Chapter 10: Shen Huai, You Heartless Man!

Tong Yue ran out of the utility room with a flushed face.

Shen Huai did not follow her.

This whole ordeal had exhausted nearly all of his energy.

He checked the time; without realizing it, it was already lunchtime.

But Shen Huai was not hungry at all.

He had spent the entire morning maneuvering among his ex-girlfriends.

Physically and mentally exhausted, he had already cast hunger to the back of his mind.

He walked out of the utility room.

Shen Huai took a turn, pushed open the door to the stairwell, and entered.

The stairwell was dim and empty.

The moment the heavy fire door closed, he felt the surrounding noise quiet down significantly.

Shen Huai casually wiped off a step, sighed, and sat down.

Immediately after, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

As the taste of tobacco was drawn into his lungs, Shen Huai deeply exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Only then did his tightly furrowed brow relax a little.

In fact, he didn't usually smoke much in his daily life.

He didn't have much of an addiction to the stuff, either.

Only when he was under extreme pressure would he take one out to smoke a couple, to regulate his mood.

Just like, at this very moment.

The shocks he had received this morning were too concentrated; they were simply one wave after another.

Shen Huai hadn't been able to digest it all yet.

After all, what kind of decent person could encounter three exes in a row at one company?

Especially his direct supervisor, Tong Yue.

He had long since witnessed the terrifying nature of this person.

Her specialty was belittling PUA.

She would first describe you as worthless, take the opportunity to elevate herself, and make you full of awe for her words and for her as a person.

If his own heart weren't strong enough to identify the tricks in her words at a glance,

he might have really been brainwashed into becoming her sycophant.

Such a person would definitely be a great asset as a business partner.

But if she became your significant other, then the latter half of your life would mostly likely end up as her appendage.

How to survive in an office environment full of exes

was a major problem Shen Huai was currently facing.

Shen Huai took another heavy drag of his cigarette.

"How about... I just quit?" As soon as this thought popped up, Shen Huai immediately shook his head to nip it in the bud.

He wasn't the type to retreat the moment he encountered a problem.

Moreover, Xingyao was a company that countless people broke their heads trying to get into.

His starting point was so high right after graduation; he absolutely could not give up easily.

Although he had many exes, he had put in serious effort for every single relationship.

Even though he was a scumbag, he was a scumbag with principles.

He could barely consider his conscience clear.

Shen Huai took one last drag of the cigarette butt, threw it on the ground, crushed it hard with his foot, and began to think rapidly.

First, Su Meng; although she was also at Xingyao, she wasn't in the same department as him, nor on the same floor, so the daily threat shouldn't be great.

And there wasn't much entanglement between him and Su Meng; she shouldn't deliberately trip him up.

Next was Lu Sheng.

He knew this person even better.

She separated public and private matters, focused on the task rather than the person, and was a typical workaholic.

With such a personality, she shouldn't retaliate against him by mixing in personal grievances.

And to be precise, even if he re-examined their past relationship, it was Lu Sheng who had let him down.

So for him, the threat from Lu Sheng wasn't very large either.

Finally, only this Tong Yue remained.

At the thought of Tong Yue, Shen Huai only felt a headache coming on.

With Tong Yue's petty and calculating nature,

now that he had fallen into her hands and become her subordinate, who knew what kind of tricks she would play on him in the future.

Perhaps at this very moment, she was already calculating in her heart how to embarrass him later.

Thinking of this, Shen Huai let out another heavy sigh.

Working this job was truly like walking on thin ice.

Suddenly.

Shen Huai vaguely heard a faint sound of sobbing.

At first, he thought he was hallucinating.

After all, he had been sitting here for so long, and he hadn't heard any sound before.

Very quickly, Shen Huai discovered that he had not misheard.

He silently tilted his head upward.

This sobbing sound came from above.

His train of thought was interrupted by the sobbing. Shen Huai no longer had the motivation to continue thinking, and instead became curious about the owner of this crying.

Listening to the sound of the crying, it seemed to be a girl.

He wondered what kind of grievance she had suffered to actually be hiding alone in the stairwell in broad daylight, wiping away tears.

Shen Huai's philanthropic genes were stirring once again.

