Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-One: The Price of a Bowl of Noodles

There was a massive uproar.

Ever since Xiao Yu had come to find Nan Wei, most of the interns had sensed that Nan Wei and Xiao Yu didn’t have an ordinary relationship. But, they never would have guessed that Nan Wei was Xiao Yu’s disciple.

Aside from their age difference, the biggest reason for this was because of Nan Wei’s background.

From their perspective, if the renowned Mystery Designer wanted a disciple, he should have chosen an outstanding genius from a top tier school.

Perhaps they forgot or simply chose not to think about the fact that Xiao Yu had also dropped out of school and came from a nontraditional background.

Nan Wei’s declaration was only meant to reveal his own identity. The last part about putting in a special request for Zhou Mang was complete nonsense. It wasn’t that he was more talented either; Zhou Mang was only selected to stay because Yan Jin took a liking to him.

Yan Jin never made disadvantageous business decisions.

Besides Nan Wei, who already had tons of valuable experience, and a few underperformers, the rest of the interns were pretty similar in terms of skill. Yan Jin didn’t want them because he had already obtained sufficiently valuable new hires. Standing up for Nan Wei was only an added benefit.

While YL needed more designers, they didn’t need them that badly. The driving force of YL design, Xiao Yu, was already in place. Training a few more high potential new hires like Nan Wei was enough.

Frankly speaking, the current batch of prospective hires were among the lowest level of artists. They’d only be useful in supporting roles. People like them who lacked both talent and motivation were a dime a dozen. They weren’t recruited with the intention of honing their design skills; they were recruited for skilled labor. The only requirements for them were to know their place and not cause trouble.

As things turned out, in their very first month, they had already gotten together to isolate Nan Wei. Yan Jin was aware of the exact extent of this. It was a long foregone conclusion that they couldn’t work with Nan Wei. If they were hired, it was inevitable that they’d backstab Nan Wei in the dark while smiling at him in public. The Yan Family was famous for running an airtight operation. How would Yan Jin allow this weakness to remain for others to exploit?

Since it was certain that Nan Wei would convert to full-time, Yan Jin naturally eliminated all potential sources for trouble.

From purely a cost-benefit analysis, Yan Jin would have preferred to leave Nan Wei out in favor of all the other interns. But, Nan Wei had powerful people backing him. It wasn’t even an issue of emotion anymore — if Yan Jin really dared to kick Nan Wei out, Xiao Yu would likely kick Yan Jin himself out.

Thus, it was actually a loss for Yan Jin to select Nan Wei to stay for full-time. Firing everyone else except for Nan Wei meant that the design department still lacked personnel, so Yan Jin could only have the human resources department continue searching for qualified candidates to make up for the loss.

And the person to reverse Yan Jin’s loss was Zhou Mang.

Even if Nan Wei hadn’t mentioned Zhou Mang to Yan Jin, Yan Jin still would have found out about Zhou Mang long ago. Compared to the naive Nan Wei, Yan Jin did not believe one bit the story of “Nan Wei looking like Zhou Mang’s deceased little brother.” It would have been good if all Zhou Mang did was to stand up for Nan Wei during his hardships. Unfortunately, at that time, Zhou Mang had already seen through Nan Wei’s identity. Of course, it wasn’t Nan Wei’s identity as Xiao Yu’s top disciple that had been seen through, but rather his identity as the young master of the Nan Family. Nan Wei was the rightful heir to the Nan Family that was so cruel and influential it was hard to look at.

Naturally, the next step for Yan Jin had been to research Zhou Mang’s identity. Surprisingly, the investigation had found something.

Zhou Mang’s background was extremely simple, but his “little brother’s” background was exceedingly complicated. Yan Jin had stopped the investigation halfway through. The first reason was that this “little brother” was involved in too many things. It wasn’t that Yan Jin didn’t dare to delve into this; he just didn’t need to look for trouble. The second reason was that he could already guess what was remaining.

The guess wasn’t based on what he had seen from the first part of the investigation, but rather the story that he previously didn’t believe with the “deceased little brother that looked extremely similar to Nan Wei.”

There were many metrics that could be used to judge whether someone looked extremely similar to another. But, the most important was undoubtedly bloodline.

When Yan Jin signed Zhou Mang’s full-time conversion, he was in such a good mood that his heart felt like it was flying.

This was already the second welcome surprise. For the young lady in the human resources department, it was like even the heavens were on their side.

Or more accurately, they had the luck of the gods.

“Fishy, I bought the tablet that you wanted.” Yan Jin was editing documents with his head lowered. It seemed as if he was talking about a very normal occurrence.

“Really? I heard that after currency conversion it almost costs one hundred thousand RMB!” Xiao Yu made an effort to resist his desires. “Hey, don’t waste money like that. I didn’t like it that much. Also, I haven’t used my current tablet for that long yet, so I don’t really need a new one. Did you buy it through an overseas friend? I heard there’s a lot of fake tablets here…”

Yan Jin’s pen paused.

He lifted his head from his documents and saw Xiao Yu’s super excited little cheeks light up.

