At the arrivals exit, Shao Yu met her mentor, Lu Lin, and her senior sister from the same discipline, Yi Ya.
At the parking lot, Yi Ya stopped short in front of the car, checking the painted decals and bright silver rims twice over, then gasped.
“Junior Sister, this is your car?”
Shao Yu was succinct. “A friend’s.”
Since she was picking people up, she’d driven Song Yingqiu’s car for the sake of convenience.
Yi Ya’s face lit up with gossip. “This rich? So there’s a tall, rich, handsome boyfriend in the picture?”
Before Shao Yu could answer, Lu Lin shot her a disapproving look. “I know Shao Yu’s temperament well enough. It’s obviously a female friend.”
Yi Ya looked a little sheepish. “Director, I was only joking. Gossip is my one vice.”
Lu Lin laughed then. “I know you’re joking, or you’d already be getting a lecture.”
Yi Ya relaxed, and after Lu Lin got into the car, she murmured to Shao Yu, “See that? Sister Lu plays favorites right in the open.”
The two of them were close, and Shao Yu said with a faint smile, “Why not tell her that to her face? Or will you come ask me about it later instead?”
Yi Ya: “You said it! You’d better fill me in from now on.”
From inside the car came Lu Lin’s unhurried voice. “What are you two whispering about behind my back?”
Yi Ya scrambled in. “Wouldn’t dare, Director. Coming, coming.”
Shao Yu took the driver’s seat, her mood considerably lighter now that her mentor and good friend had arrived in Lingguan.
Lu Lin asked whether the students had managed to find housing. Yi Ya had sorted out a shared flat; Shao Yu said she was already staying at a friend’s place, and only then did Lu Lin look reassured.
Shao Yu and her fellow disciples usually called Lu Lin “Sister Lu” in private. As head of the plastic surgery department, Lu Lin had carried her love of beauty to its utmost. Immaculately maintained, she looked more like an older sister to her students than a mentor. Her temper was excellent, and in private she was very close to them.
If another director in the department hadn’t kept stirring up trouble, shamelessly snatching research resources and patients by any means necessary, Lu Lin would never have accepted that olive branch in a fit of frustration and brought her entire team to Lingguan.
Shao Yu dropped Yi Ya at her destination first, then drove Lu Lin to her lodgings, where several fellow disciples who had arrived earlier were waiting to help get her settled.
At the welcome banquet that evening, the hospital leadership all knew Shao Yu was Lu Lin’s prized disciple and chosen successor. Add her striking looks, and toasts found her constantly; there was no escaping a drink.
One male executive got carried away, lifting the bottle. “Doctor Shao, one more? Just one? Only one glass is just too—”
Shao Yu didn’t so much as lift the hand holding her empty glass, her thin lids fluttering up. “Too unclassy, you mean?”
One sentence shut him down, and the man’s face soured. Lu Lin stepped in to shield her. “Shao Yu never drinks. A surgeon’s hands stay steady because she doesn’t drink. She’s stricter with herself than anyone.”
The atmosphere finally eased.
Later, Yi Ya and Shao Yu went to the restroom together, and rounding a corridor corner, they ran straight into a colleague on the phone.
“That research star from our department, you know the one? First day meeting the leadership and she’s already pulling faces. The ice goddess, all high and mighty—”
The voice arrived before its owner; when the two parties came face to face, it cut off dead.
The colleague flushed red but struck first. “Am I wrong, though?”
Then she hurried off.
A team was never a single solid block, but colliding with that face-first stung all the same.
Yi Ya whipped her head around furiously, ready to call the woman back and settle accounts.
Shao Yu stopped her. “Leave it.”
Yi Ya: “But… even I’m embarrassed for her.”
Shao Yu: “She’s embarrassed for herself too.”
Shao Yu’s tone was calm, not the calm before a storm, but the calm of someone to whom the matter simply did not register.
Gradually, Yi Ya understood: Shao Yu hadn’t stopped her to defend the woman at all. She genuinely hadn’t deemed her worth noticing, indifferent to the point of cold.
Yi Ya murmured, “Well, she got one thing right.”
“Hm?”
