Chapter 22 She was anxious to clear her name completely…

She was so eager to clear herself of all wrongdoing, which only made things more obvious to Tan Su.

He pinched the scruff of her neck like a kitten, lifting her damp coat with two fingers, and asked again, "How did you find me here?"

Miao Zhi, standing at the back, felt a little uneasy. She had indeed told Li Li that she was going to Jin Hai before she left, but who would have thought that she would block her way to the door?

However, Li Li was very principled. She believed that Tan Su was threatening her, so she remained motionless like a tortoise, biting her lip and refusing to say another word no matter how Tan Su asked her.

Tan Su watched suspiciously as her face grew redder and redder, until suddenly she looked up at him and let out a huge sneeze.

Li Li could swear to heaven that he didn't do it on purpose, but Tan Su didn't know when to stop, so he was just unlucky to be in this mess.

Tan Su decisively let go of her: "Go back to your room quickly, take a shower, and take your medicine."

Chen Ya helped Li Li push her luggage back to her room. While Li Li was taking a shower, Chen Ya brought over some cold medicine. She watched Li Li swallow the medicine and then quickly crawled into bed to sleep.

The next morning, he accompanied Tan Su to meet with President Wang.

As the morning meeting ended and lunchtime approached, Tan Su suddenly asked Chen Ya, "What's she having for lunch?"

Chen Ya quickly realized who he was talking about and said, "I'll call Miss Li and ask her."

Chen Ya walked out of the private room and dialed a number. Li Li was still fast asleep, but she sounded fine and should be fully recovered. So she asked her if she wanted to come over.

Li Li rubbed her eyes, still half asleep, and asked, "Who did you eat with?"

"The leadership of the Chinese Spectrum."

Li Li knew immediately that it was just a business social event, and she said, "I'm not going. I'm not here to work, so I'm not going to drink with people."

Chen Ya: "Should I come over and bring you food?"

Li Li threw back the covers and lazily got out of bed: "No need to trouble yourself, I'll just eat at the restaurant downstairs."

She felt a bit dizzy and lightheaded when she went to bed last night, but after a good night's sleep, she felt much better.

She went downstairs for lunch and then strolled around the area.

The sea view here is still very beautiful. The long embankment along the coast stretches for several kilometers, and there are beautiful parasols on the beach. There are also men and women playing and having fun in their swimsuits. The traces of yesterday's rainstorm have been evaporated by the scorching sun.

She took many beautiful selfies and spent a long time editing them under the parasol in the ice cream shop before posting her favorite ones on her WeChat Moments.

This made it seem like she was really on vacation. She was very pleased with her own intelligence.

The air was crisp and the sun was scorching.

Li Li was sweating under the sun and itching to play, so instead of squeezing in with others on the beach, she went back to the hotel swimming pool to relax.

That evening, Tan Su called her again to ask if she wanted to eat.

Li Li was a little smug and a little arrogant. She thought that since he had gone to so much trouble to invite Tan Su again and again, she would give Tan Su face and go.

When entertaining guests, coastal cities naturally serve seasonal seafood, prepared in various ways such as steamed, garlic-flavored, and spicy.

Li Li dislikes the taste of garlic; she doesn't eat garlic and feels nauseous even with it in her mouth. Today, her sense of smell is unusually sharp, and it seems like every dish has a hint of garlic, making her even less hungry.

Seeing her picking at her food with her chopsticks, Tan Su knew that her old habit of being a picky eater had come back to haunt her, so he ordered a separate dish of salt and pepper pork tenderloin for her.

Miao Zhi was deeply shocked by the leader's thoughtfulness and secretly wondered: Could it be that Li Li is really going to become the boss's wife?

Li Li still barely ate anything. She felt colder and colder as she sat in the private room, and she kept adjusting the remote control to make changes.

The people drinking with him were sweating profusely, but none of them dared to say anything to cool him down.

Tan Su noticed that something was wrong with her, so he took off his coat and gave it to Li Li, asking Chen Ya to take her home first.

Sure enough, Li Li developed a fever not long after returning to the hotel.

Fortunately, Chen Ya had been taking care of the child for a long time and had all kinds of basic medicines in her bag.

I took Li Li's temperature and gave her fever-reducing medicine. I added an extra bed to her room that night and checked on her occasionally.

The next day, Li Li's symptoms reappeared, and they were more severe.

Her throat was sore and hoarse, and she had a persistent low-grade fever. Chen Ya was assigned to her by Tan Su, who took her to a nearby hospital for a blood test and an IV drip.

After attending the annual meeting in the afternoon, Tan Su returned to the hotel and sent Miao Zhi to Li Li's room to check on her recovery.

He bumped right into Chen Ya as she came out of the house carrying his suit jacket.

He peeked through the crack in the door and saw that the curtains inside were open. A man was sitting by the bed, backlit. He reached out and touched Li Li's forehead to check her temperature, cursing her, "I hope you're delirious from the fever. Even an idiot knows to run indoors when it rains, but you don't."

Li Li's throat was killing her, but she still insisted, "The doctor said I didn't get a fever from being caught in the rain; it's because the swimming pool was dirty."

"Do you think a public swimming pool is your home? You went in without even knowing if the water had been changed after it rained. You deserve to get sick."

She said in a choked voice, "Li Zhoudu, you're just here to annoy me."

"Then what are you doing here?" Li Zhoudu mocked her.

