090: He took my pig away and kept it penned up to raise it

Xiaoqi folded her arms over her chest, wearing the air of a seasoned commander. “Mr. Lin, I really do want to pay you back, but I... don’t have the money.”

Her look said it all: no money, and not even her life was negotiable. Do whatever you want.

He remained calm, nodded, then took out a sheet of paper and a pen and placed them before her. “Didn’t I just say I’d give you a raise and triple your bonus? Write an IOU. You can pay me back after you get your salary. I’m always easy to deal with, so I’ll be generous and let you repay only three thousand a month. That should be fine, shouldn’t it?”

“...”

As the saying goes, experience breeds cunning. How could a twenty-year-old alien girl possibly outwit a man like the company president?

Xiaoqi signed the IOU in grievance and walked out of the president’s office with a heart full of pain.

Inwardly, she muttered, Heaven above, thank goodness you let me escape his clutches today. Otherwise, in the future, I’d end up selling myself away!

She still hadn’t even received her first paycheck, and yet she already owed a mountain of debt. Truly... it hurt too much to bear.

After packing up her things, she came to Yi Yang’s side.

By then, Yi Yang already knew what had happened.

Seeing Xi Yang standing at his office door with her belongings in her arms, she looked very much like a child who had been abandoned.

Yi Yang walked over and took the things from her hands. “Xi Yang, why do you look so glum? What’s wrong? Can’t bear to leave my brother?”

“I can’t bear to leave my mo... ney.”

“What?”

Xiaoqi snatched her things back. “Nothing. I just got transferred here all of a sudden, so I’m a little unaccustomed to it.”

“What’s there to be unaccustomed to?” Yi Yang put an arm around her shoulder and glanced at her. “Xi Yang, you can’t bear to leave my brother, can you? How about I call him right now...”

Xiaoqi suddenly looked up at him. “Calling him would work?”

Yi Yang thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Let me try.”

“Okay, okay, hurry up and call.”

Actually, Xiaoqi did not feel reluctant to leave the president at all.

What she was thinking was: if she went back, would she no longer have to repay the money?

Though hope was as distant as a field under the horizon, she still had to try.

Yi Yang placed the call and switched on speakerphone. “Brother, about Xi Yang, could she...”

“No.”

“...”

Yi Yang brought out his trump card. “Brother, Xi Yang doesn’t want to leave you either. She wants to stay by your side...”

The man on the other end countered with an even stronger card: “You joined the company and produced no results whatsoever, and now you’re adding insubordination to your record. Believe me, I can send you to a construction site to experience life in a minute.”

“...”

How could Yi Yang dare say another word? “Brother, I was only asking. I won’t disturb your work. Bye.”

After hanging up, Yi Yang looked at Xiaoqi but said nothing. He went over to the desk and crouched down.

Xiaoqi pouted so hard her lips nearly touched the sky.

Damn capitalist. He even refused to spare his own little brother.

But if I’m not by his side, will those claws reach other employees instead?

Or, just like me, will he target the beautiful female staff?

Xiaoqi could not help imagining a scene in which a frail little beauty, under the threat of the capitalist president, trembled as she cried, “I won’t sign, I won’t sign,” while in tears she wrote an IOU and a deed of sale...

At once, Xiaoqi was filled with righteous indignation. The little universe of justice in her chest blazed into life. Although the thought of the capitalist president and some other female employee being together left a faint, inexplicable tightness in her heart, that feeling was nothing compared to the greater cause.

She clenched her fist. If such a thing really happened, she would absolutely stand up and condemn him.

“Who could possibly be as tough as I am, enduring humiliation and carrying burdens for the greater good? Those frail little beauties would never withstand the torture of that capitalist.”

Yi Yang was moving a pile of files from under the desk and placing them on top of it when he heard Xi Yang’s words, full of blazing fury.

Of course, to him, they sounded completely baffling.

“Xi Yang?” He waved his fingers in front of her eyes. “What did you just say?”

“Huh?”

Xiaoqi’s wild train of thought flew away. “Nothing. I was just speaking from the heart.”

Yi Yang looked utterly confused. “You...”

“What is all this?” Xiaoqi pointed at the large stack of files on the desk.

“Oh, these are old company proposals. They’re all urgent,” Yi Yang said as he sat down, picked up a pen, signed his name on the top document, and handed it to Xiaoqi.

“Xi Yang, your first job here is to sign my name on these documents. This is my signature. You’re smart, so you’ll learn after a few practice runs.”

“...”

“What about you, then?”

Yi Yang pulled out his phone. “I’ll play games.”

“...”

Xiaoqi looked down on him. “No wonder your brother just said you’ve achieved nothing since joining the company. Yi Yang, big, fat contempt for you.”

“...”

At the time he had agreed to join the company, even he did not know why. Now he could not be bothered to think too deeply about it.

After joining, however, he had come to realize that it was fine to work here. At least his mother would stop nagging every day, and she would no longer keep targeting his brother.

“Xi Yang,” Yi Yang said with the authority of a superior, “you have to obey your boss’s orders.”

“...”

Xiaoqi hesitated. “I’m also just a small employee of the company. It doesn’t seem right for me to do this for you. Why don’t you just sign them yourself and watch closely...”

