The CEO Falls for the Slacker

Chapter 8

With someone as proactive as Sun Jones, anything she does will be successful.

The same goes for Chai Ya. After knowing the exact time Sun Jones’ high-speed train would arrive in S City, she immediately got up and started preparing to pick her up.

On the other hand, Feng Shanshan was dawdling, still at home getting ready. She said she had to carefully prepare since she would be moving into Shen Yan's luxurious house soon.

[Chai Ya: Sis, if you arrive early, find a place at the train station to sit for a bit. It’ll take us a little while to get there too.]

[Sun Jones: Sure! I brought some local specialties for you, I’ll wait for you to come and pick them up.]

[Chai Ya: Great! Shanshan might actually arrive earlier than me.]

Feng Shanshan’s and Shen Yan’s hometown, City A, wasn’t far from S City. The high-speed train ride was only about twenty minutes.

After confirming the station where Sun Jones would arrive, Feng Shanshan finally bought her high-speed train ticket.

Shen Yan calculated the time and figured they would definitely reach S City in the afternoon. Even if they went to the supermarket and then to her house, they probably wouldn’t get there before five o’clock, so she would likely arrive after them.

She thought she should tell the community manager to let them in when they arrive at the entrance, but she wasn’t eager to interact with the manager.

Earlier, the manager had warmly invited her to join the property owner group, but she had refused.

She initially wanted to contact her mom for help with talking to the manager, but then realized that as someone already working, she shouldn’t burden her mom with such small matters.

In the last two days, she had interacted with more people than she did in a whole month back in school.

Entering the workforce was really exhausting.

After thinking it through, she decided that it wouldn’t be good to let her friends wait outside the community gate. It was already May, and the weather was getting hot. It wouldn’t be realistic to have them wait with all their bags in the heat.

She opened the community manager’s WeChat and briefly described her three roommates, asking her to help bring them back to her apartment.

After sending the message, she waited for a while, and soon saw that the other side was typing.

Her community manager was very friendly and immediately agreed to help. She thanked Shen Yan several times, saying it was part of her job as a manager, and assured her not to worry.

This made Shen Yan feel warm inside and realize that buying this apartment was definitely worth it.

The more she thought about it, the more she appreciated the experience. She posted about it in their small family chat group.

Shen Wei quickly responded with a thumbs-up emoji and commented, [The property fee is expensive, but it’s worth it.]

Xu Yue also quickly replied, [Next time, let’s see if they can help collect the blankets.]

Shen Yan: ...Why can't she keep up with her mom's line of thinking?

Thinking about enjoying hotpot with her friends later, Shen Yan felt even more motivated while working in the afternoon.

While writing her summary plan, she had a burst of inspiration. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, not only adding "flair" to the content for each department but even optimizing the small titles for Zhou Xingqi’s sections. She even started considering whether to buy a mechanical keyboard, as the one provided by the company felt terrible to type on.

Just as this thought crossed her mind, she startled herself.

What was happening? She thought. It had only been two days on the job, and now she was turning into a workaholic. She hadn't even received her first paycheck and was already considering spending her own money on work-related stuff.

But the company's keyboard was truly hard to use—it was one of those flat, desktop-model keyboards, which not only felt bad but also couldn’t keep up with her typing speed.

After some internal struggle, she pushed the idea of buying a keyboard out of her mind.

Around 3 PM, Shen Yan was nearly done with the summary plan. She planned to send it to Zhou Xingqi at 4 PM, giving him an hour to review it, so if any changes were needed, she’d still have time to make them without needing to stay late.

Just as she was about to relax, Jian Hong stood up from her desk and asked, "Does anyone want some milk tea?"

Teacher Cheng was the first to respond: "Yes, let’s get some! It’s been a while since Xiao Shen joined us, and we haven’t celebrated yet."

When Shen Yan heard her name being called, she quickly looked up and saw everyone excitedly staring at her.

She suddenly had a realization.

Oh no, she thought silently, I just suppressed the urge to buy my own stuff for work, but now it seems like a workplace unwritten rule to buy milk tea for my new colleagues?

She hadn’t thought of this yesterday, but now that her colleagues had brought it up, it seemed awkward.

She smiled awkwardly and said, "Sure, what would everyone like?"

Meng Gulan, who had nearly thirty years of work experience, laughed when she heard Shen Yan’s question: "Xiao Shen, you haven’t even received your salary yet! How can we let you pay for it? Of course, this should be on the leader, right, Assistant Zhou?"

