Episode 40 Candidate
It was such a mess back then, and now it’s so uncomfortable to rush to get married.
Song Qi is a smart man and will not be trapped by love. Even if he mocks her, he must have other purposes for coming here at this time, and that purpose is nothing more than -
"I need you to help Mommy and I 'fly solo' in mainland China, conceal our true identity, and seize the resource market at the same time."
"Are you kidding? You are Mr. Song's only daughter, and your mother is his legal wife. You chose this time to come to Shanghai to visit relatives. As cautious as he is, it's impossible for him not to be on guard. Even if I help you, I can't cover such a big secret."
From his tone, it seemed that he was unwilling. Song Qi shrugged in vain and said lazily,
"If you don't want to help, then just wait to be my husband, right?"
…
Jiang Shu finally understood her intention. She wanted to fight to the death for her goal and also force him into an emotional dead end. This was a punishment for him.
Either marry her or help her gain benefits - one of them will win.
As worthy of being the daughter of a Hong Kong tycoon, she is as smart as she is. Faced with the blatant matchmaking of the two mothers, she did not refuse but just dragged it out. However, faced with the blunt counterattack of the marriage partner, she chose to find another way. She would neither compromise and marry a loser, nor let the loser stay out of it too easily.
During the Hongmen Feast at the Jiang family mansion, she hadn't readily revealed her intentions, clearly testing Jiang Shu's true commitment to his relationship. After all, when a relationship suddenly breaks up, men can panic, get drunk, regret, blame themselves, or even start a new relationship, only to abandon both the old and the new within a few months. It's not surprising.
Jiang Shu seems to be a principled and loyal person, but she never easily believes in a man's principles.
So she deliberately sent out ambiguous signals last time to attract his attention and find out his details. If Jiang Shu had compromised with her and lingered in front of the sink after the meal, then today's incident would have been averted.
But he didn't that day, and he didn't even contact me privately once that week.
She learned from her neighbor that the villa had been robbed, and after digging up many clues, she discovered that this had happened when he returned home that night... Hearing that they were moving today, Song Qi seized this opportunity to make a final test.
"Anyway, this is my only goal, so it doesn't matter who I marry. But you shouldn't be indifferent to marriage, right?"
Her eyes showed a determination to win him over. Faced with the reverse "forced marriage", he had no reason to refuse.
"Okay, I promise you this."
He compromised, "But this matter is only known to you and me, Mrs. Song and my mother can't..."
"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."
Jiang Shu was tricked by her, so his face was naturally not good. At this moment, the moving company asked him to go upstairs to check the things. He hurriedly said, "Send me your planning materials later. After I move..."
"That's all easy to say. I have one last thing to say. Help me check on someone. I want you to do it in private."
"who?"
"Wang Duo."
Jiang Shu frowned, suddenly remembering the pair of secretive eyes at the hospital gate that day...
"What are you checking him for?"
"I suspect he's Daddy's illegitimate child, perhaps his eldest and his favorite."
Xu Yiwei was already sweating profusely before he even arrived at Tengchun Gallery.
There are very few subway entrances that lead directly to the small road, so after getting off the subway, I walked for more than ten minutes to get to the door. I could have taken a shared bicycle, but when I saw that the balance on my phone was about to drop to double digits, I felt that one dollar and fifty cents was still money.
The gallery is not big, and although its main entrance faces the street, it is not noisy. There is a strong sense of life nearby, with fruit stalls, coffee shops, convenience stores, and a Cantonese roast meat shop halfway down the street with fragrant aroma.
She couldn't help but feel hungry when she smelled the food. Remembering that she hadn't eaten breakfast and there was still half an hour before the interview, she wondered if she could fill her stomach. However, as soon as she got closer, she saw the bright red price list posted on the transparent glass. A serving of roast goose was 198 yuan, and a serving of barbecued pork rice was 58 yuan. Even if it was just barbecued pork, it would cost over 40 yuan...
Only then did she realize how extravagant their lives were when she was with that rich second-generation man. He never looked at the prices when buying things - but she had lived under fixed prices, and every day was a torment.
The boss behind the glass window was preparing the pig's feet with skillful knife skills. She stood there, gazing at the plum blossoms, quenching her thirst. As she watched, the scenery inside the glass became blurred. All she saw was herself standing there dejectedly with her backpack on her back...
It seemed she had never been a bar girl immersed in alcohol, cigarettes, and lights, wearing thick but indistinguishable makeup, waking up in different people's beds. Nor had she been a low-class gold digger sitting in the passenger seat of a BMW, showing off the luxury bags and jewelry given by men, but actually getting nothing in return.
Nor was she an 18-year-old girl who came to Shanghai alone to study, working part-time as a dishwasher in a small restaurant to make a living, washing dishes until late at night, and using her two hours' wages to barely buy a special offer of chicken chop rice at a 24-hour convenience store...
Sitting at the bar behind the glass door of a convenience store, she silently ate a midnight snack warmed from the microwave. Beyond the glass was a quiet, secluded street. Someone would always groan intoxicated, either in pleasure or pain. Every now and then, a motorcycle would pass by, leaving behind a fleeting hum. The dim streetlights always blended with the bright light of the convenience store on the glass, and her shadow always overlapped with that of her first love, who had stayed up all night looking for her...
At that moment, she only felt that everything outside the glass was a false mirror, and the person reflected in the glass was real.
But at this moment, she suddenly saw clearly that the world outside the glass was actually the real one.
"What would you like to order, little girl?"
