Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Seven: The Person in Control I

“Hey bro, why did you arrive so late? Was there something urgent?”

Nan Wei looked at the person speaking to him and replied with a question, “Who are you?”

“My name is Wu Zuoling.”

“I’m Nan Wei. The traffic was a little packed, so I arrived late.”

Nan Wei casually threw out an excuse.

“Oh I see…” The other person did not probe further.

On the same day, Human Resources gave a detailed explanation to the group of new recruits about the company’s policy concerning their job confirmations and the relevant employee benefits. At the same time, they got everyone to sign on their internship contracts.

When it was Nan Wei’s turn, the HR lady hesitated for a moment but proceeded to give him the same contract that everyone else had.

In fact, the contract given to Nan Wei was the official contract drafted for him. Although his salary could not be compared to Xiao Yu’s, he was nevertheless highly paid. However, just earlier that morning, Xiao Yu specifically instructed her to give Nan Wei the normal internship contract and let him fairly compete with the rest.

And so, here comes the question…

Should she follow Chairman Yan’s instruction and offer Nan Wei the official contract, or follow Xiao Yu’s instruction and offer him the normal contract? To follow, or not to follow, that was the question.

On one hand, Xiao Yu was YL’s heavyweight designer whom they had hired with their VIP contract. In the few months since he had arrived at YL, they had received countless offers from large enterprises from other cities and many companies from the industry had also been eyeing this designer. If they were to offend him just because of such a small matter and cause him to leave YL for other companies, it would be a big mistake.

On the other hand, regardless of how successful Xiao Yu was, a family business like YL would still take the chairman’s instruction to be the final decision. A capitalist’s viewpoint was surely broader than the average person’s. The current YL’s board of directors had ceased to exist in any form except in name, which meant that Yan Jin’s words were like the imperial edict – even if he were to shut down YL and sell it, no one could overturn his decision.

As a tiny, tiny HR person, the thing she feared most was getting stuck between two leaders’ decision. If she were a normal HR person, she would definitely cry and look for her manager for help – even if her manager could not find any solution.

Thankfully, the person in-charge this time was a little different from the rest. Coincidentally, she chanced upon a very interesting group of people via YL’s employee group chat and was successfully sold on the idea of the Yan-God couple.

Even though fangirling was a very interesting hobby, the excitement from over-imagining cannot be compared to seeing the actual thing.

There were far too few employees who could interact face-to-face with both Xiao Yu and Yan Jin. As a result, despite the group’s firm belief that these two had something going on, none of them could present any solid evidence to prove it.

It was therefore an unexpected surprise.

The HR lady took out her mobile and waved at Xiao Yu as she stared at the little spots of marks that could not be covered by the high collars.

Xiao Yu was confused.

“Chairman Yan’s instruction should not be overturned no matter what. But, I’m your fan. How about this, take a picture with me, and I’ll open the back door for you for once?”

“Sure, no problem.” Xiao Yu answered with joy.

Just like she promised, after Xiao Yu had left the office, she began redrafting a new contract and was accidentally seen by her colleague.

“Qin Xi, what a bold move you’re making. That’s the designer which Chairman Yan specifically instructed was to be given special treatment.”

The person who spoke was called Zhang Yuji. She was always passionate when jesting with everyone but was not as meticulous with her own work despite her good interpersonal relationships.

“Oh really,” Qin Xi replied calmly.

“How could you do this? Aren’t you afraid that Chairman Yan will fire you?”

“Chief Xiao gave this instruction.”

“That’s still a no. He is just a designer no matter what, but Chairman Yan is…” Zhang Yuji stopped her speech halfway.

“Is what?”

Qin Xi adjusted her spectacles as her tone turned cold.

Her employment with YL was extremely normal – she had graduated from university, handed in her resume, completed her internship, received confirmation, gotten a promotion and salary increment, right up till she was in-charge of handling the new recruitment process.

However, the longer she had been with YL, the clearer it was to her that there was a group of weird people among them. These people stood out from the masses, yet they all had the same characteristic that was hard to describe.

Almost every department at YL had these few people that were very aggressive with other female employees. They did not care about their own work progression, nor their bonuses, much less their salary.

Once Qin Xi overheard someone from the Finance department complaining during a lunch gathering. It turned out that there was a female employee whose bank account had two levels of password security. Before she would make any confirmation, the money that was transferred to her account would be frozen at a third-party platform. This meant that the employee could only receive the money after she gave the confirmation. In the end, when the Finance department had received the money transfer rejection for three consecutive months, they finally approached the female employee in person to notify her. The female employee who carried a handbag worth thirty-thousand dollars with branded accessories from head to toe, panicked like a fearful rabbit and apologized with teary eyes for the inconvenience she had caused.

