Chapter 8: Being Attracted to a Married Woman.
Pushing open the door to the President’s Office, the expansive space was “pitch-black” as always. Shen Jiani clicked her tongue and marveled, “Looks like the President’s Office forgot to pay the electricity bill again.”
However, the blue hues under the curtain of rain over the imperial capital poured across the office, making it look drop-dead gorgeous.
An even more beautiful sight was a man standing with his hands behind his back in front of the giant floor-to-ceiling window covered in water droplets. He looked out over the central axis that sliced through the east and west of the imperial capital like a massive ruler. The man’s silhouette resembled a black silhouette cut out by hand, and his crossed hands behind his back were as vivid and striking as a bow tie.
From top to bottom, from the strands of his hair to the soles of his shoes, Pu Huaiyan was simply the most perfect specimen of a man in the entire world.
Shen Jiani opened her phone camera and aggressively clicked the shutter, snap snap snap.
The sound system in the office was playing music—the classic Cantonese song “Thousands of Songs”.
In a single instant / So many things to say / Sadly we will soon be worlds apart
All I can do is deeply gaze at this moment / Staring with all my heart
In days to come, though thousands of songs / Drift far away along my path
In days to come, though thousands of evening stars / Shine brighter than tonight’s moon
None can compare to the beauty of this night / Nor make me treasure it any more
Shen Jiani collapsed carelessly into the chair in front of the executive desk, spinning around in circles. “Why the sudden urge to listen to Cantonese tunes? Old songs really are classics, though.” Plus, the lyrics suited this person’s recent state of mind remarkably well.
She hummed a couple of lines along with the song, only to realize she didn’t know a single word of Cantonese. Fearing she might ruin the office owner’s mood and get chewed out, she crestfallenly gave up.
The man turned around slowly and walked toward the executive desk. His magnetic voice mingled with the lyrical song, saturating the office air.
“She plays this song in her office.” He had heard it when they were on the phone.
“Oh-ho~” Shen Jiani let out a whistle. “Even listening to songs out of love for the house and its crow1. For an untouchable flower to descend to the mortal realm is truly earth-shattering~”
“…”
Across the executive desk, their eyes met.
Shen Jiani couldn’t help but lean forward, resting both hands on the table while clicking her tongue in awe at that face. “Gege, your looks are just too good, and your figure is so perfect. I want the gaming department to develop a new mobile game modeled after you—it’d definitely be a smash hit. That way I could earn some plane ticket money back to Toronto, so you wouldn’t have to arrange a private jet for me.”
“…” The man glanced at her while turning on his computer. “Have you gone crazy or out of your mind?”
“…”
Shen Jiani leaned back, collapsing into the chair back again. She aimed her phone straight at him and took a barrage of photos in retaliation. “Wasn’t I just trying to save you money? Hmph.”
Pu Huaiyan reviewed documents while speaking, “Don’t post them recklessly on Moments. If you expose me and ruin my good plans, I’ll hold you accountable.”
“Good plans?” She cracked a cold, grinning sneer. “Taking a liking to a married woman counts as a good plan? Take a step forward, and you can fly side-by-side with a second-marriage young woman; take a step back, and you’re a home-wrecker. The coffin lid on the Pu family ancestral grave won’t be able to hold them down, hey!”
A gloomy, icy glare shot over. Shen Jiani shivered, immediately switching her tone. “Rest assured, I’m reliable.” Putting away her phone, the girl leaned in close again to ask, “It’s been three days. We’ve both returned from the United States. If I still don’t send your Madam her stuff, she’s going to start pressing me for it.”
“Mm. Go ahead and mail it.”
…
Jiangnan had entered its rainy season recently. Shan Dai had lost all desire to leave work and wanted to stay at the company twenty-four hours a day, but Ziming wouldn’t allow it, dragging her out the door the second off-work time arrived.
The apartment Shan Dai rented herself was one she hadn’t lived in for even two days so far, making it feel very unfamiliar. She was simply considering taking time to look at new houses to buy one.
That day, while flipping through advertisements for new properties in her office during a break from work, the company receptionist knocked on her office door and brought in an express delivery box.
“Mailed from the northern capital, President Shan.”
Hearing this, Shan Dai immediately took a look. Then, her eyes narrowed slightly. The box in the receptionist’s hands wasn’t larger than the previous one, but it definitely wasn’t small either. This clearly didn’t look like a box used to package a single hairband.
Taking a deep breath, she dropped the mouse in her hand, adeptly pulled a utility knife from her drawer, took the express box, and sliced it open twice with swift movements.
She refused to believe in this bad luck.