“I get a headache just looking at this,” Yi Yang said, pulling her things onto the desk, then scooping up the pile of files and shoving them into her arms. “Just sign randomly and pass it off. No one can tell the difference.”

“...”

There were so many documents that Xiaoqi could hardly hold them steady. “Xi Yang, this is your first assignment in the department. You have to make your director satisfied!”

“...”

After work, Joanna walked up to private room 208 in a cafe, pushed the door open, removed her sunglasses, and sat down across from the man. “What on earth is so important that we had to meet in person?”

“There are some things I have thought about for a long time, and I still think I should show them to Miss Qiao,” Li Cheng said, sliding the laptop toward her.

The screen was filled with images of Yi Chen and Xiaoqi together. She closed the computer. “What do you mean by this?”

Li Cheng opened it again, clicked through a few images, and handed it back to her. “Miss Qiao, don’t rush. Take a careful look.”

Joanna looked more closely, and when she saw the words “amnesia” at the top, shock flooded her face.

No wonder he had suddenly said he did not recognize her before.

So that was it.

Then she seemed to remember something else. “If Yi Chen has this illness, then why does he remember Ye Xi Yang? And lately, Yi Chen seems to still remember me too. He doesn’t look like he has amnesia at all.”

Li Cheng adjusted his glasses. “That is also something I cannot make sense of. There are two possibilities: either President Lin has already been cured, or he was pretending to know you.”

“It can’t be pretending,” Joanna narrowed her eyes. “Because I once ran into him when he had this illness before.”

“Then President Lin must have recovered? But how did he recover?”

Joanna did not care whether his condition had improved, or whether it had improved at all, or how it had improved. She only cared that he had had this illness.

He had amnesia, which meant what he said before had been the truth, and that he had not hated her.

As long as he did not hate her, everything would become easy.

“Miss Qiao,” Li Cheng tapped a few times on the laptop and showed it to her. “Last year, President Lin’s private doctor created a memory bank for him. This is it. However, it seems he has never used it. I don’t know whether the memory bank was made successfully or not, but I will still try to break into it. If I succeed, then whenever Miss Qiao wants President Lin to forget someone, he will forget that person.”

At that, Joanna’s eyes flashed with a sharp light. “One hundred percent?”

Li Cheng shook his head. “After all, I can’t be sure whether the memory bank is mature enough yet, so I can’t guarantee it. Still, I’ll do my best.”

#

At the office, Yi Chen’s phone rang. While flipping through documents, he answered it.

“Hello.”

“Yi Chen!”

His hands paused briefly over the papers, then he went on with his work as usual. “What is it?”

On the other end, Joanna spoke softly and gently. “It’s been so long since we last met. As friends and collaborators, we should at least come out for a meal together, don’t you think?”

Yi Chen was about to refuse instinctively, but Joanna had helped a great deal with Yi Yang’s exhibition, and she had indeed put in a lot of effort.

“All right. I’ll treat you after work.”

“Good. I’ll be waiting.”

Xiaoqi spent the whole day signing names until her hand went numb.

After work, she went home and immediately flopped onto the bed for a nap.

When the maid called her for dinner, she ate and then went back to sleep.

Her phone buzzed. She opened her drowsy eyes and fumbled with it for a long while before unlocking the screen.

It was a multimedia message from an unknown number.

Puzzled, she opened it.

It was a photo.

And that photo was...

She sat bolt upright.

It was of Yi Chen and Anna eating in a Western restaurant.

Although they were only having a meal, Xiaoqi felt terribly uncomfortable looking at it.

The same way she had felt earlier when she had imagined the president exploiting other female employees: a dull, suffocating knot in her chest.

But weren’t the two of them being together exactly what she had long hoped for?!

So she should be happy.

He had a new girlfriend now. If she told him later that she was not Ye Xi Yang, then he probably would not be too angry, would he?

Thinking of that, Xiaoqi felt a little happy for a moment.

But only for a moment.

Very quickly, her mood sank again.

He had a new girlfriend. That should clearly be a happy thing, so why did her chest feel so tight and uncomfortable, leaving her unable to summon any energy?

Why... did she feel as if she had been abandoned?

That feeling was even more painful than being transferred to Yi Yang’s side.

Xiaoqi was not the sort of person who tormented herself with needless worries. She ignored the feeling and lay back down to sleep, but she tossed and turned without rest.

She tried very hard not to think about the photo, but she simply could not help it. She could not shake off that irritating emotion.

Finally, she sat up, grabbed her hair, and shook Little White awake.

Little White, sleeping soundly, was extremely displeased. “What now?”

“I’m in a really bad mood right now.”

Little White lifted its cat head to look at her. “Why?”

“Hey...” Xiaoqi let out a long sigh. She had a lot she wanted to say, but she did not know where to begin.

Seeing her like that, Little White gave up on sleep too. It stood up on its hind legs. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“I feel like I’m a pig, and Yi Chen is a wolf. I was caught by him and locked up to be raised. The pig is unwilling, but it can’t beat the wolf and isn’t as smart as he is, so it can only listen to the wolf and eat the wolf’s food. After a while, this pig seems to have gotten used to being kept like that. Then the wolf suddenly lets the pig go and starts keeping another pig instead, and this pig actually feels awful. Tell me, what should this pig do?”