofa, bent her knees, and sat down.
To her, these departmental gatherings were nothing more than a formality. Perhaps if she were not here, these employees might actually be able to relax and enjoy themselves.
The department dining together this time was the First Design Department, which had achieved the highest performance last month.
Most of them were unfamiliar faces, and the only one she vaguely recognized was the head of the First Design Department, whom she had met a handful of times.
The lights inside the private room grew even more vibrant, constantly shifting colors.
Abruptly, music blasted back to life as the next song began to play.
The accompaniment was deafening.
No one knew who had queued the song, and nobody dared to step up to sing it. The atmosphere instantly plunged into awkwardness.
Yueyi pressed her lips together. At this moment, she could easily ask who had queued the track and tell that person to get up and sing.
Yet she was unwilling to force anyone against their will.
After sitting for a moment with her hand resting on the sofa armrest, Yueyi stood up and spoke in a low voice to the head of the First Design Department nearby. “I am going to the restroom. You all go ahead and have fun.”
Pulling the room door open again to breathe in some fresh air, she heard the high-volume music behind her reignite.
She had no idea whose bright idea it had been to host a gathering at a KTV, but it was far more agonizing than a regular dinner party.
Bracing her hands against the edge of the washbasin, Yueyi stared at her reflection in the mirror. Nearly ten years had passed since she first took over the company.
She slowly turned around, leaning her back against the sink, deliberately stalling to delay her return to the private room.
Her phone chimed with a notification, and she lowered her gaze to unlock it.
“Has Sister arrived at the place yet?” asked Yan Nianyi.
“I have arrived,” replied Yueyi.
“Oh, you have arrived,” Yan Nianyi murmured brightly.
With one leg draped casually over the sofa armrest, her striking features were periodically illuminated by the multicolored lights, highlighting the exquisite contours of her face.
Her slightly wavy long hair cascaded loosely down her back. Halfway consumed, the cigarette pinched between her fingertips burned down, letting gray ash drift onto the solid wood floor.
The seat cushion dipped slightly as someone sat down beside her. “So happy. Did you get a message from someone special?”
Yan Nianyi raised her gaze to glance sideways. The person was Shao Yihan, a childhood friend and close confidante who naturally knew all about her feelings for Yueyi.
She let out a soft sound of acknowledgment, offering no further explanation.
Shao Yihan shrugged. Yan Nianyi was usually a generous person, but whenever it came to Yueyi, she grew exceptionally petty, terrified that anyone else might cast even the slightest trace of covetousness toward the object of her affection.
Flicking the ash from her cigarette, Yan Nianyi continued typing on her phone. Amidst the deafening musical accompaniment, she cast an irritable glare at the person standing near the song selection screen.
That person felt a chilling gaze sweep across their body, freezing them to the bone as if it were tangible. Subconsciously, they snapped their head up to lock eyes with the lazy, semi-reclined figure on the couch.
His breathing suddenly hitched, and he frantically turned down the volume by a large margin.
Yan Nianyi lowered her eyelids, her fingertips flying across the screen.
“When is Sister going back?” asked Yan Nianyi.
“I probably have to wait a little longer,” replied Yueyi.
Yan Nianyi sent a cute little emoji before tossing her phone facedown onto the glass table. Dozens of bottles of liquor stood neatly uncorked and lined up together.
Nearly half of them were already empty bottles.
Yan Nianyi casually pulled out a bottle, poured some into a glass, and lifted it to her lips with feigned casualness.
As the center of attention, the moment she raised her wine glass, several people sitting nearby paused their chatter and hurriedly raised their own glasses in polite unison.
A curve formed at the corner of Yan Nianyi’s lips, and she drank it down in a single gulp.
A fiery burn rolled down her throat straight to the pit of her stomach. After that single glass, Shao Yihan beside her picked up a liquor bottle, ready to refill it.
Yan Nianyi raised a hand to stop her. “I am not drinking anymore.”
“What is the matter? Are you exhausted from the flight?” Shao Yihan set the glass down honestly and teased, “Surely a trip abroad did not ruin your drinking capacity.”
