I Promise to Walk With You for Half of my Life’s Journey - Chapter 38

Early Monday morning of the seventh week.

As Cheng Sutong walked into the office, she keenly sensed something unusual in the air. Several colleagues looked up, but upon seeing her, they quickly shifted their gaze and looked down, pretending to be busy.

Zhao Xueqing rushed to her workstation, clutching a crumpled piece of printed paper in her hand.

“Sutong,” she whispered, thrusting the paper into Cheng Sutong’s hand. “Look at this.”

It was a printout of a mass email sent by an anonymous sender with a jarring subject line:

Regarding Suspicions of Benefit Transfer by Ms. Cheng Sutong, Head of the Museum of Hearing Project

1. 1. Conflict of Interest: It pointed out that Cheng Sutong’s girlfriend, An Chuxin, is a long-term volunteer at the school for the deaf and mute. It questioned the choice of the school for the partnership as a “private favor” and alleged the potential existence of financial kickbacks.

1. 1. Resource Skewing: It listed how the manpower and materials invested by the company into this project over the past month far exceeded the standards of conventional public welfare projects, suggesting that Cheng Sutong was “abusing company resources by taking advantage of the Director’s favor.”

1. 1. Moral Questioning: The most cutting sentence read, “Is using disabled children as a gimmick for personal promotion a betrayal of the original intent of public welfare?”

The email had been sent late Sunday night. The recipients included the company’s middle and high management, the entire creative department, and it even copied two contacts from foundations that partnered with the company.

Cheng Sutong read it word by word. She felt a sarcastic smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Sutong, are you, are you not angry?”

“I am angry.” Cheng Sutong smoothed the paper, folded it, and placed it in her drawer. “But I am even more curious about who is so concerned about me.”

“It must be Wang Lei! Last week he was acting all helpful, but he was actually plotting something bad!”

“Do not say anything without evidence,” Cheng Sutong said as she turned on her computer. “Is Director Chen here?”

“In his office. He looks very upset.”

Cheng Sutong stood up and took a thick folder from her drawer. “I am going to see him.”

Nine o’clock in the morning. Smoke swirled in Director Chen’s office; the lit cigar on the desk had clearly just been started. When he saw Cheng Sutong, he extinguished the cigar.

“Have you seen the email?”

“I have.”

“Explain,” the Director said, leaning back into his chair with a sharp gaze.

Cheng Sutong placed the folder on the desk and opened the first page, which contained a detailed project log.

Page 1: Timeline. This clearly marked the decision-making process, participants, and meeting minutes for every key milestone since the project’s launch. Regarding the choice of the school for the deaf and mute, it included a comparative analysis of the three original candidate institutions and the internal voting records of the creative department (the school for the deaf and mute received 82% of the votes).

Pages 2 to 5: Resource Usage Details. Every expenditure and every hour of manpower had a corresponding approval form and output. At the end was a horizontal comparison with public welfare projects of a similar scale, showing that the actual resource consumption was 15% lower than the industry average.

Pages 6 to 10: Conflict of Interest Clarification. This included An Chuxin’s volunteer certificate (which predated the project’s conception), a statement that she had no financial dealings with the school (stamped by a notary office), and a “Conflict of Interest Avoidance Commitment” signed by Cheng Sutong herself.

Page 11: The design sketches Zhou Xiaoxing had drawn in the warehouse last weekend, with her Pinyin handwriting underneath: “wo xiang rang da jia kan jian wo men de shi jie.” (I want everyone to see our world.)

Cheng Sutong’s voice was steady. “Director, regarding the benefit transfer mentioned in the email, I can prove my innocence with these materials. As for the resource skewing, the data is here for you to judge.”

She paused and looked directly into the Director’s eyes. “Regarding the claim of using disabled children as a gimmick, I cannot prove that, because the original intent is something invisible. I can only ask you, and everyone else who received the email, to come to the preview site on Friday. See the children’s works, hear what their teachers have to say, feel the space, and then let everyone judge for themselves.”

Director Chen lowered his head to flip through the materials.

“Do you know who sent the email?” he asked suddenly.

“I have suspicions, but no evidence. It is not important. What matters is whether there is a problem with the project itself.”

The Director suddenly let out a laugh that seemed to say, “You are quite something.” “Cheng Sutong, are you really only twenty-three years old?”

“My psychological age might be a bit older.” Cheng Sutong smiled too. “After lying in a hospital bed for so long, I did not learn much, but I did learn one thing: when the whole world is questioning whether you will live to see tomorrow, every minute of today can only be used to do what is truly important.”

