Chapter 8: Feng Xiaohe

What is working?

To put it frankly, it is trading your days for money.

For a normal office worker, there are no blue seas, clear skies, poetry, or distant horizons. There is only a reality as tasteless as plain boiled water.

After taking the shuttle to the company, another boring day began.

Fortunately, Gao Sijin’s job was not soul-crushing. He started at 8:00 AM and finished at 3:00 PM. The workload was light, mostly consisting of creating spreadsheets and recording invoices.

Sometimes, Gao Sijin felt that the knowledge he had acquired during university was a complete waste. It seemed that while many jobs in society had high educational requirements, a middle school student could actually handle the work. If artificial intelligence replaced humans one day, he truly would not find it strange at all.

“Hey, great writer, you’re blocking my line of sight. Sit down.”

“Sorry about that, Young Master Zhao.”

Gao Sijin immediately sat in his office chair to avoid blocking his colleague’s view of the beautiful women.

The woman walking into the company was named Feng Xiaohe. She was a famous beauty in the unit, and Gao Sijin only glanced at her swaying dress before immediately retracting his gaze.

Feng Xiaohe swung her arms with a wide stride, and her high heels made a crisp, pleasant clicking sound against the floor.

Gao Sijin and Young Master Zhao were entry-level employees on the first floor, serving as little more than transparent background characters. In contrast, Feng Xiaohe was the company’s star. The company president always brought her along to various business banquets.

At those business negotiation dinners, the men would discuss women. Business matters were often only mentioned in passing. She had discovered that talking about women made those successful men smile constantly. After a few drinks, Feng Xiaohe would become close friends with those successful individuals, and the business deals would naturally follow.

Men often tried to get Feng Xiaohe drunk, hoping to take advantage of her and bring her home for a night of passion.

However, Feng Xiaohe was a master of the drinking table. She maneuvered through the social scene with poise and skill, never once getting drunk. Usually, the men would end up passed out under the table while Feng Xiaohe would still be smiling as if nothing had happened.

Female colleagues whispered that Feng Xiaohe’s romantic interests were the sons of city leaders. Some said she had been involved with wealthy heirs worth hundreds of millions for a long time, and others even claimed she had accompanied old men, acting as a relay baton in the hands of the successful.

Whether any of this was true, however, was difficult to tell.

Gossips existed everywhere, and in a company, they were especially numerous.

Nevertheless, these rumors had a profound impact on her. She was arrogant, never greeting entry-level colleagues and never deigning to explain the rumors. On the surface, the company management got along harmoniously with her, yet she remained perpetually alone.

“Old Liu, don’t be impulsive!”

“Are you crazy, Old Liu?”

However, the chubby, greasy Old Liu, whose head was soaked in sweat, had already summoned the desperate courage to rush forward. He held a bouquet of roses and ran directly in front of Feng Xiaohe, dropping to his knees.

Given his weight, one might worry he would crack the floor. Although mocking someone’s weight at a time like this was a bit much, confessing his love to Feng Xiaohe was essentially suicide.

Feng Xiaohe took the roses, but then she threw them onto the ground. She used the heel of her shoe to ruthlessly crush the petals. From beginning to end, her eyes held a bone-chilling coldness. Her moist, lipstick-coated lips parted slightly as she spoke each word deliberately.

“You should go back to the pigpen and breed with the sows.”

Several people nearby couldn’t hold back their laughter. Some covered their mouths, some raised their eyebrows, and some let out strange, mocking cries. The misfortune of a “little person” was entertainment for the majority; the core of comedy was tragedy.

Though the rose petals were crushed, they still released a fragrant scent. But Old Liu was crying like a 200-pound child.

Gao Sijin did not laugh. He did not think there was anything funny about it. He stepped forward and helped Old Liu up.

“It took so much for me to fall in love once… so much…” he choked out.

“Some women are just beyond our reach,” Gao Sijin advised.

“The shady path you think you’ve found has actually been a high-traffic road for a long time. The depths on both sides are drenched in dew every night and morning. Even though that place has been marked by countless others, we still yearn for it. Even if it has become a black hole, it remains a place we are happy to explore our whole lives. When you can enter easily, you should realize it’s not because you’re great, but because someone else has already widened the road for you.”

Young Master Zhao, who had suffered a similar social death in the past, empathized with Old Liu and immediately recited a famous cynical quote.

The entire first floor of the company was filled with a joyful atmosphere. After Old Liu left, everyone could no longer hold back and burst into loud laughter.

Colleagues were entangled in conflicts of interest; no one would truly pity another. In this era where one had to compete just to survive, this was only human nature.

Gao Sijin recorded their expressions, keeping them as reference material for his future writing. Of course, he also specifically recorded Old Liu’s dejected and desperate appearance when he resigned.

After finishing work on Friday, he officially left the company.

“You’ll find something better.”

“If I ever do well somewhere else in the future, you guys should come work with me!” Old Liu gripped Gao Sijin’s hand with his greasy palm. “Thank you so much, brother. You were the only one who didn’t gloat.”

His gratitude might have been sincere, but after this parting, it would likely be forever.

The world was inherently cruel, and Gao Sijin hoped for more tenderness between people.

However, he also knew that the reason society progressed was due to natural selection and the survival of the fittest.

‘I really want to go full-time…’

It wasn’t that he hated being a corporate slave at the company. Rather, compared to being a corporate slave, he hated being a masked adult even more.

Faced with a supervisor who often slacked off and pushed work onto him, he had to maintain a smiling face. Faced with the exclusion and pressure from colleagues, he had to maintain a smiling face. Faced with his supervisor’s three-hour-long sessions of nonsense, he had to maintain a smiling face.

The taste of alcohol was bitter, yet it was exceptionally delicious.

On his way home from work, Gao Sijin bought a can of Budweiser.

‘When a person truly falls in love with drinking, his life is already on a downward slope.’

His life was sealed within his home, the company, and the stretch of road between the two.

The world was indeed vast for a small number of people, but for the majority, it was as small as a birdcage.

He wanted to be a poet, but he did not want to be a poet who starved to death.

“I’ll just write books…”

“Write books? What kind of books?”

After getting off the bus, Gao Sijin saw Feng Xiaohe getting off at the same stop.

“It’s nothing.” Gao Sijin did not dare look her in the eye. “Goodbye, Ms. Feng.”

“Oh, goodbye.”

Feng Xiaohe unexpectedly returned the greeting.

Gao Sijin sometimes took the same bus home as Feng Xiaohe, but this was the first time she had ever acknowledged him.