Chapter 47: Work

"Let me tell you, I'm super amazing now…"

Watching Dou Dou forced her way in front of the busy Shen Siyuan, wanting to talk to him.

Shen Siyuan was so annoyed by her he had no choice, so he gave Yin Xingyue a look, asking her to drag Watching Dou Dou away.

Of the week, only Monday was his workday, so today he had to finish a whole week's worth of work, and only then could he slack off in peace for the rest of the time.

On top of the proposal he'd written for Zhou Zhengdao last week, after going through Saturday and Sunday, Zhou Zhengdao had raised many more revision suggestions, all of which he had to handle today.

So busy he didn't even have time to drink water, not even time for a paid bathroom break.

"Don't disturb big brother's work." Yin Xingyue dragged Watching Dou Dou away.

"But I want to play with him." Watching Dou Dou said, a little aggrieved.

"Then you'll have to wait until he's done."

"Sigh, being a grown-up is so boring."

Watching Dou Dou rested her chin on her hands, squatting on the ground.

Yin Xingyue also squatted down beside her.

Watching Dou Dou said again: "I don't even want to be a grown-up anymore."

Yin Xingyue pressed her lips together and said, in a quiet, eerie tone: "You can't become a grown-up."

"Why?" Watching Dou Dou tilted her head to look at her, a silly blank look on her face.

"Because you're already dead. You're a ghost now, not a person." Yin Xingyue said, none too pleased.

"Then can I become a big ghost?" Watching Dou Dou asked curiously.

"No." Yin Xingyue said.

It should have been a very melancholy topic, but as the two of them talked, there was a touch of comedy to it.

Hearing this, Watching Dou Dou said in great disappointment: "So I can only be a little kid forever?"

"What's so bad about being a little kid? What's so great about being a grown-up?"

"When you're a grown-up, you can eat whatever you want, go wherever you want to play, no mom and dad saying you can't do this, you can't go there…" Watching Dou Dou counted off the perks of being a grown-up on her chubby little fingers.

"But everything you just mentioned costs money." Yin Xingyue said.

"Then I'll earn lots and lots of money."

Watching Dou Dou spread her arms wide, indicating a super huge amount of money.

"If you want to earn money, you have to work. When you work, you don't have time to play, and you can't just go wherever you want. Like big brother over there…" Yin Xingyue pointed at Shen Siyuan, who was nearly going crazy from being so busy.

Watching Dou Dou was dumbfounded. How could that be?

"Being a grown-up is this unhappy?"

"Of course. So what's so great about being a grown-up? Being a little kid is carefree, no need to think about so much." Yin Xingyue said.

She didn't want to grow up. If only she could stay small forever, no need to go to school, no need to be brought back by mom, and she could just stay by grandma's side—how wonderful that would be.

She was starting to miss grandma. She looked at the busy Shen Siyuan, hesitating whether to tell big brother that she wanted to go home to visit grandma.

"Carefree?"

Watching Dou Dou rubbed her chubby little chin with her small hand and let out a silly smile.

Hearing her laughter, Yin Xingyue pulled her gaze back, looked at her and said: "If you're bored, I'll teach you to practice kung fu. Big brother told me to teach you."

The "kung fu" Yin Xingyue mentioned naturally referred to 【Embracing Bao Feng Mian】.

Last night Shen Siyuan had taught for over an hour. Yin Xingyue picked up all of Shen Siyuan's movements very quickly, but the naturally active Watching Dou Dou learned them in a complete mess.

So Shen Siyuan handed this arduous task to Yin Xingyue, asking her to find time to teach Watching Dou Dou and try to get her to learn it properly.

"Okay!"

Actually, Watching Dou Dou didn't resist learning 【Embracing Bao Feng Mian】 at all—in fact, she was quite enthusiastic, even treating it like a game. It was just that she was too young, and had a hard time settling down, which was why she learned it all crooked and lopsided.

Watching Dou Dou stood up and immediately struck a pose of embracing the universe.

But no matter how Yin Xingyue looked at it, something felt off.

"Can you not stick your butt out so high? You look like Donald Duck…"

Watching Dou Dou had a very low threshold for laughter; one sentence from Yin Xingyue had her doubling over cackling.