And he said he didn’t like it that much…

Lies come from the mouth, but truth is revealed by the body.

“Weren’t you saying before that you didn’t like how it looked? In the future, you can design one for them,” Yan Jin said without too much thought.

“How could it be that easy? You’re so biased. There’s so many different types of designers. Clothing designers only design clothes, while jewelry designers only design jewelry. If you try to do all of them, none of them will succeed. Take me for instance…” Xiao Yu paused for a moment and hesitatingly said, “I’m proficient only in at most four to five types of design.”

Yan Jin sniggered at him.

“I’m a special case. Do you know what that means? Most people aren’t like this,” Xiao Yu said grumpily.

“Yeah, you are Fishy, the hamster of good fortune. Of course that’s not normal,” Yan Jin agreed with Xiao Yu. He beckoned Xiao Yu over and scooped him into an embrace.

“I’ve given my little hamster such a large gift. Do I get anything in return?”

Xiao Yu struggled and whined for a few moments. Then, without a trace of shame, he laid his head onto Yan Jin’s shoulder and looped his hands around Yan Jin’s neck. “Hmph. It’s just a tablet. My annual salary is over ten million. I can afford it myself.”

“Your mouth is so dishonest.” Yan Jin poked Xiao Yu in the forehead.

Xiao Yu leaned his head back from the poking. Then, he discontentedly leaned his head back in.

Back to the correct spot for a kiss.

They combined into a tangled mess on the table. Many important documents were crumpled and wrinkled.

In the end, Xiao Yu didn’t escape from sexual play in the office today either.

……

Nan Wei didn’t care about Yan Jin’s plots. He only cared about living happily.

Thus, he had brought up Zhou Mang to Yan Jin to express that he wanted Zhou Mang to stay.

Of course, the final decision was still in Yan Jin’s hands.

Nan Wei only brought it up once. He didn’t care care about Zhou Mang’s attitude or strategies to get close to him.

Nan Wei had grown up very privileged. He had started where others finished their goals. He wasn’t afraid of jealousy and even less so of verbal attack. He didn’t care at all for what others said about him and the Nan Family. He wasn’t angry at all when others shouted that he was “the Nan Family’s bastard” to his face.

But for design-related matters, his mental state was a clean slate. Nobody was qualified to stain it.

He treasured everything he had received from his old teacher or from Xiao Yu. When he picked up his drawing pen, he felt that he was only the designer Nan Wei. No one else could claim ownership of this identity, including the Nan Family.

So when these people looked down on him just for coming from a nontraditional background, they were attacking not only his own skill, but also his learnings from his two mentors and his very own hard-earned identity.

Nan Wei very rarely got angry, but his temper was never very pleasant either.

No one in the Nan Family was good-tempered.

Nan Wei had suppressed his temper for an entire month. Finally, when he’d received an appropriate chance to let it out, he made sure to give all of them a loud and clear face-slapping.

All of them had ugly looks on their faces.

They had long known that Nan Wei had some reason for his skill. But, they had never expected that reason to be so powerful. Being the top disciple for the Mystery Designer already meant that he was qualified. That itself was the embodiment of skill.

If they had known this earlier, they definitely wouldn’t have isolated him. Worshipping him would have been more correct.

Speaking of which, if it hadn’t been for that Wu guy, they likely wouldn’t have had a bad impression of Nan Wei at all!

Immediately, everybody looked at Wu Zuoling. His face was the ugliest of them all.

Wu Zuoling had the lowest design skill out of all of them. He might have been the first to go if the evaluation had been purely based on skill. From the start, he hadn’t intended on competing directly on skill. When Nan Wei showed up, Wu Zuoling finally had a target for his eloquence. He had convinced everyone that Nan Wei had only gotten this internship through some family connections and that he was just here to muddle his way through to an internship certificate. After isolating Nan Wei, the next step was to force Nan Wei to resign himself.

He had thought this plan was perfect. He hadn’t expected that things would go wrong in such a way.

He lowered his head to avoid all the condemning gazes, but in his heart, he silently felt like the others deserved what they got.

They had been so easily persuaded to join in. It served them right that they were also let go.

Full of malicious thoughts, Wu Zuoling actually didn’t feel too bad in his heart.

“Haha, you really know how to crack jokes.” Hearing Nan Wei’s words, Designer Zhang laughed. “Here at YL, no one can get in through connections. Zhou Mang was hired because of his outstanding work.”

This somewhat soothed the others’ depressed frustration.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Mhmm, Brother Zhang already said that it was based on skill.”

“Zhou Mang is the number one design major from University S. How can we compare to him?”

Nan Wei laughed softly from the burst of discussion around him.

Just when the rest of them had begun to reluctantly admit their own shortcomings and comfort themselves, Zhou Mang suddenly said, “Wow, you’re so awesome!”

Somehow when the others had already moved on to another topic, Zhou Mang was still on Nan Wei’s previous topic. Not only that, he added foolishly, “Thank you, brother! No need to pay me back for this meal!”

Nan Wei: ……

Everyone else: ……