My Weekend Lover Turned Out To Be My Boss - Chapter 27

Chapter 27: 2009. “Encounter”

Do you know what it’s like to be on a journey in distress and dragging along a useless teammate? You Feifan is simply my nemesis—no, accurately speaking, my disaster star! When others go on a road trip, it’s all about being free and easy, but for me, she’s a plague god lying in the back seat.

“Cough, cough, cough, cough… can’t you wait until I’m better before you scold me… cough, cough, cough…”

“Stop talking nonsense… don’t you dare infect me with that cold! You’re this old, yet you still think you’re a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl who can handle it? Not wearing long johns is an insult to the season!”

“Got it, got it. Haven’t I already been wrapped up like a zongzi by you…”

Coincidentally, there was a roadside dive restaurant not far down the highway. I slowed down and stopped the car, then opened the car door. Seeing me about to leave, You Feifan immediately raised her head and stared at me suspiciously: “Where are you going?”

“I’m not going to abandon you, what are you afraid of… What else would I be doing? Of course, I’m going to get you some hot water…”

She looked quite pitiful in her sickly state, her cheeks even redder than a monkey’s butt—very festive. She lay back down, mumbling, “Thank you.”

I closed the car door, took a few coins from my pocket, and walked toward the restaurant. The proprietress was tidying up the tables. Seeing me alone, she immediately smiled and greeted me warmly in the local dialect: “Miss, traveling alone? What would you like to eat?”

“Boss lady, do you have boiled water?”

“Of course! How much do you need?”

“I’ll buy a few bottles of mineral water. Can you help me fill them with hot water?”

“Sure thing, wait a moment!”

I handed the money to the proprietress and sat down to wait. I lit a cigarette and glanced in the direction of the car. Where could I find a pharmacy in this middle of nowhere? When the proprietress returned with a plastic bag holding three bottles of hot water for me, I quickly asked, “Is there a pharmacy nearby?”

“Miss, it’s hard enough to find a place to eat around here, let alone a pharmacy. You’ll have to drive toward the town… But I can tell you’re heading to Daocheng. It’s not far, about forty minutes at most.”

I took the bag, thanked her profusely, and hurried back to the car. I opened the back door and pushed the hot water bottles into You Feifan’s arms: “No pharmacy nearby. You have one mission: drink all three bottles of this hot water…”

You Feifan looked at me mournfully, clutching the water bottles: “Qiu Wuming… I’m not a child… If I drink that much water, my bladder will burst even if my kidneys don’t.”

“Stop stalling, drink it up! Hold on a little longer; we’re almost at Daocheng!”

Returning to the driver’s seat, I closed my eyes tiredly, wanting to rest for a moment. I had been driving continuously for over ten hours, only stopping once for gas. I was about to lose my temper. Just then, You Feifan leaned her head close to me. I could feel the intense heat radiating from her cheek—hot enough to fry an egg.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ve been driving for so long. Why don’t you sleep for a while?”

“And when I wake up, you’ll have died in the car, and I’ll be driving a corpse to find the police?”

“Can’t you say something nice? I’m already this sick!”

“If you know you’re sick, then lie down quietly and stop moving.”

“You’re yelling at me!”

“Yes, I’m yelling at you. You’re in your thirties acting like a child. How did you even survive this long? Even kindergarten kids understand the principle of adding clothes when it’s cold!”

“Ah~ are you worried about me?”

“Dream on… you dead weight…”

…

“Hey, you come here on time every day, rain or shine, to feed stray cats. If you like them so much, why don’t you take them home and care for them?”

I held a sausage in my hand. A pregnant mother cat was rubbing against my shoes, purring against my ankle. I looked up at the sound and saw an imported BMW parked by the roadside. The woman was wearing sunglasses that covered most of her face, with her arm resting on the car window, propping up her chin.

Although the sunglasses prevented me from seeing her face clearly, they couldn’t hide her curiosity. Even her tone of voice carried a subtle, floating amusement. While she was curious about me, I was also very curious about her because it was obvious from her few words that she had been watching me for a long time.

A while ago, I took on a private job to prepare the office decor for a company in a nearby office building, so my range of activity was limited to this area. One night, I worked too late, and while waiting for my friend to drive me home, I discovered a wild cat near this tree. As I was eating my leftover lunch bread, this mother cat approached me, begging for food.

I don’t know how it happened, but every time I passed by here afterward, I deliberately stopped and gave her the food I had prepared. Some habits are formed inadvertently. Half a month had passed in a blink of an eye. So, thinking of this, I tilted my head and stared at the woman in the car: “Miss, is there a problem?”

She turned on her hazard lights, got out of the car, and walked toward me. The woman was quite observant of traffic rules. She was wearing flat leather shoes, yet she was still a few centimeters taller than me. The short two-step distance created a gap in aura that startled the mother cat, which scurried into the bushes.

