6. Snow in a silver bowl
◎It belongs to her, even from afar. ◎
After a brief interruption, the office quickly returned to normal, and everyone resumed their work.
Shang Xinuan was originally listening attentively to Yu Jiayue's adjustment of ideas, but after stealing a glance at Li Xiran, her soul seemed to fly away, leaving only her hands tapping on the keyboard.
She usually saw Li Xiran when he was resting, but when he was working, he would subconsciously shed his outward emotions, and his face would be calm and expressionless.
He seemed to dislike reading electronic documents; besides the piles of paper documents on his desk, the printer next to him was almost always running.
He would circle the parts he thought were inappropriate with a pen and add annotations.
Although Shang Xinuan couldn't see the annotations clearly from a short distance, she could still sense his restrained penmanship and the bold, unrestrained style of his handwriting.
Of course, he would also suddenly look at her.
When their eyes met, he seemed completely unsurprised by her curious and thoughtful gaze.
She simply gestured that she should pay attention in class.
Shang Xinuan then snapped out of her reverie and looked at the densely packed revision comments in Yu Jiayue's document.
“Your first draft was actually fine in terms of direction, but I’ve come up with a few core organizational sequences for you to consider and choose from,” Yu Jiayue said. “Moreover, your paper is more in-depth than I expected, and I can’t bear to change your original way of thinking.”
Shang Xinuan: "You've worked hard. I'll treat you to lunch."
Yu Jiayue leaned back in his chair, the young man in his early twenties exuding youthful exuberance. "No, I have to rush back to the TV station later. I need to check an interview transcript with my colleagues."
“But we’ll pay for this meal later when we go to Cambridge together,” he added.
Shang Xin paused, then asked, "Are you going to Cambridge?"
"Aren't you going?" Yu Jiayue asked in surprise. "Although Peking University is good, Cambridge's resources and faculty seem to be more in line with our research direction."
Shang Xinuan's fingers slid unconsciously across the computer touchscreen, just like her mind at that moment, blank and disordered.
"I...I probably want to be closer to home." After a long pause, she finally managed to utter this sentence.
“It’s okay, take your time to think about it.” Yu Jiayue looked at her. “We’ve always been in the same research group. Whether you choose Peking University or Cambridge, I will definitely be on your side.”
The young man's straightforward and undisguised thoughts even made Shang Xinu pause for a moment.
She subconsciously glanced up at Li Xiran, only to see him still engrossed in marking and annotating, seemingly oblivious to their conversation.
"I heard a fresh milk tea shop opened in the suburbs. Have you and Xixi checked it out?" In the past, she and Qiao Xi loved to explore new shops all over Shanghai. From clothing and jewelry to local delicacies, they were practically experts in Shanghai.
"Xixi just returned to China and is busy with the onboarding design for her new company. She hasn't had time yet."
“Indeed.” Yu Jiayue changed the subject. “I heard it from my colleagues at the station. They said the owner originally grew tea, but then he got a girlfriend who liked milk tea, so he went to the suburbs to lease a piece of land, where he raised cattle and grew tea. He made handmade fresh milk tea for his girlfriend.”
"Moreover, that milk tea shop doesn't offer delivery service, saying that it relies entirely on the warm temperature to maintain the taste of the tea. This has attracted many people to make a special trip there just to taste the fresh milk tea."
Shang Xinuan couldn't help but exclaim, "Traveling thousands of miles is quite romantic."
"Are you free tomorrow? Let's invite Boss Jiang, Fairy Ruan, and Xixi to go out and have some fun. Also, a new racetrack just opened next to that milk tea shop, and I remember you like horseback riding."
She suddenly became obsessed with horseback riding during her freshman year of college, and even begged Shang Zun to open a horse farm for her in Shanghai. However, when a news story broke that year about a horse being startled and trampling an actor to death, Shang Zun rejected her request.
In the end, she still owned a horse farm.
It was Li Xiran who traveled thousands of miles to Yijing, where land is incredibly valuable, to secure a plot of land for her and build a private horse farm that is not open to the public.
During the New Year, she also spent two days playing with Li Xiran and Yi Jing's group of uncles and aunts.
It's been two or three months since I last went to see it.
"Are you going?" Yu Jiayue asked her eagerly.
After much deliberation, Shang Xinuan shook her head. She didn't want to disappear all the time as soon as she arrived at the Li family, making it seem like she was only trying to get close to Li Xiran.
"You need to do an internship, and I need to revise my thesis. Xixi is working on a design, Ruan Xiannv is busy with her art exhibition, and Boss Jiang is practically living in the bar lately. We can't do it for now..."
Her excellent reason for declining even made Li Xiran, who was drinking water, choke.