Even the busy Shen Siyuan was drawn in by Watching Dou Dou's laughter and glanced over at the two of them.

Yin Xingyue shot a helpless look at Shen Siyuan.

Shen Siyuan gave her an encouraging smile and went back to his own work.

"Stop laughing. Tuck your butt in."

"It's too big, I can't tuck it in. My mommy says my butt looks like an elephant's butt." As she said this, Watching Dou Dou even wiggled her bottom.

"Follow my example."

Yin Xingyue struck the same 【Embracing Bao Feng Mian】 pose.

Knees slightly bent, body in a slight crouch, arms embracing the empty air.

"It's a slight crouch, not sticking your butt out. Imagine you're holding something…"

Watching Dou Dou was very puzzled. She was clearly crouching down.

She looked down at herself. Her legs were just too short—you couldn't tell she was crouching at all, you could only see that she was sticking her butt out…

"Don't rush to leave after work. We're having a meeting." Zhou Chuan stood up and reminded everyone.

The moment his words fell, everyone immediately let out a collective wail.

"No way? Leader, when did you learn the trick of holding meetings after work? You had so much time during the day and you didn't hold one?" Wang Chao was the first to shout.

"In the afternoon, the meeting room was occupied by the Planning Department the whole time. What could I do? I could only wait until after work."

"We still have to go to the meeting room?"

"Obviously. We're going to go over last month's data analysis report together. Wait—you haven't written yours yet, have you?"

"Uh…"

"Tell me, what exactly do you do all day?" Zhou Chuan was absolutely furious.

He didn't oppose slacking off, but the premise was you had to finish your work first before slacking — he was, after all, still the boss.

"What about the rest of you?" Zhou Chuan asked the others.

"I've already finished writing mine."

"Me too, I've already sent it to your email."

"I finished mine last Friday."

……

Everyone spoke up one after another, and only then did Zhou Chuan's expression clear slightly.

So his gaze fell once more on Wang Chao.

"It's always you — you just drag your feet on everything, absolutely refuse to do it until the very last moment."

"Boss, this time I really forgot. I'll do it right now, I guarantee it'll be done before we get off work today."

Zhou Chuan had no choice but to tell him to speed up, and sat back down himself.

Every month, everyone would do a data analysis on the game projects under their responsibility. If the revenue target was met, everyone was happy — during the meeting, a couple of casual remarks and it was over in no time.

If the revenue target wasn't met, then it was analyze left, analyze right — from holiday events to system mechanics, everything was dug out and combed through frame by frame to find the cause.

Of course, the final conclusion of the analysis was usually that this batch of players just wasn't up to par…

Zhou Chuan was considered a pretty decent boss; the meeting didn't take up much of everyone's time, but even so, by the time they came out of the conference room, it was already half past seven.

After Shen Siyuan grabbed a dinner outside, by the time he got home it was almost nine.

He rode his bike to the building, had just parked the electric scooter, when Lu Guanchang — Old Lu, who he hadn't seen for several days — came hurrying up to greet him.

But he didn't dare step forward; his gaze fell on Yin Xingyue and Watching Dou Dou, who were riding the yin wind and circling around Shen Siyuan, and a look of fear appeared on his face.

Especially the flames on Watching Dou Dou that hadn't been fully drawn back in — they made his heart pound with terror; if he got too close, he'd feel a stabbing pain in his soul.

But while he was afraid, deep down he also felt a faint trace of envy and jealousy.

He had wanted Shen Siyuan to help him meet with his wife and daughter — he'd begged again and again, and only after much reluctance did the other party agree. Yet these two little girls before him had easily obtained their fateful opportunity and become extraordinary.

What he didn't know was that although he had hidden his jealousy very well and not shown it, the moment the thought arose, the fleshy lumps on his face grew even more numerous, as if they were about to fester — this was the outward manifestation of "form born from the heart," and it could not be concealed.

Shen Siyuan naturally noticed as well, but paid it no mind. Instead he opened his mouth to ask: "Did you find your ex-wife and daughter?"

Old Lu hurriedly nodded. After all, being a ghost made moving about much more convenient — following some clues from the past, after several days of effort, he had actually managed to track them down.

PS: It's the end of the month, if you've got tickets in hand, I'd appreciate a wave~