Chapter 4
1708 Words
Shen Yan agreed with Sister Meng’s opinion; she also thought Zhou Xing didn’t seem like someone who could easily find a partner.
But since she was a newcomer, she could only silently agree in her heart.
“Sister Meng, hello,” Shen Yan greeted politely.
Sister Meng nodded at her, “You’re Shen Yan, right? I’ll call you Xiao Shen.”
“Mm.”
“Xiao Shen, you’re from A University, like our CEO and Assistant Zhou. You’re all alumni,” Jian Hong also walked over from the copier.
“Hello, Sister Jian,” Shen Yan wasn’t sure how to respond, so she could only smile.
“Mr. Wang and Mr. Lu are busy outside. This is Teacher Cheng Rong,” Zhou Xing said, noticing that Shen Yan had recognized Jian Hong and Sister Meng. He secretly gave Shen Yan some points, thinking she was a good young person.
Shen Yan saw Cheng Rong peeking his head out from the cubicle, so she continued smiling and greeted him.
“Xiao Shen, your seat is inside, by the window,” Zhou Xing guided Shen Yan to her workstation and pointed at the glass-walled room opposite. “That’s the CEO’s office. Let me take you to greet the CEO.”
Shen Yan felt a little nervous. “Can we skip it?”
“Huh?” Zhou Xing didn’t expect her to react that way. She was clearly different from those who tried to get close to the CEO.
People can be quite annoying—before, when others rushed to squat outside CEO Lu’s office, Zhou Xing couldn’t stand it. He wished the CEO would lock himself in his office all day and not come out. But now Shen Yan didn’t want to meet CEO Lu, and he felt she should at least greet him.
After all, CEO Lu was the head of the Lu Group, and the sudden addition of someone to the executive office should be reported to him.
“Let’s go greet him. I’ll take you there,” Zhou Xing said, seeing Shen Yan’s hesitation. He understood, since Shen Yan had just graduated and seemed to have some social anxiety. “Don’t worry, the CEO and I are about the same age. He’s not a bad person.”
Shen Yan: “…I didn’t mean that.”
“Then let’s go. The sooner, the better. You’ll have to greet him eventually,” Zhou Xing reassured her.
Shen Yan: “Okay.”
Zhou Xing knocked on the door, and upon hearing a cold “Come in,” he opened the door.
“CEO Lu, this is Shen Yan, our new recruit from this year’s spring recruitment, from A University’s Chinese Department,” Zhou Xing introduced her to CEO Lu.
Shen Yan smiled and said, “Hello, CEO Lu.”
CEO Lu glanced at her and nodded.
Zhou Xing glanced at CEO Lu, who also looked at him, and there was a moment of silence.
Shen Yan sensed the strange atmosphere and, having originally kept her head down, was forced to raise it and observe.
She exchanged a glance with Zhou Xing.
Zhou Xing: “Is that it?”
CEO Lu then spoke the second sentence after his “Come in”: “What do you mean, ‘Is that it’?”
Zhou Xing: “Don’t you have anything to say?”
CEO Lu: “What should I have to say?”
Shen Yan: …
Zhou Xing turned to Shen Yan: “Let’s go.”
Shen Yan pulled at the corner of her mouth: “Okay.”
“Assistant Zhou, you really seem to care about Xiao Shen.”
Zhou Xing had been busy helping Shen Yan with various tasks, from applying for an employee number to picking up office supplies. He hadn’t stopped all morning. When he went to her desk again to ask if she wanted to apply for a laptop, Jian Hong couldn’t help but comment.
Zhou Xing thought for a moment. He hadn’t been this attentive with previous newcomers, but—
“Xiao Shen is from A University’s Chinese Department. She’s going to be a key person in writing materials for us. She’s different from those before.”
Jian Hong looked at him with doubt: “Is that the only reason?”
Shen Yan, overhearing their conversation, suddenly felt uneasy and interrupted, “Isn’t my job just to serve tea, run errands, and do miscellaneous tasks?”
Zhou Xing was startled: “Who told you that?”
Shen Yan: “I overheard it in the meeting room downstairs.”
Actually, it wasn’t just from overhearing downstairs. Shen Yan had always thought of the executive office as responsible for logistics work, and with Assistant Zhou above her, she assumed her role would be to assist with miscellaneous tasks. So when she heard Zhou Xing had read an article she wrote for the school journal, she was quite surprised.
