Chapter 203: You've made it. Were you just acting like a spoiled child with me?
"Captain, don't be nervous. This is a good thing. Take a deep breath first... What I mean is, if you are nervous at the time, you can learn to take deep breaths like me. Just remember to inhale - exhale - inhale - exhale - maintain the rhythm of breathing." Wen Wenxu taught Zhu Yingning how to relax when he was nervous while glancing at the rearview mirror.
Chen Fei interrupted his incoherent and rambling words: "...Okay, you think you are giving birth to a child? The captain is not nervous, I think you are more nervous."
As the car was about to turn into the high-speed rail station, Wang Shengju, who was sitting in the passenger seat, reminded Wen Wenxu: "Talk less and watch the road more."
Wen Wenxu had no choice but to keep his eyes on the road ahead.
This time, not only Wen Wenxu and Shen Fei came to see Zhu Yingning off, but also Wang Shengju and Yan Zi, who did not need to be on duty, came.
It’s nothing, it’s all because of that phone call two days ago.
"This is the first time we've seen the central government directly invite people to attend a forum they're hosting," Wang Shengju said. "It shows they're paying special attention to our village's poverty alleviation projects. Yingning, you've made it big."
The call that day was from the township leader, who said that she had just received an important notice from the county party committee office. The General Office of the Central Committee specifically asked her to participate in a national forum with the theme of "Agricultural and Commercial Interconnection, Poverty Alleviation and Revitalization", and asked her and Wang Shengju to hurry to the township to see the specific documents in person.
She had no idea what was happening. She went to the township with Wang Shengju in a daze, then went to the county in a daze, read the intranet documents in a daze, and looked at the time carefully - she didn't have time to savor the surprise, and the first thing she felt was shock, because this forum was going to be held in three days!
Fortunately, the invitation given to her was only to invite her and the company leaders to share the poverty alleviation experience of combining agriculture and commerce, and no other requirements were made.
But this is already scary enough.
The document stated that the speaking time was ten minutes, which meant that she not only had to rush out a PPT and speech draft, figure out what clothes to wear for the speech, but also had to cooperate with Xu Sirui, because he was the so-called "head of the company."
As another unlucky guy who was suddenly notified to give a speech on stage and share his success experience with everyone, Xu Sirui had to temporarily postpone many work arrangements and buy a plane ticket from Shanghai to fly back to Beijing.
Considering that he was also in a hurry to return to Beijing and was exhausted from the journey, Zhu Yingning did not bother him. Instead, she called Zhou Tianqing and asked her to help her prepare a set of clothes for formal occasions.
Actually, I should have looked for Zhu Zhiwei, but she hadn't been in Beijing recently. She said, "I do have a few formal suits left in my apartment in Beijing. I can ask Jia Ting to send them to you. It's a pity that the annoying kid can't tell the difference. I don't know what's going on, but he doesn't like to dress up at all. He's nothing like me."
Zhu Yingning knew Zhu Zhiwei didn't really believe that all girls should dress up, but rather that her biggest concern was that Chu Jiating was Gu Dachun's ancestry. She was afraid of seeing even a hint of Gu Dachun in Jiating. The fact that she didn't dress up clearly made her look more like Gu Dachun.
She had no choice but to quickly comfort Zhu Zhiwei: "I don't like dressing up either. You see, I don't like dressing up so much that I have to borrow clothes from you guys for formal occasions. Jia Ting didn't take after you, maybe she took after me."
Zhu Zhi smiled and said, "You have a big mouth! What nonsense are you talking about?"
"I'm not talking nonsense. I often think that Jia Ting might be my child."
She laughed loudly on the other end of the phone: "Don't let her hear you say this, or she'll really run away and become your daughter. She loves you so much, Ningning. Do you remember the day I took her away from the village? You wrote her a letter, and the child cried after reading it."
After hanging up the phone, Zhu Yingning took a long time to calm down before calling Zhou Tianqing.
"Okay." After hearing her request, Zhou Tianqing not only agreed readily, but also said that he would come to pick her up in person when the high-speed train arrived at the station.
