Chapter 85: Promotion Gift But as a boyfriend he is still quite qualified...
Promoted to partner, Luo Shu's transfer was finally finalized. Leo went to make a fuss several times but returned in vain. Shen Qianshu has been absent-minded since the birthday party. I heard that his brother forced him to study at the grassroots level of the company. Fei Wei has also been preparing to return to the court these days, and her life has returned to normal.
After work that day, Fu Ze invited everyone to have a drink near the company again. After all, the last dinner was paid for by outsiders, so it didn't count as a treat.
The bar street that even the navigation couldn't figure out was filled with nightclubs and bars of all sizes. Worried that Shen Qianshu wouldn't be able to find the way, Fu Ze chose to wait at the door of the bar.
Luo Shu and Zhai Xiaowen went in first and found that the atmosphere inside was extremely harmonious. In the center of the stage, a man holding a guitar was singing a familiar folk song. When his rich and textured voice sang "Stranger, please give me a Lanzhou", it immediately caused the men and women in the audience to sing along.
The music ended and the crowd dispersed, and the tavern resumed its dice-rolling and casual chatting mode.
Zhai Xiaowen, who was reluctant to let the handsome lead singer leave the previous second, quickly took out a velvet box from her pocket the next second: "Sister Luo Shu, this is my promotion gift to you."
The surprise came so unexpectedly that Luo Shu instinctively pushed it away. Zhai Xiaowen, as if anticipating her move, quickly thrust the gift into her hands, "Don't be so quick to refuse. I have something to say."
She cleared her throat. "Although we haven't been together long, I admire you from the bottom of my heart. You're capable, have a good personality, and treat everyone equally. They say teaching an apprentice can only make the master starve, but you're different. You've taught me, an intern, everything you know without reservation. Your looks are just one of your lesser-known strengths. I feel truly lucky and blessed to work with you. But, there's one flaw about you."
As she said this, she secretly glanced at Luo Shu's reaction, "It means treating the kindness you deserve as a burden."
Luo Shu rolled her eyes slowly twice: "Do I have it?"
Zhai Xiaowen nodded repeatedly. "Just like usual, I brought you breakfast, and you found a way to pay it back with interest. I also helped you carry documents and run errands, and you always treated me to milk tea as a thank you. It's so polite. Although I don't understand why you don't like owing favors to others, I'm not someone else. I'm your most loyal and knowledgeable supporter of Li Xiang."
"The best at finding out information?" Luo Shu teased her deliberately.
Bao Da Ting suffered a Waterloo. Zhai Xiaowen naturally refused to admit this dark history and took Luo Shu's hand to play rogue: "Oh, except for this time, this time was purely a mistake."
Perhaps it was the relaxed atmosphere that boosted her originally subdued mood. Luo Shu smiled with joy from the bottom of her heart. She opened the velvet box and found a pair of bow-shaped diamond earrings. "Thank you, Xiaowen. I like your gift very much."
"As long as you like it." Zhai Xiaowen picked up the beer glass that was mostly filled with ice cubes, shook her head to the soothing music, took a big sip, and sighed with satisfaction, "Sister Luo Shu, you don't know, since you left, no one in the design department wants to chat with me anymore."
Luo Shu smiled faintly: "My current office is only ten steps away from the design department. Besides, isn't Teacher Fu here?"
"Oh, that's different," Zhai Xiaowen complained. "Teacher Fu never listens to my gossip and always tells me to shut up and stop bothering him."
Luo Shu was understanding: "Why don't you take advantage of this opportunity to chat as much as you can."
"Then I'll be polite." Zhai Xiaowen got straight to the point and asked, "Were you really in a relationship with the child's father?"
"The child's father?" The curve of Luo Shu's mouth straightened.
"It's Fang Qingzhuo."
Luo Shu's thumbnail dug into the flesh of her knee. After a few seconds of silence, she admitted, "Yes, we did."
"Then why did you break up?" Ever since their last dinner, Zhai Xiaowen had been curious about the relationship history between the handsome man and the beautiful woman. And it seemed that Fang Qingzhuo was the one who was trying to save the relationship. "Is it because of personality incompatibility?"
Luo Shu shook her head.
"Graduation in a different place?"
Luo Shu continued to shake her head.
"It must be family?"
Luo Shu continued to shake her head.
"Could it be that there's a third party involved? In romance novels, the main reasons for a breakup are usually these few things."