“Go away,” Yan Nianyi scolded with a smile. “I just do not feel like drinking today. Let us save it for next time.”
She was planning to go to Sister’s place tonight, after all. Reeking of alcohol would not do at all, as it might ruin Sister’s impression of her.
She sat up halfway, just as she was about to say something, when her ears caught a conversation from not far away.
“The Yue Family Enterprise.” Those four words struck right against Yan Nianyi’s eardrums, and she traced the sound with her eyes.
A man held a microphone with the back of his hand facing downward, his elbow twitching as he spoke, half of his words carrying outward through the microphone.
There was only one Yue Family Enterprise in this city that she knew of.
Yan Nianyi shifted her posture, bracing her arm against the sofa armrest.
Shao Yihan clicked her tongue and poured herself a glass of wine.
Lifting the glass to sniff it, she was just about to taste it before her lips could even touch the rim when a fair wrist shot out. Before she could react, a half-burned cigarette butt mixed with ash was dropped directly into her wine glass.
“What is this?” Shao Yihan’s mouth twitched.
“My apologies.” Shao Yihan’s mouth remained half-open in shock as she stared at the person beside her.
The previously lazy figure aggressively snatched the wine glass from her hand. The orange-yellow liquid sloshed around a few times, the ash dissolved, and the drink turned a murky grayish-white.
The smile on Yan Nianyi’s lips grew wider. She hooked her arm around the neck of the man who had been speaking and asked in a gentle tone, “What was that you just said?”
Accustomed to being opportunistic, the man assumed that someone of Yan Nianyi’s background was getting so intimately buddy-buddy with him because she was impressed. A surge of false pride swelled up within him, and he fabricated lies effortlessly. “I said the Yue Family Enterprise almost went under back then. If Yueyi had not begged my dad for an investment, the Yue family would not look like they do today.”
As if unsatisfied, he added with a supplementary jab, “That scene of her begging is still burned into my memory. Tsk, we should have made her beg a little longer back then.”
Yan Nianyi’s smile grew even brighter. The fingers resting behind the man’s neck tightened with increasing force, while her eyes filled with dark malice. “Begging?”
Shao Yihan quietly retreated a step or two. She certainly had no desire to get splashed with things she should not be touched by.
The man assumed Yan Nianyi was getting into the spirit of things and blundered on blindly, “You have no idea, she practically knelt before my dad.”
“Clang.” The man’s face slammed heavily against the glass table, the massive crash momentarily drowning out the musical accompaniment.
In an instant, save for the man’s miserable struggling and the continuous background music, everyone in the private room fell completely silent, staring blankly at the two of them.
The microphone slipped from his hand, emitting a harsh electronic screech.
Shao Yihan bent down and switched off the microphone.
Yan Nianyi’s smile blossomed even more brilliantly. She grabbed the man by his hair, jerking him upward to force him to look into her eyes, which were smeared with blood across half his face. “I truly do not know. Why don’t you enlighten me some more?”
Before the man could open his mouth, taking advantage of his slightly parted lips, Yan Nianyi shoved the wine glass she was holding right against his mouth. The liquid poured down into the man’s throat, and she casually tossed the glass aside, using her freed hand to clamp shut over his mouth.
Sliding her palm downward, she grabbed his throat and violently jerked him upward. The man let out a miserable groan as the liquid was forced down his belly.
Yan Nianyi dusted off her hands in disgust, a smile still lingering at the corners of her mouth as her words carried distinct excitement. “Go on, then. I am genuinely quite interested.”
“You fucking bastard,” the man clutched his neck with one hand while pointing at Yan Nianyi with the other, “I will kill you.”
“Slap.” A heavy, echoing strike landed squarely.
The man’s ears buzzed violently. His standing frame wobbled back and forth, and his lips trembled incessantly from the pain.
That blow had landed precisely on his injury.
“If you do not know how to speak, shut your mouth,” Yan Nianyi casually caught the man by his hair and dragged him closer to her. “Do not go polluting everyone else’s ears.”
“Nianyi,” Shao Yihan called out to stop her, judging that it was just about enough before someone actually got seriously hurt.