It was precisely because everyone around her supported and encouraged her that Zhu Yingning felt more and more that she must not let anyone down.
Therefore, she hardly slept for the past two days, and used all her spare time to make PPTs and speeches.
Originally, Xu Sirui said that he could help her with part of the work, but she was worried that he didn't know enough about the specific poverty alleviation work in her village, and that he didn't know enough about the standards of official documents. In short, she was uneasy about this and that, so she refused to agree and took on the draft herself.
"I'll send it to you when I finish writing it. If you have anything you want to add, please add it," she said.
Xu Sirui was both angry and amused when he heard this: "During your college years, when you were doing group work, were you always the one who took on the responsibility of doing the work of four people?"
"How can it be so exaggerated..." She muttered, "It's just because the schedule is too tight this time. If I had more time, I would definitely not do this. Oh, why is it so tight..."
"It means our publicity is effective and the higher-ups have noticed it." He smiled. "That's good news, congratulations Yingning."
Yes, that's a good thing.
It's just that the good news came too suddenly, and she was overwhelmed to welcome it.
On the way to the high-speed rail station, Zhu Yingning looked at her colleagues in the car who had come to see her off, and she thought to herself, tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn't tell if she was nervous, but she could sense she was about to die. She had only slept for two hours in two days, and the forum officially began tomorrow morning. Given her tendency to get too excited to sleep the next day, she definitely wouldn't be able to sleep well tonight.
She humbly checked on her phone whether she would die if she only slept two hours in three days.
Before they could find out anything, the car stopped and arrived at the station entrance. Wen Wenxu pulled the handbrake and reminded her again, "Captain, remember to breathe!"
She got out of the car, slung over her simple travel bag and looked back, only to see the car window rolled down and a whole car full of people looking at her, their eyes full of expectation, just like the ancient people watching the scholar who represented the hopes of the whole village go to Beijing for the imperial examination.
She raised her arms and waved, shouting, "I'll do my best!"
**
After getting on the high-speed train, she checked the manuscript one last time before sending it to Xu Sirui, asking him to review it and add some details to it.
After Xu Sirui finished reading the manuscript she sent, he asked sincerely, "...You've already written my entire speech, what else do you want me to add?"
She laughed dryly. "Haha, I can't help it. I was writing so smoothly that I accidentally wrote yours." Then she asked nervously, "Do you think it would be better for me to memorize the script? If I don't recite it in this kind of situation, wouldn't it seem disrespectful? What if everyone else memorizes it and we're the only ones who don't? It would seem insincere."
He said with a headache on the other end of the phone: "Compared to this, I care more about when you last slept."
"Don't worry, people don't die so easily. Life is very tenacious. Wildfires can't burn it all out, and spring breezes will bring it back to life."
“…”
"I'd better memorize it. Otherwise, I'm too worried. Besides, I haven't practiced it thoroughly yet. If I talk about it for more than ten minutes, it's over."
"You take a nap in the car now, leave your phone on, and I'll wake you up when the car arrives at the station."
"No, I haven't even started to recite..."
"Just sleep when I tell you to!"
"Okay, okay."
She was startled by Xu Sirui's suddenly raised voice. She shrank her neck and didn't know why she was so cowardly. After he yelled at her, all the random thoughts floating around in her mind suddenly died down. She closed her eyes and slumped herself deeply against the back of the seat.
She thought she would toss and turn for a long time before falling asleep, and even if she did fall asleep, it would be intermittent. Unexpectedly, she fell into a deep dream within a few minutes of closing her eyes.
I slept so soundly that it was almost as if I had fainted.
When getting off the bus, Xu Sirui almost failed to wake her up. He called out "Zhu Yingning" more than ten times on the other end of the phone before she slowly woke up. At his urging, she got off the bus in a daze with her backpack on her shoulder and followed the crowd to the exit.
The person waiting at the exit wasn't Zhou Tianqing, who had agreed to pick her up, but Xu Sirui. It would have been fine if it was him, but the key was that the car was still Zhou Tianqing's.
"Where's my aunt?"
"I drove him away."
“…”
Xu Sirui opened the passenger door first, pointed at the seat with his chin, and said, "Get in."
