Straight Corporate Slave Accidentally Stumbles into the School's F4 - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

What is Frog Prince?

In the center of the photo was a child riding a carousel, his awkward eyes looking as if it were his first time taking a picture. If nothing was amiss, this should be Qiao An as a child.

It was a very ordinary photo, and even the frame was made of the most common plastic material.

But why was it placed under the coffee table instead of on top of it?

Qiao Nai crouched down and picked up the photo frame. The moment he lifted it, he heard a sound, like something rattling inside.

A phrase suddenly came to his mind: The most dangerous place is the safest place.

So, Qiao Nai gave the frame a shake and heard that same sound again. The photo was held firmly and didn’t move with the frame, so could there be something else inside?

With that thought, Qiao Nai opened the frame from the back and, sure enough, found a hard card inside.

Written on the hard card were a few English words and numbers.

Qiao Nai sensed that this might be the password for the lock screen and the memos. He placed the laptop on his lap, restarted it, and entered the first string of numbers. Very quickly, the computer opened.

It seemed his guess was correct.

The second string of numbers was likely the memo password.

Qiao Nai entered the other password from the hard card. The small circle on the screen spun for a moment, the memos opened, and the things Qiao An had recorded inside appeared before his eyes.

After tucking the hard card back into the photo frame, Qiao Nai rubbed his eyes and began sliding the trackpad.

His gaze dimmed slightly; it turned out this wasn’t a diary written by Qiao An, but rows upon rows of dense numbers. At the very top of these words was the word “Ledger.”

An account book.

In other words, what was written here was a bill of every part-time job Qiao An had worked.

Qiao Nai sat with one leg partially bent and bit his lip, reading through the bills from top to bottom. The most recent date stopped about three days ago, which was exactly when he had just transmigrated.

This meant he had already missed two days of part-time work.

Thinking of this, Qiao Nai couldn’t help but frown. The main problem was that he didn’t yet know what kind of part-time jobs Qiao An did, where he did them, or if they were long-term or short-term. If they were short-term, he would likely be fired for not showing up for two or three days…

Qiao Nai scratched his hair anxiously and checked the memos again, discovering that Qiao An actually worked several part-time jobs simultaneously. Not only was there an on-campus job in the library, but there were also off-campus jobs at a Japanese restaurant and a tutoring gig.

Qiao Nai collapsed directly onto the rug, staring at the peeling plaster on the ceiling. Thinking about these endless part-time jobs, the expensive rent and utilities, and the blood-sucking uncle, he couldn’t help but let out a bitter smile.

Argh.

It seemed that pursuing someone was an urgent matter; he had to find a “sugar daddy” quickly!

The next day, Qiao Nai was awakened by the alarm clock.

When he climbed out of bed, it was only five in the morning. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but Qiao Nai already had to go out.

In winter, not only does the sunrise come late, but the wind also howls, blowing with a bone-chilling sting.

It was very late by the time he finished studying the ledger yesterday. The studio Qiao Nai lived in was quite remote and far from supermarkets. Qiao Nai hadn’t gone to buy food for today, thinking he would just make do with a quick meal in the morning and see if there was any food for sale at his workplace.

Qiao Nai opened the refrigerator without much hope, only to find it wasn’t even plugged in. It was completely empty inside, and the only piece of margarine had long since grown moldy. Qiao Nai could only place his hopes on the kitchen.

The kitchen was tiny; one turn and you’d bump into the dishes. Qiao Nai moved carefully, fearing he might “lose the wife and the soldiers” (suffer a double loss).

Qiao Nai opened the cupboard and breathed a sigh of relief. Inside was half a bag of cereal and a few individual packets of milk.

Qiao Nai boiled some hot water and simply mixed a few spoonfuls of oatmeal. Breakfast was finished in ten minutes.

By the time he left his rented house, it was only 5:20 AM.

Yesterday, he had looked at the ledger Qiao An wrote and generally knew the order of these part-time jobs. In the mornings and between classes, he had to be an assistant in the library for fifteen dollars an hour. At noon and in the evenings, he went to help at the Japanese restaurant, where he could earn over a hundred dollars in five hours. And on weekends, he had to be a tutor at an educational institution, which paid a bit more than the library assistant job about 20 dollars an hour.

In short, every day he wasn’t studying, he was working hard to make money. There was absolutely no time to breathe or rest; no matter how he thought about it, it felt like being a rat living in the shadows!

Qiao Nai spent 2 dollars to take the bus to school. On the way, he kept thinking about one thing: if he was this busy every day, how could he find the time to pursue the original uke?

Moreover, he had neither money nor power, and he couldn’t compare to the other three at all. Would the original uke even like him?

As the bus jolted back and forth, Qiao Nai saw his reflection in the window.

A breeze entered through the gap in the window, ruffling the ends of his hair. Beneath his hair was a fair and delicate face, with a faint, barely visible mole on the tip of his nose. Whether it was because his skin was too white or his hair was too dark, the color of his lips appeared exceptionally prominent.

Qiao Nai stared for a while, looking at his left face then his right, his forehead then his chin, observing himself so seriously for the first time.

He suddenly realized he had forgotten one thing.

That’s right!

Although he had no money, no power, and no influence, his face seemed to be “online” (attractive)!

How had he not thought of this?

Looking at himself in the window, it wasn’t that Qiao Nai was narcissistic, but he truly felt his face was quite special. It was a different kind of feeling; while it couldn’t be called sharp, it was somewhat soft.

