On the rainy night he sent me away, he gave me thirty thousand. When we met again, he begged me to return to the company.
Shen Nian was with Gu Tingchen for three years.
On the surface, she was his personal assistant. In secret, she was the girlfriend he kept hidden from the world. She ironed his shirts, kept his stomach medicine ready, and took the drinks for him at business dinners. But he never held her hand in public.
He said, “Nian Nian, once I land this project, I’ll make us public.”
She waited three years, only to hear him say, “You should go.”
It was pouring that day. His car drove past her, splashing mud all over her. He sent his assistant out with thirty thousand, calling it “compensation.”
She didn’t take it.
She only took the twenty-seven design sketches she had stayed up late to draw. They were the core proposal for his company’s current bid, entirely her work, yet her name had never appeared on them.
Later, she joined a rival company and worked with Lu Shen, the genius designer rumored to be socially awkward and demanding.
A year later, at the bidding presentation,
she sat among the lead creators and calmly presented the proposal. Gu Tingchen sat across from her, his face turning paler by the second.
Afterward, he stopped her, his voice trembling. “Nian Nian, I was wrong. Come back.”
Before she could answer, Lu Shen’s voice came from behind her, cool as could be:
“Mr. Gu, her rate is three thousand an hour now. You’re keeping her from work and costing our company money.”
Gu Tingchen thought getting her to forgive him would be the hardest part.
Only later did he realize
the hardest part was that she already had someone else by her side.