She threw her backpack into the back seat and climbed onto the passenger seat of the SUV using her hands and feet. Just as she fastened her seat belt, Xu Sirui got into the driver's seat, reached out and shook down the passenger seat back, threw her a blindfold, and pulled down the front sunshade.
Everything seemed to be prepared for sleep. Zhu Yingning held the eye mask weakly and helplessly: "I just slept for a long time in the car. I don't need it now...?"
Xu Sirui glared at her, and she immediately raised her hands in surrender: "Okay, okay... I'll continue sleeping, okay?"
I put on the eye mask, thinking that I would not be able to fall asleep again after having just had a sound sleep. However, I didn't expect that as soon as I touched the back of the chair, I quickly lost consciousness again.
**
They went to the house where they lived in high school. Zhou Tianlan had just returned from a trip and was very happy to see her. She held her in her arms and rubbed her until Xu Sirui reminded her, "Mom, we have important things to do." Only then did she reluctantly let go and urged them to go to the kitchen to eat dinner and then go to the study to review the manuscript.
Having made up for the sleep he had missed along the way, Zhu Yingning was halfway through memorizing his speech when he even felt that it wouldn't matter if he stayed up all night, as he would definitely have enough energy to handle the speech tomorrow.
But Xu Sirui sat across from her like a demon. Seeing that she had almost finished reciting, he immediately closed the computer and said, "Go take a shower and go to bed."
"Ah?! Sleeping again!" She couldn't help but whine, "I just fell asleep, why are you sleeping again now?"
Xu Sirui sneered: "We just had lunch at noon, why do we have to eat again at night?"
“…”
Unable to argue with this great scholar with strange logic, Zhu Yingning could only roll up her clothes and go to the bathroom to take a shower. After the shower, Zhou Tianlan's maternal love came to her head and she insisted on blow-drying her hair and even gave her an essential oil treatment.
It’s worth mentioning that after the essential oil treatment, she felt sleepy again.
She deeply suspected that the mother and son had learned some kind of sleep-inducing magic.
When she lay in bed at night, she was still unwilling to give up and wanted to make a plan B. She had no choice but to give up until all her things were taken away by Xu Sirui.
"I think I need to write a longer manuscript to be on the safe side." She sighed under the covers, trying to reason with him. "Think about it, studies have shown that when people are nervous, they speak faster than when they are not. I just reviewed the manuscript with you, and it took exactly ten minutes to finish. What does this mean? It means that when we officially start tomorrow, there is a high probability that we will speak for less than ten minutes. We are doomed, Xu Sirui."
“…”
He leaned against the door frame with a serious face, until he heard the words "We are finished, Xu Sirui", then he could not help but hold his forehead with his hand and laughed.
The room was not big, and even though there was some distance between them, his laughter seemed very close, as if it was whispering in her ear, making the air vibrate in an ambiguous way.
"What are you laughing at?" She was a little annoyed by his laughter, and pulled up the quilt to cover the lower half of her face, leaving only a pair of eyes exposed.
Xu Sirui put down his hands, folded his arms loosely, and leaned his head lazily against the door frame.
He was standing with his back to the light, and she couldn't see his expression.
Even if she couldn't see it, she could guess that he must be smiling and raising his eyebrows, because he said, "Were you just acting like a spoiled child with me, Zhu Yingning?"
These words startled her so much that she lost all her sleepiness and immediately sat up from the bed: "I didn't!"
"No, no, why are you so excited?" He lowered his arms and walked towards her.
She quickly lay down again, this time pulling the quilt higher to cover her entire face, fearing that Xu Sirui would suddenly do something.
But he did nothing.
He simply reached out and pinched her face through the quilt—his thumb and middle finger pinching each side of her face. Then he whispered, "Okay, go to sleep. Let's change the order of the speeches tomorrow. You go first, and then it's my turn. If you really speak too fast, I promise to make up for it in the remaining time, okay?"
"What if I speak too slowly?" she mumbled under the quilt.
"If you're slow, I'll cut off the outline and tell you to talk less." He smiled. "Anyway, just keep talking. Whether it's too long or too short, I'll cover it for you."
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