Tan Xiao and Zhou Ruofei walked a little farther away.
Zhou Ruofei asked, “Was that your boss? He’s actually handsome. Doesn’t look like the owner of a travel agency at all.”
“WenCheng is a publicly listed internet company, not a travel agency,” Tan Xiao said. “That was WenCheng’s executive president. WenCheng doesn’t have a CEO. The executive president reports directly to the board and is effectively the person in charge.”
Zhou Ruofei did not care about any of that. “Why does your president look so much like a civil servant?”
“Chinese entrepreneurs are like that. A lot of them like styling themselves a little closer to the system.”
To extinguish Zhou Ruofei’s delusions, Tan Xiao still called Tan Yun. It was afternoon in Switzerland. She was almost certainly too busy to deal with him.
Sure enough, Tan Yun did not answer and only returned a quick message: Working. Leave a message if you need anything.
“See?” Tan Xiao said. “It’s not that I won’t help. Her Majesty has no time.”
Zhou Ruofei looked deeply disappointed. “Even when she has time she doesn’t want to talk to me. I know. I’m just not her type by nature.”
Tan Xiao was shocked. “You actually know? Since when did you grow a brain?”
“She likes men like your president.”
“Huh? I don’t… think so?” Tan Xiao said. “My former brother-in-law didn’t look like that.”
“That was an arranged marriage. It wasn’t someone she actually wanted. She never liked that French leatherworker.”
That briefly appearing former brother-in-law had not been any leatherworker. He was the young head of a century-old French leather-goods house.
Tan Xiao did not know much about his sister’s marriage. Tan Yun was more than ten years older. Years ago she had married and divorced almost immediately, everything happening in Europe within less than a year. At the time, Tan Xiao had been in China preparing for the gaokao. He had only a vague impression of the entire episode.
Zhou Ruofei’s teeth practically itched with jealousy, both toward the former brother-in-law and toward Zhang Xingchuan’s face. He made a wildly unrealistic wish. “When I go to sleep tonight, let my soul transmigrate into your boss. Then I’ll go ask Sister Yun for an arranged marriage.”
“Don’t bother dreaming that,” Tan Xiao said. “At WenCheng’s scale, my boss probably gets an annual package of just over ten million at most. Even if my sister wanted another arranged marriage, it wouldn’t be with him.”
“More than ten million isn’t that little.”
“RMB.”
Zhou Ruofei immediately revised his wish. “No matter. Poor-but-handsome is still handsome. If marriage doesn’t work, he’d make a very suitable live-in son-in-law for the Tan family.”
Tan Xiao said solemnly, “Please stop maliciously slandering our president. He’s merely a very handsome man without much money. What did he ever do wrong?”
The next day.
Marketing operations intern Tan Xiao had been sitting at his desk for less than ten minutes when the President’s Office called and summoned him upstairs.
Inside Zhang Xingchuan’s office.
Tan Xiao sat opposite him, unsure what the president wanted to discuss. So he waited and did not open the conversation himself.
Zhang Xingchuan was not wearing glasses today. His prescription was probably mild. He was clearly not fused permanently to corrective lenses.
The office was warm and the president had no outside appointments, so he wore only a casual shirt. Compared with the previous two times Tan Xiao had seen him, he looked more approachable. He smiled easily by nature. Today he had the air of a warm older neighbor.
The president did not mention the irrelevant encounter at the restaurant the previous night. What an intern did outside the company was private.
He only asked how Tan Xiao’s internship in Marketing was going and expressed appropriate concern in a gentle manner.
Tan Xiao handled this kind of conversation effortlessly. The two went back and forth smoothly.
Zhang Xingchuan asked, “How is that paper of yours on AI and IPO pricing going?”
“I already submitted it to a journal. I won’t know whether it’s accepted until after New Year.”
“You work efficiently.”
“I had nothing else going on then, so I wrote quickly. Since coming to WenCheng, I’ve gotten busy. I’ve accomplished nothing for more than half a month.”
When Zhang Xingchuan invited him to WenCheng, he had not known Tan Xiao was a doctoral student. His intentions had absolutely been good.
Given the situation now, the alumnus looked rather unethical. He had coaxed a Qing University Finance PhD candidate into WenCheng, then dumped him into Marketing Operations. It was like using a Damascus-steel butcher’s knife to slaughter a chick.
Tan Xiao was very clever about social dynamics. From Zhang Xingchuan’s attitude, he quickly understood this had not been deliberate. There had probably only been a minor misunderstanding.
Tan Xiao was broad-minded too and immediately decided not to hold it against President Zhang anymore.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” Tan Xiao said. “I’m not complaining.”
“Operations is too simple for you,” Zhang Xingchuan said.