He rose quietly, felt his pockets, and touched a pack of tissues.

He walked upward along the steps.

In the dim light.

Shen Huai saw a slender figure sitting on the steps with her back to the light.

Her hands were wrapped around her knees, her head buried deep between her legs, the sobbing gradually fading.

Shen Huai walked over, gently patted the girl's shoulder, and kindly handed the tissues over: "Why are you crying here all alone?"

The sobbing stopped abruptly.

Hearing Shen Huai's voice, the girl looked up in a panic.

In an instant.

The tissues in Shen Huai's hand fell to the ground.

As their eyes met, there were two faces shocked into speechlessness.

A string of teardrops still hung on the girl's face, and the surprise in her pupils was almost overflowing.

Her gaze stiffly looked toward the tissues on the ground, then slowly lifted to look at Shen Huai.

"..."

Shen Huai's CPU was completely fried now.

For a split second, he even began to doubt the reality of everything before him.

Was he not fully awake?

Or had he accidentally entered some kind of ex-partner strategy novel? Or perhaps, was he dreaming right now?

Shen Huai, as if possessed, gently pinched his own thigh.

Holy crap, it hurt like hell! The real sensation of pain coming from his leg proved that everything before him was not a dream.

Now, Shen Huai felt even more panicked in his heart.

Heavens, what on earth was going on?

How was it that in the time it took to smoke a cigarette in the stairwell, he had run into a familiar person again! The girl before him, crying like rain on pear blossoms, was none other than one of Shen Huai's ex-girlfriends, Liu Shishi.

She was also the only person in his entire romantic history to whom he had taken the initiative to propose a breakup.

Liu Shishi, having realized it belatedly, stood up with a "whoosh," turned her face away in a panic, and wiped away the tear stains with the back of her hand.

She had never expected this.

That she and Shen Huai would actually reunite in such a disheveled state.

And that her ugly appearance, hiding in the stairwell to cry, had been seen by him entirely.

The more Liu Shishi thought about it, the more ashamed she felt; a belly full of anger was stuck in her throat, and though she drafted a response for a long time, she couldn't squeeze out a single word.

Seeing that Liu Shishi remained silent for a long time, Shen Huai understood in his heart.

He knew Liu Shishi too well.

She was someone who, no matter how great a grievance she suffered, chose to digest it silently on her own.

In order to cater to others, she would even go so far as to sacrifice herself.

When he was with Liu Shishi, he had been attracted by her sweet smile.

Because she grew up in a single-parent family, Liu Shishi had a sense of inferiority carved into her genes.

This inferiority had subtly permeated every aspect of her life.

It led her to swallow her grievances, whether right or wrong, whenever she suffered outside.

Her humble demeanor sometimes even made Shen Huai feel angry.

Because Shen Huai's appearance was too handsome, Liu Shishi truly lacked a sense of security inside.

She always felt that Shen Huai would change his heart one day.

In order to bind Shen Huai to herself, Liu Shishi had done various things that Shen Huai found difficult to accept.

Her most common tactic was to keep Shen Huai by her side by torturing herself.

This made Shen Huai feel very exhausted, and repeated warnings remained useless.

Finally.

When Liu Shishi hurt herself once again, Shen Huai acted in time, snatched the eyebrow pencil from her hand with a backhand motion, and threw it far away.

Unable to bear it any longer, Shen Huai proposed a breakup for the first time.

And he told her seriously that sympathy gained by hurting oneself was not love.

Shen Huai prided himself on not being a romantic fool.

He never proposed a breakup lightly, but once he said it, there was absolutely no room for reversal.

Looking at it now.

Liu Shishi had most likely encountered some grievance in the workplace, which was why she was hiding here alone to vent.

As a result, he hadn't expected to be bumped into by her ex-boyfriend.

He bent down to pick up the tissues, pulled one out, and handed it to Liu Shishi again, "Why are you still the same as before, such a crybaby? Who bullied you?"

Who would have expected it.

Upon hearing these words, Liu Shishi, who had been suppressing her emotions all along, completely broke down.

Bean-sized tears slid down her cheeks, and she looked extremely aggrieved.

"Shen Huai... you are nothing but a heartless man!"

(End of this chapter)