Ch30.2 - Lu Qingjiu

translator: baumkuchen  editor: ellabells

The man was tall and had decent features, but everyone in the company knew that he and Lu Qingjiu weren’t on good terms. 

Lu Qingjiu said, “I’m going to the toilet.” He stood up and headed in the direction of the toilet. As Zhu Miaomiao watched him leave, she made a worried expression.

The man’s name was Wu Xiao. He was Lu Qingjiu’s boss, but his personality and Lu Qingjiu’s were simply absolute opposites. Although he was capable, his temper was especially bad. When Lu Qingjiu first joined the company, his attitude towards Lu Qingjiu had still been passable. But for some unknown reason, it became worse and worse, to the point when he began to specially target Lu Qingjiu. So Zhu Miaomiao and the rest all guessed that Lu Qingjiu resigning had something to do with Wu Xiao.

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Of course, Lu Qingjiu never gave a proper answer in response to such speculation.

After Lu Qingjiu was finished using the toilet and had his head lowered washing his hands, he heard a cold remark laced with disgust come from next to him, “How come you’re back here? Didn’t I tell you never to appear before me ever again?”

Lu Qingjiu turned his head and saw Wu Xiao, “President Wu.”

Wu Xiao walked up to Lu Qingjiu and said, “What, you thought I was joking? What did you do after you left that actually made Zhang Chuyang change his mind about you? Lu Qingjiu, if I were you, I’d be a little smarter and stay far, far away from this company.”

Lu Qingjiu had already drank quite a bit of alcohol, but he felt like his mind was even clearer than usual. He looked at Wu Xiao and smiled faintly, “President Wu, aren’t you curious about where I found out those things about you?”

Wu Xiao watched Lu Qingjiu warily. 

“How about I tell you?” Lu Qingjiu laughed. The alcohol had made his mild temperament fade, instead, turning him a little sharp. That cold and sarcastic gaze of his made Wu Xiao feel a little unable to look him directly in the eyes.

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“Isn’t it just that you’re fucking fond of gossip?” Wu Xiao asked, “What else can you tell me?!”

Lu Qingjiu sneered, then pointed at him, “Come with me.”

Wu Xiao had never thought that Lu Qingjiu would actually be this arrogant, and for a time, was aroused into anger. The two of them, one leading and the other following, walked straight out of the restaurant, giving Zhu Miaomiao, who had been worried all this time, a shock. 

“They just left like that, what are they planning on doing?” Zhu Miaomiao said, frightened, “I’ll go with them, what if Qingjiu gets beat up? Wu Xiao’s bigger than him by a head.”

Yun-ge held Zhu Miaomiao back. “Don’t. Don’t go and join in on the ruckus. Actually, President Wu isn’t a bad person, he just has a bad temper. No matter what happens, they won’t start fighting.”

Zhu Miaomiao replied, “What do you think? Why does President Wu dislike Qingjiu so much…”

Yun-ge said, “How would I know.” 

Wu Xiao was their immediate superior. Being targeted by your immediate superior naturally wasn’t anything pleasant. It was just that, even till today, they simply couldn’t understand why in the world Wu Xiao didn’t like Lu Qingjiu, and even targeted him at every opportunity.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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Wu Xiao sat in the driver’s seat, a gloomy look on his face. He asked, “Where to?”

Lu Qingjiu said, “The entrance to the company.”

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Wu Xiao, “…” He wanted to say something, but held back in the end. It was just that the look in his eyes became worse and worse, he looked at Lu Qingjiu like he was looking at a mental patient. 

Lu Qingjiu was too lazy to explain himself to him. He was drunk, so now his entire person was dizzy. When he spoke, he also didn’t think too much. He asked, “President Wu, have you ever seen a ghost before?”

Wu Xiao was driving. When he heard this line from Lu Qingjiu, he sneered, “What? You want to push all of this onto a ghost? Ha, would there be such a gossipy ghost in this world?”

Lu Qingjiu grasped the key point in Wu Xiao’s words. “So you’ve seen them?”

Wu Xiao was silent for a moment, then nodded a little half-heartedly, saying, “When I was younger.” He’d indeed seen those unclean things before, and he’d even seen them often when he was younger. Every time he saw them, he became sick. His family had found someone with knowledge in this area and that person had said that his eight characters were too light, but he would be fine after he grew up. This ended up being true, because after he got older he never saw such things again. 

“No wonder,” Lu Qingjiu said.

Wu Xiao asked, “What are you trying to say?”

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Lu Qingjiu didn’t say anything. He leaned back lazily against the passenger seat. “Even if I said more you wouldn’t believe me. Wait till we get there, you’ll know what I wanted to say.”

Wu Xiao pursed his lips. His eyes showed a strong unhappiness. In his eyes, Lu Qingjiu was someone who really liked to gossip about others. His breezy and gentle nature on the surface was all an act. As for how he’d gotten such an impression of him, it was purely because he himself had heard Lu Qingjiu gossiping in the toilet several times. Especially the last time he’d heard it, it had even involved the company’s most confidential projects. Because of this, Wu Xiao forced Lu Qingjiu to resign and had even expressed strongly that if he didn’t resign, he would fire him. 

Lu Qingjiu hadn’t questioned Wu Xiao’s decision at all, simply leaving cleanly. This had also made Wu Xiao sure that he hadn’t read Lu Qingjiu wrongly and that Lu Qingjiu was indeed that kind of vile, fake gentleman. Wu Xiao detested those kinds of people the most, so when he saw Lu Qingjiu he didn’t even bother giving him any face.

Up until they reached their destination, Lu QIngjiu had no intention of explaining. Wu Xiao parked the car, and asked angrily, “So what do you actually want to say?”

Lu Qingjiu said, “Come here.” He entered the building, walked over to the elevator, and pressed the button.

