Chapter 1: Why Are You Here?

 

"Your grades are very good, and you interned at a brokerage investment bank when you were in school. Your resume says that the investment bank also sent you an offer before graduation. So let's talk about it, why don't you let the big domestic brokerages go, and choose to come to Xinxing Capital."

The man's voice was cool and measured, carrying the weight of authority. After studying the resume in his hand with deliberate thoroughness, he raised his eyes and fixed them on the young woman who'd come for the interview.

He possessed a rather outstanding face—the kind that commanded attention without demanding it. A pair of silver-gray fine-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his high nose, lending him an air of refined sophistication.

The glasses made him look gentleman-like yet somehow cold and ascetic, as if he existed slightly removed from ordinary concerns. At first glance, his temperament read as elegant. Look closer, and you'd taste a faint coldness and shrewdness—edges carefully hidden but unmistakably sharp.

Beneath those lenses lay a pair of silent but penetrating eyes that seemed to see everything, to read between every line and beneath every surface. The corner of his eyes tilted upward slightly, and a small mole marked the corner of his left eye—the finishing touch to his facial features, making his whole face resemble that of an elegant demon.

Zhong Qing silently drew in a breath, holding it in her chest.

She told herself: be more natural, more natural.

This was the final hurdle. She'd just successfully navigated questions from the other interviewers, and now, as long as she passed muster with the man before her, she could successfully secure her position at Xinxing Capital.

It was time to put her real acting skills to the test.

She had to deliver an excellent and sincere answer—one that wouldn't allow those sharp eyes to discover her true purpose.

Zhong Qing smiled, the corners of her lips curling at a specific, practiced angle. Someone had once told her that when she smiled like this, she looked innocent and honest—disarmingly so.

Her eyes swept humbly and sincerely over the row of interviewers, then finally settled on the face of the man in the center.

This man named Qiao Mingxuan, whom she'd studied carefully before coming to the interview, was the business leader of Xinxing Capital's FA division and also the youngest MD at Xinxing Capital.

When she looked at him, he was also looking at her—an exchange of gazes weighted with unspoken assessment.

She carefully and quietly armed herself against his eyes that seemed capable of seeing through everything. In the clean, crisp voice unique to a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, she explained sincerely: "Because, I don't want to choose a company that is already the best, and the room for growth in such a company is already very limited. I want to join the most promising company and witness its tremendous growth in the future, and in this growth, I may have a lot of credit."

After finishing, she smiled with calculated honesty, her sincerity radiating like sunlight.

She saw the person before her raise his eyebrows—an almost imperceptible movement.

What did that mean? Satisfaction or skepticism about her answer?

His projected gaze seemed to sharpen, becoming more scrutinizing. Zhong Qing made her smile even more harmless and sincere, embodying every young college student who'd just stepped outside their campus doors—clean and simple with just the right touch of eager enthusiasm.

"If you were asked to describe yourself in one word, what kind of person do you think you are."

The man looked at Zhong Qing and posed another question, his tone conversational yet somehow still testing.

After a deliberate pause, he added: "Smart, self-motivated, studious, anti-pressure, team spirit, able to endure hardships and be willing to suffer losses, etc., these have been said to be vulgar, and I look forward to you giving a different answer."

...?

Zhong Qing had never encountered such a question in all her interview preparation.

He'd eliminated the vast majority of words she could use, leaving her with precious few positive characteristics to draw from.

Then she'd choose one—

"Before I have had time to go through the beatings of society, I think I am still a relatively honest person." Zhong Qing replied with a smile that aimed for self-deprecating charm.

She saw Qiao Mingxuan's mouth corner lift almost imperceptibly. But it didn't quite look like a smile—more like the ghost of amusement.

She felt that people who'd spent years in the workplace had truly complex expressions. Simple muscle movements somehow carried layers of unreadable meaning.

After Qiao Mingxuan asked this question, he set down Zhong Qing's resume and turned to his colleagues conducting the interview with him. "I have nothing to ask, do you have anything else to ask?"

Everyone shook their heads, displaying preliminary satisfaction with Zhong Qing's performance.

Qiao Mingxuan lowered his eyes to retrieve another resume, and HR, seeing this cue, said to Zhong Qing: "It's okay, classmate, we will call you to tell you the final result, go back and wait for our notice."

Zhong Qing stood up, bowed to all the interviewers again, and said thank you and goodbye to everyone with a good-looking and sincere smile that seemed to light up the room.

Her smile and voice seemed almost infectious. After she exited, HR and several other interviewers couldn't help but discuss among themselves: "This girl is good, she loves to laugh, her appearance is pleasant, and her personality is indeed as she said herself—she looks quite sincere at first glance."

