Chapter 126: A Habit Formed – The Daily Gossip of a Sickly Young Woman in the Compound

Chapter 126: A Habit Formed - The Daily Gossip of a Sickly Young Woman in the Compound

"Mother Li, did Zhou Qin really go to help?" Lin Qing suddenly asked upon hearing this.

"Yes, he did. I'm not that harsh," Mother Li replied, then leaned in and whispered, "You didn't see it, but Wang Qiaomei's face was so pale that day, even paler than your usual complexion. She clearly wasn't feeling well. How could I have forced her to clean?"

"Of course you couldn't!" Lin Qing responded without hesitation.

"Exactly right!"

"Besides, if I had forced her, it would have started to ruin my reputation. I wouldn't ruin my own reputation for those two.

I disciplined both of them. If Wang Qiaomei found someone to help, at least her share would be done. As for Qin Xianglian, I didn’t care, as long as someone cleaned the street."

"So, who actually cleaned the street?"

Mother Li leaned in again and whispered, "I heard it was Zhou Qin who cleaned it all by himself."

"Haha!" Lin Qing burst into laughter.

"Exactly. I already knew Qin Xianglian wouldn’t help with the cleaning willingly, so I didn’t bother supervising them. I just told them that by the next morning, I expected the street to be spotless."

"Haha! That’s brilliant!" Lin Qing thought Mother Li's approach was a stroke of genius.

If she had supervised them the whole time, it would have caused a lot of trouble. It was better to let them handle it and just check the results later.

"The next day, I heard someone say they saw Zhou Qin cleaning the street all by himself that night."

"Zhou Qin is really something..." Lin Qing couldn't find the right words to describe him.

...

After chatting with Mother Li, Lin Qing had a rough idea of what had happened in the compound while she was away.

As she cooked and ate dinner alone, Lin Qing suddenly felt lonely and began to miss Cen Xi. She wondered if he was eating properly.

The newlywed couple seemed to be on the same wavelength. While Cen Xi was having dinner with Xiao Yifan, he couldn’t help but think about his wife, wondering if she was taking her medicine as she should.

"What's wrong? Missing home?"

Cen Xi remained silent.

"Ah, it’s normal. You’re newly married, so it’s natural to feel this way. You’ll get used to it!" Xiao Yifan even patted his shoulder, speaking from experience.

Cen Xi shrugged his hand off, placed his finished plate in the recycling area, and headed back to the office.

"Hey, wait up! What’s the rush?" Xiao Yifan quickly caught up.

...

It must be said that when Lin Qing was alone at home, the devilish voice in her head did appear: "Since you're alone at home, no one will know if you take your medicine or not. Maybe you should just skip it?"

Fortunately, Lin Qing's willpower was strong. While eating, she still prepared her medicine and drank it willingly. This sudden realization made her feel that she had been quite fussy before.

Previously, she would make excuses and refuse to take her medicine, mainly because someone indulged her. Thinking of this, a sweet feeling rose in her heart.

After finishing her medicine, she washed up, locked the kitchen door, and returned to her bedroom. She locked all the windows and doors before going to the inner room.

The evening alone was quite boring, so she picked up a comic book to pass the time.

When she went to bed, she suddenly realized it had been so long since she slept alone, and she felt a bit unaccustomed. She tossed and turned, feeling like something was missing, and everything just felt off.

It dawned on Lin Qing just how used she had gotten to having Cen Xi around.

The next morning, bright and early.

Lin Qing got up early, sticking to her recent routine, prepared breakfast for herself, and after eating, she was ready to go to work.

The folks in the front yard looked downright shocked.

They hadn’t noticed anything last night, but this morning, they could tell something was up.

Mother Jiang looked at the horizon and said, "Well, isn’t this a surprise? The sun must be rising from the west!" The frail young lady from the main house actually got up to make breakfast herself?

"Cen Gong must have finally had enough," Jiang Da Sao speculated beside her.

"Hee hee hee!" Jiang Da Sao felt a bit schadenfreude at the thought.

But when Lin Qing left, they finally figured out what was odd.

"Huh? Why is she by herself? Where’s Cen Gong?" Jiang Da Sao thought as she looked out from her kitchen.

Luckily, she wasn’t the only one wondering.

Lin Qing left with the group, including Zhang Yuanyuan and Yu Liang. Zhang Yuanyuan was quite curious about it.

"Lin Qing, why are you on your own today?"

"Cen Xi had some urgent work in his department and didn’t make it back last night," Lin Qing briefly explained to them.

"Oh, got it!" Now everyone understood.

Being from the factory, they knew the research department often worked non-stop, so it wasn’t unusual for them to skip sleep.

So once they heard the reason, they didn’t press further.

It was her first time heading to work solo, and she made it there just fine.

"Hey, did you hear?"

"Hear what?" Lin Qing was eating lunch when she suddenly heard Fu Huihui’s question and immediately looked up curiously.

"I heard Wang Qiaomei passed out in the workshop."

"What? What happened?" Lin Qing became interested upon hearing this.

"A colleague told me this morning she just collapsed while working," Fu Huihui’s department wasn’t as busy, so they often had time to chat about gossip. She happened to hear a colleague mention this, and the colleague knew because he had a relative in the infirmary. He went out to see that relative in the morning and happened to witness it.

"Is she really that frail?" Wang Jiaojiao couldn’t help but doubt.

"Mother Li mentioned she was sick before. Maybe she hasn’t fully bounced back and is still weak," Lin Qing suddenly remembered this.

"But I heard she called in sick a couple of days ago. Today was her first day back, and she pushed the supervisor to mark her absence as sick leave."

"How do you know all this?" Wang Jiaojiao asked, slightly surprised.

"Because the supervisor agreed and then came to HR to make the change."

Now it all made sense.

The supervisor logs attendance, then HR checks and tallies it before sending it to finance for payroll.