A small candy

Chapter 20 Why are you resigning?

Jian Ling and Dai Wangchu walked around the mall for a few rounds. Jian Ling seemed to be possessed by a money-giving boy, and bought everything she saw that looked good.

While browsing a luxury goods store, she bought three bags without blinking an eye and offered Dai Wangchu one as a gift, but she declined. Unhappy, Jian Ling turned around and picked out a few dresses without even trying them on. Her fingers swished across a row of hangers and she said to the salesperson beside her, "I want all of these dresses."

Dai Wangchu saw with his own eyes that the shopping guide looked at Jian Ling with eyes like a hungry wolf seeing a little fat sheep.

After they'd wandered around until they were exhausted, they decided to take a break and found a restaurant in the mall for dinner. Jian Ling's spirits perked up at the aroma of the food, and she turned her anger into appetite. She ordered a ton of food, not even considering whether they could finish it. After all, wasting food was always a bad idea.

Later it turned out that Dai Wangchu was overthinking it. Jian Ling finished three large plates of food by herself, muttering as she ate, "I don't care about my figure anymore. I'd rather die of obesity. Anyway, the person I like doesn't like me."

Dai Wangchu was a little scared: "Don't, don't, don't do this."

Jian Ling pushed the other two large plates towards her: "Don't look at me, just eat. I think the food in this restaurant is pretty delicious. Do you want to order another plate of these fried fish cakes? Only four on one plate are not enough."

Dai Wangchu waved his hand: "No, I'm almost done eating."

Jian Ling acted as if she didn't hear her words. She called the waiter over and ordered another plate of fish cakes, eating one in two bites.

Dai Wangchu was shocked: "Jian Ling, don't overeat, you've already eaten enough."

Jian Ling shook her head: "You have no idea how much I eat. Actually, I may have eaten, but I don't eat that much in order to maintain a good figure."

Dai Wangchu didn't try to persuade her anymore and accompanied her to eat a lot of food.

They were both so full that they slumped in their chairs, unwilling to move. Jian Ling pulled her phone out of her bag to check the time, only to find a pop-up message from the food delivery app.

It showed that her order had been successfully delivered an hour ago and had been signed for.

Order? What order?
Jian Ling felt like she had forgotten something. She clicked on the message box and saw that it was the bouquet of roses she had ordered that morning.

Jian Lingren was dumbfounded.

"Chu Chu, Chu Chu, I'm done." Jian Ling slowly raised her head with a sad face.

Dai Wangchu lazily raised her eyelids. The feeling of fullness in her abdomen made her unable to even speak. She only expressed her surprise with her eyes: Is there anything worse than a broken heart?
Time goes back to eight o'clock this morning——

After Jian Ling handed the box of exquisite pastries to Cheng Zhixu's assistant, she returned to her workstation and couldn't help but share the matter with Dai Wangchu.

Dai Wangchu felt a little disappointed and pointed out directly that the gift she gave was not obvious enough and it was difficult to tell whether it was an expression of affection or something else. However, since she had already given it, there was nothing more to say.

Jian Ling said, "Proceed step by step. Moving too fast is never safe."

Dai Wangchu stroked his chin, looking very experienced. "If that's what you're thinking, you could try playing hard to get. It's quite effective."

Jian Ling became interested and leaned over eagerly to ask for advice: "I don't understand, can you explain it in more detail?"

"You gave Mr. Cheng some pastries, so it's very likely he doesn't quite understand your intentions." Dai Wangchu pondered for a moment, then continued, "You never know. As a boss, he's naturally very smart, so he might have a vague guess, but he's not sure. At this point, if you give him a gift that clearly expresses your feelings, it'll be enough to fuel his imagination. Alternate between loosening and tightening, with a proper degree of relaxation, just like flying a kite. This is the essence of playing hard to get, do you understand?"

To be honest, Jian Ling didn't understand, but it didn't matter. She would grasp the key point. The key point was that she would give another gift to express her feelings, and this gift should have an ambiguous meaning.

For girls, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about "ambiguity" is red roses.

Jian Ling clasped her hands together and decisively took out her phone to order a bouquet of roses. Of course, she wouldn't be so foolish as to have the flowers delivered to her office. What if it got out of hand? So she set a delivery timeframe.

