“Saw what?” Mai Ding asked in confusion.
“You’re still pretending you don’t know? That night at the restaurant.”
Only then did Mai Ding remember. “So it really was you. I thought I’d mistaken you for someone else…” Gao Guo cut him off roughly. “Stop beating around the bush. You want to report me and take my position, don’t you?” Mai Ding still had not figured out what Gao Guo meant, but Gao Guo supplied the explanation himself. “Of all places, I never expected to run into you there. What rotten luck. The manager already suspects something. What do you want?” Even Mai Ding was not stupid enough to miss the meaning now. The woman with Gao Guo that night really had been the manager’s wife. Their tables had not been very far apart. Fortunately, something had blocked the view between them. They could not slip away without making themselves even more conspicuous, so they had anxiously waited for Mai Ding’s group to leave first. The moment Mai Ding left, they hurried outside too. That was when Gao Guo saw Mai Ding stick his head out to look back and decided that Mai Ding knew. But he was not panicking. Perhaps he had not been the only one whose secret had been exposed that night. Seeing Mai Ding remain silent, Gao Guo added, “You’d better not think about scheming against me. I’ve got something filthy on you too.”
That only confused Mai Ding more. Gao Guo stood up as well. “That man you were with at lunch today isn’t just an ordinary friend, is he? If I tell everyone, you’ll be even too ashamed to stay at this company. Think about it carefully.” An Zi Yan’s face had been blocked from Gao Guo’s view that night, but Gao Guo had overheard some of their conversation and mistakenly assumed Li Ming was An Zi Yan.
Hit with too much information all at once, Mai Ding had not yet managed to sort through it. He only stared blankly as Gao Guo left. Downstairs, Gao Guo bumped shoulders with a young man walking toward him. Already agitated, Gao Guo took a step back and raised his head with a dark expression, ready to curse, but the moment he saw the young man’s face, he swallowed the profanity without realizing it. The young man merely gave him an indifferent glance and continued inside. Gao Guo’s instincts, sharpened through years of dealing with all kinds of people, told him one thing: the person who had just passed him was not someone to provoke.
Mai Ding cared about only one thing. Not the affair between Gao Guo and the manager’s wife, not being mistaken for having something with Li Ming, not even being threatened. What bothered him was Gao Guo’s contempt for his relationship. He looked around the entire office with a trace of a bitter smile at the corner of his mouth. In every empty seat, he could almost see how each person would react: whispering behind their hands, embellishing the story, spreading it everywhere. That was what his love looked like in other people’s eyes, no different from any other ugly scandal, something fit for gossip and ridicule.
Was it ugly?
“Hey.” An Zi Yan walked slowly toward him. Wherever he passed, every imagined scene Mai Ding had seen at those desks dissolved into smoke and scattered in the wind. Light flickered in Mai Ding’s eyes as he stared at the person his feelings belonged to. Those people’s eyes must have been dirtied by filth. Otherwise, who would dare call his love ugly?
“What are you spacing out for?”
“You came.”
“What happened?”
“Something small. I’ll tell you when we get home.”
An Zi Yan looked around with complete indifference. This was his first time upstairs. He casually picked up a file from Gao Guo’s desk nearby, flipped through two pages, then tossed it down carelessly.
“Don’t throw other people’s things around.” Mai Ding picked the file up and put it back, then pushed An Zi Yan from behind. “Come on. Let’s go.”
They did not even make it home before Mai Ding gave An Zi Yan the rough outline of what had happened. He only said he had discovered a coworker having an affair with the manager’s wife. He left out Gao Guo’s threat. An Zi Yan listened with little interest and, when Mai Ding finished, said, “Pretend you don’t know. Don’t get involved.”
“I’m not going to. It’s not like I caught a thief or some other crime. Even if what they’re doing is wrong, it’s still their private business. No matter what, I’m an outsider.”
“So you actually know that. I thought you’d angrily drag the manager’s wife and your coworker in front of you and give them a stern lecture.”
“I’m not an idiot who lectures people over everything.”
“So you think people who lecture others over everything are idiots?” An Zi Yan immediately found the hole in Mai Ding’s words. Mai Ding glared but could not answer. After a while, Mai Ding said, “I told you about work, so tell me about school too. We need to communicate more about each other’s lives.”
“Wake up. Go to school. Leave school.”
“Would it kill you to use a few more words?”
“After waking up, I go to school, then I leave school.”
“Are you practicing sentence construction?!” Mai Ding yelled.
Mai Ding continued going to work as usual, assuming the matter involving the manager’s wife would gradually die down. The manager was already suspicious, so Gao Guo and the manager’s wife should end their relationship and return to their own lives. Reality was far less simple than Mai Ding imagined. By then, everyone at the company was saying that the mysterious man was someone from inside the office.
The manager came out of his office. Everyone lowered their heads. In a voice impossible to read, he said, “Mai Ding, come to my office.” It was the first time the manager had ever called for Mai Ding. Normally, he paid no attention whatsoever to an intern. Mai Ding could hear murmurs rising behind him.
Inside the manager’s office, the manager gestured for him to close the door, then studied Mai Ding with his small eyes and a strange expression. After a long while, he said, “You’ve been at the company for a while now.”
“Mm.”
“I heard from Gao Guo that your mind isn’t on your work at all. So what exactly do you come here for every day?”
Mai Ding did not know how to answer. He was still a student. He had not learned how to talk smoothly, how to maneuver through social situations, or how to flatter a superior. Facing work and society, he was a blank sheet of paper, anxious and ill at ease. The manager grew angrier as he spoke. “I pay you to work here, not to eat for free. You don’t do your job properly, and you even dared seduce my wife?” Mai Ding looked up in shock. “I-I didn’t.”
“Of course you won’t admit it. She told me everything. You kept pestering her and pursuing her. When she refused, you threatened to tell people the two of you were having an affair. She was too frightened to say anything. Then the rumors got worse and worse until she couldn’t take it anymore. Someone even confirmed that you were the one who started them. Think about it. The rumors began not long after you joined the company.” The more the manager spoke, the more convinced he became, naturally pinning everything on Mai Ding. As he spoke viciously, his eyes periodically filled with sympathy for his young wife, as though she had suffered some terrible grievance and he had wrongfully doubted her.
“I-I didn’t.” Mai Ding shook his head hard and repeated his denial. What else could he say? He was the easiest person in the office to bully, so naturally he had become the most convenient scapegoat. Who would believe him? There was a helpless truth in this world: the weight of someone’s words was proportional to their status. All that talk about everyone being equal was more ridiculous than an exaggerated advertisement.
The manager had expected Mai Ding to refuse to admit it, so he pretended to be merciful. “Be honest and apologize. I’ll pretend none of this happened, settle your wages, and you can leave.”
“I can’t apologize for something I didn’t do.”
“Fine! You’re still being stubborn!” He was about to continue when the telephone beside him rang. It was an important client. Covering the receiver with one hand, he snapped, “Get out! And I’m having the security guards downstairs keep an eye on you. You are not allowed to leave the company without my permission. Who knows whether you’ll steal something on your way out.”
Mai Ding left the office and returned to his desk under the scrutinizing gazes of his coworkers. Gao Guo spoke in a low, icy voice. “Why don’t you just admit it? Trade your ugly secret for mine. No matter what I’ve done, it’s still not as humiliating as you liking men.”
“Then tell them.” Mai Ding’s face held no expression, and his voice was calm. “You think I’ll be afraid? You think I’ll be ashamed?”