Chapter 1: Passerby

Chapter 1 A Stranger

Just another ordinary workday.

In the office, employees bustled about, the clatter of keyboards occasionally punctuated by the ringing of phones.

Zhou Zuofei's intercom suddenly rang.

Without even looking up, she reached out and picked up the receiver with precision.

The next second, the voice of her manager, Ye Ru, sounded in her ear: "Xiao Zhou, come here for a moment."

"On my way."

Zhou Zuofei immediately set aside her work, habitually pressing the shortcut key to put her computer into sleep mode, then took her notepad and headed to the manager's office at the other end of the hallway.

Inside sat a woman in her early thirties, wearing light makeup and dressed in professional attire.

Upon seeing Zhou Zuofei enter, she naturally waved her over.

"Take a seat first. There's something I need you to handle."

Ye Ru was the manager of the second division of the Administrative Department at Huanyu Group and Zhou Zuofei's direct superior.

Three years ago, Zhou Zuofei had joined Huanyu Group through campus recruitment, and Ye Ru had been one of her interviewers. Since then, she had worked under her.

The two had a good relationship, so their conversations were relatively casual in private.

"What's up, Sister Ye?"

Ye Ru handed her a folder: "A new intern is coming tomorrow. You’ll be mentoring them."

"An intern?" Zhou Zuofei was taken aback. Their department hadn’t recently opened any internship positions, and it wasn’t the standard internship period like summer or winter break.

In other words, this intern hadn’t been hired through the standard channels.

To put it bluntly, they were here through connections.

Huanyu Group was a major corporation with nationwide operations, and the company was famous for its generous compensation package.

With a superior work environment, excellent benefits, and strong growth opportunities, the HR department was flooded with a flood of applications every recruitment season.

Even internship slots were highly competitive, often leading to employees pulling strings to get their relatives or children into the company to burnish their resumes.

Zhou Zuofei opened the folder and glanced inside—it contained the intern’s resume. The attached headshot showed a quite good-looking young man with a bright, confident smile.

Her eyes shifted left to the name column, where the words "Zhan Zilang" were written. A glance at his major and graduation date only confirmed what she'd suspected.

He had graduated over a year ago—clearly not here just for an internship certificate.

After reviewing the resume, she asked, "Is this a new employee about to join?"

"Hard to tell. He might just stay for a month or so. Or maybe he’ll get bored and leave after a week."

Zhou Zuofei joked, "So, it’s more like playing chaperone to management's pet?"

Seeing that Ye Ru didn’t object and only smiled, she posed a second question: "But why would someone like him end up in our department?"

For one, his major wasn’t even relevant. Secondly, the Administrative Department had little clout within the company—it was a constantly overworked, underappreciated department.

If he really had strong connections, he could have gone to other departments. The admin department wasn’t exactly a prime placement.

Ye Ru said succinctly, "Don’t overthink it. We just do what management says. Just keep things quiet for a month until we can hand him off."

It seemed there were more complicated reasons behind this.

As an entry-level staffer, Zhou Zuofei had only heard about the office politics within the company but had never been directly involved.

On one hand, her position was too low-level to be relevant. On the other hand, the admin department mainly provided support and services and wasn’t involved in corporate competition.

Moreover, since they interacted with all departments, they remained neutral—no one would easily offend them, but they also wouldn’t benefit from any advantages.

Without further ado, Zhou Zuofei decisively agreed, "Understood. I’ll make the arrangements."

Her official position was admin associate in the second section of the admin department. She had graduated from a no-name college in K City, where Huanyu Group was headquartered.

Back then, she had received an offer from Huanyu through campus recruitment and chose to stay in K City for her career, becoming one of the countless out-of-town grads grinding away.

That campus recruitment was a joint event across multiple universities. At the time, Huanyu was the hottest company recruiting, and almost everyone Zhou Zuofei knew had applied.

From what her roommate could dig up, she was the only one in her department to receive an interview invitation—and possibly the only one in the entire school.

