Gu Siqiao’s brain went briefly blank in a rare moment of distraction. A raspy, half-formed “Ah” slipped out from his slightly parted lips, sounding remarkably like a quacking duck.
Refusing to show any weakness, he quickly cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”
It was quiet on Xue Lou’s end of the phone. He sounded very close to the receiver—even his soft breathing was audible.
Xue Lou asked, “Did you need something, Gu Siqiao?”
Gu Siqiao replied, “There’s a small matter. Is now a convenient time? Am I disturbing you?”
“No disturbance,” Xue Lou said right away. “I was just at home.”
Gu Siqiao breathed a sigh of relief.
He asked, “Regarding the police report, is there any other way we can approach this?”
Xue Lou said, “There probably won’t be any further developments. The police mentioned that the scammed amount isn’t considered huge in my case. There are plenty of people in far worse situations who still couldn’t recover their money.”
“But thank you for keeping my situation in mind and calling specifically to check in,” Xue Lou added.
Gu Siqiao instinctively rubbed his nose.
“I know someone in public security. If it doesn’t work out, I can ask around on your behalf,” Gu Siqiao said. “We can’t just let it slide like this.”
“I’ll just treat it as spending money to learn a lesson,” Xue Lou said.
Paying thirty thousand yuan to learn a lesson, Gu Siqiao thought. If it were anyone else, sure. But you? Can you even afford that kind of lesson?
“Gu Siqiao,” Xue Lou called out his name, his tone carrying an inexplicably cautious tone. “Is there anything else?”
Gu Siqiao let out an “Oh”: “There is one more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
Gu Siqiao asked, “Where are you developing your career these days?”
“Right here in Jiangcheng,” Xue Lou answered.
“That’s good. Jiangcheng is great. A provincial capital, and it’s our hometown—it’s solid on all fronts.”
“Yeah.“
“So what line of work are you in right now?” Gu Siqiao probed further.
This time, Xue Lou hesitated for a moment. “It’s hard to say—just doing odd jobs, really.”
“Odd jobs are fine. Who isn’t working for someone else these days?” Gu Siqiao had almost exhausted his entire life’s reserve of polite small talk, so he decided to cut straight to the chase. “Anyway, working for anyone is still working. I have a good job opportunity here. If you’re interested, would you like to consider it?”
Xue Lou asked, “What kind of job?”
“An executive secretary position that just opened up—Secretary to the President of Window Group,” Gu Siqiao said. “The hiring listing hasn’t even hit the internet yet, so I’m giving you an advance heads-up.”
“I know Window Group—it’s a nationwide famous private enterprise,” Xue Lou said, sounding perplexed. “The secretary to the president is such a core position—how did you get advance word of it?”
“…Because I am the President of Window Group.”
Silence fell over the other end of the line.
“Gu Siqiao,” after a long pause, Xue Lou spoke up carefully. “This doesn’t seem appropriate.”
“There’s nothing inappropriate about it. You meet all the qualifications for the position.”
“You don’t even know my situation, how do you know I’ll definitely…”
“Because there are barely any requirements,” Gu Siqiao began ticking off points on his fingers out of habit. “Major requirements: none. Age requirements: none. Work experience requirements: none. Even degree requirements: none…”
“How could a position as executive secretary to the president have no requirements?” Xue Lou interrupted him. “Even assembly line workers are required to be fresh university graduates.”
“How do you know that?” Gu Siqiao retorted.
Xue Lou fell silent once again.
Gu Siqiao instantly realized he might have poked at the guy’s sore spot. “What I mean is, those are all just bullshit pretenses put up by bosses. I’m sitting in the president’s chair and I never went to university either—so what? Whether someone rises up or not boils down to one phrase: timing and fate.”
“Now I’m offering you this opportunity, Academic God, to prove that this is indeed your fate.” Speaking up to this point, Gu Siqiao was almost impressed by his own eloquence. “Besides, aren’t you going to hear out the compensation package at my company before making up your mind?”
Without waiting for Xue Lou to reply, Gu Siqiao pushed ahead: “A base salary of fourteen thousand yuan, full six insurances and housing fund, triple overtime pay on statutory holidays, a monthly meal allowance of five hundred yuan and a commuting allowance of three hundred yuan. Sixteen months’ salary per year, plus an end-of-year bonus—”
He remembered HR telling him earlier today that ‘outstanding employees receive an end-of-year bonus of thirty thousand.’
