The project manager left with his bag, and the private room large enough to seat ten felt even emptier. The unfinished tea on the table still gave off a faint wisp of steam, but everyone knew it would soon go cold.
Before Xu Zhen could say anything, Lu Wanning abruptly dropped a few words.
“It was Han Yao.” She said. “Wasn’t it?”
The day had come at last.
Lu Wanning was no fool. She knew that the trajectory of her life had been thrown into disarray once again from the day she’d seen Han Yao again if life were compared to a clock, then Han Yao was undoubtedly the owner of the clock shop. She could point the hands wherever she pleased, turning them at will, while Lu Wanning could only watch the changing numbers, powerless.
The day she punched President Gao, she should have been fired by the capitalists and lost her job.
But because of Han Yao, everything had changed.
Isn’t that all good? A voice in her head said. Isn’t keeping your job good? Isn’t a steady income good? Isn’t joining Xu Zhen’s department good?
What a wonderful life. Flourishing, thriving.
Lu Wanning’s lips moved, but she felt as if thousands of feelings were tangled inside her, impossible to put into words and even if she spoke them, no one would understand. All of this was something she cherished, but if the price was getting close to Han Yao again, she couldn’t afford it.
She would definitely ruin everything including Han Yao, including herself.
Just like five years ago.
Lu Wanning asked flatly, “President Xu, did Han Yao tell you to do something?”
“…” Xu Zhen took a sip of tea, seemingly unsurprised that Lu Wanning had guessed Han Yao’s name so quickly. She only said, “President Han didn’t tell me to do anything.”
Lu Wanning’s brow furrowed. “Just say it plainly. No need to hide things.”
“No.” Xu Zhen paused, then said earnestly, “I’m not lying to you.”
There was a trace of mockery in Lu Wanning’s words mockery directed at herself, of course: “It wasn’t Han Yao who told you to keep me around?”
Xu Zhen neither confirmed nor denied.
After a moment, she set down her cup. “Objectively speaking, our department hasn’t taken on anyone new in a long time. As a recent graduate, you honestly didn’t qualify. I admit, I’m not some do-gooder philanthropist with time on my hands keeping you served my own purposes.”
“I’m a few years older than you, and I’ve seen more people and more things.” Xu Zhen rubbed her brow. “That day President Han came to the company, I could roughly tell from various details that you two were old acquaintances.”
“But President Han really said nothing to me all of this was just my speculation. And now it seems I guessed right, didn’t I? You two have quite a close relationship.”
Xu Zhen was very direct: “In business, business is what matters. I kept you on because I hoped to make use of the relationship between you two though of course, I have no interest in probing into what exactly it is.”
“For instance, right now: there’s a problem with the project, and I’ve contacted everyone I can reach, and none of them can help. Everyone’s been working hard these past weeks, and your share of the effort hasn’t been small. This is also the first project you’ve followed since graduating, and I’ve seen your hard work.”
“So, Wanning, under these circumstances would you be willing to ask President Han for help?”
“Help me out, please!”
Many years ago, Lu Wanning had heard similar words in the Han household too.
At that time, the uncle and auntie working in the kitchen were nearly in tears, but no matter how they begged, everyone else only looked troubled, offering words of comfort while their bodies remained unmoved.
Lu Jiahui couldn’t bear to watch and turned her head away, her voice very small: “I… I could help chip in some money, but we’re a widow and orphan, we really don’t have much.”
“Are you stupid?!” The auntie beside her cut her off before she could finish. “If you actually help pay, doesn’t that amount to admitting you were the one stealing?”
The servants dividing up the kitchen’s near-expiry food had always been an unspoken rule, but who knew the newly arrived butler would suddenly start cracking down on it? The blame naturally fell directly on the uncle and auntie who worked in the kitchen.
The butler ordered them to pay compensation a large sum.
Little Lu Wanning nestled against Lu Jiahui, understanding nothing, only looking at the uncle and auntie’s faces and feeling a heaviness in her heart. Her language textbook said “every grain comes from hard toil” wasting food was simply wrong.
Besides, the bread, fruit, and milk were all still well within their expiration dates. To be thrown away as “not fresh” after just one day the poet who wrote “Pity the Farmers” would be heartbroken to see it.
Lu Wanning quietly asked Lu Jiahui about it, but Lu Jiahui only sighed, helpless: “Even if that’s the logic, it was the master’s property to begin with. They have the right to dispose of it as they wish.”
The right to dispose of it meaning it was better for it to go into the trash than into anyone’s mouth?
No one dared speak up for the uncle and auntie in the kitchen, and aside from Lu Jiahui, no one was willing to help them raise money. A new official lights three fires upon taking office, who knew if the new butler, in a fit of anger, might drag innocent bystanders down with them?
They couldn’t afford to pay, and they would lose their jobs.
Was there really nothing to be done?
That evening, Lu Wanning carried a little stool outside to do her homework. She stared at the math problems before her, distracted, always wanting to do something to help the uncle and auntie.
But she didn’t know what she could do. She was just a child living here under someone else’s roof small and voiceless.