Lifting the lid, there were two boxes inside. Shan Dai’s eyes froze, and she curiously opened the smaller box on top, whereupon a wine-red woven hairband caught her eye.
She was instantly overjoyed and picked it up right away. But in the next second, her expression changed and her brows furrowed.
This wasn’t hers.
She had bought hers during her college internship years ago, and it had washed until it was slightly faded, nowhere near this new. This one was brand new.
Holding it under her nose to smell, she could even catch that distinct, pleasant scent carried by new factory-fresh fabric.
What was going on??? Baffled, Shan Dai held the hairband and looked at it for quite a while. She wanted to put it down yet felt reluctant, because when all was said and done, she had gotten what she had been wanting all this time.
In the end, she set the hairband down temporarily, removed the empty box, and went to check the second one.
This box wasn’t thick either—just a thin layer. Opening it, it actually turned out to be a magazine, Times Discourse, the most authoritative financial magazine in the northern capital.
Shan Dai picked it up and flipped open the first page, from which a piece of paper slipped out.
The elegant lowercase handwriting on it was clearly a woman’s script.
“Hello, Ms. Shan~ I’m Shen Jiani. I’m so sorry that my mistake caused you trouble. I have nothing to compensate you with, so I’m sending you an exclusive interview magazine of my boss. Take a careful look—it even has his signature, one-of-a-kind in the entire world! I hope you like it.”
Shan Dai: “…”
This was actually her way of compensating her. Shan Dai didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Returning to the cover, she saw a sweeping, dragon-and-phoenix style signature. Although the three characters for Pu Huaiyan were in wild cursive script, the shapes were vaguely discernible, and underneath was a line of well-wishes.
A smooth journey ahead.
Shan Dai recalled how Ziming had been constantly bringing up Pu Huaiyan’s interview with the financial weekly Times Discourse in front of her recently. She had watched the video version, which made her turn into a total fan girl because he was so handsome, and Pu Huaiyan charmed her through and through.
She hadn’t expected Secretary Shen to send her a copy. But how come Secretary Shen hadn’t been fired after making two mistakes in a row?
Speaking of which, she still needed to ask her why she mailed a new hairband instead of her old one.
Shan Dai picked up her phone and sent her a message: “Secretary Shen, I received the package. Thank you for the magazine.” “However, why is the hairband brand new, and not the one I lost?”
Shen Jiani still replied in seconds: “Sobbing, Ms. Shan, yours was actually lost.”
Shan Dai was surprised, “Lost?” Saying that, she asked again, “Then why did Meiyuan say over there that President Pu found it?”
Shen Jiani: “I don’t know, Ms. Shan. That day, President Pu suddenly told me to go buy a hairband outside. He described to me what it looked like. I searched for several days in major malls in Beijing without finding it, and later discovered online that it was a specialty product from a scenic spot elsewhere, so I only managed to get it through online shopping.”
Shan Dai read the message twice without missing a single word, her heart instantly filled to the brim with disbelief.
She subconsciously backed out of the chat box, turned to switch to Pu Huaiyan’s account, and typed… “President Pu, sorry to disturb you again. I received the package today and saw the hairband. But why did I hear from your secretary that you instructed her to buy a new one, while the old one was lost?”
She was already familiar with Pu Huaiyan’s reply speed. After sending it, she stood up first to tidy up the express box. Setting the magazine beside her computer, she planned to read it when she had free time.
As for that hairband, she certainly wouldn’t mail it back. She wrapped it around her hand to look at it, and finally took it up to tie up her long hair, then went to the restroom to look in the mirror.
It still looked very good, the corners of her mouth turning up. Finally, she stared at her own smile and slowly spaced out. This was the first time in these ten-plus days—since discovering Lu Zhixing’s infidelity—that she had a smile from the bottom of her heart.
With a bitter laugh, she went back out to her desk.
The words “President Pu” had already popped up on her dark screen phone. She opened it and entered WeChat.
Pu Huaiyan: “My apologies, Madam. Yes, I had my secretary buy a new hairband.”
Shan Dai asked him: “Is my old hairband lost? If you didn’t pick it up, why did you know I was looking for a hairband, and why send me a new one? This makes me feel so embarrassed.”
Pu Huaiyan: “It wasn’t lost.”
Shan Dai widened her eyes in surprise.
Pu Huaiyan: “It was just dirty. When I picked it up, it had gotten dirty.”
Shan Dai paused, temporarily at a loss for how to reply.
Pu Huaiyan only ever sent two messages in a row when explaining something: “I knew the hairband belonged to Madam, so I had my secretary find a new one while wanting to find Madam’s contact info myself. When I realized I couldn’t find it in the end, I contacted Meiyuan.”