"Right, Mr. Qiao?" Someone turned to seek Qiao Mingxuan's agreement.

Qiao Mingxuan raised his eyebrows lightly and made no sound. His eyes flashed back to an image of the girl—long hair cascading over her shoulders, white teeth flashing in that brilliant smile.

Sincerity.

She'd embellished her speech with a northern dialect that sounded very down-to-earth, different because it wasn't overly polished or cultured.

The dictionary definition of sincere: simple, genuine, and not false.

If he hadn't witnessed the scene outside the conference room before the interview started, he might have agreed—she was a very honest girl.

Perhaps.

Zhong Qing had taken the bus early that morning to Xinxing Capital to participate in the interview.

The interview was arranged in a conference room. Outside lay the interview waiting area, with several rows of benches occupied by numerous candidates.

She'd heard that Xinxing Capital was only recruiting three people this time. Zhong Qing looked around at those waiting for their turn and thought to herself: everyone here is a competitor.

But in truth, competition itself wasn't frightening. What was frightening was how competition could breed crooked thoughts and underhanded tactics.

Zhong Qing had originally wanted to turn a blind eye to such behavior, but unfortunately, it was unfolding too close to her to ignore.

Sitting in the same row of chairs were a man and a woman. From their conversation, they were clearly classmates who'd both submitted resumes to Xinxing Capital. She listened as they chatted—the male classmate was very socially adept, while the female classmate seemed rather bookish and naive.

The female classmate had apparently gotten up early and rushed here without time to put in her contact lenses, wearing only thick black-rimmed glasses.

After sitting down, she'd twisted open the lid of her contact lens case and placed it on the armrest of the seat. She removed her black glasses and set them on the armrest as well, preparing to change from frames to contacts.

When she reached for wet wipes to clean her hands, Zhong Qing sat beside them with an appearance of being engrossed in her materials. But she watched the male classmate's movements clearly.

The male classmate "accidentally" knocked over the female classmate's contact lens case and her black-rimmed glasses. When he helped pick them up, he "accidentally" stepped on the frames, and the glass lenses cracked immediately. Then he bent down and searched "seriously" for a long time but couldn't find the contact lenses.

After executing all this, he launched into PUA tactics, turning it back on her: "How can you put contact lenses and lens glasses on the armrest? Can this be stabilized? If you don't put it like this, it won't fall off at all! You see, the potion almost splashed on me."

The female classmate fell for his brainwashing trick completely, blaming herself. Her speech became stuttered: "I, I'm sorry, I didn't expect it to drop here... But what should I do now, Wu Ming? I don't have glasses to wear! I am highly myopic and can't see anything clearly without glasses. How can I possibly perform well in the interview?"

The male classmate "comforted" her with poisonous kindness: "Don't take this interview so seriously, you study well, if this company can't do it, you can go to other places."

While ostensibly "comforting" the female classmate not to be nervous, he kept creating more nervous mental pressure, layer upon layer. The female classmate was so thoroughly "comforted" by him that she almost gave up on the interview entirely.

Zhong Qing sat aside and watched calmly, her expression neutral. She felt chilled by the calculating cruelty of her male classmate's tactics.

She was sitting next to the male classmate. On the armrest between them sat two paper cups containing black coffee taken from the Xinxing Capital coffee machine. When she'd first sat down and couldn't suppress a yawn, the female classmate had kindly brought her a cup when fetching coffee.

Zhong Qing looked at the coffee and sighed internally. She wasn't a particularly nosy person, but she was someone who couldn't ignore even a small favor from others.

So next, she'd simply repay this cup of coffee.

Zhong Qing calmly picked up the coffee and took a sip. When she set it down, she gently pushed the male classmate's cup to a delicately precarious position.

Then she bent down with the pen in her hand and straightened up. She raised the pen and tapped the male classmate on the shoulder, asking with a smile: "Classmate, did you drop this pen?"

The male classmate turned around in response, and the tip of his elbow struck his own cup of coffee.

The paper cup toppled like a child with an unstable base. In an instant, it fell, spilling its stomach full of black coffee across the armrest of the seat. The liquid splashed onto his light-colored shirt and trousers.

The male classmate immediately panicked. Zhong Qing screamed with even more apparent panic than him: "Are you okay, classmate?" While calling out, she wiped the seat armrest with tissue, and after cleaning the armrest, she moved directly to wipe the coffee stains on the male classmate's body—the transition was natural and seamless.