The Director closed the folder. “I will handle the email matter. You focus on preparing for the preview. On Friday, I want to see the space you promised that allows people to judge for themselves.”

“Yes.”

As she reached the door, the Director called out to her again. “Cheng Sutong.”

“Mhm?”

“If someone continues to give you trouble, you do not have to endure it. Fight back when you should. This company has survived to this day not because everyone is harmonious, but because we only keep the people who get things done.”

Tuesday and Wednesday.

The storm over the email did not subside. Whispers and undercurrents continued in the breakroom, the restrooms, and the WeChat groups after work. Some people began to distance themselves from Cheng Sutong intentionally or unintentionally, picking flaws in her proposals during meetings. Some even hinted that “perhaps a more stable person should be put in charge of the project.”

Wang Lei’s behavior was the most intriguing. He did not participate in project meetings, but he also did not make a public stance. Only when people were gossiping in the breakroom would he coldly interject, “If you have an opinion, go tell the Director. What is the point of whispering behind her back?”

Cheng Sutong’s reaction surprised everyone; she was completely unaffected. She held meetings when they were scheduled, went to the school as planned, and stayed up late to calibrate the installations as needed. She was even more composed than before.

Zhao Xueqing could not help but ask, “Sutong, how can you be so calm?”

Cheng Sutong was labeling a glass jar and did not even look up. “When you want to do something right, all the obstacles in the process will eventually become a part of the strength of that thing.”

Wednesday afternoon, Cheng Sutong went to the school for the deaf and mute as usual. An Chuxin was helping out in the art room today.

The children had obviously heard something; Teacher Su Hang would not keep things from them. Xiaoxing pulled Cheng Sutong’s hand and slowly gestured in sign language, which Su Hang translated: “Xiaoxing asks if someone bullied you. We can make the sound postboxes even more beautiful so that those bad people will be too embarrassed to say bad things anymore.”

Cheng Sutong knelt down and replied in sign language, “No one can bully me. I have the stars you made.”

Xiaoxing thought for a moment, ran back to her locker, and took out a flat tin box. Inside were over a dozen stars folded from special paper, each with a lustrous sheen.

Su Hang explained, “These are ‘Courage Stars.’ Stars folded with this paper absorb moonlight at night and glow quietly during the day. She is giving them to you to keep in the office; when bad words come near, they will be automatically melted by the light.”

Cheng Sutong accepted the tin box and gave Xiaoxing a hug.

Thursday morning, Director Chen called an urgent all-hands meeting.

He opened the projector directly, and the full text of the anonymous email appeared on the screen.

The meeting room was deathly silent.

“I believe many of you have received this email. The sender is very clever: anonymous, content that is half-true and half-false, and highly inflammatory. I have also heard some gossip over the past few days.”

He scanned the room, his gaze resting for a moment on a few people who looked uncomfortable.

“Today’s meeting will only solve three things.” The Director switched the slide. “First, regarding the benefit transfer.”

Key evidence from Cheng Sutong’s materials appeared on the projector: An Chuxin’s volunteer records, the notarized statements, and the internal voting results.

“The selection of the school for the deaf and mute was a democratic decision by the creative department. Cheng Sutong’s personal relationship was proactively reported before the project started, and she signed an avoidance agreement. The company’s risk control department has already reviewed it, and there are no violations.”

The page switched again. “Second, regarding resource skewing.”

The data charts clearly showed that the project’s actual resource consumption was lower than similar projects.

“Third, and the point I care about most: using disabled children as a gimmick.”

The Director paused, his voice suddenly becoming stern. “This sentence not only insults Cheng Sutong and all the colleagues involved in the project, but more importantly, it insults the children at the school for the deaf and mute, as well as their teachers and families.”

He pulled up a video recorded by Teacher Su Hang showing the children working in the art room: Xiaoxing pressing her ear against a speaker with her eyes closed to feel the vibrations; A-Jie using his fingertips to touch materials of different textures to find a “tactile correspondence” with sound; a group of children gathered together, heatedly discussing in sign language what color should be used for a certain sound of the wind.

At the end of the video, Su Hang faced the camera. “Some people ask if these children who cannot hear can translate sound. I want to say: it is precisely because they cannot hear that they hear more deeply.

They do not hear with their ears; they hear with their skin, their bones, and their hearts. What they give to this noisy world is not a gimmick, but a mirror. It reflects how deaf we people who can hear actually are.”

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