The Finance personnel was speechless while she studied this young, naive lady who god-knows-which rich family had brought up.

The whole incidence ended up with the female employee opening a new bank account. That was when the Finance department had realized that the reason why her initial bank account had two levels of password security was because her account had over ten million dollars so her account was automatically set up to have transfer confirmation.

Qin Xi knew that there were some people who came to YL for Yan Jin, like a fangirl pursuing her idol. But the indescribable characteristic she noticed was different from the typical admiration. It was more aggressive and with distinctive motive.

Zhang Yuji had this particular characteristic.

“Chairman Yan would find out anyway. You’ll see the consequences.” Zhang Yuji did not answer Qin Xi’s question.

“Hm. Thanks for your concern.” Qin Xi said.

“You! I advised you out of concern, but you won’t listen. Don’t take it out on me when things go wrong.”

“I won’t.”

Zhang Yuji’s arrogant shadow slowly disappeared from sight as Qin Xi continued to draft the contract.

It was possible that Chairman Yan had some big secret background that normal employees did not know of. But “they” knew it very clearly.

Everyone still had lingering fears regarding the mass retrenchment exercise that had happened in the design department not long ago. It was one of the reasons why the design department was still lacking in employees despite two mass recruitment exercises in the past. Nevertheless, the pressure and panic in other departments was not as obvious compared to the design department. As time flew by, the impact caused by that incident was starting to vanish and the nervous atmosphere in the other departments slowly disappeared.

Qin Xi was a HR personnel, which was why she had a better idea of what had happened than everyone else. The majority of the people who left during the retrenchment exercise had that particular characteristic.

Could this possibly mean that Yan Jin was not unaware of these seemingly unsuspecting “internal troubles”?

Also, after the retrenchment incident, the peace had finally returned. Was it really so simple for these people just because they were not from the design department?

With regards to the retrenchment, there was much speculation in the employee group chat. But from how Qin Xi looked at it, only their small group of over ten odd people had guessed the most logical and possible situation correctly.

How interesting.

Qin Xi smiled.

……

On the second day of work, Nan Wei felt the malice from the other interns.

Other than himself, this group of interns were mostly graduate students with majors in design or people with a few years of internships from other companies who came to try their luck at YL. Overall, they had lower spending power and could not afford S City’s high-priced properties nor rental and were left with living at the employee hostel that YL provided. It was located near the office and could save the time and effort travelling between work and home.

And so, Nan Wei who drove to work was very eye-catching to them. Plus, with the “impressive feat” of reporting late to work on the first day, his reputation was instantly widespread among them.

The development of this incident was also partly because of the introduction that Qin Xi had given them regarding the internship program.

YL’s internship followed an elimination system – if they were in other departments, the senior employees would evaluate them according to their overall work performance, while the design department’s evaluation focused more on drawing quality and the passing rate of their drafts. The interns had the same work requirement every day and about 80% of the interns would be selected and 15-20% of them would be eliminated based on the passing rate of their drafts.

Despite Qin Xi emphasizing that the design department would only look at the quality of their designs, most of them still believed that their confirmation would be based on their overall performance.

Thus, the unconventional Nan Wei was deemed to be the first person to be eliminated among all of the interns.

There were a total of twelve interns. 20% would mean that only two people would be eliminated. Hence Nan Wei’s elimination was a big relief to them.

It seemed especially so to them when all the other interns were cautiously and conscientiously working on their drafts while Nan Wei played his mobile as he sat at the sofa near the window, enjoying his cup of tea. Almost everyone felt that it was already a miracle that a young and idle person like Nan Wei could even be recruited to be an intern.

Nan Wei did notice the intentional isolation by the people around him. Still, he continued what he did and seemed uncaring about this treatment.

This treatment lasted a whole month until…

“There’s some issues with your first draft. I remember it’s not my first time telling you that there’s no need to be so detailed at first.”

Xiao Yu held a stack of drawings as he walked into the interns’ office. He immediately saw Nan Wei who was sitting by the window and very casually walked over.

Nan Wei also very casually accepted the drawings and casually asked, “How did you get here, Master?”

“Yan Jin went off for a meeting. I seized the opportunity to come over. I’m afraid I’ll get moldy if I continue to stay at the thirtieth-floor.”

Xiao Yu did indeed make a convenient trip over to hand over the reviewed drafts and was prepared to head back already. Before he left though, he went through the important points with Nan Wei again.

“Sure, I’ll correct it right away.”

“I’ll have to trouble you with the Summers new release. Our younglings at YL are simply too inexperienced. They are fine with free-styling, but not even as competent as a high-schooler when it comes to assisting with other drawing. Thanks for the help anyway, I’ll get Yan Jin to increase your pay.”

“Sure, just give me the word.”

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