As for Cheng Zhixu's address, I have to thank Ye Guizhou.

That night, Cheng Zhixu came to her place to get something, and she later asked Ye Guizhou about it. Ye Guizhou thought she was worried that Cheng Zhixu would raid her house again, so he told her that it was Cheng Zhixu's old house, but he hadn't lived there much since then, and it had been vacant for a long time, with only some unimportant items in it. He told her to live there without worrying about it and not to bother with it anymore.

She almost cried out that she was wronged. She had never thought about changing her residence, okay?
Jian Ling asked casually, if Cheng Zhixu doesn't live here, then where does he live?
Ye Guizhou told her Cheng Zhixu's other address without thinking, but he didn't expect that this useful information would come in handy so soon.

After ordering the roses, Jian Ling put the matter out of her mind. Coupled with the upsetting incident that happened at noon, she completely forgot what she had done. She even asked Dai Wangchu to go to the CEO's office to get the documents that afternoon. She hadn't anticipated the current situation.

Dai Wangchu figured out the whole story and almost dropped his jaw in shock: "You said you took my advice this morning and gave Mr. Cheng a bouquet of red roses?"

Jian Ling's head fell, and her forehead hit her palm. She said depressedly: "Yes, you heard it right."

Dai Wangchu pressed his temples, finally understanding how a teacher must feel when a poor student leaves them speechless with rage. "What good can I say about you? Why give me roses when there are so many other gifts?"

Jian Ling raised her head and shouted at her angrily, "Didn't you say you wanted to give me a gift that clearly expressed my feelings for him?!"

Dai Wangchu: "And then you thought of giving this as a gift?"

Jian Ling: "What else can I give you?"

Dai Wangchu took a long time to utter, "You are truly a talent."

"Let's not talk about this for now. Tell me what to do next." Jian Ling's face was gloomy. The sadness of losing love was temporarily put aside, leaving only anxiety and impatience. "When I gave him that bouquet of roses, I didn't know he already had someone he liked! What's going on now? Am I the third party trying to steal someone's girlfriend? I don't want that."

"Let me think of a solution." Dai Wangchu made a gesture of silence, indicating that he needed a quiet environment to let his brain work quickly.

Jian Ling shut her mouth pitifully, filled with regret.

After three minutes of silence, Dai Wangchu's mind clicked, and an idea flashed through his mind: "Let me ask you, was the bouquet signed? If it wasn't signed, Mr. Cheng wouldn't know who sent it."

Jian Ling's eyes lit up: "Yes!" As soon as she finished speaking, she remembered, "No, I asked the florist to write a greeting card for me!"

Dai Wangchu's shoulders tilted and he stumbled. "I surrender." After a moment, Jian Ling slowly smiled for the first time that night. "Hehe, I didn't ask the boss to write my name directly. I asked him to write my initials."

Dai Wangchu slammed the table and said, "That's fine. Just deny to the death that you sent the flowers."

Jian Ling actually wanted to say that the two letters JL were easy to guess. As long as Cheng Zhixu wasn't stupid, he could guess that the flowers were from her. But she couldn't care less now. Even if he asked, she would deny it outright.

Her Royal Highness the Princess of the Jane family would never allow herself to interfere in other people's feelings.

-

It was late at night and Jian Ling tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep.

The moonlight was bright outside the window, shining through a thin layer of curtains. Even with the lights off, the room didn't seem pitch black. Jian Ling was feeling restless. When she turned over again, she couldn't help but take out her phone from her pillow and checked WeChat. There was no message from Cheng Zhixu.

Ordinarily, he had already received the roses, so hadn't he guessed they were from her? In her opinion, if Cheng Zhixu had guessed the flowers were from her, he wouldn't have asked anything.

Jian Ling rubbed her hair, found the remote control and closed the blackout curtains. There was no light in the room, and she sighed in the darkness.

Ever since she started taking the medicine, she hasn't suffered from insomnia like tonight.

In the end, Jian Ling didn't know how she fell asleep. Several alarm clocks in the morning failed to wake her up. It was only when her aunt came and knocked on the door that she woke up.

She knew she would be late again this morning without looking at the time, so she decided to give up and no longer rushed to the company like she did the previous times. Instead, she sat down to have dinner with Ye Xianxin.