Frowning, Wu Xiao followed. He really wanted to see what kind of trick Lu Qingjiu was going to pull. 

The elevator went all the way up, stopping at their company’s floor. Because of today’s dinner, most of the employees had already clocked out. The few remaining were working overtime.

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When the security guards by the entrance saw Lu Qingjiu and Wu Xiao, they let out shocked expressions, even calling out a “hello President Wu”.

Wu Xiao nodded, then said, “What are you actually planning on doing?” He was a little impatient now.

Lu Qingjiu didn’t pay him any mind. He continued to walk forward. The two of them walked through the long office corridor, and soon reached the entrance to the company toilets. He pushed open the door and made a gesture of “please” towards Wu Xiao. 

Seeing Lu Qingjiu’s movements, Wu Xiao’s expression froze for a moment. He asked, “What do you mean by this?”

Lu Qingjiu blinked. “Don’t you want to know the answer? I’m giving you the answer now.”

Wu Xiao, “…The answer is in the toilet?” He looked at Lu Qingjiu suspiciously, it was unknown what he’d thought of. An inexplicable blush rose on his cheeks. “I don’t like men, okay.”

Lu Qingjiu, “…” He was shocked by Wu Xiao’s train of thought. In the end, he didn’t say anything and simply went in first. 

Even though Wu Xiao had his hesitations, since he was already at the entrance, he still followed Lu Qingjiu into the toilet.

The toilet had a giant window, and on the window were folding blinds. The little lights overhead let out a weak glow. No matter where it was, the toilet was never a pleasant place.

Wu Xiao said, “I’m here, my answer?”

Lu Qingjiu took a deep breath, walked over to the window and shouted out, “Old Tree, Old Tree, are you there? Are you sleeping?” 

Wu Xiao, “…”

Lu Qingjiu said, “Quickly wake up, Old Tree?!”

Wu Xiao looked over at him with horror. He clearly thought Lu Qingjiu had gone crazy.

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Lu Qingjiu didn’t pay Wu Xiao any attention. He called out a few more times, and about one or two minutes later, a voice that sounded exactly like Lu Qingjiu’s sounded from one of the stalls. That voice responded, “Jiu-er? You’re back?” 

Upon hearing this voice, the fear in Wu Xiao’s eyes was practically about to materialise. His mouth gaped open. He pointed a trembling hand at Lu Qingjiu, then pointed at the stall where the voice had come from, clearly asking what in the world was going on? Why was there another Lu Qingjiu talking inside?

Lu Qingjiu shrugged. He walked over to the stall, reached out a hand and pulled open the door. After the door was opened, the stall was revealed to be empty and without anything inside, much less a second Lu Qingjiu.

“What’s going on??” Wu Xiao was shaken. If not for him personally hearing it, he absolutely would not believe something like this.

“Old Tree,” Lu Qingjiu sighed, “I already said, when you’re gossiping, don’t use my voice. Now you’ve really harmed me.” 

“Ha ha ha ha…” Lu Qingjiu’s voice once again sounded from inside the stall, but it sounded a little awkward, “How would I know that there was still someone who could hear my voice? I was just a little careless when gossiping, no?”

Lu Qingjiu said, “See, you’ve made me be misunderstood.”

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Old Tree went silent.

This Old Tree was a supernatural existence Lu Qingjiu had discovered not long after joining the company. When Lu Qingjiu was in the toilet, he heard someone whispering about some very private gossip, but Lu Qingjiu felt that something was wrong, because no one in the company sounded like that. At that time, in order to find out who actually was talking, he’d waited for a very long time in the toilet, until he realised there was something wrong — there was clearly no one left in the toilet. 

Upon realising the abnormality, Lu Qingjiu made excuses to get another colleague to come to the toilet, but after the colleague went in, he said he hadn’t heard anything. At that point, Lu Qingjiu understood that that voice didn’t belong to a human. Later on, after working there for longer, he found out that that voice came from a big tree by the entrance to their company. The tree also found out that Lu Qingjiu could hear its words. Gradually, the two became friends. The big tree’s voice before was very strange, so after it made friends with Lu Qingjiu, it began to deliberately mimic Lu Qingjiu’s voice. It was said that among their tree tribes, it was a sign of liking someone. At the time, Lu Qingjiu didn’t put much thought into it, but hadn’t expected that this would be a calamity waiting to happen after.

Wu Xiao was clearly not as sensitive to the supernatural as Lu Qingjiu, so he could only very occasionally hear the big tree talk. This big tree knew the most intimate gossip of the entire company, like hadn’t some co-worker A taken leave to get plastic surgery done, stuff about how President B had contracted an STD from having sex with prostitutes. When it spoke with people, it used Lu Qingjiu’s voice. When Wu Xiao, who didn’t know the truth of the matter heard this, he naturally misunderstood. 

Wu Xiao, who misunderstood Lu Qingjiu as a gossip-spreader, simply gave him an ultimatum: one, be dismissed, or two, resign voluntarily to save face.

Even though he didn’t really understand why, in the end, Lu Qingjiu had chosen the latter, and left the company. Thinking about it now, this matter had simply been an undeserved catastrophe. 

After listening to Lu Qingjiu explanation, the embarrassment on Wu Xiao’s face grew stronger. He let out a dry cough, “Sorry, I hadn’t thought… that something like this existed in this world.”

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Lu Qingjiu asked helplessly, “Do I look like a gossipy person to you?”

Wu Xiao, “Well… A little bit?”

Lu Qingjiu, “…” Fine, okay, as long as you’re happy. 

The author has something to say:

Wu Xiao: Lu Qingjiu, this person with thick eyebrows and big eyes, actually went around telling people I had haemorrhoids

Lu Qingjiu: I’m not, I didn’t……