The male classmate's expression turned hideous. He slapped Zhong Qing's hand away: "Don't wipe it! You wipe the handrail first and then wipe me—the more you wipe it, the dirtier it gets!"

Zhong Qing looked perfectly innocent, employing a similar tactic to turn it back on him: "Classmate, you just shouldn't put your own cup of coffee on the armrest. If you hadn't placed it there, when you turned around, you wouldn't have knocked it down..."

The male classmate glared at Zhong Qing, originally wanting to blame her harshly. But when he met her harmless face, so full of honest concern, the words died in his throat.

Thinking about what she'd said, he realized the fallen paper cup was indeed his own, and the coffee in the cup had indeed been spilled by his own movement. His complaints lodged in his throat, unable to find a reasonable excuse to vent.

In the end, he could only say in a very poor tone: "You didn't pick up my pen! What do you think you're talking to me for? You made me splash coffee all over myself!"

After finishing, he got up and ran out toward the bathroom to deal with the coffee stains on his body. But after running two steps, he turned back, reached out and grabbed his backpack, then ran out again.

As he rushed out, he seemed to bump into someone at the entrance to the waiting area.

Zhong Qing felt a little strange about this—so anxious, yet he didn't forget to come back for his backpack. She wondered what treasures it contained.

The interview was about to begin, and Zhong Qing was scheduled first. She seized the time to move next to the female classmate and comforted her with a simple, warm smile: "Don't be nervous, it doesn't matter if you can't see clearly. The interviewer is evaluating our ability, not our vision."

The smile she put on was said to make people feel very reassured when they saw it.

The female classmate's mood stabilized visibly. She thanked Zhong Qing with a grateful smile: "It's amazing, I really don't seem so nervous now. Thank you, classmate! My name is Ling Na, how about you?"

At this moment, a man in a straight suit walked purposefully through the waiting area and into the interview conference room—he appeared to be the person the male classmate had bumped into when running out.

After a few seconds, the human resources specialist stood at the door of the conference room and called out: "Start the interview now. Is Zhong Qing here?"

"Yes."

Zhong Qing looked up and responded, then turned to Ling Na and said with a smile: "Hello, my name is Zhong Qing."

After the interview concluded, when Zhong Qing walked out of the conference room, she appropriately dialed back the brightness of her smile, turning the corners of her mouth that had been raised high into a shallow, subtle curve.

A very friendly and easy-to-talk expression—approachable but not overeager.

Someone in the last row waved to her—Ling Na, the girl she'd met while waiting for her interview. She smiled and walked over.

"How was it? Was it difficult? Were the interview questions hard to answer?" Ling Na asked in a low, nervous voice.

Zhong Qing smiled and shook her head reassuringly. "It's not difficult, don't be nervous. Didn't you say you'd rehearsed all the interview questions from the world's top 500 companies when chatting with your classmate? Don't worry, with your current level, let alone doing business, it's no problem to go directly into HR."

Ling Na smiled nervously, shyly, but with a little relief blooming in her expression.

Zhong Qing glanced at the empty seat next to her and asked casually: "Haven't the male classmates who came to the interview with you come back yet?"

"Do you mean Wu Ming?" Ling Na turned around and looked at the door before replying, "He went to deal with the coffee stains on his body. By the way, why hasn't he come back yet..."

"Leave him alone," Zhong Qing hoped that Ling Na could hear her underlying meaning. "Prepare for your own interview first."

"Hmm!" Ling Na nodded in response, then began checking her resume and materials in hand.

Suddenly, she became panicked again. "What about my various award certificates? I just put them next to the armrest, why are they gone?"

She began rummaging frantically, but couldn't find them anywhere.

At this moment, the earlier scene flashed through Zhong Qing's mind—the boy turning back to retrieve his backpack.

She couldn't help but form a bold hypothesis: the certificates Ling Na was looking for might have been hidden in his backpack by the male classmate.

But now wasn't the time to discuss the truth. She steadied Ling Na, asking her not to panic: "If you can't find the originals, do you have copies?"

Ling Na was still very panicked, shaking her head. "When I received the HR call, I asked, and they said that except for the graduation certificate and degree certificate, other certificates don't need copies, only originals. So I didn't prepare copies of those award certificates! What should I do now? If the interviewer asks me if the awards I've won are true, how can I prove it? If I say I'm sorry, I don't know when the certificate went missing, will it affect their impression of me?"

...Yes.

Because it would seem utterly absurd.

Zhong Qing thought quickly: "If there's no copy, have you ever taken photos? Think about it."

Ling Na's eyes immediately lit up like lanterns. "Yes! Every time a certificate came, I would take a picture and send it to my parents to make them happy!"

