“Honey, what time do you think it is? Why are you still sleeping?” Feng Xiaohe said as she kicked open the bedroom door with an overbearing air. She looked at the man who was snoring under the covers and added, “I’ve already made breakfast for you.”
“Didn’t you promise me you’d wake up early this morning to go with me to the airport to pick up Xiaona?”
“Let me sleep a little longer, okay, honey? Even 5 minutes would do…” a weak voice drifted out from beneath the quilt.
“I can understand you not wanting to go to work normally, but Xiaona finally has a vacation to come back home. How can you sleep in for something this important?” Feng Xiaohe stood with her hands on her hips, pressing her foot clad in black stockings firmly onto the quilt. “Get up right now. Don’t make me use special measures.”
“Honey, she’s already a college student. She can definitely get home from the airport on her own…” the man said, his voice carrying a hint of a sob. “Besides, I was writing my novel until the middle of the night. I finally got into bed, but you still wouldn’t let me sleep. They say a woman at 30 is like a tiger, and that’s no exaggeration. I really don’t have a single drop left…”
“I’m only 26! And paying the public grain is a husband’s duty. Since you married me, you have to satisfy me. Now get up!”
Feng Xiaohe tugged hard at the quilt.
“I really can’t do it. I have a disease where I’ll die if I get out of bed. Forcing me to get up is attempted murder of your own husband.”
The man, meanwhile, tried his best to hold onto the covers.
Back and forth they went, like a game of tug-of-war.
Eventually, the man lost the advantage, and Feng Xiaohe yanked the quilt away.
The man lying on the bed in his pajamas actually had a face identical to Gao Sijin’s.
Feng Xiaohe suddenly froze.
‘Wait, when on earth did I marry Gao Sijin?’
‘And since when was Xiaona in college?’
The chaotic memories gave Feng Xiaohe a slight headache until the sharp ringing of a phone reached her ears.
***
*Brring! Brring! Brring!*
“So it was a dream…”
Feng Xiaohe rubbed her hair, which was messy from sleep. The eighth-grade girl lying in her arms was her younger sister, Feng Xiaona.
This was still that old, dilapidated house. The windows let in drafts, the pipes were rusty, and there were cockroaches and silverfish. Sometimes, Feng Xiaohe even admired her own survival skills.
“Sigh, I had that kind of dream again…”
“What did you dream about, Sister?” Feng Xiaona asked, her innocent eyes blinking.
“I dreamed about married life.”
“Did you dream about your future husband?”
“I suppose so.”
“I bet he’s a handsome and wealthy CEO, right?” Feng Xiaona asked with great interest, swinging her legs.
Feng Xiaohe shook her head and said wistfully, “He’s a poor loser. But he’s alright — no bad intentions.”
“Who is he?”
“You don’t know him, Xiaona.”
“Tell me more, Sister! I want to hear about him.”
“Stop being so nosy. Hurry up and brush your teeth and wash your face. You have a math tutoring class soon.”
Under Xiaona’s persistent questioning, Xiaohe finally forced an end to the topic.
After getting out of bed, Feng Xiaohe went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
As she boiled the hot porridge and fried two sunny-side-up eggs, Gao Sijin’s face surfaced in her mind.
Actually, Gao Sijin wasn’t on her hunting list. He was too poor.
She remembered that Gao Sijin was 1 year younger than her and had joined the company 1 year after she did.
He barely spoke on a daily basis and was always spacing out at the office.
In his department, there was a Director Liu. She was a mother with a young child who took leaves for all sorts of reasons almost every month, often dumping her work directly onto Gao Sijin.
“Director Liu, you finished last year’s reports in a single morning?” Minister Sun asked with surprise. “Such a heavy workload. Thank you for your hard work. I’ll try to get you an extra bonus at the end of the month.”
“Thank you, Minister Sun. Take care.”
Director Liu smiled fawningly.
Director Liu would never tell Minister Sun that the work had actually been completed by Gao Sijin alone.
Whenever Feng Xiaohe passed the first floor, she saw Gao Sijin working so hard he didn’t even have time for a sip of water. He just kept his head down and toiled away.
Wasn’t that just how companies were? Those who flattered and coasted along often did very well in the workplace, while those truly willing to work had to shoulder most of the burden.
Conscientious and obscure — those were the labels Feng Xiaohe had given Gao Sijin. He was an outsider who stayed out of the fray. While others thought about how to take advantage of people, he thought about how not to owe anyone.
To Feng Xiaohe, such a man was a pushover.
If it were Feng Xiaohe, she would rather go down fighting than let someone else take credit for her work.
But what Feng Xiaohe hadn’t expected was that even someone like Gao Sijin could have an angry outburst one day.
A newcomer had joined the company back then, and the task of training them naturally fell to Gao Sijin. Only he would take on such a thankless job without complaint.
“You didn’t clean up your own mess, and now that there’s a problem, you’re blaming the newcomer? Is this fun for you?” Gao Sijin stood in front of a recently hired college student, speaking loudly like a protective father.”
“Does Xiao Zhou owe you anything? He isn’t even familiar with the work yet, and he was helping you on top of finishing his own tasks. But what about you? The data you gave him was wrong, and now you’re turning around and blaming him. What are you thinking? Do you have no shame?”
“Shouldn’t he have checked it? I gave you all the data. Why couldn’t you catch such a simple mistake? As the mentor, why couldn’t you look after your apprentice and help him check? You’re just making trouble for me all day.”
Perhaps relying on her status as a mother, Director Liu spoke with exceptional self-righteousness.
The two went toe-to-toe on the ground floor. Director Liu even threatened to squeeze Gao Sijin out of the department. Gao Sijin snorted in disdain and shot back with sharp words.
The matter eventually faded away, but Director Liu tripped Gao Sijin up plenty of times in the following days.
Xiao Zhou had now become Director Liu’s dedicated lackey. He treated Gao Sijin, who had stood up for him, like an enemy, mocking him at every turn.
Gao Sijin remained solitary, neither flattering nor sucking up to anyone. He did his job and rarely caused trouble for anyone.
“Breakfast is ready, Xiaona.”
“Coming, Sister.”
Feng Xiaohe didn’t actually like the workplace atmosphere either. Before entering the professional world, kindness was a choice, but afterward, kindness became a cost. Sometimes, people bit each other for limited survival resources, and socializing became entirely utilitarian.
She really wanted to warn Gao Sijin about some basic principles.
However, she never had the chance, and she felt that approaching him unprompted would lead to unnecessary misunderstandings.
“Sister, you’ve been spacing out since this morning. Is something on your mind?”
“No, Xiaona. I was just thinking about a friend.”
She called him a friend, but they had almost no interaction.
Perhaps, like most people, he also thought of her as an “unclean” woman.