After the breakup, I was taken in by a group of trendy young women.

Lin Ye was woken up by his phone vibrating.

It wasn't the pleasant notification sound of a system offering rebates; it was the frantic, continuous vibration of a WeChat voice call, like a drill drilling into your brain.

He reached for his phone on the coffee table with his eyes closed. The blue light from the screen made him squint. The caller ID displayed three large characters: Wang Xiaoying.

The time is 7:02 AM.

The third day of the May Day holiday.

Lin Ye stared at the three words for two seconds, and the neurons in his brain that hadn't completely pulled out of the dream began to slowly connect—Wang Xiaoying, his direct supervisor, a retired flight attendant, 28 years old, with a figure so good that she was secretly photographed three times at the airport, and a face so delicate that she could dazzle passengers at the first-class check-in counter, but with a temper so bad that everyone in the department didn't dare to breathe during meetings.

Workaholic with incredibly high demands; still sending WeChat messages at 2 AM, even correcting punctuation errors.

Lin Ye and his colleagues discussed it privately and unanimously concluded that it must be caused by hormonal imbalance due to not having a boyfriend.

He pressed the answer button, but before he could even say "feed," a roar that could have ignited the motion-activated lights exploded from the receiver: "Lin Ye! Where the hell have you been?! There's a limit to your post-holiday blues! Don't you know you're on duty today? You're the only one absent from the whole company! I called you three times and you didn't answer! Do you want to quit?!"

Lin Ye moved the phone away from his ear by half an inch.

The girls who were sleeping sprawled on the sofa were startled by the noise and turned over. The blond-haired girl mumbled, "Who is it so early in the morning?" and buried her face in the cushions to continue sleeping. The big-footed girl with tattooed arms slid down from the sofa armrest and kicked Lin Ye's calf, muttering something inaudible in her sleep.

Lin Ye took a deep breath, put the phone back to his ear, and sat up straight.

"Wang Xiaoying, are you fucking crazy?"

The roaring on the other end of the phone stopped abruptly.

There was silence for at least three seconds.

"May Day holiday, what's the point of working? If you like working so much, I think we should slap you on the face for being so dedicated."

Lin Ye's voice wasn't loud, and he spoke slowly, his tone like he was reasoning with an unreasonable child, but every word was clearly uttered into the microphone.

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

Then came Wang Xiaoying's voice, but it was no longer the roar that could shatter windows—her voice had dropped from a shrill scream to a frequency he had never heard before, filled with disbelief, choked-up astonishment, as if someone had splashed a glass of ice water in his face: "You—what did you say?"

"I said, today is a public holiday, and the duty roster lists Li Wei's name, not mine. You didn't even check the roster before calling and yelling at people. Are you going through early menopause?"

Lin Ye couldn't help but laugh after saying that.

Premature menopause—isn't that the phrase Huang Mao used to curse Zhang Qian at the KTV yesterday?

He actually uses it quite naturally here.

The silence on the other end of the phone lasted even longer than before.

Lin Ye could almost hear Wang Xiaoying flipping through the duty roster on the other end of the phone—the papers rustled, the mouse clicked, and then there was a very faint, suppressed but not completely suppressed gasp.

She misread it.

The duty roster does indeed list Li Wei's name, not Lin Ye's.

But Wang Xiaoying has never apologized to anyone since the day she started her onboarding training.

There is no "sorry" in her dictionary, only "What's wrong with you?"

She remained silent for a while, and when she spoke again, her voice had regained about 70-80% of its usual authority, but beneath that authority lay a thin layer of awkwardness that she herself didn't know how to handle: "Even if I misread the duty roster, you can't talk to me like that. I'm your superior—"

"Leaders also need to be reasonable."

Lin Ye interrupted her, his tone as calm as if he were simply stating that the weather was nice today.

"You call me and yell at me at 7 a.m. during the holiday. You don't have a boyfriend, so you can't take it out on me."

"How—how do you know I don't have a boyfriend?!" Wang Xiaoying's voice suddenly rose half an octave.

Lin Ye was stunned for a moment.

His comment about "you don't have a boyfriend" was just a habitual rant, the same tired joke his colleagues have repeated hundreds of times in the break room. He didn't expect any response.

But Wang Xiaoying's reaction—it wasn't like anger, but more like someone had touched a deeply hidden sore spot.

A very soft sniffing sound came from the other end of the phone.

Then the call was hung up.

The busy tone beeped three times, the screen went dark, and the living room returned to silence.

Lin Ye looked down at the words "Call Ended" on his phone screen, leaned back on the sofa, and put his phone on the coffee table.

The tattooed feet were still kicking his calves, and the koi scales shimmered with a bluish light in the morning sun.

He gently moved her feet away, stood up, walked to the window, and lifted the bed sheet curtain. The morning light streamed in and fell on his face, while the sycamore trees rustled in the wind.

Then he picked up his phone from the coffee table, opened Wang Xiaoying's WeChat, and typed two lines: "Dedication to you, I need to rest."

After sending the message, he put his phone back in his pocket and went to the bathroom to wash up.

When he finished washing up and came out, the seven girls were still asleep—Yellow Hair was curled up like a shrimp, hugging a cushion; Tattooed Arms was sprawled out, taking up half of the sofa; Tattooed Legs stretched out from the end of the sofa and rested on the edge of the coffee table; Green Hair and Pink Hair were huddled together on a yoga mat; Bangs was huddled in the corner, hugging Wangcai; and the sisters Shen Qing and Shen Na were squeezed on the tattered bed, Shen Qing's arm draped over Shen Na's waist, their hair spread out on the pillow like a whole sheet of black silk.

Lin Ye walked over, picked up the blanket that the tattooed man had kicked to the ground, and covered the blond man with it.

In his sleep, Huang Mao mumbled, "Brother, kiss me again," with a glistening drop of drool at the corner of his mouth. He turned over and continued sleeping.

He straightened up, about to go to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, when his phone vibrated again.

WeChat.

Wang Xiaoying's voice message...

Lin Ye didn't open the message, but sent more than a dozen 60-second voice messages in a row. She was probably furious. No one in the company dared to talk to her like that.