Zhong Qing immediately suggested: "Then now, go to the front desk and ask them to help print out all the photos of the certificates."

Ling Na seemed saved from drowning. She immediately grabbed her mobile phone and ran out to seek help from the front desk.

After leaving Xinxing Capital, Zhong Qing hurried to the building's bathroom to change out of her formal interview outfit. She was cautious in the process, moving with an almost pious gratitude.

She changed back into the white shirt and jeans from her backpack, then gathered her long shoulder-length hair into a neat ponytail in front of the mirror.

She had a lot of hair—when worn down, it was like a quilt draped over her shoulders. She was usually accustomed to tying it up, which was more convenient for work.

But everyone said she looked very dignified with her hair down, so she'd worn it loose for the interview.

However, flowing hair was more suitable for girls who were treated well and didn't need to work multiple jobs. It wasn't suitable for someone like her who had to work at least three jobs daily. So now she was changing herself back to her original form.

She carefully put away the changed suit and checked her phone—the bus she needed to catch would arrive at the station in five minutes.

She quickly shouldered her backpack and strode out of the bathroom. She ran too fast and bumped into someone entering from the opposite direction.

Zhong Qing quickly steadied herself, apologizing while bowing repeatedly. Her neck bent one after another, and what caught her eye were two long legs in straight suit pants.

One of the building's elite professionals.

She turned sideways to let the elite pass first, keeping her head half-lowered, glancing down at the time on her phone.

She looked anxious but still waited politely to let the other person pass first.

As soon as the elite passed her, she immediately pulled her legs free and continued rushing, perfectly demonstrating that every second counted.

Qiao Mingxuan stood still and looked back at the retreating ponytail.

It was the "sincere" girl named Zhong Qing, without question.

As she'd half-lowered her head, his gaze had slid over the crown of her head and caught just the tip of her nose and lips.

A very beautiful profile—the kind of refreshing beauty that belonged to youthful vitality.

She'd only apologized but hadn't shown any curiosity about whom she'd bumped into.

In such a short time, she'd changed into simple clothes and was rushing out so hurriedly. He wondered what she was doing.

This girl's words and actions seemed different everywhere, nothing quite aligning with the image she'd presented.

He retracted his gaze and walked into the men's bathroom.

---

Zhong Qing ran to the bus stop in one breath, completing a perfect rendezvous with the bus she'd been hoping to catch.

Having missed rush hour and with few people on the bus, she found a seat and sat down.

She was certain that the person she'd just bumped into was Qiao Mingxuan.

When she'd made way for him, she'd deliberately not looked up, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. She'd also deliberately lowered her head to a precisely calculated angle.

One of the suitors she'd rejected had once told her that when she lowered her head like that, you couldn't quite tell which feature drew the eye—whether it was her nose or lips, or the atmospheric sense created by her hazy facial features.

She had the least intention of engaging in these technical expressions or movements designed to increase people's favor. But this time, she genuinely wanted to attract Qiao Mingxuan's attention—she not only had to work at Xinxing Capital, but she also had to stay close to him.

So as long as there was even the slightest opportunity, she had to seize it in time and try to capture his attention.

And to attract a person's attention and curiosity, you must not acknowledge them when they see you. Not only must you not acknowledge them, but you must hurry away as if dealing with something far more important than them.

She seemed to have seized the opportunity and done well.

After half an hour of swaying as the bus stopped and started, Zhong Qing arrived at her university.

She'd graduated and moved away from school after finishing her degree, but this time she'd returned to give back the clothes in her backpack to her junior—the expensive formal dress she'd worn for the interview had been lent to her by this younger student.

After returning the clothes and solemnly thanking the underclassman, she plunged headlong onto the bus heading to the city's outskirts.

The place she was going to was the junction of city and countryside, where rent was cheap and the air environment was good—the "farmhouse" area where white-collar workers from the city were most willing to come to relieve stress on weekends.

Zhong Qing had used money earned from her part-time jobs to rent a room and small courtyard here. She and Yi Chengcheng had settled in this small courtyard on the city's outskirts.

Thinking of Yi Chengcheng... thinking of her shy, smiling appearance from before, and thinking of her current state of silence.

Thinking of the once-beautiful Yi family's descent into miserable poverty, thinking that circumstances had changed so drastically, and Yi Chengcheng was the only one left of the Yi family...

Zhong Qing's heart sank heavily.

How miserable and poor was her life when she was a child?

Zhong Qing thought that if she went on one of those reality shows about life transformation, she would definitely win a wave of sympathy and tears of pity from people across the nation.

It was that miserable.

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