“Xiao Shen, do you have a misunderstanding about our executive office?” Jian Hong laughed and looked at Zhou Xing, “Assistant Zhou, you’ve been busy introducing everything but didn’t tell Xiao Shen about the actual work we do?”
Zhou Xing scratched his nose. He hadn’t explained the main tasks of the four of them, had he?
“Our office is mainly responsible for, besides assisting the CEO, writing all kinds of materials for the Lu Group—anything from documents submitted to government departments to the speeches for the CEO’s meetings.”
Shen Yan: … So it actually matches her major.
“Okay, but how can I write anything when I don’t know about the company’s business?” Shen Yan asked.
“Copy,” Jian Hong imparted her wisdom, “Just copy everything.”
Shen Yan widened her eyes.
Jian Hong explained, “The business or administrative departments will provide us with information, and it’s translated into plain language.”
Shen Yan responded, “Align the granularity? Unify the underlying logic? Private domain traffic?”
Jian Hong gave her a thumbs-up: “Xiao Shen, you’ve done your homework.”
Shen Yan shrank back: “Is that right?”
Jian Hong laughed, “Well, our company is in a transitional period, so these buzzwords aren’t super important now, but they might be useful someday.”
Shen Yan: “I’ll give it a try.”
Jian Hong: “No worries, take it slow. I wasn’t great at it either. Did you know that Sister Meng can write an article on her way to work in the subway?”
Shen Yan shook her head: “No, I didn’t.”
“Sister Meng left the system, and her writing skills are top-notch. The company’s IPO prospectus was completely transformed after she edited it,” Jian Hong said. “I believe if we go public, 95% of the credit goes to her.”
“Stop flattering me, alright?” Meng Gulan, who had been making tea at her desk, hurried over to refute, “Without me, Lu Group would still go public.”
“Alright, alright, let’s not get off-topic,” Zhou Xing quickly steered the conversation back, “Xiao Shen, do you want to apply for a laptop?”
Shen Yan shook her head: “No need, I have my own.”
Zhou Xing gave her a “Are you stupid?” expression: “Why use your own old one when the company’s is free? If you can get a new one, why not?”
Shen Yan: “…”
Jian Hong also agreed: “How can you spend your own money for work?”
Shen Yan weakly asked: “Is the company’s laptop brand new?”
Zhou Xing nodded: “Yes, and it’s a MacBook Pro, the latest model, though the memory isn’t big.”
Shen Yan didn’t expect Lu Group’s benefits to be so good: “So if I take the laptop but leave before my probation period ends, what happens?”
Jian Hong: “You’d have to return it when you leave.”
Shen Yan asked again: “What if I leave ten years from now? Do I still have to return it?”
Zhou Xing: “I know this one. If the electronic product has been used for over five years, after depreciation, it’s yours.”
Although Shen Yan didn’t fully understand depreciation, she got the point: “So this laptop will be mine after five years?”
Zhou Xing: “Yes.”
Shen Yan suddenly felt that not being able to become a civil servant might have been for the best since she could work at Lu Group, which seemed better than being a civil servant.
She didn’t realize how wrong she was until she received an urgent task near the end of her first day.
Shen Yan was sitting at her workstation when she heard Zhou Xing tell her to wait for a while as there was an urgent task. She thought, “What urgent task can I, a newcomer, do?”
She had spent the entire afternoon setting up her new laptop and finally got it working, only to be told there was work now?
“The district government needs materials on the Link project from Shenyu Technology. We’ll work on it tonight,” Zhou Xing explained after briefing Jian Hong.
Shen Yan was confused: Shenyu Technology? Isn’t that the popular short-video app recently? What is the Link project?
But Zhou Xing didn’t have time to explain and instead sent her a pile of materials on the internal chat.
“Take a look at these first. Jian Jie is setting up the framework, and once she’s done, find the relevant content from these materials and add it to her framework.”
Shen Yan: “Huh?”
Her expression was just like that of a character on a quest to eliminate Tang Seng and his disciples.
“It’s simple, you can do it,” Zhou Xing encouraged her.
Shen Yan, motivated by the tense atmosphere around her, ended up reading until 6 p.m.
When Zhou Xing and Jian Hong invited her to dinner in the cafeteria, she was still engrossed in the materials.
When she finally realized what had happened and was in the cafeteria, she wondered: “Assistant Zhou, is this the 996?
- Writer