It had rained a few days before, and the air outside was fresh, carrying a faint scent of grass if you breathed it in carefully.
An auntie passing by reminded her: “Doing homework out here will ruin your eyes.”
Lu Wanning obediently replied, “But the air is nicer outside.”
“Still, you have to think of your eyes. You’ll regret it when you’re nearsighted! Go on, find somewhere with better light.”
Persuaded by the aunties, Lu Wanning carried her little stool toward where the lights were. The streetlamp beside the servants’ quarters was always rather dim, but for some reason, the bulb seemed exceptionally bright tonight.
Following the light, she walked without realizing it to the edge of that lawn where no one ever came.
But tonight, someone was there.
Again.
At a glance, Lu Wanning saw the wooden easel, stretched with a pure white canvas that, even from a distance, was already covered in color perhaps still the same painting as last time.
And there was that person. That girl whose mere smile amid the sound of rain had once sent a chill down her spine was now sitting quietly in the night, wearing a cream-colored dress with lace trim, absorbed in painting with oils.
A few days ago, Lu Wanning had learned her name: Han Yao.
She had even gone online to look up the character it had so many meanings and appeared in so many poems. It simply sounded cultured. Unlike herself, just a glass of lemon water at night.
Lu Wanning was, after all, a child “parasitizing” in this household. Seeing the young lady here, she instinctively prepared to avoid her, but just as she turned to leave, something suddenly occurred to her
At that moment of hesitation, she looked up again and unexpectedly found those eyes gazing over at her.
Han Yao said nothing, only holding her paintbrush, paused on a petal at the edge of the canvas.
Lu Wanning’s eyes lit up. She was the bold, act-first-think-later type by nature, and without much deliberation, she picked up her little folding stool and her math problems and walked over.
“Han” she called, then swerved sharply and switched to a polite form of address, “Miss.”
Then, a little nervously, Lu Wanning said, “There’s something I’d like to ask your help with.”
She quickly explained the whole situation with the uncle and auntie from the kitchen, and at the end made sure to clarify that all the ingredients involved were destined for the trash, the fresh ingredients the family actually used, no one would ever dare touch.
“Please,” Lu Wanning pleaded. “They have to pay back a huge sum of money, but they can’t afford it. If you could just say something to the butler…”
Han Yao listened quietly to the end.
The last petal was finished too a brilliantly vivid purple cornflower.
After a moment, she said, “It has nothing to do with me. Why should I care?”
Lu Wanning paused. “Compassion?”
She saw Han Yao smile faintly, without a sound probably laughing at the very word.
Right, that really was a stupid answer.
But Lu Wanning racked her brains and couldn’t come up with anything else. Han Yao truly had no reason to help them in fact, the “stolen” food was, in a sense, Han Yao’s own property.
She felt a bit deflated. “No?” That day, Han Yao had seen the milk bottles in her room but hadn’t blamed her. She’d thought perhaps Han Yao was kind at heart, which was why she’d come charging up to ask today.
The brush touched the last bit of blank white, filling the final sliver of space on the canvas.
“You can,” Han Yao said, setting down her brush. “But you’ll have to give me a reason.”
Seeing a chance, Lu Wanning hurried to press her case, but no matter how she thought, nothing came. “A reason… a reason is…” She nearly wanted to knock on her own head to shake loose a clever idea, but her head ached from thinking and she still just stammered, unable to get the words out.
Damn it, don’t miss this chance!
Han Yao watched with interest as Lu Wanning knitted her brows in distress, as if she found it rather novel. After a long while, she blinked.
In that moment, Lu Wanning thought blinking. That was probably the only difference between her and a porcelain doll.
The next second, she heard Han Yao say, “Keep me company. Play with me.”
“What?”
“Be my toy, and I’ll agree.”
“Toy?” Lu Wanning said blankly. “How can I be your toy?”
“Why can’t you?”
“Toys are things. Lifeless objects.” Lu Wanning’s words carried a strong note of refusal. Though she didn’t know what “toy” meant in this context, she instinctively disliked it. “I’m a person, not a Barbie doll…”
Hearing this, Han Yao didn’t argue. She only said softly, “Is that so?”
She smiled faintly, her eyes curving slightly.
“What a pity, then.”
The painting was finished. Han Yao set down her brush and rose to leave, heading in a direction entirely opposite to Lu Wanning’s, without saying another word.
As for the painting?
This was her home anything she put down, someone would come along and tidy it away.
Watching the figure grow more distant before her, listening to the rustle of shoes on the lawn, Lu Wanning grew increasingly anxious, and she couldn’t help starting to question her own decision.
None of the other servants could sway the butler’s decision. If she truly wanted to help that uncle and auntie, Han Yao was her only chance.
As for the toys… they were around the same age, how else could they play? It would be just like the games at school, wouldn’t it? At worst, she could let Han Yao win now and then, let her win more often.
Lu Wanning gritted her teeth.
“Miss… Han!”
Her clear voice pierced the silent night sky.
“I agree.”