Noticing that she had been standing outside for a long time, the proprietress opened the cashier window and waved to her.
Xu Yiwei blushed when asked, "I'm just passing by, I'm not buying anything."
Just as she was about to turn around and go to the gallery next door, she happened to run into a familiar face. It was Lin Ying who came to work. She was wearing a light purple off-shoulder suit dress today, and her hair was fixed at the back of her head with a shark clip, which made her face look more delicate. She exuded elegance and intelligence, and was even more eye-catching than when she saw her in the hospital that day.
"You are Xiao Xu, right? Why are you here so early?"
A smile played on her lips, and before Xu Yiwei could reply, the owner of the roast meat shop spoke first - "Good morning, Miss Lin! How can this dress look good today?"
Lin Ying replied to her: "Sister Chun, would you like me to help you send the link?"
"Oh, come on, you have such a great figure, how can I wear it if I buy it?"
Knowing that Lin Ying’s Shanghainese wasn’t fluent, the proprietress switched to Mandarin as a joke.
"You have such a small frame, I can't envy you." Lin Ying put the words back and said to Xu Yiwei:
"Come in? It's hot out."
Before entering, Xu Yiwei heard the proprietress mutter to Lin Ying: "Come for lunch at noon."
Following Lin Ying into the room, the sweat on his body finally evaporated. Xu Yiwei was the first to take off his backpack and hold it in his hands. The sweat on his back soaked through his T-shirt, and his long hair stuck to it, making him look like a scarf around his neck in the summer...
The first floor of the gallery is a public area. The overall style is close to the Wabi-Sabi style of natural wood that has been popular in the past two years, but the decorative paintings on the wall are not of a similar style. However, whether you look closely or browse, you will not feel out of place at all, because its color saturation and style are in line with the overall color tone, including the ornaments near the coffee table and sofa.
The style is clean and the details are quite ingenious, so when you walk in, you don’t feel monotonous, but also not too noisy. Instead, it becomes more interesting the more you appreciate it.
Xu Yiwei stopped for a moment, and felt a lot cooler.
Until Lin Ying reminded her, "Let's go upstairs? Our office area is mainly upstairs."
She heard about Lin Ying's identity from Jiang Shu. She is currently the operations director of this gallery and has been in this industry for more than six years. Before coming to the gallery, she worked as a business assistant in a cultural center. At that time, she had experience in organizing exhibitions and identifying paintings. Her vision and aesthetic taste are very good.
After following her into her own office, Xu Yiwei sighed inwardly - it was indeed so.
She keenly caught the scent of tuberose - this was not aromatherapy, but real floral fragrance. The smell came naturally, without any aftertaste of chemical fragrances that rushed into the nose after being distilled at high temperature.
Apart from the smell, the decoration of Lin Ying's office is very simple and refreshing. There are not many decorations on the desk, but it is still humane. There are a few Fuji Polaroid photos under the computer. The content is naturally her and her daughter. Her daughter is simply a replica of her. When she smiles, her eyes are like two stars, bright and dazzling. On the desk, the only thing that seems a bit abrupt is a Hello Kitty pen holder and some small blind boxes of figurines - probably her daughter likes them, so she put them in the office.
The bookshelf behind her was filled with magazines and books, ranging from biographies to picture albums, novels, and reference books... everything was there, and it was very complicated.
"Have a seat. The air conditioner just turned on. It will be cool soon."
Lin Ying reminded her, but she had already poured her a cup of warm water while getting the water.
Xu Yiwei thanked her repeatedly and sat down in the chair opposite her desk a little awkwardly.
I thought it would be the HR who came to interview her, but unexpectedly it was the director who interviewed her directly.
“Our gallery is not big, as you can see, with only three floors. The first floor is a public area where artworks are exhibited and clients are negotiated. We occasionally take the initiative to host private exhibitions, but in the past two years, these have become rare. We mostly lend works and take commissions from curators. The venue is also more flexible and efficient.
The second floor is the main office area. There are only a dozen colleagues now. One is in charge of finance, three are in charge of planning and publicity, and the rest are agents. They are responsible for our core business, mainly negotiating with artists and the lending and resale of artworks, as well as the market, maintaining channels and negotiating business cooperation. You can also understand them as sales in our industry. The rest are administrative. Xiao Xie used to work downstairs, but since we no longer undertake exhibitions, the security guard downstairs is enough. In the future, I still hope that the administrative staff can be closer to us, and we can discuss things sometimes on the second floor.
Half of the third floor is a linen room, and the other half is a rooftop. When the weather is nice, colleagues will chat, smoke, and drink coffee on the rooftop. When the mood strikes, they can sketch or play guitar.
She fluently introduced the current situation of the gallery, combining the space with the personnel structure, and even briefly touched upon the daily pastimes of her colleagues, which was truly vivid.
After hearing this, Xu Yiwei couldn't help but want to praise such expression ability, but she was worried in her heart. Could she afford such a good working environment?
Just when she thought Lin Ying was going to ask her to introduce herself, she took a different approach and asked directly -
"You seem to have quite a lot of experience. Could you please pick out a moment that you're most satisfied with and share it with me?"
This was a question that broke the routine, but it was not tricky. Lin Ying did not ask her to read her resume, nor did she ask questions based on a certain point in the resume. Instead, she pointed out a direction and asked her to talk about which part of her past she was most satisfied with.
Xu Yiwei followed this question, letting her thoughts take her back to that summer three years ago...
When she was eighteen years old, she attended a grand international art exhibition, where she met her first love who changed her destiny.
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