Before Friday's shift ended, Tracy scheduled one-on-one talks between Luan Nian and the marketing staff.
No one outside knew what was said in those talks, and everyone guessed. When it was Lumi's turn, she clapped Shang Zhitao on the shoulder before going in. "Don't be scared. Big sister will clear the road for you. Mountain of knives or sea of fire, your teacher goes first."
Shang Zhitao laughed at that and watched her walk in, then bent back over her flowchart. She was still working out how to raise efficiency by 25 percent. She had argued about it, made a fuss about it, and somewhere along the way had started to find the challenge of it interesting. It was the one big thing on her plate right now anyway.
Inside, Lumi smiled at Luan Nian and Tracy and sat down across from them, uncharacteristically upright.
"Nothing serious. Just a casual chat. No need to be nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
Luan Nian could see Tracy was about to start in on her usual HR routine, and he cut her off. He knew Lumi well enough by now. She didn't like being talked around in circles. So he asked her directly, "Happy with this year's raise?"
"A little light. Hoping for more next year."
"Thinking about leaving anytime soon?"
"No."
"Done." Luan Nian spread his hands, ignoring the look Tracy shot him.
"That's it?" Lumi had geared herself up for something serious before walking in, and now it was over in two questions. Was everyone else supposed to sit through half an hour of small talk?
"That's it. Anything you want to ask?" Tracy sighed and turned to her.
"Can I take a few days off?" It had been a busy stretch, and Lumi wanted to go abroad.
"For what?" Luan Nian asked.
"To buy a place in London."
That was the year overseas property investment had just started catching on in small circles. Those with money went to Europe, those without went to Southeast Asia. Owning a place abroad couldn't hurt. Lumi was joking. She had no intention of buying property overseas. She just wanted a trip.
"So, can I?" she asked again.
"No," Luan Nian said.
"Why not?"
"Your department's about to lose some people. There's no one to pick up the work. Wait until the new hires are in place."
He chose the words "lose some people" on purpose, then watched for Lumi's reaction.
"How much difference could one person leaving make?" Lumi wasn't convinced. "The work all falls on Shang Zhitao anyway."
"And if Shang Zhitao left too?" Tracy finally cut in.
"No chance. She's busy working on the 25 percent thing."
Luan Nian glanced up from his phone at Lumi, then went back to answering a message. Shang Zhitao had argued with him on the phone, told him flatly she was quitting, sounded completely resolved about it, and now she'd turned around and thrown herself into the efficiency project. Nobody changed her mind faster than she did.
Lumi left Luan Nian's office and patted Shang Zhitao on the head. "Your turn."
"Huh? That was fast."
"How would I know?" Lumi was baffled herself. What kind of nonsense was that, dragging someone in, asking two questions, and sending them right back out, like some kind of game.
"So what did they ask?"
"Whether I was happy with my raise."
"What did you say?"
"Not happy, obviously. I'm not stupid."
Shang Zhitao thought about it and agreed. Say you were satisfied, and the boss would take that as license to keep next year's raise just as small.
Shang Zhitao went into Luan Nian's office. He was looking at his phone, and Tracy gave her a friendly smile.
She sat up straight in the chair, the posture she always kept. More than a year on the job, and neither how she stood nor how she sat had ever changed. Tracy waited for Luan Nian to open, since he'd jumped in and taken over during Lumi's talk. But Luan Nian only set down his phone and asked Tracy, "Aren't you starting?"
Tracy looked a little helpless and turned to Shang Zhitao. "No need to be nervous. It's nothing serious, really. Luke's going to be overseeing marketing directly for a while, so we're doing these talks to get a sense of everyone."
"Oh, okay." Shang Zhitao nodded.
"Still working such long hours lately?" Tracy asked.
"Not really, actually." That was the truth. The workload had eased up a lot since before. At least now she made it home before ten thirty most nights.
"Still working a lot of weekends?" Tracy pressed. She genuinely cared about how hard Shang Zhitao was working. In the system's time records, Shang Zhitao logged more hours than anyone. Tracy had looked into whether it was low efficiency or simply too much work, had evaluated her workload directly, and confirmed it really was too much. Beyond her own job, she'd also ended up absorbing all the small, scattered tasks that fell through the cracks in marketing.
"Not too much. Sometimes there's a call I need to take, but it doesn't eat into the weekend."
"So what do you usually do on weekends?"
It wasn't a difficult question, but Shang Zhitao felt her face warm slightly. What did she do on weekends? Luan Nian kept his eyes on her without saying a word.