Tan Xiao considered it, then answered honestly. “I wouldn’t say simple. There’s a lot to do. It’s just all boring. Having to do boring work every day is actually pretty difficult.”
Zhang Xingchuan strongly agreed. Challenging work was more interesting to him too, and he assumed Tan Xiao meant the same thing.
He already intended to move Tan Xiao to the Financial Business Division after New Year. Now that the subject had come up, making Tan Xiao return to Marketing and continue operations work felt unreasonable. So he made a temporary adjustment. “Before Spring Festival, come work here first.”
He instructed his special assistant to take Tan Xiao along.
The assistant brought Tan Xiao outside to arrange the transfer, desk, and administrative details, then returned alone to ask Zhang Xingchuan, “President Zhang, what exactly should I teach him?”
Zhang Xingchuan was unconcerned. “Just bring him along. Let him learn by himself.”
No matter how much Zhang Xingchuan liked Tan Xiao, it was unrealistic for a company president to personally teach a student every task.
And Zhang Xingchuan believed Tan Xiao should possess the ability to learn independently. If he did not even have that, there was no need for Zhang Xingchuan to keep paying attention to him.
Special Assistant Jiaxin had suddenly acquired a temporary tail and was initially a little irritated. But Tan Xiao worked hard, spoke sweetly, and was absurdly intelligent. Many tasks Jiaxin had needed several rounds of trial and error to understand when she first became a president’s assistant, Tan Xiao grasped after watching once.
Within a few days, without Jiaxin even asking, he could proactively handle nearly a third of her workload.
“Sister Jiaxin,” Tan Xiao said, showing her a document he had prepared, “check whether this is right. If there’s no problem, I’ll send it.”
Jiaxin read it, nodded, and gave him permission to send it. Inwardly, she began thanking Zhang Xingchuan. Everyone was drowning in work at year-end, and he alone had assigned her an angelic little brother to help. Their president was truly beautiful inside and out. He deserved to get rich.
If the president could let a little more of that wealth leak through his fingers toward her, even better.
Zhang Xingchuan was on a call when Tan Xiao knocked and entered, delivering a document on Jiaxin’s behalf. Zhang Xingchuan gestured for him to wait.
Bored while standing nearby, Tan Xiao noticed a bendable stress-relief toy on the desk and picked it up to fiddle with.
Zhang Xingchuan, still on the phone: “…”
He did not even see the process clearly. He only watched Tan Xiao’s long fingers pinch it a few times and somehow produce the rough silhouette of The Thinker.
What kind of stress-toy sculpting master was this?
After ending the call, Zhang Xingchuan accepted the document. Everything looked fine, so he signed it.
“How is it?” he asked Tan Xiao. “Is work in the President’s Office boring?”
“It’s fine. I’m still adjusting,” Tan Xiao said. “Sister Jiaxin has helped me a lot. She’s really nice.”
Zhang Xingchuan agreed. “Jiaxin really is excellent.”
Jiaxin’s educational background was ordinary. She had joined WenCheng after graduation, starting as a flight-booking specialist. But she was diligent, responsible, steady, good at solving problems, and never afraid to take responsibility. She moved through several departments and remained an outstanding employee every year.
Beyond work ability, she was dependable, extraordinarily attentive, and had an exceptional memory. Those strengths eventually caught Zhang Xingchuan’s eye. He moved her into Human Resources, then later into Administration, deliberately developing her along the way. Jiaxin worked hard too. After WenCheng listed, Zhang Xingchuan transferred her into the President’s Office. Barely past thirty, she became his special assistant and entered the company’s middle-management ranks.
Zhang Xingchuan really did love playing Bole.
He remembered Spring Festival was only a week away, and a few months after that Tan Xiao would graduate.
So he naturally asked, “What are your plans after graduation?”
He was certain Tan Xiao would have a very clear life plan. What he really wanted to know was how interested Tan Xiao might be in staying at WenCheng.
During the temporary period Tan Xiao spent following Jiaxin in the President’s Office, Zhang Xingchuan had occasionally observed him and was extremely satisfied. He had even begun imagining that if Tan Xiao formally joined WenCheng after graduation, which department he should start in, how to train him step by step, and how, if everything went well, he might someday become one of Zhang Xingchuan’s most capable lieutenants.
This time, Tan Xiao refused to cooperate.
During his time in the President’s Office, he had gradually understood some of Zhang Xingchuan’s patterns.
Jiaxin was not an isolated example. Zhang Xingchuan simply enjoyed giving employees opportunities, discovering the potential in people around him, then cultivating the people he chose until they flourished. The process gave President Zhang a powerful sense of accomplishment.
The president genuinely had a bit of a raising-and-developing hobby.
Tan Xiao could see that the latest target Zhang Xingchuan wanted to raise was him. But Tan Xiao had absolutely no need to be raised. Better to refuse decisively and avoid wasting the president’s goodwill.
