Li Na lived in a house allocated to her mother when her parents divorced. After her mother remarried, the house remained vacant. Li Na had lived here since she graduated from her senior year internship. This location could be regarded as a bustling area, a good area to find decent people. But to find a well-paid big business could be quite hard.
She majored in financial management, but usually, her work wasn’t related to her major. Especially now that the competition was so fierce, there were people better than Li Na, and many others who came from prestigious schools.
Li Na knew that she was too ordinary.
As her name suggests, Li Na looked ordinary, had average grades, and a modest family background. She had no choice but to attend interviews and application meetings one after another.
Li Na had always believed that as long as she had a pair of diligent hands, she would never die of starvation.
Li Na found several suitable companies and units on 58.com and Ganji. It was ten o’clock at night after sending out her resume. She stretched her waist, washed up, and went to bed.
The rain had been falling at night.It’s going to be sunny tomorrow, Li Na thought as she lay on her bed.
Li Na had a dream that night, a beautiful dream, like a wet dream, but not a wet dream.
She dreamed that she was kissing a man on a small boat in an amusement park. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it vaguely. The man in a shirt was holding her around the waist, his fingers interwoven in her hair, and the two kissed passionately.
Unfortunately, dreams were always blurred. In the dream, Li Na couldn’t see the man’s face. Although she couldn’t see his appearance, she always felt that he was a mature man.
Then Li Na woke up. She took her cell phone from the bedside. It was only 5:53, but it was time to get up.
Recalling that dream, Li Na washed her face and laughed at herself: “I must really want a man like crazy.”
After she washed her face and brushed her teeth, Li Na looked into the mirror and dabbed on her face. She did not look good. She had good facial features at most, and her skin was neither black nor white. However, it was also impolite to go to an interview with a bare face, so Li Na simply applied light makeup. Put on the foundation, traced eyebrows, drew eyeliners, and even mascara and false eyelashes weren’t done. Lastly, a nude shade of lipstick was used. And was finished.
Noticing that her neck and face were not the same color, Li Na daubed her neck. She then went to see the interview notice on 58.com and Ganji, set the time and place for the interview, and wrote it in the notebook that she carried. Today, her schedule for the day was an interview.
In addition to the interview, Li Na took the bus card, makeup items, a cup, her resume, and some other things to bring before she went out.
At around seven o’clock, most office workers were still meeting the Duke of Zhou[1] in their dreams, and only a handful of service workers, or those who had just finished their night shifts, ate breakfast at the breakfast shop.
Li Na bought two meat buns and a bottle of yogurt. She put them in her bag and took them to the bus to eat. She had to rush to the job fair. The job fair started at 8 o’clock. It was 15 minutes by subway and half an hour by bus. She chose the latter without hesitation since it was still early.
Li Na got into the bus, sat in the back seat, took out her notebook, and looked through it. She had to be at the job fair from eight in the morning until noon, and submit a resume for the interview. If it was not accepted, then she would have an interview with two big companies at one and three o’clock in the afternoon. And if she doesn’t have time for lunch, she’ll grab a bite to eat at a small restaurant. That was pretty much the whole day.
The bus passed through one stop after another, and the number of people on the bus was increasing little by little. It gradually became crowded and no one could make much movement, the whole bus began to become noisy.
Li Na sat in a daze in the back row after eating the buns with her resume in her arms. This was her daily activity. Her eyes didn’t blink, and she didn’t think about anything in her mind. It was also an alternative rest.
Just then, a pair of sneaky hands appeared in Li Na’s field of vision. She moved her eyes and became vigilant.
They were the hands of a middle-aged man who was reaching out to a beautiful woman with wavy hair in a small suit.
At first, Li Na thought it might be molestation, but the man had a small object between his fingertips, a razor blade, and his hand was reaching for the woman’s handbag.
A thief?!
Li Na naturally wasn’t stupid enough to shout that there were thieves. Most thieves commit crimes by groups. She didn’t want to offend the thieves blatantly, she just wanted to give the woman a heads-up[2].