“I often see you feeding the cat here. Curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see how cute this cat really is…”

I turned my head to look at the bushes. The mother cat peeked out slightly, its shining eyes indicating that it needed the food in my hand. I crouched down and threw the sausage to her. The mother cat meowed, as if saying “thank you,” and disappeared into the bushes with the food in its mouth.

I wasn’t keen on this kind of pick-up. Any communication without trust is just pretense. Therefore, the appearance of the woman in front of me made me feel subtly awkward, but I still answered her previous question: “Giving charity is not the same as taking full responsibility for a life. If I have food, I give it. There’s no deep reason why.”

The woman took off her sunglasses and crossed her arms, her gaze falling on my chest. I subtly looked down at the temporary employee badge tucked into my pocket on my neck. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything more. She turned and left, leaving a cloud of exhaust fumes for me. She just drove away…

What a lunatic. Who was that woman?

…

Early in the morning, I carried my step ladder and put on my sleeves, ready to start the day’s work. According to the wall design plans provided by the foreman, I had to hand-paint all the walls in this office today. The modern, irregular graffiti patterns were quite tedious. Black was black, white was white. Although the intent was to look unconventional, the repetitive twists and turns still followed a strict pattern.

Anyway, following the drawing made the difficulty manageable. It was a kind of joy that didn’t require self-creation. While mixing the paint, I looked at the city view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The boss of this company was quite powerful. The office spanned several floors. Judging by the current market price, the monthly rent was not low. Later, I asked around and found out that they had actually bought all the floors. Not someone to mess with. Rich people are beyond comprehension.

“Xiao Qi, you are truly diligent, starting work so early.”

The foreman carried an electric drill in one hand and a hardware toolbox in the other. He was probably dropping off materials and checking on the work. I shrugged, holding the palette impatiently: “How can I not come early? They’ve dumped all the walls in the entire company on me alone. Tell me, can one person handle this? If we go past the deadline, don’t try to argue with me!”

“Alright, alright, you’re asking for more people again! Isn’t the principle of many hands make light work simple enough? You’re the one doing it, of course, you can handle it~ I’ll give you an extra bonus later. Motivated now, aren’t you?”

“Just one extra bonus? Forget it, I can’t be bothered arguing with you. You said it this time. You were so stingy last time…”

The foreman was about to pat his chest and give his word when a young woman in a formal suit walked over. She leaned close to the foreman and whispered a few words. The foreman smiled and nodded repeatedly. After seeing the woman off, the foreman quickly patted the ladder: “Come down, come down!”

I stopped what I was doing impatiently and looked down at him: “Now what?”

“Stop painting for now. Go to the boss’s office. She specifically asked for you by name.”

“Huh? Me? I didn’t do anything wrong. Why is she asking for me?”

“Why are you spacing out? If she’s looking for you, it must be something good. Hurry up and go!”

“Oh, oh, oh…”

I slid down the ladder in a hurry, looked at the foreman with great doubt, sensing something fishy…

The boss’s office was upstairs, on the fifteenth floor, to be exact. Compared to the lower floors, the view was better. It wasn’t too high or too low, so the elevator wait wasn’t long, and the breeze coming from outside in the summer was more comfortable than the air conditioning. I had never been to this floor properly, and I had never met the company’s boss, so I was curious.

However… I didn’t much like people referred to as ‘the boss.’ They were either a middle-aged man in his forties or fifties, fat and greasy with a receding hairline, or a mean woman in her forties or fifties with a beehive hairdo… Just thinking about it gave me the chills…

The woman who had just approached the foreman must be the boss’s secretary. She smiled at me from a distance, radiating warmth. Before I even got close, she had already knocked on the office door: “Boss, she’s here.”

Without waiting for my reaction, she pushed the door open and invited me in: “Hello, please come in quickly.”

I remained utterly bewildered as I entered the office, curiously looking around at the decorations. Finally, my gaze settled on the beautiful floor-to-ceiling window behind the desk. It seemed I was too quick to judge myself. The boss of this company was actually a woman. She had her back to me, holding a file folder.

She was wearing a black, tight-fitting slip dress with a sleeveless cardigan over it. Her long, dark, curly hair fell casually over her shoulders. Her figure was curvy and attractive. This fashionable outfit made it difficult to associate her with the word “boss.” While I was still daydreaming, the woman spoke: “See, the view here is great. I can see you feeding the cat every day, but it’s a bit far, so it’s not very clear.”

Saying this, she turned around to face me. My confusion from the morning turned into astonishment. It was the strange woman from yesterday! I unconsciously took a step toward her. Following the direction she pointed, I looked down. As she said, the fifteenth floor was a bit high, but the angle for me to feed the cat was just right.