Besides, WenCheng’s resources were limited. If Tan Xiao occupied the ecological niche of the president’s special development project, then some other promising young person who might otherwise have received the opportunity would lose it.
“I’m a salted fish who goes wherever the current takes me. I don’t really have a plan,” Tan Xiao said frankly. “Maybe I’ll stay in academia and apply for a postdoctoral station. But postdocs usually have teaching duties, and I’m not ready to ruin young minds yet, so I still need to think.”
Zhang Xingchuan did not immediately understand. “Academia is fine, but you studied Finance and you have such good qualifications. Going out into industry would give you better prospects.”
“That would mean competing too hard,” Tan Xiao said. “I don’t have some requirement that I must become a successful person. There’s no need to join the race.”
Zhang Xingchuan looked bewildered for a moment. “You’re already doing a PhD at Qing University. How many people your age could possibly grind harder than you?”
Tan Xiao became arrogant on this subject. “Studying and taking exams are as easy as breathing to me. The reason I’m still doing a PhD is exactly because I don’t want to go out and compete.”
“Stop joking,” Zhang Xingchuan said. “Since undergrad you’ve been constantly doing internships and practical work. Don’t tell me you genuinely have no goal.”
“I’m serious. I like internships because internships themselves are fun,” Tan Xiao said. “Besides, if you only study and never participate in real-world practice, you’ll get stupid.”
Zhang Xingchuan: “…”
He had looked into Tan Xiao’s family background. His parents were divorced. Tan Xiao lived with his mother, who had remarried. She and her husband were ordinary civil servants in a provincial capital in southern China.
Tan Xiao’s relaxed, measured way of dealing with people had probably been shaped by that kind of civil-service household atmosphere.
A family like that did not have enormous cash flow, but a child growing up in that environment would not suffer much materially either.
Zhang Xingchuan thought and said, “Are you dating anyone? For love to last, it needs a material foundation too.”
“I’m not dating anyone, and I don’t want to.”
That completely stumped the president.
Zhang Xingchuan had graduated from Qing University, gone to the US for graduate school, worked in Silicon Valley for two years, then returned to China to start a company. For more than a decade he had pushed forward day after day. The thorns and flowers along the road to success had been vivid, interesting scenery to him. If life restarted, he would still willingly do it again.
He genuinely liked Tan Xiao. Tan Xiao was extremely intelligent and disliked dull, boring things, which meant his underlying temperament loved novelty and challenge. He knew when to advance and retreat, understood people, and his high education was arguably the least impressive of his virtues.
Zhang Xingchuan had never imagined that someone who looked like such a perfectly well-rounded king of grinding would actually be a salted fish.
“President,” said the curious salted fish, “you keep asking about me. What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”
Zhang Xingchuan was defeated. The thousand-li horse refused to run and had started managing upward toward Bole instead.
“I’m single.”
Tan Xiao got along very well with coworkers at WenCheng and occasionally heard gossip. Several people swore that Zhang Xingchuan did not date and kept away from women because he had a white moonlight from his student days. For various reasons they never got together. That person later married and moved overseas, and Zhang Xingchuan had never been able to let go. He would rather stay single than settle.
At the time, Tan Xiao’s first question had been: Wait, are you talking about Zhang Xingchuan or He Yichen?
Elio’s Notes: He Yichen is the famously devoted male lead of Gu Man’s romance Silent Separation, adapted into the television drama My Sunshine. Tan Xiao is teasing how much this office rumor resembles a romance plot.
He had only half believed the rumor, but he was genuinely curious how someone like Zhang Xingchuan could still be single in his thirties.
“President, you’re this handsome. Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
Zhang Xingchuan looked at him strangely. “You’re handsome too. Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“I’m young.”
“You’ll be twenty-four after New Year. Is that very young?”
“I don’t want to date women. You’re…”
Zhang Xingchuan did not want to let him finish. He aggressively turned the question back. “Why don’t you want to?”
Tan Xiao genuinely had no easy way to explain it. “The reason is a little complicated. Basically, it’s not entirely up to me.”
Hm? Zhang Xingchuan raised an eyebrow.
“There are some private reasons. I can’t freely have the kind of relationship I want, and I don’t want to deceive an innocent girl. So I might as well not date at all.”
Even Tan Yun had been forced into an arranged marriage. What ability did Tan Xiao have to choose whoever he wanted to marry? Better to seal his heart away than hurt himself and someone else.
Zhang Xingchuan: “…”
Zhang Xingchuan understood.
He had once seen Tan Xiao tugging around with a beautiful androgynous man and had already been faintly suspicious.
Now Tan Xiao had delivered this suspiciously evasive explanation.
The prized colt he wanted to cultivate had suddenly transformed into a salted fish. And apparently a gay salted fish at that?