"My weekends are... pretty full, actually." Shang Zhitao thought it over. Studying a language, showing up to pad the numbers at Sun Yu's offline events, eating with Sun Yuanzhu and the others, going shopping with Yao Bei, sleeping with the boss. She was also planning to start studying for a part-time graduate program next year.
"Like what?" Tracy was genuinely curious.
"Like getting dinner with friends, shopping, seeing a movie, that sort of thing."
"Still no boyfriend?"
"Soon, soon."
Shang Zhitao had no idea why Tracy was asking all this, so she just repeated that it was coming soon. It was HR routine, really. Are you single, how long have you been married, do you have kids, all of it aimed at testing how stable you were as an employee. A woman on the verge of a relationship wasn't thinking about switching jobs. A woman about to get married might start thinking about leaving because marriage could mean children down the line, and job hunting got harder after that. A woman who'd just had a baby had her mind on the baby, and that affected her output at work. Tracy wasn't a bad person, she just needed to gauge how stable her people were.
When Shang Zhitao said "soon, soon," Tracy laughed and said, "I have a junior from university who just came back from abroad. Three years older than you, good family background, good looking too. Want me to introduce you?"
Shang Zhitao blinked, then couldn't hold it back. "Why don't you ask me if I'm happy with my raise?"
The moment the words left her mouth, she heard Luan Nian let out a short laugh. He turned his head slightly, and she caught the corner of his mouth still curled up before he could pull it back. Luan Nian found the two of them, teacher and student, ridiculous in the same way. They were both the sort who couldn't hold too many things in their heads at once. You had to talk to them plainly, or they'd get hopelessly confused.
Tracy laughed too. She'd always liked Shang Zhitao, because the girl had never once let her down. She nodded. "Fine then. Are you happy with this year's raise?"
"It would be nice if it were a little more," Shang Zhitao said, delivering the answer she'd prepared in advance, and Tracy burst out laughing.
She had no idea why they were laughing. She hadn't said anything funny, as far as she could tell, and she was a little lost. Luan Nian gave her a long, quiet look, then lowered his head again. Shang Zhitao never held on to things, never carried grudges. At heart she was simply a happy, uncomplicated girl who rarely kept score with anyone.
Luan Nian knew all of this about her.
She was so transparent that whatever was on her mind showed on her face, and he could read it easily.
"How's the 25 percent efficiency project coming?" Luan Nian finally spoke, addressing her directly.
"The project approval system still has room to optimize. Review and sign-off can go fully digital. That should about cover it."
"When will the changes be done?"
"Two to three months." No one was even bothering to ask whether she'd take it on, just moving straight to the solution.
"Go ahead with it. And while you're at it, ask your mentor if she can bring you in to help manage the budget. We're short-handed." Luan Nian tossed out the question, eyes fixed on her, waiting for her answer.
"Oh." Shang Zhitao made a small sound. "Are we done?"
"Yes, we're done," Tracy said, nodding, though privately she was thinking this wasn't a talk at all, just idle chat. Hardly a challenge.
"So I can go back to work?"
"Go ahead. Thanks for your time."
Shang Zhitao stood and headed for the door. Her hand had just reached the handle when she heard Luan Nian call out, "Flora."
"Hm?" She turned back to look at him.
"If Alex has talked to you about following him to another company, I hope, personally, that you turn him down." Luan Nian glanced at Tracy. "Your career's just getting started. There's still a lot of ground worth exploring, a lot to learn. And the company sees the effort you've put in and how you've grown. I'd like you to stay and keep fighting alongside us. Tracy's told me your performance came through well in the 360 review, and I agree with that result myself."
Shang Zhitao stood frozen.
This was the first time Luan Nian had ever praised her formally, and he'd done it in front of the HR director. Was this some kind of management tactic on his part? She couldn't tell, but it moved her all the same.
"Thank you," was all she managed to say.
She didn't come back to herself until she was back at her desk and Lumi called her name. "What happened? What did you two talk about?"
Shang Zhitao shook her head. "Nothing."
After she left, Luan Nian turned to Tracy with a dry look. "Did you sit through some training course recently? Is this the new style of talk now?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Now I know why your department never catches executives about to jump ship."
"Why's that?"
"You've got so much spare time you're setting employees up with boyfriends. When does anyone actually work?" Luan Nian found it genuinely funny. It was the first time he'd ever sat in on a talk and watched the HR director play matchmaker for an employee.
"It was just a passing comment, don't be so serious about it." Tracy tried to wave him off. "Relax a little."
"I'm plenty relaxed. I'm worried the rest of you are too relaxed."
"Fine, fine, I confess." Tracy raised both hands. "I can't win an argument with you. I surrender. You win." She scooped up her laptop and walked out.