But a subjective judgment was too biased; he needed to put it into practice.

How to do that?

It wasn’t until he finished his morning part-time job that Qiao Nai finally thought of a good practical method: testing this face on a video social media app.

If the traffic was decent, it would prove it wasn’t narcissism but that his looks were truly high-tier.

The apps on Qiao An’s phone were pitifully few, with not a single social media app in sight. Qiao Nai spent a few minutes downloading and registering an IG account.

Then, he opened the camera, fixed his hair a bit, took a random selfie, and set it directly as his profile picture.

His phone’s camera quality wasn’t good, giving the photo a faint blurriness, like a natural filter. It was hard to see clearly without clicking in; only the general outline was visible.

Very few accounts online would use an unedited photo as a profile picture; only Qiao Nai was like a breath of fresh air.

He didn’t quite know how to run a new account yet. Thinking of his colleagues in the operations department and their daily work, Qiao Nai took some time to scroll through videos for a bit. Before going to his part-time job at the Japanese restaurant at noon, he posted his photo on IG. Because he was so busy with work, he even forgot to add music to the post it was just a raw, natural photo.

Qiao Nai’s duties at the Japanese restaurant weren’t fixed. Sometimes he washed dishes in the kitchen, and sometimes he worked as a waiter taking orders. It all depended on whether they had enough staff that day; he was forced to go wherever he was needed.

Fortunately, the owner of the Japanese restaurant was very nice. Not only did he not make an issue of why Qiao Nai hadn’t come for the past few days, but he also cared enough to ask if he was sick. He even told him that there weren’t many customers during the weekday and that he didn’t need to work himself to death resting well was the most important thing.

Accustomed to being an exploited beast of burden in his daily life, this was the first time Qiao Nai had been cared for by a boss. He felt a bit unaccustomed to it for a moment, and his motivation grew even stronger. He washed dishes for two hours straight, and only after leaving the restaurant did he belatedly feel the pain in his shoulder blades.

He massaged his shoulders, took a scarf out of his schoolbag, wrapped it around his neck, and headed toward the school.

He had been so busy washing dishes that his phone was locked in the storage locker, and Qiao Nai hadn’t noticed until now that the phone in his pocket had been vibrating constantly.

Qiao Nai massaged his neck and took out his phone.

The moment he opened the phone, he suddenly stopped.

How could he have forgotten this!

He had forgotten about posting the photo on IG.

Qiao Nai frowned for a moment, then his expression smoothed out. It turned out the vibrations just now were notification sounds for messages.

With that in mind, Qiao Nai opened IG.

Whether it was because the phone was too laggy or for some other reason, it took several seconds to finally refresh. A string of stranger messages popped up, not only likes, saves, and follows, but also one private message after another.

In just two or three short hours, Qiao Nai’s casually uploaded post had already garnered tens of thousands of likes.

Qiao Nai blinked, somewhat incredulous.

It was this fast??!

When he was a corporate slave, he didn’t scroll through IG much, so Qiao Nai wasn’t very familiar with this app. He wanted to search for posts to see a beginner’s tutorial, but the phone lagged and lagged, taking several seconds to scroll through a single video.

Not only was IG lagging, but even the phone was becoming so hot it felt like it might explode.

Qiao Nai hurriedly exited the app, fearing something might go wrong with the phone; it wouldn’t be worth it if the phone ended up trashed!

After exiting, Qiao Nai immediately canceled message notifications in the settings. After cooling down for almost half an hour, the phone finally wasn’t so hot anymore.

Qiao Nai breathed a sigh of relief and headed to the classroom carrying his books.

Qiao An was studying classical music. All his major courses were related to music. What Qiao Nai lacked most were musical cells; he knew nothing about this field and spent the entire lecture in a daze.

“God, how are your dark circles so severe, Qiao An?” Like Qiao An, Yun Cheng was studying classical music. He had skipped the morning class and only rushed over halfway through the first afternoon session.

Qiao Nai was sitting in the back row and had saved a seat for him in advance.

“Are they severe?” Qiao Nai touched his eyelids. “I went to sleep quite early yesterday.”

Much earlier than when he was a corporate slave, though he also got up early in the morning…

A white light flashed before his eyes; Qiao Nai had been photographed by Yun Cheng.

“Severe!” Yun Cheng pointed at his phone. “Look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Just as Qiao Nai was about to lean over to look, Yun Cheng cupped his face and looked at it from top to bottom, left and right. “But with this face of yours holding it up, the dark circles actually have a kind of aesthetic beauty.”

“Wat is it?” Qiao Nai’s voice was muffled from being squeezed.

“A melancholic, decadent style.” Yun Cheng squeezed a few more times before finally withdrawing his hand, casting an envious gaze. “But to be fair, Qiao An, what do you put on your face every day? Why is your skin so soft, white, and bouncy?”

Qiao Nai thought seriously for a moment and said, “Frog Prince?”

After being a corporate slave for so many years, let alone skin care, he didn’t even have enough time to sleep. Time spent applying Frog Prince was a luxury.

“What is Frog Prince?” Although Yun Cheng was Chinese, he had lived abroad since childhood. Everything he wore and used were luxury goods, and he had never heard of this thing.

Qiao Nai recalled the logo on the packaging and spoke as he thought, “Children’s cosmetics…”

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