With that in mind, Li Na got up and pushed her way through the crowd, towards the back door of the bus. The crowd moved because of Li Na’s movement. And the thief quickly retracted his hand when he saw the movement, pretending that nothing happened, his eyes wandering.
Usually, thieves get on the bus with a few people, especially when there’s a crowd. They surround the target, which is the easiest way to steal, and then get off quickly.
Li Na elbowed her way over to the woman in the suit, isolating the man who was standing behind the woman. She smiled and moved her shoulder bag to her chest. “Excuse me, I will get off at the next stop,” she said.
The other party responded to Li Na with a polite smile.
After a while, the cell phone in the woman’s handbag rang, she opened the zipper and took out the phone to answer: “Hello, general manager, um, I’m ten minutes away from the office… would you like some royal cat food? Yes, I got it.”
While the woman was on the phone, a pair of hands reached into her handbag and stole a gray wallet. Li Na, who thought the thief would not do anything again, didn’t see it.
Fairy put the phone in her bag after making the call and habitually looked for her wallet, but she couldn’t find anything.
Cold sweat suddenly broke out on the Fairy’s back. Not to mention hundreds of cash in her wallet, there was her ID card, two bank cards, and most importantly, the black card the big boss had given her for office shopping!
It didn’t matter if her things were lost. But if the boss’ black card was lost, then she can just go to hell after getting out of the bus.
Thinking of this, Fairy yelled: “My wallet was stolen!”
Li Na froze, and the people in the car started to make a commotion.
Fairy first took out her cell phone and opened the camera to take a video of all the people around her. Then she shouted to the driver, “Driver, please drive to the police station right now. I’m going to call the police if I lose my wallet!”
Li Na’s first reaction was to look at the man behind her. The man couldn’t hide the panic on his face after hearing the woman’s words.
At the same time, someone on the bus complained: “If you want to call the police, then call the police. We are still in a hurry to go to work, why should the driver listen to you and go to the police station.”
After all, Fairy worked in a big company and had seen a lot of things. She sneered, “Driver, the closest police station is just ahead. Turn right at the first intersection and drive for 300 meters. Could we please drive there?”
The driver hesitated, “Girl, look at this big bus, if you don’t have much money and not an essential thing is lost, just forget it, a bus full of people can’t be delayed just for you alone, right?”
“That is…”
“I’m still waiting for work…”
“Hey, when you encounter this kind of thing, you can only admit that you’re unlucky…”
“Who knows when you lost it, maybe the thief got out of the car long ago.”
Fairy spoke calmly. In a voice not too loud or too small, but it was enough for everyone on the bus to hear, “I got on the bus at the last station. When I got on the bus, I took some change from my wallet. No one has gotten off since I got on the bus, so I’m sure the thief must still be on the bus. Once I go to the police station, the thief will not be able to escape!”
The crowd murmured, and Li Na looked at the thief. The thief noticed her and looked back at Li Na, his gaze a bit fierce.
Li Na, to make the driver realize the seriousness of the situation, touched her shoulder bag and yelled, “Hey! Where is my wallet! My wallet was stolen too!”
Fairy was stunned. She gave Li Na a second look. Li Na’s hand touched her arm and her voice doubled, “Driver! My wallet is gone! There are two or three thousand in it! Driver, please call the police! I want to go to the police station too!”
Fairy seemed to understand something when she saw this. The girl in front of her was helping her. After all, her words alone might not be able to shake the opinion of the whole bus. At this time, if another person came forward, it would have been a lot easier.
Li Na chose to be this person, to simply do it or not. To follow along, and make peace with their losses? For cheap thieves? How was that possible?
“Everyone, look at your bag and see if anything is missing,” Li Na stood up and reminded, “You must know that thieves usually commit crimes in a group. There must be more than one thief on the bus. The beautiful woman next to me lost her wallet and mine is also gone. The thief must have stolen other people’s things, we can’t just let it go!”