So that was how it was. Shan Dai felt overwhelmingly guilty and said, “If it was dirty, it could just be thrown away—it wasn’t worth much anyway. To waste so much time and effort on a single hairband for President Pu, buying a new one and looking for my contact info… I truly don’t know how to express my gratitude.”
Pu Huaiyan: “Just to make Madam happy.”
Shan Dai stared at that message without blinking, frozen in place.
Four more words came in from the opposite side: “Not worth mentioning.”
Shan Dai stiffly tapped her phone keyboard: “Thank you… I still don’t know how to properly thank you.”
Then she added: “The recent events were truly unexpected. If I have the opportunity to go to the northern capital on a business trip in the future, I hope President Pu will honor me by letting me treat you to a meal.”
There was no reply from the opposite side; several minutes passed without a response.
Shan Dai knew that a big boss like him, burdened with a mountain of daily affairs and running such a massive conglomerate, had time worth a fortune—giving it to her for a meal was a complete waste, and ‘thank you’ was the most useless phrase.
She understood, so she wasn’t too disappointed, only unable to resist reaching back to touch the clearly textured hairband behind her head, still feeling immense gratitude.
The buzzing on her desktop pulled her thoughts back.
Shan Dai looked at her phone.
Pu Huaiyan: “Madam is welcome in Beijing. Whether for work, leisure, or expansion, I will do the honors as the host. Contact me anytime.”
After freezing for a few seconds, Shan Dai let out a long, slow sigh of relief. Luckily, he didn’t show any resistance to her wasting his time—luckily.
But expanding to Beijing? She hadn’t thought about it at all right now.
In the past, when the company was first founded, that bustling imperial city had indeed been taken into consideration, but it was eliminated shortly after due to realistic reasons. Now that the company had taken root in Jiangnan and settled down, unless it developed exceptionally well later, there might be a possibility of expansion.
As for traveling, she was even less in the mood for it, so it really could only wait until a day she went on a business trip.
She replied: “Okay, thank you, President Pu. Then I won’t disturb you further.”
Turning off her phone, she turned her head to begin working.
That magazine was placed right beside her computer, with the large black-and-gold words “Yanxin Times” hanging right in the middle of the cover, constantly popping into her sight silently whenever she raised her glass to drink water.
After a while, when Shan Dai set down her water glass, her hand still reached out toward the magazine.
The entire magazine didn’t contain a single personal photo of him; only on the first page regarding his detailed introduction, the background featured a hazy silhouette enlarged to cover the whole page, presumably him.
In a charcoal-black suit, a straight and tall figure, a royal blue maple leaf brooch pinned to his lapel, sitting beneath the dim night lights of the office.
Shan Dai reached out one hand to click play on a song on her computer, leaned back into the soft backrest, and began reading intently.
First page content—President of Yanxin Times Group, Pu Huaiyan.
The name Pu Huaiyan might feel unfamiliar to the public, but those strolling through the century-old hutongs of Beijing have likely heard the four words “Taiheng Group” to some extent. Taiheng, a century-old famous enterprise in the imperial capital, a enduring foundation that remained prosperous.
Yet starting from the turn of the year late last year, people might have also noticed a slight change regarding this city: the imperial capital’s famous enterprise no longer included Taiheng, and the word frequently emerging to replace it was a brand-new commercial city, Yuanshi Group.
Few people knew that behind Yuanshi Group lay an even larger commercial empire, supporting the birth of the former Taiheng Group like a heavenly pillar while personally dismantling a company that seemed to be at the peak of its power, giving rise to today’s completely transformed Yuanshi Group. That company was called “Yanxin Times”.
Phrases like “accumulated feathers sink a boat, a crowd of light objects snaps an axle”2 are rarely spoken by a boss to describe enterprises under their name—yet Mr. Pu Huaiyan said it today.
The current President of Yanxin Times, Mr. Pu Huaiyan—the man who completely eradicated, reformed, and transformed the legacy’s biggest problem, “Taiheng Group”—is currently 28 years old, born in Toronto, a Chinese American who graduated from Yale. He transferred back from the US company to take up his new post domestically a year ago.
2012 Times Discourse Weekly Exclusive Interview Today: Pu Huaiyan.
Seeing this, Shan Dai felt the gears of fate turning in a miraculous fashion. A man who grew up in Toronto would one day quietly meet her—a Jiangnan local—in another city, actively communicating with her to remind her that her confidently held marriage had developed a crease.
At this exact moment, a line of lyrics happened to stream out from the computer player—You silently flooded into the depths of my heart.
The next line was—Yet past events lie scattered all over the ground.
Translator’s note:
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