As if she had been programmed to shake her head, Luo Shu kept shaking her head in denial.
"So do you still like him?"
Under program control, Luo Shu habitually denied it, but the command to shake her head was stuck in the second after she heard the question. When she realized her true thoughts, she woke up instantly. It turned out that the body's reaction could not be deceived.
Zhai Xiaowen was tired of guessing: "Since neither of them is the case, then you two are just bored and breaking up."
At this point, Luo Shu simply stopped going against her own will: "It's because I care too much about this relationship and approve of it too much that I can't tolerate even a grain of sand in my eyes."
There was both approval and sand, and Zhai Xiaowen was stunned: "Do you care or not?"
The table was filled with bottles and cans. Besides the beer we ordered, there was also a fruit plate and snacks that came with a high-end purchase. Luo Shu casually picked up a toothpick and poked it into an apple. "You like apples. One day, the apple suddenly developed a black spot and a blemish. You dug out the rotten part, and the apple was still an apple, but it was no longer the perfect apple in your memory."
With another apple, Zhai Xiaowen was even more confused: "Sister Luo Shu, I don't quite understand what you are saying."
Warm yellow light poured down, and Luo Shu held up the apple with the pierced petal, her eyes calm and expressionless: "That's right, you don't understand. I don't understand myself either."
Zhai Xiaowen scratched her forehead and asked, "Is the rotten area very large?"
"Is this important?" Luo Shu looked at her in confusion.
Zhai Xiaowen took the apple from her hand and put it into her mouth, chewing it slowly. "Although it's hard to understand, what I want to say is that the characteristic of apples is that they are fruits."
Then, from a normal foodie's perspective, he analyzed the pros and cons: "Instead of worrying about whether it's the same apple, it's better to research whether it's okay to eat it and whether eating it will cause diarrhea and harm your health."
This novel starting point successfully confused Luo Shu. Her left ear was filled with a chaotic heartbeat, and her right ear was filled with the sounds of finger-guessing games from the next table. Her tone was full of confusion: "I think it should be edible."
Zhai Xiaowen met her dazed expression and placed her hand on the back of her hand, seeming to encourage but also concerned: "Sister Luo Shu, are you trying to say that there's something wrong with Fang Qingzhuo? If he treats you badly, I'll immediately stop being a fan and turn against him."
The cool touch on her skin brought Luo Shu back to her senses. She blinked twice, concentrated for a moment, and joked, "What about your dear Chi Yuan?"
Zhai Xiaowen waved her hand: "At worst, I won't spend any money, so he can't earn a penny from me."
Adhering to the spirit of seeking truth from facts, Luo Shu said impartially: "He is quite serious about making games."
Zhai Xiaowen was very interested in the topic she brought up: "How serious are you? Are you striving for perfection or are you working day and night?"
"To find inspiration for my game, I drove an off-road vehicle to visit fellow villagers and learn about their local customs." When talking about the memories, Luo Shu's tone was so gentle that she herself didn't even notice it. "I even injured my shoulder while helping the elderly with their work."
"He's quite helpful," Zhai Xiaowen commented.
Luo Shu shook her head: "No, he has too many shortcomings to count on one hand: arrogance, double standards, pettiness, and a lot of twisted logic."
Zhai Xiaowen frowned slightly in disdain and exclaimed, "Ah!" She couldn't believe it. "Then what are you trying to achieve by dating him?"
"Maybe he's looking for abuse." Luo Shu took a breath and added objectively, "But as a boyfriend, he's still quite qualified."
She asked herself, had she ever been happy with Fang Qingzhuo? The answer could never be denied, she was truly happy in those days.
The departure of emotions leaves only endless melancholy.
There were countless sleepless nights when she stood on the borderline between wakefulness and numbness, unable to fall nor to be free. Fang Qingzhuo, a man who had been proud for half his life, almost knelt down and begged for her forgiveness, but she turned a blind eye. At first, she attributed all her grief and anger to hatred, but later she found that she was at a loss as she could not continue to love and could not hate thoroughly.
She had no choice but to escape, leaving everyone behind and going far away, leaving behind the absurd and sad past, and going alone to live the exchange life that Hou Sisi had dreamed of.
Zhai Xiaowen looked at Luo Shu, who was talking freely, her eyes lit up by an unknown light, as if she had discovered a new world: "Sister Luo Shu, do you know what that expression was on your face just now?"
Luo Shu touched her face and said, "It's a normal expression. What else could it be?"
