Shang Zhitao had handled her feelings well enough, but once it was time for work, the worry set in. She got off the bus and looked around. No Luan Nian. Good. She sprinted into the office building.
Nobody had taught her what to do after a one night stand with her boss. She had searched it secretly the night before. The internet said: act like nothing happened, and neither person will feel awkward.
Shang Zhitao stayed anxious until the afternoon, when she heard Alex tell Lumi at the weekly meeting, "We're having an online call with Luke later about the Q4 budget. You and Flora sit in."
"Not in person?" Lumi thought Luan Nian was somewhat easier to deal with remotely. In video calls he always asked so many questions that you could never zone out.
"He's on a business trip. Advertising industry summit."
"Alright then."
Shang Zhitao let out a long breath beside her, took Lumi's spreadsheet, and started writing formulas to calculate the budget. Lumi sat next to her, watching her type Excel formulas without a single pause, and patted her on the shoulder with a thumbs up. "Taotao, you're something else."
"Huh?" Shang Zhitao didn't follow.
"I bet your Excel skills are top five in this company. The first four are those business analysis geniuses."
Shang Zhitao's face turned faintly red.
She had put in the work. At first she only knew simple formulas, enough to get by, but she felt it wasn't good enough. So she started studying systematically. Sun Yuanzhu recommended books to her, and sometimes even held late night lessons for her and Sun Yu. Shang Zhitao had even started thinking about learning data visualization.
"I just think being more skilled makes things more efficient."
"You're absolutely right about that."
Lumi sat beside her sorting through the data with her, though at this point Lumi barely needed to guide her at all. Shang Zhitao had, in one way or another, worked through most of the basic tasks in the marketing department. She was thorough, kept careful records of everything she'd done, and knew exactly where things stood. Lumi trusted her completely.
Neither of them had time to go out for lunch. They finally got everything organized and sent to Alex just before the afternoon call.
Budget meetings usually only needed the boss and the project lead to talk things through, with everyone else sitting in. Shang Zhitao heard Luan Nian say, "Sorry, my last meeting just wrapped up. I'm running late."
"No problem, no problem, we just finished organizing things too. Is it hot in Hong Kong?" Alex asked him.
"It's alright. A bit hotter than Beijing. Who's sitting in today?" Luan Nian asked.
Planning and marketing each introduced their attendees, and the meeting began.
Shang Zhitao opened her laptop to take minutes. Everyone else in the room outranked her, and nobody needed to assign her the task. She did it on her own. Taking minutes actually taught her a lot, especially in meetings with Luan Nian. His mind was clear, his language precise, and every time he spoke he went straight to the problem without any wasted words. Shang Zhitao was quietly learning from him.
Sometimes she wondered how good it would be if she could become someone like him.
Today's budget discussion got a little heated. Starting with the very first project, Luan Nian began asking about ROI projections. The first project was a sales department industry exchange event, planned across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Chongqing, and Xiamen, inviting clients from different industries to attend seminars together. The goal was client relationship maintenance. The total budget was seventeen million.
"Do we have the proposed guest list?" Luan Nian asked.
Apollo from sales answered, "Yes, I'll send it over." The invited clients were all top players in their industries.
Luan Nian went quiet for a few seconds, then said, "There's a problem with the project's goal. If this is about client maintenance, taking them out for drinks and dinner would do the job. Five hundred thousand would be more than enough for these clients, and it could be done even better. Why are we spending seventeen million on something that fifty could accomplish?"
The people in the meeting room glanced at each other. The industry exchange salon was one of Lingmei's annual fixtures, meant to build industry influence, and nobody had expected Luan Nian to open fire on it first.
"So what does Luke suggest?"
"My suggestion is, if you can't think it through clearly, cut it."
Selkie from finance shrugged at them. She had warned everyone before the meeting. She'd been through risk control meetings with Luan Nian before and knew how strict he was. But the executives in the room hadn't believed her, thinking someone so young couldn't possibly have that kind of nerve. They had underestimated him. He might be younger than them, but his methods were nothing to take lightly.
"How about this," Alex said, smoothing things over. "Apollo, go back and have your team rethink the project together. Client maintenance is only a small part of it. Building industry influence still matters."
"If it's about building industry influence, then I need to see what reports might come out of it, what conclusions they'll reach, which experts we can bring in, and how many potential clients it will generate. Last meeting we discussed the company's business transition. Mid tier clients with short, fast projects are also worth taking on now, so bring that segment into the invitation list too." Luan Nian laid out his requirements directly. "Think all of this through first, then decide whether to move forward. Next project."
Shang Zhitao noticed that Apollo, the head of sales, wasn't happy. She wondered, out of curiosity, whether they'd react the same way if Luan Nian were sitting across from them in person instead of on a call. Deep down, she agreed with the questions he was raising. After a few months in marketing, she'd developed a feel for budgets. That was real money going out the door, and shouldn't every yuan spent produce something to show for it?
"Should we move on to the next item?" Alex asked.
"Sure." Shang Zhitao heard Luan Nian take a drink of water, the swallow audible, and it made her think of the way his throat had moved when he kissed her. Did he ever think back to that day the way she did?
