Manager Wang spoke slowly, "Well, Old Ma, what’s your ga plan? Do you have a rough outline?"
Manager Ma, having cald down, lit a cigarette and looked up. "What else can we do? We’ll just work ourselves to the bone!"
He paused, his gaze sweeping around the room. "Little Gu also said that whoever sses up will be on duty."
Everyone in the room shivered.
Manager Ma continued, "As expected, all capitalists are bloodsuckers. Little Gu is truly a natural, self-taught in this."
Everyone was dumbfounded once again.
Being on duty, really?!
Manager Ma, now completely calm, waved his hand decisively. "Let’s have a eting! Damn it, I refuse to believe we can’t take down those bastards at Gu Corporation!"
The six of them imdiately started their eting, discussing various strategies...
The eting dragged on past 6:00 PM without concluding. When Gu Anxi was about to leave work, Secretary Tang quietly approached. "The eting is still ongoing. Would Director Gu like to check on them?"
Gu Anxi smiled faintly. "It’s fine as long as Manager Ma is there."
Inside the eting room, Manager Ma was fuming. Why are we, the company’s key contributors, stuck in this miserable eting while that supposedly highly capable Little Gu, who was just parachuted in, gets to leave early? But despite his anger, he didn’t dare voice his complaints.
At half-past six, Secretary Tang had a al delivered. It was a lavish spread!
Seeing the pale, drained faces of the Cloud He Group executives, Secretary Tang said cautiously, "This is from Little Gu. She said you’ve all worked hard."
Manager Ma snorted. "Thank Little Gu for ."
That was all he dared to say. He was well aware of that girl’s tactics; she was a master of all sorts of manipulative gas, playing them with infuriating skill. If he confronted her again, there was no telling how miserably he’d end up!
Manager Ma said nothing more then. He hurriedly shoveled down a few mouthfuls of food and then continued with the eting!
「For several days,」
the senior executives were in etings all day, every day—etings, etings, and more etings.
Manager Ma had noticeably lost weight, and Old Wang, caught up in Ma’s relentless drive, had also thinned down a bit. However, their performance figures had indeed started to climb...
Little Gu still clocked in and out punctually, which really irked them.
Gu Anxi, aware of their grievances, calmly stated, "Isn’t needing to work overti just proof of your own incompetence? Keep up the good work. The plan for next quarter is to boost performance while... eliminating overti."
Manager Ma felt like he could cough up a mouthful of old blood. He swore that after this ordeal, he would never be ’on duty’ again.
Gu Anxi actually found her workdays quite enjoyable. The only thing was that Father Bo and Mother Bo were especially concerned about her well-being, plying her with all sorts of nourishing supplents every night when she returned ho...
「That night,」
Gu Anxi had just finished her shower and gotten dressed when she felt a sudden warmth in her nose. She touched it—a nosebleed.
"Uncle," she called out to Bo Xichen.
Bo Xichen hurried over, helped staunch the bleeding, and once it stopped, he gently guided her to sit on the sofa. "What happened?"
Gu Anxi said sowhat sheepishly, "Perhaps I’ve been eating too well!"
Bo Xichen chuckled. "Should we stop the wild ginseng for a while then?"
Gu Anxi humd in agreent, leaning against his arm to rest. Closing her eyes comfortably, she asked, "Uncle, are you done with your work?"
"Just a little more," he replied, his voice slightly deep as he gently stroked her hair.
Gu Anxi murmured affirmatively, snuggling contentedly against him...
After a while, sounding drowsy as if she were about to fall asleep, she murmured, "The COMO awards are being announced tomorrow. Will you have ti to go? The ceremony is at eight in the evening at the Riri Hotel."
Bo Xichen sighed. "I have surgery tomorrow evening, so I probably can’t make it."
She humd again, a hint of disappointnt in her tone. Noticing her slight letdown, Bo Xichen lowered his head, his voice dropping to a soft whisper, "But I can spend tonight with you."
Gu Anxi felt a little shy and buried herself in his embrace, staying there for a long mont without moving.
Bo Xichen chuckled softly. "Baby?"
She still didn’t budge, her cheeks tinged with red...
Bo Xichen teased her, "Didn’t you say we were already like an old married couple? Why are you still so shy?"
Gu Anxi lay in his arms, playing dead. He wasn’t an impatient man, so he instead brought up matters concerning the Cloud He Group. "I heard from your Father Bo that you’ve really put those company veterans through the wringer! Manager Ma, especially, must have a lot of complaints. Has he been ’on duty’ for a whole week now?"
Gu Anxi looked at him. "What do you think?"
He chuckled. "Since you’ve managed to displease these people so thoroughly, you naturally have your ways of handling them."
Bo Xichen recalled how, when he and his own father had first talked about Anxi starting work, they had both been quite worried she would exhaust herself. Yet, after just a couple of days, she was her usual energetic self. Instead, it was everyone at Cloud He Group, from top to bottom, who had been plunged into ergency overti. Clearly, this Little Gu was a very strict boss.
Still nestled against him, Gu Anxi smiled. "Uncle, if I can’t even get a few subordinates to do their jobs, then what’s the point of being a vice-president?"
Though her logic was sowhat skewed, he couldn’t really find any fault with it.
With work matters more or less covered, what followed was personal...
...
「The next morning,」
when Gu Anxi woke up, Bo Xichen had already risen and left. He had sent her a text ssage saying he would be back very late. Gu Anxi looked at her phone, smiled foolishly to herself, and then got out of bed.
She ate a quick breakfast and headed to the company. As it happened, she needed to see Manager Ma about sothing, so she went straight to the marketing departnt.
The door to Manager Ma’s office was open, and he was inside talking with Manager Wang. Manager Ma, his voice loud and his temper even louder, was fuming, "Old Wang, tell , on what grounds are we slaving away here while she gets to enjoy air conditioning, heating, and snacks every day?"
Manager Wang looked exasperated but tried to gently reason with him. "She’s the Bo family’s precious darling. Can you compare? Do you have her pretty little face, or her mind with its eighty-one cunning twists and turns?"
Manager Ma grumbled further, "I even heard she called in a masseuse during work hours to loosen her up! Tell , who in the Bo family, when they were in power, ever behaved like her?"
He paused, then said fiercely, "She’ll run the company into the ground sooner or later!"
Manager Wang tried to soothe him from the side. "That’s the Bo family’s business, Old Ma. Calm down. We just need to do our jobs and collect our salaries."
That remark strained their rapport. Manager Ma practically leaped to his feet. "Why don’t you try being ’on duty’ for a day and see how you like it?!"
Manager Wang gave a very diplomatic smile. "Old Ma, at our age, why get so angry? You need to take care of yourself. Besides, you’re the only one who can really handle this pressure right now. If you can’t manage, the rest of us would fare even worse."
Manager Ma saw it clearly now. These damn colleagues were all unreliable, leaving him to face the trials and tribulations alone. His anger flared, and his words turned nasty. "That little brat! If it weren’t for the Bo family, she’d be absolutely nothing!"
"Anything else?" Gu Anxi’s cool voice suddenly sounded from the doorway.
Manager Ma jumped, startled. He whipped his head around to see Gu Anxi leaning against the doorfra, looking as if she had been there for quite so ti.
The shock sent a fresh layer of cold sweat breaking out on his back. "Uh, Director Gu! That’s not what I ant!"
He then looked at Gu Anxi cautiously. This ti, I’m really done for, he thought. She probably won’t even give the chance to be ’on duty’ anymore.
But Gu Anxi rely gave him a calm glance. "If you encounter any difficulties, you can co to ."
And with that, she simply turned and walked away.
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