“End-of-year bonus of sixty thousand,” Gu Siqiao declared, sealing the deal.
Having finished his pitch, he leaned back into his seat and raised his head, staring at the floor-to-ceiling windows of the brightly lit Gu estate dining room.
Normally, the silhouettes of the Gu family dining together turned his stomach, but right now he felt utterly confident—he even felt like applauding his own ingenuity with a triumphant bravo.
The corners of Gu Siqiao’s lips couldn’t help curving upward… until he heard Xue Lou’s calm voice.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle the role,” Xue Lou said.
“How do you know you can’t handle it if you haven’t even tried?” Gu Siqiao shot back. “You were the top gaokao scorer of No. 1 High School, man! If you can’t handle it, barely anyone can.”
Silence returned on the other end of the phone.
Whenever Xue Lou stopped talking, Gu Siqiao would start second-guessing himself—regretting why he was being so overly pushy, making himself sound like some warm-hearted busybody citizen.
“Anyway, think it over carefully. Opportunity like this won’t come knocking twice,” he said, picking up his phone. “I need to drive now, so I’ll hang up first. I’ll send you my assistant Kang Shuai’s phone number in a bit. If you agree, contact him.”
“Kang Shuai?” Xue Lou repeated.
“Yeah, also our classmate from high school,” Gu Siqiao said. “Bye-bye.”
He ended the voice call, shifted gears, and tilted his head to look back into the floor-to-ceiling window.
Under the warm, soft glow of the lights, three generations of the Gu family were eating and chatting. The two women were smiling as they clinked glasses, and even Xiao Yu had scampered back to the table to enjoy the newly served post-dinner dessert.
With one less person present, the atmosphere was ridiculously harmonious.
Gu Siqiao raised his hand and slammed it hard onto the steering wheel!
The sharp blare of the Ferrari’s horn gave the people inside the house a startle.
His elder brother, Gu Sicheng, shuddered, spilling red wine all over his trousers.
Gu Siqiao burst out laughing and cursed under his breath, Serves you right! Before Gu Sicheng could storm over to the glass window to yell, Gu Siqiao slammed his foot on the accelerator and made a clean getaway.
*
The next morning, after the weekly meeting ended, there was no one around to draft meeting minutes or organize documents for Gu Siqiao, so Kang Shuai had to step in temporarily.
“Hurry up and have HR recruit someone, Fourth Brother. You can’t just work me like a mule,” Kang Shuai stood listlessly by the desk, sorting through paperwork like a page boy grinding ink for a young master in ancient times. “I feel completely drained.”
“Drop the dramatics,” Gu Siqiao leaned back in his executive chair with his long legs propped up on the desk, reading a report without so much as looking up. “Your Fourth Brother has already recruited someone who’ll be arriving shortly—nine times out of ten, he’ll show up.”
“So fast! Who is it?” A spark of hope flickered within Kang Shuai.
“Far in the sky, yet right before your eyes,” Gu Siqiao flipped to the next page. “None other than Xue Lou.”
“Xue Lou?”
Kang Shuai snapped his head up. “Why did you look for him?”
“Is there something wrong with him?”
“It’s not that he won’t do, but don’t you still owe him money? If you hire him, how are you going to settle that account?”
Gu Siqiao flicked his eyelids up. “When did I ever owe him money?”
“Come on! That hacker scammed thirty thousand yuan out of the guy using your account!”
“So what?” Gu Siqiao dismissed it indifferently. “It wasn’t me personally who scammed him. How does that fall on my head?”
“He only gave it because of your reputation!”
“That’s on him for lacking anti-fraud awareness,” Gu Siqiao grunted. “Don’t blame the bumpy road if you can’t walk properly.”
“It’s just thirty thousand yuan—if you just give it back to him, problem solved,” Kang Shuai said. “It’s not like you’re short on thirty thousand.”
“My money didn’t blow in from the wind either.”
“You really are heartless, I swear!” Kang Shuai exclaimed. “I can see it now—you’ve turned bad, Fourth Brother. You’re a heartless capitalist…”
“If you love doing charity work, be my guest. This had nothing to do with me in the first place, and I don’t clean up after scammers,” Gu Siqiao tapped Kang Shuai with a document folder. “You idiot, he’ll create labor value for me, and I’ll pay him a higher salary. That’s already doing more than enough for him, okay?”
“Fine, fine, fine, whatever you say is right,” Kang Shuai gathered up the signed documents. “Director Gu sent multiple emails today asking me to take her to the R&D department. I’m heading out first.”