This meeting was too much. Under the table, Lumi kicked Shang Zhitao's foot, then sent her a message. "He's cutting everything, hahaha, we won't be spending a cent going forward."
"I'm going to have a heart attack."
The air in the meeting room was heavy. Nobody was happy except Lumi, cackling away. Lumi didn't care either way. It wasn't her money being spent, and not spending it wasn't going to save her anything either. She just found it satisfying. In her own blunt way, she put it like this: "These old fossils have had it coming." Lumi had gotten plenty angry at these executives over money before, watching them spend freely and then drag their feet during internal audits, all smiles to your face and complaints behind your back. With Luan Nian stepping in like this, everyone would have to rein it in a little.
Luan Nian wasn't naive. He knew that after today's meeting, he'd be the target of plenty of resentment. But he didn't care. Even so, he sent Alex a message. "Your department is going to have some long nights getting the budget under control, and I know it won't be easy, but understand that I'm doing this to help you."
"I know, thank you." Alex wasn't naive either. With Luan Nian doing this, his own job just got a lot easier.
"Marketing is the company's cash cow. If you don't get your budgets under control, you'll be the ones caught out. Headquarters is tightening internal audits this year. If they really dig in, how many people in this room would actually pass? Best case, a formal warning. Worst case, termination. In the worst scenario, someone could even end up in custody."
"I've heard about that too. Thanks for being the one to play the villain here, Luke." Alex understood Luan Nian's intentions now. He could more or less see it. He was in charge of marketing, but he couldn't do much about people like this himself. So Luan Nian stepping in today to clean up the budget wasn't a show of force. It was simply a statement.
Lumi sent Shang Zhitao another message. "Luke is seriously hot when he's like this. Every time he gets this sharp, I want to strip his clothes off and see what makes him different from other men."
Don't bother stripping him. I already have, and he is different, Shang Zhitao said to herself. As if she'd seen plenty of men. She only had Xin Zhaozhou to compare him to, and that was a shallow enough experience.
"Kitty said this morning that our internal chats are monitored." Shang Zhitao replied to Lumi, a little worried that their talk about Luan Nian might get noticed.
Lumi laughed out loud. "Relax, nobody's watching us. Other people say way worse."
"Okay okay."
The meeting was exhausting. Luan Nian kept firing questions, and everyone struggled to keep up. Shang Zhitao suddenly felt that whatever she'd experienced these past few months hadn't really counted as office life. This was. Sharp exchanges, careful restraint, agreement on the surface and undercurrents underneath. She barely made it to the end of the meeting when Luan Nian suddenly asked, "Who's taking the minutes?"
Alex glanced at Shang Zhitao. "Flora is."
"Send them to everyone in attendance after the meeting, and copy me. I have a dinner to get to, so we'll stop here for today. Thanks, everyone." Luan Nian hung up.
Shang Zhitao closed her laptop and stepped out of the meeting room. Her phone buzzed with a message. She opened it. It was from Luan Nian. "Confirm the next reporting deadline with them and include it in the minutes."
"Okay."
Nothing more.
Luan Nian's businesslike tone put Shang Zhitao at ease. Maybe things wouldn't be awkward between them going forward. She found herself wondering, could acting like nothing happened really be enough to keep up appearances? Probably. Look at Luke, acting as if nothing had happened at all. He handled it so smoothly it was obvious he was operating on an entirely different level.
She went around confirming the next reporting time with the department heads, but they were all clearly in a bad mood and brushed her off. "I need to have an in depth talk with my team. This isn't a small change, it's basically starting the project over. Let me discuss it and get back to you." None of them would give her a timeline.
Shang Zhitao found herself stuck. She sat at her desk trying to figure out how to phrase things, feeling like this task had turned into a hot potato. About half an hour later, Luan Nian had already finished his first drink at the dinner and still hadn't received the minutes from her. He asked, "Why hasn't it gone out yet?"
"The department heads haven't confirmed a time for the next report," Shang Zhitao said, trying to phrase it as gently as possible.
Luan Nian understood immediately that they were stonewalling her. Where had the courage gone, the courage she'd shown when she wrote down, word for word, that he had urged her to resign during that interview? His brow furrowed, and he wrote in the executive group chat. "I've thought it over. Even though the changes are significant, the budget needs to be finalized this week. Please have the secretary schedule a meeting for Wednesday afternoon. Any team without a new proposal by then will be considered to have given up their budget." Then he added, "Alex, have whoever took the minutes in your department send out what we just discussed. I want to look it over again."
"Sure." Alex replied quickly, then turned to Shang Zhitao. "Just send it out as is."
Shang Zhitao nodded and sent out the minutes. She looked up to see Lumi giving her a look. The two of them glanced down the hallway to see a stunningly beautiful woman walking beside Tracy, heading into Tracy's office.
"Who's that?" Shang Zhitao mouthed to Lumi.
Lumi typed out a message to her instead. "You didn't recognize her? Luke's ex girlfriend. The one from the email."
"She's even better looking in person than in the photo," Shang Zhitao replied.
"I heard she comes from a very good family too."
"Oh."