Feeling awkward, Yu Jiayue suddenly asked Li Xiran, "Chairman Li, that boss is about your age. Given your social experience and status, would you really go to such lengths for your lover?"
Li Xiran put down his water glass, his expression gentle, even his voice was slow and gentle, "Although I don't want to shatter your beautiful illusions, the marketing strategy of that milk tea shop was done by a friend of mine."
"A deeply moving love story, presented in an unconventional way. Spending a fortune just to win a smile from a beautiful woman—it's hard not to be attracted to young people like you."
"But given my social experience and social standing, I wouldn't need to go through all that trouble."
A shrewd capitalist, a truly brilliant answer.
Shang Xinuan thought of her little horse farm again, which she had indeed achieved with ease in front of Li Xiran.
She even wondered if this counted as him spending a fortune on her just to win a smile from a beautiful woman.
"Mr. Li, do you usually drink milk tea like a young person?"
Li Xiran lowered his head and continued annotating the documents, but still answered his question seriously, "I usually drink a lot of tea."
At this moment, Chen Ti knocked on the door, "Chairman Li, the conference room is ready and waiting for you."
Li Xi then picked up a fountain pen, folded the document he had just annotated, and threw it into the shredder behind him before getting up.
Shang Xin followed his figure to the door. He hadn't spoken to her all morning.
She remained unmoved by Yu Jiayue's direct pursuit of her, and her mood inevitably became depressed.
But just as he was about to push open the office door, he suddenly turned around.
With a serious expression and a tone like that of an elder, he said to her, "Don't run around. Focus on writing your thesis. I'll come back to check it."
Shang Xinuan recalled the last time she heard this sentence was when she was in elementary school, sitting in Shang Zun's office doing her homework.
Shang Zun gave her the same instructions before the meeting.
-
Li Xiran had only been in a meeting for five minutes when Yu Jiayue received a call from a colleague and hurriedly said goodbye and left.
Suddenly, she was all alone in the huge office.
It wasn't until noon that Chen Ti knocked on the door again. "Miss Nuan Nuan, I'll take you to lunch."
Shang Xinuan was taken by Chen Ti to the staff restaurant of Li's company. She often came here to eat during her freshman year of college and was considered a regular customer.
Chen Ti served her a plate and brought it to her seat.
"Has Uncle finished his meeting yet?" She was still thinking about Li Xiran, who was in the meeting.
"I was so busy serving you rice that I forgot to mention that Chairman Li received a call from the suburbs this morning. He went to deal with the issue of the land for the children's amusement park."
Shang Xinuan, who usually loved the stewed pork ribs here, suddenly found them tasteless today. "Is Uncle always this busy?"
I didn't even have time to go back and say hello to her, or send her a message.
But then she thought that this was a way of reporting her itinerary, and she didn't have that right.
"Busy! I probably won't be back today. I'll take you home after get off work."
"Then I'll have to trouble you." Although she was a little disappointed, she was content to see him every day, even if it was just for a few minutes.
Chen Ti didn't treat her like an outsider, and knew that she was one of the few people around Li Xiran who genuinely cared about him, so she was willing to take the initiative to talk to her. "Actually, Chairman Li works almost year-round. Every day he's either in a meeting room or in his office approving documents. He inspects construction sites every week and travels to various countries every month."
"Chairman Li is already so tired, and many of the group's long-term shareholders still oppose him from time to time. Outsiders see him as high and mighty, but only Chairman Li himself knows the feeling of being bound and constrained."
Behind him are tens of thousands of employees, and on his shoulders lies the entire Li Group.
A large enterprise is often related to local economic development and social stability.
What he carried and endured was something that ordinary people could not empathize with.
“However, it would be good if you could come to the company for a while,” Chen Ti said with a smile. “In the past, when the department encountered difficult issues that they dared not approach Chairman Li with, they would leave them for your visit to get approved.”
Although she could roughly guess the reason behind it, the young lady still wanted to hear it from someone else.
Why did you wait for me to come?
"Everyone in Shanghai knows that Chairman Li dotes on you the most. As long as you are sitting in the office, he will definitely not get angry."
An irrepressible smile played on her lips, and her heart fluttered with an indescribable sweetness. "I've never seen my uncle get angry before."
"It's best not to see them, they're terrifying." After saying that, the two laughed.
It was lunchtime, and almost all of Li's employees were in the cafeteria.
On the surface, everything seemed calm, but the focus of everyone's gaze was unanimously drawn to Shang Xinuan and Chen Ti.
"President Chen personally served the rice and chatted with me. If she's not the boss's wife, I'll punish myself by copying Chairman Li's name a hundred times."
