Shang Zhitao finally understood what a business trip at an advertising company really meant. She had always imagined business trips as relaxed, even leisurely. The reality was nonstop.
After that morning's tea, the work never let up. The team split into four groups. Since she had no experience, she was assigned as Luan Nian's assistant, while Lumi was sent to the venue.
Shang Zhitao didn't hold a grudge, and the unpleasantness from that morning faded quickly. But she couldn't tell whether Luan Nian still remembered it, and one by one her colleagues drifted off, leaving just the two of them sitting there.
She felt a little on edge, though she couldn't say exactly why. Being around Luan Nian always put her on edge. She had a vague fear that he'd find some excuse to lecture her again, as if she were still the stubborn student who refused to back down.
"Sit." Luan Nian tipped his chin toward the seat beside him, and Shang Zhitao obeyed. She sat down next to him and caught a faint trace of his scent, something she couldn't quite place, nothing like ordinary cologne. He seemed less sharp-edged than usual, more settled.
Luan Nian turned his laptop toward her, showing the schedule his secretary had just sent over. "We're meeting three clients today. The first has already moved into execution, one part of which is the venue's main visual and overall copy that Lumi is handling. The second has won the bid, but the creative work still needs fine-tuning. The third is a dinner meeting. Sales has been working them for a long time and we're now deep into requirements discovery. Since I'm on the client's whitelist and they specifically requested someone at my level, I need to be there."
He paused, then asked, "Do you remember what I just said?"
Shang Zhitao nodded. "I remember."
"Your job is to prepare meeting minutes for the first two clients and hand them to me right after each meeting. Pay attention to how the clients react and tell me your thoughts once we're done."
"Got it."
"Can you drink?" Luan Nian asked.
"No."
He glanced at her sideways, the thought behind his eyes plain enough to read: can't hold your liquor and still working in advertising? She met his look with a flat, unbothered expression, and he understood that too: so what if I can't?
Shang Zhitao was, in her own way, a little ridiculous. Sometimes she was meek to the point of looking helpless, the kind of person anyone could push around. Other times she'd flare up out of nowhere, just enough to make her seem less like a pushover, though only just.
Once the exchange passed, there was still work to do, so she asked him seriously, "Luke, Lumi mentioned earlier that the Creative Center has a set template for meeting minutes. Could you send me a copy?" Lumi had never actually said any such thing, but a stickler like Luan Nian was bound to have specific requirements, and Shang Zhitao didn't want to get criticized again after the meeting.
Luan Nian pulled up a sample of meeting minutes and sent it over. It was under three hundred words. Shang Zhitao thought she'd misread it, then wondered if he was messing with her. She asked again, "This is what the minutes are supposed to look like?" They were nowhere near as long as what the marketing department produced.
"Mm. Did you read it properly? Write down the key points. No filler."
"I read it."
Shang Zhitao was starting to realize she genuinely couldn't get a read on this man. She'd assumed he had exacting standards for everything, yet here were meeting minutes only a few lines long. He claimed his standards weren't high, but he never stopped finding something to correct.
"Any questions about the work?" he asked.
"None..."
"Let's go."
Once they'd finished discussing work, Luan Nian didn't say another word to her. He stood at the curb, that striking face of his turned toward the street, waiting to flag a taxi. Shang Zhitao pointed to a café nearby with a patio umbrella. "Why don't you wait over there? I'll get the cab." It was the kind of deference a subordinate was supposed to show a boss.
Luan Nian glanced at her. He didn't like it when she acted like this. Most of the people under him behaved the same way, but for some reason it grated on him more coming from her. He almost said something, almost started in on another lecture, but held it back.
Not my problem.
Let her do as she likes.
I'm fine. Why would I waste effort training an idiot?
That's what he told himself, and yet he still moved off to the side and stood there watching as she flagged down the cab.
When the car pulled up, Luan Nian opened the door, glanced at Shang Zhitao's floral skirt, and got in without a word, taking the seat by the far window.
Shang Zhitao got the vague sense that she'd just been looked after, though she also wasn't sure that she had been. She noticed she wasn't as afraid of Luan Nian as she'd been the week before. He had a sharp tongue, but he took his work seriously. He didn't talk much, but every word he said mattered. If she paid attention, he taught her exactly what needed teaching and said exactly what needed saying.
Watching him with a client was nothing like the small, scrappy negotiations she remembered from her internships. She recalled how the weaker students among her peers used to handle meetings with clients, nervous and unsure of their footing, hedging every suggestion. The clients knew exactly how to work that kind of hesitation, sighing things like, "Well, if the budget's really this tight, maybe we should just go with another team."
"You don't need to look elsewhere. We're your best option. Cheap and good."
Luan Nian was nothing like that.
He gave off the impression that it didn't matter whether the client agreed with him or not, only that they should listen, as if he already had the whole situation under control. But he never overplayed it either, never crossed the line into arrogance.
He'd lay out a creative concept and argue it through with the other side properly. If something came up that he disagreed with, he'd slow down, think it over, then start asking the client pointed questions about the idea itself. Unhurried. Composed.
He might ask, "So who exactly is this idea meant to reach? Can we break it down by creative element?"
Or he'd say, "We tried this exact approach three years running and it didn't perform." Then he'd pull up the data right there on his laptop to prove it. It was as if every piece of information in his head was filed and ready, waiting for him to reach for it the instant he needed it.
He could even turn warm with the female executives on the client side. "Cutting the price isn't the strongest move here," he'd say, smiling.
The gentleness caught her off guard every time. When he softened like that, he seemed like an entirely different person, the kind that made people feel like they'd stepped into a warm spring breeze.
Luan Nian kept surprising her. She'd expected him to be flashy, overbearing. He wasn't. He really was a strange one.
The first client meeting ran long, all the way until the client walked them downstairs to see them off.
Shang Zhitao felt like she'd just watched a textbook lesson in how to run a meeting. Except none of it was actually in any textbook. She glanced at Luan Nian again, something close to admiration creeping into her expression. She looked once, said her goodbyes, then looked again, and this time he caught her at it. She wasn't embarrassed, so she just said it outright. "You're really something. That meeting was incredible."
"Is flattery a required course in college?" he asked.
The man couldn't take a compliment and couldn't leave an insult alone either. He was simply difficult to deal with.
Shang Zhitao let the jab land but kept going anyway, unbothered. "I learned a lot from you today."
"Like what?"
She thought about it for a second. "Like how to use your looks to charm a female client." Then she flashed him a sly grin, bright enough to light up her whole face.
Luan Nian stared at her for a moment. This new hire had shown up in tears that morning, stamping her feet in front of him, and now here she was joking around with him in the afternoon. It was more than a little irritating. He looked away and walked into a convenience store on the corner, came back out with two bottles of horse chestnut drink, and tossed one to her. She fumbled to catch it. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
Luan Nian drank from his own bottle, his eyes drifting over toward her without quite meaning to. Her face had gone slightly pink from the sun. She was an ordinary enough girl, but the way she tipped her head back to drink gave her a brief, unexpected edge of appeal. Clean, but with a hint of something more. Something in his chest gave an odd little pull.
Very faint.