A few minutes later, his phone rang, displaying Secretary Liu on the caller ID.
Gu Siqiao was a bit surprised and answered, “Hello?”
In his memory, Secretary Liu was an exceptionally honest and reserved person. When standing next to his right-hand man, Kang Shuai, Kang Shuai could easily talk enough for the two of them combined.
Back then, Gu Siqiao had agreed to hire her precisely because of that trait.
He hadn’t expected this quiet employee to make an unprecedented phone call to him.
During her years under Gu Siqiao, Secretary Liu truly embodied the words ‘devoted to her duties’, and she had never made extra demands simply because her work satisfied Gu Siqiao.
It seemed that today, she was going to break her own rule.
Over the line, Secretary Liu sounded noticeably tense: “President Gu.”
“Whatever it is, go ahead,” Gu Siqiao said. “You’ve been with me for several years now—no need to hold back.”
“Logistics and HR have both talked to me,” Secretary Liu stammered slightly. “President Gu, I’m taking the liberty of making this call to you mainly because I really don’t have that big of a face to have you keep a position open specifically for me…”
“It’s all handled according to protocol. Anyone in my position would do the same,” Gu Siqiao flipped through a contract, answering casually.
“No, President Gu, you don’t understand,” Secretary Liu said. “There’s something that, now that things have reached this point, I must tell you.”
The woman struggled internally on the other end of the line: “I heard that… because of my transfer, the Chairman was very unhappy.”
Gu Siqiao’s expression shifted slightly.
Secretary Liu said, “I must submit my resignation, President Gu. I don’t want to make things difficult for you. My uncle was one of the Chairman’s contractors in his early years. When I couldn’t find a job the year I graduated, the Chairman told me to come try out at the Group, saying he’d gradually make me a permanent employee… The Chairman thought you found me to be an eyesore because you found him to be an eyesore.”
“During these past few years at Window, everyone respected me as President Gu’s chief secretary, but I knew in my heart that I was just a nobody. Being promoted by you from among so many secretaries in the executive suite was simply because I was more cautious and prudent than others. Only I knew over these years that I never felt truly grounded in this job. To tell you the truth, President Gu, when I found out I was pregnant, I felt as though a massive weight had finally been lifted off my chest.”
“I don’t know how to put it, President Gu… in short, I failed your trust,” Secretary Liu sounded on the verge of tears. “The Chairman showed me great kindness, and you’ve treated me so well these past few years—I just don’t have the face to linger here…”
Gu Siqiao slowly set down the folder.
He finally understood.
Why the public welfare project… no, why every major project was relayed to his father’s ears the moment he made a decision, even before there was time to discuss it at the board meeting.
Gu Siqiao had always assumed that since the Group was so large and documents passed through many hands, leaks were inevitable.
Yet Gu Siqiao found himself remarkably devoid of emotional outburst over this revelation.
He even felt a sense of composed acceptance, willing to admit defeat.
If the son placed an Aunt Zhou in the Gu estate, the father would plant a Secretary Liu in the executive suite. The old ginger was indeed spicier than the young; he had to concede this round.
Gu Siqiao sighed softly. “In that case, I won’t force you to stay. Let’s part on good terms. I wish you a bright future.”
The call ended.
The black ink on white paper suddenly blurred into a tangled mess. Gu Siqiao closed the file, lit a cigarette, and sat silently at his desk for a long time.
*
Two days later.
The loan approval was taking longer than expected, yet the pressure to secure it was mounting urgently.
Because of this, Kang Shuai spent entire days running back and forth to the bank from morning till night.
This was work that should have fallen on a secretary, but Kang Shuai had countless executive assistant duties of his own to handle, leaving him feeling utterly overwhelmed.
While waiting for the bank manager in the VIP lounge, Kang Shuai was parched, barking instructions over the phone to remotely direct his subordinates. Less than ten seconds after hanging up, his phone rang again.
“These useless fools,” Kang Shuai took a sip of water before answering aggressively, “Hello? If the system can’t find the card number, switch computers and try again! If that still doesn’t work, call IT! Do I need to teach you step by step?”
The background noise on the line sounded somewhat busy, and the caller waited for Kang Shuai to finish his outburst before speaking.
“Is this Kang Shuai?” the young man’s voice sounded unfamiliar and formal. “Gu Siqiao gave me your number and told me to reach out to you.”