Luan Nian wasn't really keeping score, but he felt he owed Shang Zhitao a word of explanation. The praise he'd given her had been sincere, fair, and meant. The reason he'd told her earlier that Alex wanted to take her along was that she was cheap and easy to manage, but that wasn't how he actually saw her. He was simply laying out, honestly, how a manager thinking about jumping ship would view his own team. Someone poaching staff had to bring people at every level, not all top performers. Sunny was a strong player. The next tier down was people who could execute.
He went back to his work, occasionally standing to look out into the distance to ease his dry eyes, and each time he sat back down he'd glance over at Shang Zhitao. She was frowning at her screen, probably still on the efficiency project. Luan Nian couldn't pinpoint exactly when she'd changed her mind, but he'd known one thing clearly since Wednesday night: you did not want to cross a woman. Fighting with one cost you far more than it cost her. There was no coming out ahead.
Shang Zhitao had efficiency on the brain, still frowning over it while waiting for the bus, so lost in thought that she didn't notice Luan Nian had been standing beside her for a while. He waited a bit, gave up expecting her to notice him on her own, and finally stepped in front of her. She flinched back on instinct before focusing and recognizing him.
"What are you doing?" Luan Nian asked, hands in his pockets, at ease.
"Working on the efficiency thing," Shang Zhitao said seriously. She'd made up her mind to stay while having dinner with Sun Yu, more or less out of the blue. She listened to good advice, and she still remembered what she'd wanted on her very first day in Beijing. She knew she wasn't strong enough yet to stand entirely on her own. She'd fought with Luan Nian badly enough that leaving felt like the only way to save face, but as Sun Yu had put it: anyone who could fight that hard and still choose to stay had real strength of character.
"Want to walk?" Luan Nian asked.
"But I haven't eaten."
"What do you want?"
"Grilled meat and doenjang soup."
"Let's go."
They walked side by side through the late night, a person's width of space between them. A few steps in, Shang Zhitao remembered Luan Nian hadn't driven today. She looked around and asked, "Wait, where's the car?"
"Sat all day. Didn't feel like driving." Luan Nian's sleep had been poor lately, his dry eyes worse than usual, not the best condition for driving, and he didn't want Liu Wu to drive either. Liu Wu's family member was ill, and Luan Nian had that much mercy in him.
"Oh." Shang Zhitao went quiet, thinking back to how she'd lost her temper that day, and felt a sudden flush of embarrassment. She let out a small laugh. "What I said on the phone that day, I was just angry. Don't hold it against me, okay?"
That was the kind of person Shang Zhitao was, quick to own up to her mistakes without any fuss. That day she hadn't kept her cool, had ended up just like Luan Nian, unable to say what she meant plainly. Thinking back on it now made her a little ashamed. Luan Nian stopped and turned to look at her. Such a sweet girl, that likable face, those smiling eyes. He couldn't help reaching out to pinch her cheek, and only then did he say, "Shang Zhitao, I know sometimes what I say isn't kind, but I want you to understand that most of the time, I don't mean any harm by it. If something I say ever bothers you, just tell me directly. You don't need to handle it the way you did."
"Fighting like that just wears me out."
If Tan Mian and the others had heard Luan Nian say that, they'd have said he must have been possessed by something. When had anyone ever heard Luan Nian talk that softly? But he meant every word. He'd never lost sleep over things like this before. Too lazy to date, too lazy to break up once he had, too lazy to look back once it was over, nothing had ever really wounded him. To him, maintaining a relationship was far harder than starting one.
That one fight with Shang Zhitao had kept him up all night, angry enough that his stomach ached. The next day, seeing the dark circles under her eyes in the meeting room, he'd wanted to strangle her all over again.
"So can you praise me sometimes? Like you did today." Shang Zhitao tugged at the hem of his jacket. "I need you to compliment me once in a while, so I know I'm not really as bad as you make me sound. Luan Nian, I need your encouragement."
"Is my encouragement really that important?"
"Very important. Really."
Shang Zhitao wanted to tell him that someone like her, who'd spent twenty-two years content just to sit in the audience and clap, had only found her fighting spirit after meeting him. On the days when she felt like she kept losing, no matter how many times she tried, she needed his approval. It was the food and ammunition that got her back onto the battlefield, a small joy no one else could give her.
"So can you actually pull off the 25 percent?" Luan Nian asked.
"I can."
"Then you can eat a bit more meat later."
"Okay. And I can have a little wine too." Shang Zhitao pinched her fingers together. "Just this much."
"No." Luan Nian gave her a look. "You bite people after you drink."
Stingy.