Yan Nianyi glanced at the man’s face, let out a light laugh, and viciously kicked him right in the chest. “Send him to the hospital. The medical bills will be covered by the Yan family.”
Sinking back down onto the sofa, Yan Nianyi casually rinsed her hands with the remaining alcohol. “So filthy.”
The petrified crowd slowly snapped back to their senses. They twitched the corners of their eyes as they stared at the unconscious man collapsed on the floor, exchanging a tacit glance without daring to ask questions.
Before long, two KTV service staff members arrived outside and carted the man off to the hospital.
At a time like this, who would be foolish enough to play the good Samaritan and trigger Yan Nianyi’s bad side?
“Let us keep playing,” Yan Nianyi adjusted her frames, her fingertips still stained with a trace of unwashed blood and sticky residue. “I am going to the washroom.”
Pushing open the door to the private room, the glaring lights made her narrow her eyes in discomfort.
“Sister Yan was so fierce just now, she scared me to death,” the moment Yan Nianyi left, heated discussions erupted within the room.
“I wonder what that guy said to make Sister Yan that angry.”
“Do not make a big fuss out of nothing, just keep singing,” Shao Yihan tossed the microphone over, serving half as a warning and half as a reminder. “Just pretend you saw nothing of what happened here today. Do not let word of it spread.”
Aside from the few of them who regularly hung out together and knew each other’s roots, there were two or three unfamiliar faces in the room.
If this incident got out and accidentally reached Yueyi’s ears, consequences would follow.
Glancing toward the door bathed in the shifting neon lights, Shao Yihan took the initiative to handle the cleanup work.
“Ha, Zhou Ming just tripped clumsily against the edge of the table by himself. What does that have to do with us?” Those familiar with the dynamic immediately chimed in with nervous laughter.
The two or three unfamiliar acquaintances were clever people as well. Upon hearing this, they quickly joined in, reducing the entire event to Zhou Ming’s own clumsiness in a few short sentences.
Shao Yihan poured drinks for them in approval.
As she raised her head to drink it down, the woman’s fair fingers twitched with a silent message: Yan Nianyi, you better thank me for preserving your image outside.
The sound of gushing water echoed endlessly. Yan Nianyi meticulously rubbed each of her fingers, pumping soap from the dispenser over and over again until the reek of blood and the sticky sensation finally faded away.
“Such a hassle,” Yan Nianyi muttered a brief complaint, using the hand dryer to eliminate the lingering moisture on her skin before turning around to head back.
“Nianyi?” Yueyi had just stepped out of her own private room, intending to wash her hands before leaving, when she coincidentally bumped into someone heading back.
“Sister,” Yan Nianyi called out happily.
“Why are you here? Were you not having dinner with your friends?” Yueyi remembered that the hotel was quite some distance away from here.
“We finished eating with Sister, so I came here to play!” Yan Nianyi eagerly sidled up close, never expecting to run into Yueyi here. “What is Sister doing here?”
“There is a departmental gathering,” Yueyi answered honestly. “I am getting ready to head back now. What about you?”
“I am going back with Sister,” Yan Nianyi replied.
“Very well.” Yueyi nodded, her gaze suddenly freezing in confusion as she stared at the collar of Yan Nianyi’s shirt. “Why is there blood on you?”
Yan Nianyi was still wearing the white button-down shirt from dinner. Yueyi lowered her gaze to see that the other’s white sneakers were also stained with a few drops of blood smeared across the surface.
“Did you get hurt?” Yueyi’s first reaction was to pull the person in front of her and inspect her up and down, only releasing a breath of relief once she confirmed there were no wounds on her body.
“A friend accidentally tripped and hit the table edge, bleeding from the forehead. It probably got on me when I was helping carry him to the ambulance,” Yan Nianyi explained simply.
“Is he alright?” Yueyi frowned.
“He is fine.” He won’t die.
Yan Nianyi’s tone was breezy and cheerful. She pressed her thumb lightly against the back of Yueyi’s hand where she held her, the smooth texture of her palm making her crave even more.
Sister’s hand is so warm.
Yan Nianyi licked her rosy lips.