As Li Na reminded them, many people looked through their pockets and bags, and they were astounded. A man and a woman’s wallets were missing.
For a time, everyone on the bus was alarmed. No one dared to say anything, the driver drove straight to the police station without saying a word.
……
Jiang Ke woke Xiaomi up early in the morning and put it in the pet bag. Before he went out, he called his assistant, Fairy. Xiaomi’s cat food was finished, and he asked her to buy a bag and take it to the company.
There was a regular morning meeting on Monday. Jiang Ke rushed to the company at 8 o’clock, and handed Xiaomi to the front desk to be taken care of: “Wait for Fairy to come and let her feed Xiaomi.”
“Okay general manager.”
At 9:30 after the meeting, Jiang Ke went to see Xiaomi. Xiaomi was hungry and meowed. Jiang Ke frowned and asked the front desk, “Where is Fairy? Tell her to come to my office in five minutes.”
“General manager, sister Fairy called and said that she was at the police station and might not be able to make it.”
“The police station? Was she robbed? She went to the police station on the way to work?” Jiang Ke said with interest.
The two girls at the front desk both had strange expressions on their faces. One of them said, “Fairy said that her things were stolen and that the thief had taken her hostage. Now she’s at the police station giving a statement. She said she’ll be back by ten-thirty.”
Jiang Ke didn’t expect that he would get it right when he just said it casually. He had some doubts about whether he had the legendary crow’s mouth[3].
But no wonder Fairy’s not here. He casually pointed, “Please go to the nearby pet store to buy a bag of cat food for Xiaomi, the royal brand, the red packaged one.”
The receptionist googled Royal Cat Food. A 2 kg bag of cat food was 498 yuan! She bursts into tears in her heart. She really didn’t eat as well as a cat, and she didn’t live as well as a cat…
Jiang Ke returned to the office and asked the people on the same floor for a piece of bread. He broke it into small pieces and put it on the palm of his hand. Xiaomi hurriedly stepped forward to lick it from the palm of his hand.
After Xiaomi finished eating, it sat on the table, raised its head, and mewed to Jiang Ke. Jiang Ke ignored it, sat in the chair, and began to deal with the company’s big and small affairs.
He didn’t know how long time had passed. During that period, the girl at the front desk, Xiaowen, bought cat food, fed the cat food to Xiaomi as required, took the little guy out for a walk, and Fairy came back.
As soon as she came back, someone told her to report to the boss. Fairy said sadly, “I’ve had a bad day today…”
Tian Tian, the HR[4] manager, happened to pass by and thrust the applicants’ information into her arms: “Fairy! Cheer up!”
“f*ck off!”
Fairy felt that she was very distressed. She graduated from university and joined the company as an intern. At that time, there were two men and one woman with her as boss’ assistants. After the three-month internship, one woman was eliminated. Another left at the end of the year a year later. And in the end, she and a buddy named Ken were left. This buddy is mixed-race. He returned from studying in the UK and spent two years of ups and downs with Fairy. Then he also chose to run away.
Her big boss was not so difficult to serve, but the workload was huge. Including everything from financial budget, marketing, advertising planning, and so on, all given to the assistant. In addition, the general manager was somewhat inhumane. His expensive pampered cat, in particular, needs to be waited upon sometimes. But everything else is… okay.
She had been working with her boss for almost three years, and she had figured out his temper and habits for the most part. A workaholic plus a shit shoveling officer plus a single dog equals a big boss Jiang Ke.
And she had been happy and worried during this period. The good news was that her salary had been raised again. As an assistant, her salary is comparable to that of the HR manager. She earns six figures a year, more than three hundred thousand.
What’s worrying was that Big Boss was a bit dissatisfied with her efficiency.
[1] The Chinese God of Dreams
[2] an advance warning of something
[3] a jinxing mouth. If someone has it, it means what they say will come true (usually unlucky events)
[4] Human Resources