"You're either following the younger ones or circling around the older ones. Are you destined to be at odds with the Tan family for life? Fine, I'll take you to the police station when we get back and change your surname to Tan Li."

"My name isn't Tan Li!" she angrily pounded the bed, but her voice was so soft it had no power whatsoever. "You're the one who should change your surname!"

Li Zhoudu dismissed her with disdain: "Little mute, you'd better save your breath."

He was scrolling through an app on his phone: "I'm booking a ticket. I'm taking a flight home early tomorrow morning."

"I'm not leaving!"

"Why aren't you leaving? Tan Su is just like his grandfather Tan Huiming, full of bad intentions and cunning old foxes. He's not someone who can be easily fooled. Put away your crooked thoughts."

Chen Ya glanced at her boss, who lived up to his reputation as a cunning old fox, and without changing his expression, raised his hand and knocked on the door of the room.

Li Zhoudu looked over, then got up and walked to the door.

He stood inside the door, gave Tan Su a hasty handshake, nodded, and said, "Thank you for this time, Assistant Chen, and thank you for troubling you, Tan Su. If this happens again, just let me know. No matter how much the kitten clings to you, our family will step in to discipline him."

Tan Su did not follow his lead, but instead smoothed things over for Li Li: "Li Li has a positive personality, and she is willing to learn more, which I welcome."

Li Zhoudu immediately refused, saying, "You are a busy person, there's no need to trouble yourself. Whatever she wants to learn, her family has the means. It's just that home-grown flowers are never as fragrant as wildflowers, and she always finds the outside world more appealing."

This was the first time Chen Ya had ever heard her boss called "Wildflower." It seemed that this General Manager Li was just as individualistic as Li Li; it turned out that this was part of their family tradition.

Li Zhoudu continued, "We're leaving first thing tomorrow morning, so..."

Before he could finish speaking, loud banging on the bed, expressing opposition and protest, came from inside the room.

Tan Su then said, "It's a coincidence, I'm also going back to S City early tomorrow morning."

The dissent inside immediately ceased.

Li Zhoudu was furious at Li Li's blatant siding with outsiders, but he still spoke to Tan Su in a light tone: "It's Xiao Mao'er's birthday in a few days, and we're going to have a birthday party. The elders in the family have been wanting to thank you for your care this year. Since we're seeing you today, we'll invite you as well."

Tan Su nodded and said, "Okay, I'll reserve some time."

Every family member's birthday is a big event. Li Pusheng always remembered the saying that the kitten's birth chart was too weak to be properly controlled, so she didn't have a big celebration for her birthday in the first few years.

It's about the whole family getting together, cutting a cake and having a good meal, and then giving each of them gifts and red envelopes.

Later, when the kitten got older, it became harder to coax.

After Li Zhoudu's birthday, she sat on Li Pusheng's lap and earnestly reasoned with him, saying that Grandpa was too biased and shouldn't be so sexist.

Li Pusheng didn't know where she learned that word, and jokingly asked, "Why is Grandpa biased towards boys?"

Li Li argued vehemently: "Why does my brother have so many guests and receive so many gifts on his birthday, but I don't? This unfairness is sexism."

Li Pusheng pretended to suddenly realize something and said, "Oh—Little Cat also wants to have a birthday party, doesn't she?"

Li Li nodded.

Six months later, her first birthday party arrived as scheduled. Li Pusheng spent lavishly to hire an event planner and booked an entire floor of the hotel to decorate it like a fairy tale castle.

Li Li's only contribution was choosing the template for the birthday invitation.

Later, a bunch of uncles and aunts in their forties and fifties came in with Barbie pink invitations, and Li Li, who was standing at the door, had to inspect them one by one with a serious expression. Thinking about it now, it was incredibly embarrassing.

She was wrapped in a blanket on the plane, listening to Li Zhoudu enthusiastically bringing up these old grievances again, but she remained silent in rebuttal.

Li Li's voice now sounds like a knife, so she can only pinch him secretly.

Tan Su and his group left on an earlier flight.

Even when she was so ill that she lost her voice, she was still monitoring Tan Su's movements. Miao Zhi was truly impressed by her perseverance and dedication.

Earlier, after Miao Zhi finished replying to Li Li's last sentence, he put his phone away in airplane mode. At this moment, Chen Ya, who had just finished telling her husband the landing time, suddenly turned around and reminded him, "This is the last time. Don't do it again."

Miao Zhi's expression changed slightly, and he stammered, "I don't know her."

“Miss Li is a very difficult person,” Chen Ya said, ignoring his excuses. “If you can’t learn the most basic refusal, you won’t be able to do your current job well.”

That was a very harsh statement, and Miao Zhi immediately apologized: "I understand. I'm sorry, Sister Chen."

Then, as soon as he landed, he blocked Li Li.

Li Li: ...

Li Li arrived at the company early Monday morning and went straight to the 32nd floor to deliver a birthday invitation to Tan Su.

She was still furious about being blocked by Miao Zhi, but her voice was still hoarse like a duck's, so she couldn't make a sound and provoke Tan Su's ridicule.

She slammed the invitation onto Tan Su's table with great force to express her dissatisfaction.

But Tan Su didn't understand her anger at all. He took the beautiful orange invitation from the envelope, flipped through the time and address on it, and said, "I understand."

Li Li turned to leave, but was stopped by Tan Su behind her.

He tossed a throat lozenge from the drawer, and Li Li caught it.

Without even looking up, he tilted his chin up and said, "Get out."