"No, let me think about how to describe it." Zhai Xiaowen scratched her head. "Hmm... it's that trending internet meme. It's like I've been transported back to the days when I wasn't a bitch."
“…”
Fu Ze came out of the bathroom and saw Shen Qianshu hesitantly a few steps away from the vortex of hot chatter. He slapped him on the shoulder: "Why are you standing there like an idiot? They are right there, why don't you go sit down?"
Shen Qianshu remained indifferent, his lowered eyes concealing a hint of disappointment: "I have something else to do, so I won't sit down."
After saying that, he turned and left without any hesitation.
Fu Ze watched Shen Qianshu's back as he walked away, full of questions. How could he come back saying he had something to do after just going to the bathroom?
Due to the influence of typhoons and tropical cyclones, the rainy season in coastal cities can come easily.
Fang Qingzhuo had been lying down for less than half a minute when a chubby claw mercilessly slapped his left cheek.
He opened his eyes with a sense of despair, and the first thing that caught his eye was the image of a human baby sucking its fingers and howling.
A hint of disgust appeared between his brows. He wondered if he had poked him with a finger filtered through saliva.
Unable to bear it any longer, Fang Qingzhuo reached for his phone and opened the chat interface with Song Shijin. He didn't even bother to type a single word and sent a voice message: "When are you guys coming back? I'm almost having a nervous breakdown."
The person on the other end was kind enough to reply with a voice message in seconds: "I'm asking you to play with him, not take him away. Besides, there's an aunt at home, so why are you humming?"
"But you didn't say that he could play all afternoon without sleeping." Fang Qingzhuo pressed the screen and saw another line.
Unfortunately, his accusation fell on deaf ears, and Song Shijin didn't even reply with a single punctuation mark.
Fang Qingzhuo thought he was unlucky. While the couple was dating affectionately, he became a babysitter. Before his wife even understood why, he confided in Song Shijin and agreed to babysit for him.
Staring at the ceiling, he couldn't help but wonder, if Luo Shu hadn't broken up with him, would they have a child by now? How should he design a baby room in his large apartment? Boy or girl? What name? Would he be as fat as Song Shijin's kids? Should he quit smoking again?
Suddenly, a burst of wailing interrupted his wandering thoughts. Glancing sideways, he saw the little one lying prone, crying uncontrollably, his features squeezed together. Who could he have taken after? The noise was quite loud, yet not a single tear fell, as if he hadn't been bumped or touched. It was an inexplicable behavior.
Fang Qingzhuo was silent for five or six seconds, then stood up resolutely, grabbed the boy who was lying on the crawling mat and pretending to cry, held his butt and held him in his arms, and at the same time stepped out of the protective fence and came to the sofa in the living room.
Following suit, he sat her on his lap and soothed her softly, "Don't cry, I'll let you watch TV, okay?"
Then he picked up the remote control on the table and turned on the TV: "Watch cartoons?"
The little guy still cried.
"I don't want to watch it." Fang Qingzhuo's patience was rare. "Then let's watch the news together? We can learn about national affairs in advance."
The soft blue light overflowing from the TV screen instantly attracted the child's distracted attention. He stopped crying and looked at the report displayed on the TV with curious eyes without blinking.
Seeing this, Fang Qingzhuo finally breathed a sigh of relief, rested his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes to rest. At this time, the cell phone in his trouser pocket rang twice. He took it out, thinking it was a reply from Song Shijin, but it turned out not to be.
The expression on his face became more and more solemn as time went by, and he kept his eyes fixed on the screen.
So that's the relationship.
It took a long time until Zhuang He called, and the tense jawline gradually relaxed.
The call was connected, and an impatient loud voice was about to come out.
"We can't contact Luo Shu. Can you help ask if she's still in Shenzhen?"
Fang Qingzhuo frowned: "Didn't you two agree to go to the wedding together yesterday?"
"We didn't agree to start together in Shenzhen. She went to Yuncheng first."
"Yuncheng?" Fang Qingzhuo's words had just fallen when dark clouds gathered outside the floor-to-ceiling window. Shadows swept across the room, and through the thickened glass, rumbling thunder could be heard. At the same time, the host's urgent news interruption came to his ears.
"Affected by the typhoon's circulation, Yuncheng, Zhucheng and other areas experienced heavy to extremely heavy rain in the early hours of this morning. Rainfall reached 99 millimeters in two hours, breaking the historical high water level so far, causing severe urban flooding..."
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