"It must be the boss's wife. After all, it's all over Shanghai. They're just waiting for Miss Shang to graduate so she can get engaged to our Chairman Li."
"Not necessarily. Miss Shang calls our Chairman Li 'uncle,' and wasn't it said that the cheongsam-clad beauty brought by the Empress Dowager is the boss's wife?"
“Miss Shang is a full ten years younger than Chairman Li, and she is also the granddaughter of Chairman Li’s mentor. If this relationship were to happen, how many people would criticize Chairman Li?”
"But Miss Shang likes Chairman Li!"
"Does liking someone mean anything? Their family is surrounded by a complex web of relationships. Would Chairman Li dare to marry her? Would Old Master Shang agree? Could they get past the Empress Dowager?"
"Your industry is really chaotic, let's eat!"
-
After lunch, Chen Ti took Shang Xinuan to stroll around Li's shop, and then sent her back to her office at two o'clock.
"Then you continue your studies, I'm going to work."
Once again, she was the only one left in the office, which returned to its boring and dull state.
At this moment, she remembered what Chen Ti had said about Li Xiran not returning to the company in the afternoon, and she couldn't hide her disappointment.
It turns out that even if I wasn't there, he would still stay at the company...
Suppressing her emotions, she looked forward to tomorrow while revising the first draft all afternoon.
Just half an hour before the end of the workday, the office door suddenly opened.
Li Xiran pushed open the door and entered. He was still wearing the dark suit he wore that morning, and the cuffs of his trousers seemed to be dusty and had not been brushed off.
Her hair showed obvious signs of combing, and the strands of hair at her temples were still damp with water droplets. Her leather shoes looked like they had just been temporarily waxed at the shoe-shining machine downstairs.
In short, while they are precious and elegant, they are also inevitably travel-worn.
As soon as he entered the room, he went straight to her.
Shang Xinuan remembered his words before he left, and immediately turned the computer to show him, "The first draft has been revised."
It took Li Xiran a moment to understand what she meant, and he smiled as he placed the insulated box he was carrying on her desk.
Upon opening the lid, you'll find two elegantly packaged glass bottles of milk tea.
"The popular suburban milk tea you were talking about this morning."
Shang Xin held the glass, still unable to help but be shocked.
Even though he exposed it as a marketing story, she would still go out with Qiao Xi in the future. After all, marketing needs a story to back it up, and she liked that kind of fairytale romance.
Even the logo stickers the boss gave me were cartoon-style wedding certificate photos on a red background.
She thought this must be the protagonist of this love story, the man and woman who traveled thousands of miles to grow tea and raise cattle.
"I thought you weren't coming back. Did you bring me milk tea?" Her eyebrows curved into a smile, and her eyes were overflowing with love.
More than milk tea's love story, she also wanted to know if this long journey was something that belonged to her too.
"I wasn't supposed to come back, but I had an important document that needed to be signed. The construction site I was inspecting happened to be not far from this store, so I brought it back."
Shang Xinuan bit her lip, feeling touched but also disappointed by the word "by the way".
"How can there be two cups? I can't possibly finish them all!"
Li Xiran sat back down at his desk. "Isn't it said that it tastes better when it's warm? I was worried that the journey would be too far and the cup would get cold by the time I brought it back, so I heated one of the cups up, thinking that it would be warm when I brought it back."
"Uncle, isn't that just marketing hype? Actually, the herbal tea won't affect the taste, so why go to all this trouble?" Her heart was pounding, and a warm current seemed to flow through her heart.
"But sometimes I can't deny that young people have a very rare courage to believe in love."
"So I think we should protect this quality of our little Nuannuan."
She looked into his eyes, unable to look away for a long time.
Li Xiran looked back at him, his eyes like calm lake water, yet they stirred her heart like a gentle breeze.
“Uncle, let me warm this cup up a little for you.” Shang Xin’s eyes suddenly welled up with tears. “I also hope that you have that kind of courage.”
"Moreover, whenever I feel that life is going to be difficult, eating something sweet will make me feel better."
Li Xiran chuckled and looked at her, saying, "It's rare to see our young lady experiencing difficulties."
Shang Xinuan gazed at him, nodded solemnly, and suddenly felt a bit more courage than before.
Her voice trembled as she said, "Yes! Some are really difficult. We all want to beg him to give us some response or hints."
A note from the author:
Thank you to all the little angels who voted for me or watered my plants with nutrient solution between 19:36:32 on April 16, 2023 and 00:00:07 on April 18, 2023!
Thank you to the little angel who threw the landmines: a辞. 2 landmines;
Thank you to the little angels who watered the nutrient solution: _ 3 bottles;
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
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