Zhou Xingqi nodded in agreement: "Yes, the materials from the municipal government messed up our schedule yesterday, so I’ll treat today. Order whatever you want!"

He was reflecting on his actions; their department hadn’t properly welcomed Shen Yan yet, and he almost forgot about the standard welcoming gestures for new employees.

"By the way, our department hasn't had a team dinner in a while. When everyone’s free, let’s all have a meal together to formally welcome Xiao Shen," Zhou Xingqi continued.

Shen Yan: ...

She really wanted to say that milk tea would be enough to welcome her—she didn’t need Zhou Xingqi to treat them to a meal. She would be fine just buying milk tea herself. Could they not do that big welcome dinner?

"Sounds great! I’ve been eyeing this sushi place for a while, but it’s so expensive, I’ve never dared to go," Jian Hong said, looking very happy.

Zhou Xingqi smiled and agreed: "Alright, no problem."

Shen Yan: ...

So now they were going for sushi dinner, and she wasn’t sure if she could avoid it.

But she couldn’t say no to them—it would make her look anti-social and ungrateful.

This felt very different from the alumni gatherings at A University, where she didn’t mind declining.

This dinner was bringing her a lot of psychological pressure, and she started to calculate whether she could pretend to be sick when the time came.

Thankfully, she had nearly finished her work, or else she’d probably have no focus left to write.

At exactly 4 PM, she sent the summary plan to Zhou Xingqi as planned.

Zhou Xingqi read it through and sent her some format adjustments, asking her to revise the document accordingly.

Shen Yan had studied official document writing in school, so the specific fonts, sizes, and paragraph spacing were familiar to her. Though she had long forgotten most of it, it felt oddly comforting to work with this type of content again.

After making the required adjustments, she sent the revised version back to Zhou Xingqi.

He printed a copy and took it to show to Lu Yu in their small office.

Shen Yan looked at Lu Yu’s office door for a while, curious. Hadn’t she noticed that Lu Yu hadn’t come out all day?

"Thinking about something regarding Mr. Lu?" Jian Hong joked as she noticed Shen Yan staring at the door.

Shen Yan replied honestly, "No, I was just wondering if Mr. Lu hasn’t left his office today?"

Jian Hong laughed: "You’ll understand after working a bit longer. Mr. Lu is quite the tech enthusiast."

Shen Yan: "I see."

No wonder when Zhou Xingqi took her in to greet Mr. Lu, and when he called her earlier today, Shen Yan had felt something was a bit off.

"By the way, did you see Mr. Lu today?" Jian Hong asked, sensing something strange. "He usually goes to the break room to make coffee himself."

Shen Yan thought for a moment: "No, I haven’t seen him at all from the time I arrived this morning."

Jian Hong raised an eyebrow: "You came in at 9 AM, right?"

Shen Yan: "Yes."

Jian Hong nodded in understanding: "That makes sense. Mr. Lu was probably making coffee before you arrived."

Shen Yan thought this was a nice detail—Mr. Lu seemed to have a good sense of timing. From now on, she would aim to come to work exactly on time.

Once she finished her tasks, Shen Yan looked at their group chat, and sure enough, her roommates had already arrived at her place. Thankfully, she had already informed the manager, and the manager had been reliable in guiding them to her home.

She shared her home’s entry code in the chat, and they could easily get in.

[Shen Yan: The round table in the dining room has an induction cooker, so you can cook hotpot there. The drawer under the gas stove in the kitchen holds the bowls, plates, and utensils—all of them are new. The knives and other tools should be visible on the counter.]

Shen Yan typed a long message, but no one responded.

[Feng Shanshan: Oh my gosh, Shen Yan, your mansion must be worth a small goal!]

[Chai Ya: You can actually see the river from the window!!!]

[Sun Jones: I don’t even want to try anymore, Shen Yan, could you maybe like girls?]

Shen Yan: ...

[Shen Yan: Can I just get hotpot as soon as I get home?]

[Feng Shanshan: Of course, my lady, I’ll go wash the vegetables right now.]

Shen Yan: ...

[Chai Ya: Miss, do you need a driver? I can carry you to and from work every day.]

Shen Yan: ...

[Sun Jones: Miss, those cheap clothes we bought together, are you really not allergic to them?]

Shen Yan: ...