Ye Xianxin looked up at the wall clock. It was almost nine o'clock. "Aren't you busy lately?"

Jian Ling supported her forehead, scooped up some red bean porridge with a spoon and ate it, then said slowly, "I accidentally overslept. I'm already late anyway, so whatever."

Ye Xianxin stared at her face for a while. "Didn't you get enough rest last night? Why do you look so bad? Last time I asked you, didn't you say that the medicine Dr. Chen prescribed was very effective?"

"The medicine he prescribed is indeed very effective. It's my own problem."

Speaking of Dr. Chen, Ye Xianxin eagerly inquired about their current progress: "How are you getting along with him? Have you been seeing him often lately?"

Jian Ling choked, "Mom, you're too impatient. To tell you the truth, there's no chemistry between him and me, and there's no chance of romance. Right now, we're just a normal doctor-patient relationship."

Ye Xianxin was stunned: "Then what does he think?"

"Probably the same as me."

Jian Ling buried her head in her porridge, unwilling to speak much. She felt exhausted and somewhat reluctant to go to work. She knew why her mindset had become like this. She had joined the Cheng Group not because she wanted independence or to train herself, but simply to pursue Cheng Zhixu. Now that she had lost her motivation, she naturally had no fighting spirit.

With things like this, she couldn't even find a reason to resign.

After Jian Ling finished her meal, her family's driver drove her to the office, where most of the morning had passed. When she stepped into the planning department's office, her colleagues gave her strange looks.

Fellow intern Fan Yijun already had a lot of complaints about her, and now she had even more reason to mock her: "Some people are really weird. They're late three or five times a month, and today they were even more arrogant. They simply didn't come in the morning. They think they're amazing just because they have connections."

In the past, Jian Ling would have rushed up to her and argued with her, regardless of whether she was right or wrong. But now she was like a defeated rooster, too lazy to refute, and what Fan Yijun said was the truth.

As soon as Jian Ling sat down, her supervisor came over, knocked on the corner of the table, and asked her to come with him to the office.

The usually tolerant and gentle boss rarely showed a serious expression: "Jian Ling, what's wrong with you lately? You've been late several times and even missed today's morning meeting!"

Jian Ling lowered her head and twisted her hands together: "Sorry, boss, I'm not feeling well."

Yuan Xiao frowned, his tone growing colder. "If you're not feeling well, you can ask for leave. I've always been tolerant of women, and I know your circumstances are special. But aren't you being too willful to just not come to the company without saying anything? Didn't you do quite well on the group project a while ago?"

"I understand." Jian Ling suddenly made up her mind at this moment. She raised her head and looked directly at her boss, saying in a serious and sincere tone, "Thank you for your care during this period, Director Yuan. I will complete the handover and then resign."

After saying that, she bent down slightly and bowed to him.

"Resign?" Manager Yuan was slightly startled and stretched out his hand to stop me. "No, why are you resigning? That's not what I meant. If this is really a health problem, I..."

Before Manager Yuan could finish his words, the phone rang. He pointed his finger at Jian Ling, signaling her not to leave yet, as he would explain everything to her in detail later.

Yuan Xiao turned his chair and answered the phone with his back turned: "Hello, Mingzhu, I have something to say. Is that Jian Ling? Oh, okay, I'll let her go right away."

When Jian Ling heard him mention her name, she looked confused.

After answering the phone, Yuan Xiao turned around and looked at Jian Ling with complicated eyes: "Assistant Ming asked you to go upstairs."

Jian Ling didn't react and asked blankly, "Where are you going?"

Yuan Xiao pressed his eyebrows together. "Where else can we go? The 48th floor, the CEO's office. Minglang, don't you know?" He waved his hand. "Hurry up and go up. We can talk about resigning later."

Of course Jian Ling knew that Minglang was Cheng Zhixu's special assistant. She just couldn't understand why he was looking for her at this time since he had no work arrangements.

Is it...

Jian Ling covered her mouth, fear slowly showing in her eyes. Was he going to ask about the bouquet of roses?

Yes, that must be the case. Cheng Zhixu didn't ask her on WeChat last night because he was waiting to ask her in person today so that she would have nothing to hide.

　Roar, roar, the plot is about to begin!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)