CH 35

Chapter 35: The company is closed

“I’ll have the seafood,” said Zhou Mushi as he got up and followed Jin Yang’s flashlight to the pantry. He couldn’t ask someone to bring him a bowl of noodles that had already been prepared, could he?

Fortunately, there was hot water stored in the water dispenser in the pantry, enough to make two cups of instant noodles. Jin Yang placed his phone on the cabinet and used the flashlight to illuminate the area.

With limited light, the two sat close together on the stool in the rest area, holding their bowls of noodles. The misty steam rising from the instant noodle containers formed a white circle that meandered and drifted, creating a unique warmth that surrounded the two bowls of noodles.

Zhou Mushi had just finished his third bite of noodles when he wanted to tell Jin Yang about a point he had thought of regarding the project proposal. As soon as he looked up, he noticed that Jin Yang was already looking at him. Those black eyes seemed to be pulling him into an abyss.

Perhaps Jin Yang didn’t actually want to drag him down, but at least he wanted to encircle him like the circle Sun Wukong drew for Tang Monk. Zhou Mushi’s heart skipped a beat and he quickly averted his gaze, focusing on his own noodles.

Jin Yang’s gaze was too intense, not something that an employee from a neighboring company should give to their superior.

“How have you been these past few years?” he asked.

The inevitable topic came up again after all these years.

“I’ve been doing well,” Zhou Mushi replied simply, without saying anything more.

Jin Yang held the bowl of noodles in his hands, smiling on his face but no trace of amusement in his eyes. He caressed the bowl and spoke in a serious tone, “I didn’t know I was going to meet you that day.”

“Oh,” Zhou Mushi replied, chewing on his noodles, suddenly feeling the taste was bland.

Men always remember their first love for a longer time, perhaps because of the first love itself, or perhaps because Zhou Mushi was too emotionally invested in this relationship, to the point where he trapped himself in that circle and couldn’t extricate himself. It took him four or five years to feel a slight easing of the situation.

Unfortunately, just as things were starting to ease for him, he ran into someone who would only cause him more pain.

As the saying goes, “The mouth that eats you is soft, but the hand that takes from you is short.” Despite the fact that he was being fed by this person, he couldn’t bring himself to be rude and instead resorted to discussing random topics that were unrelated to the situation.

“Didn’t you used to always be your own boss? Why are you working for someone else now?” Zhou Mushi thought to himself. Even if they had to talk about something, it would be better to discuss work-related issues.

Jin Yang forced a smile and said, “Poor management, coupled with vicious competition, left me with no choice but to close down.”

This person has always been modest. In Zhou Mushi’s understanding, regardless of whether he was a scumbag emotionally, he has always been down-to-earth in his work, never exhibiting any signs of being ‘reckless in his youth’ or anything like that. How did he get to the point of poor management, to the extent of being unable to continue and having to close down the company?

“When did this happen?” Zhou Mushi asked, his business mind starting to think whether it was an issue with the commercial market environment at the time.

“About five years ago, quite a long time ago. Let’s not talk about this. Give me the empty bucket when you’re done eating, and I’ll dispose of the soup and throw it in the trash can,” Jin Yang replied.

Zhou Mushi began to calculate the time. The company had been closed for five years? But he had only broken up with Jin Yang five years ago, so does that mean the company closed during the time they broke up?

It seemed that Jin Yang had been very busy two months before that.

But at that time, Jin Yang never mentioned anything to him, and he had actually broken up with him when he was at a low point in his career.

Could it be that he was with those women in order to save the company…