“Genuinely an ice goddess!” Yi Ya could have slapped her thigh laughing. “With you reacting like that, she looks even more like a clown. Aiyo, I like you more and more, Junior Sister.”
Shao Yu was helpless. Heaven knew what Yi Ya had imagined in that head of hers; she was completely hyped now, reaching to drape an arm over her shoulder, and Shao Yu dodged without mercy.
As the two walked off, Shao Yu failed to notice that among the group approaching down the other half of the corridor was an acquaintance.
Zong Qiang stared at the figure of Shao Yu vanishing around the corner, fumbled out her phone in a boozy haze, and tapped away.
When Song Yingqiu received Zong Qiang’s message, she was in the eastern suburbs.
She was closing a deal. She didn’t know the other company’s CEO personally, but he had an old connection with her father, Song Zhuozong.
Song Yingqiu wasted no words: she moved the banquet to the Song Family estate in the eastern suburbs, draped herself in Song Zhuozong’s authority, and had the contract signed on the spot.
Having seen off her new business partner, Song Yingqiu sat in the living room and briskly instructed Wu Rui to take the contract back to the company and pull several departments together for a meeting first thing tomorrow morning, and so on and so forth.
She issued orders as though thinking required no effort at all. Wu Rui’s assistant recorded them at top speed, not daring to slack for even half a beat.
Once Wu Rui had left as well, Song Zhuozong began his attack. “You come home once a year, and it turns out it’s all for the sake of making money?”
Song Yingqiu sipped her tea with exceptional grace. “Company growth is my life’s purpose. Didn’t you teach me that, Father?”
Song Zhuozong’s face darkened. “And is unfiliality also something I taught you?”
Song Yingqiu shrugged. “If you’re in need of an allowance, you may contact my secretary. And if you want a daughter doting at your knee…”
Her face arranged itself into polite distress. “Perhaps you could have another with Aunt Jin. That would probably be easier than educating me.”
“You!” Song Zhuozong laughed in fury. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll leave you nothing?”
Song Yingqiu only smiled. Catching from the corner of her eye the woman descending the stairs, she picked up the bag at her side and rose to her feet.
Her poise was flawless; standing face to face with this old tycoon, Song Zhuozong, she didn’t yield so much as an inch.
Her voice was unhurried, and absolutely assured.
“If you truly have the group’s interests at heart, you know perfectly well whose hands it belongs in.”
“Well, I’m off. Goodnight, Father.”
Song Yingqiu shifted her gaze and smiled up at the woman on the stairs.
“Goodnight, Aunt Jin.”
Then she turned and left.
Under the two or three scattered garden lamps, Song Yingqiu walked through the thick night, her smile slowly dissolving, her face settling into indifference, her eyes blade-sharp.
The second half of what she hadn’t said: even if Song Zhuozong refused to hand it over, did he really think she couldn’t take it?
Danchuan had been founded by her own hands, true. But what she wanted was far more than that…
Her phone chimed, cutting the thought short.
Looking down, she saw a message from Zong Qiang.
Zong Qiang: Sister, I just saw Doctor Shao!
The moment Song Yingqiu read the words “Doctor Shao,” the cold air wrapped around her melted away like snow.
She didn’t even notice it herself, but the smile returned to her face, carrying a warmth it had never held before.
She read on.
Starting from that line, Zong Qiang gave a vivid, blow-by-blow account of witnessing Doctor Shao entangled with a female friend, a friend who kept insisting she “liked Doctor Shao even more.”
Song Yingqiu tapped her phone twice with her index finger, then raised it and called Zong Qiang.
“Zong Qiang, was the girl short-haired? About five foot five? Square-framed glasses, and a slightly husky voice?”
Zong Qiang, a little tongue-tied, answered, “Sh-short hair, I think? Height about right. Glasses, how would I remember…”
Song Yingqiu knew then, and said evenly, “Mm. That was Doctor Shao’s colleague. Just a friend. Don’t go spreading it around.”
Zong Qiang: “I’m not spreading anything! The second I saw Doctor Shao, my very first instinct was to send it to you, Sister.”
Song Yingqiu laughed, her mood inexplicably light.
Her steps turned brisk as she said:
“Good work.”