So everyone around her paid close attention to this interview, while Zhou Zuofei herself remained weirdly chill.

Her roommates admired her for her cool head under pressure, but only she knew the truth—it wasn’t about composure. She had already known the outcome.

The moment she received the call, she had foreseen her future: she would pass the interview and work at Huanyu.

It all started with a dream she had months earlier.

In that dream, she had watched this whole story play out from an observer’s perspective.

Normally, people don’t remember their dreams clearly, but Zhou Zuofei not only remembered—she remembered every detail.

According to the dream, this world was straight out of some romance novel, and the female protagonist would be her future neighbor. Like all romance novel heroines, she would experience meet-cutes and drama before ending up happily ever after with the male lead.

Though Zhou Zuofei made an appearance in the story, her role was minor—basically a background character.

The only time she was mentioned in the plot was when the female protagonist appeared at the company arm in arm with the male lead. Zhou Zuofei recognized her as the neighbor who had moved away half a year earlier and got one throwaway line.

Oh, and get this—the male lead of the story would be her future boss—Ling Yu, the dreamy billionaire CEO of Huanyu Group.

At first, Zhou Zuofei didn’t believe the dream. She thought she had been reading too many novels and had subconsciously started making up fanfiction in her dreams.

But when she looked into it, something didn’t add up—the current CEO wasn’t Ling Yu.

When she looked into it, she learned that Ling Yu was actually the son of the current CEO. Before this, she would never have cared or known about such details.

Since dreams can’t create content beyond one’s own knowledge, Zhou Zuofei started having doubts.

But there was no way to check—she lacked the means to investigate, and the dream had provided too little information about her own role.

All she knew was that she would work at Huanyu and occasionally see the female protagonist after work. As for her job responsibilities or what her life would be like, she had no idea.

So she could only wait—to see if the dream would come true, to see if she would really become a Huanyu employee.

Over time, however, she let it go. After all, senior year kept her busy enough, and she had no time to obsess over such things.

Then, two days before the campus recruitment, the campus message boards blew up with news: Huanyu Group was participating this time—something they had never done before.

This made Zhou Zuofei recall that dream again. Whether real or not, she decided to shoot her shot and submit her resume.

If she failed, she could chalk it up to stress and having a weird dream. But if she succeeded...

Wouldn’t it be great to work at Universal?

And did it really matter if she was just a side character?

For a girl from an ordinary family like her, the top priority was finding a steady job to pay the bills, cutting the financial cord and making it on her own. A position at Universal was hands-down the best option.

Besides, based on her extensive experience reading novels, being a side character wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

As everyone knew, being the main character meant drama left and right—even the most improbable scenarios would somehow happen to them.

For example, discovering the keyboard warrior you’ve been arguing with is actually your boss, or running into your ex-boyfriend dressed to the nines while you’re looking like a mess buying breakfast.

To readers, such a life might seem thrilling and unpredictable, but for the protagonist, sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it?

Anyway, she didn’t like that kind of life, nor was she cut out to be the kind of female lead who could maintain a kind and optimistic attitude no matter the circumstances.

So Zhou Zuofei psyched herself up and sent out her resume.

Everything played out exactly like in her dream—she passed the interview and snagged a spot as the only graduate from her school that year to land a job at Universal.

Everyone congratulated her, envied her, and even her college counselor called to ask her to share interview tips in the class group chat.

What tips could she possibly have? The so-called "common interview advice" she used was just stuff she picked up from posts shared by classmates.

But she couldn’t explain the real reason, so she threw out some generic advice. Fortunately, the Universal offer lent credibility to her words, and she managed to wing it.

After joining Universal, she began a run-of-the-mill office job.

Though she faced plenty of challenges at first, she was lucky to have a great supervisor, Ye Ru. Plus, her best friend also stayed in K City, so they could meet up regularly to encourage each other and provide emotional support. Thus, Zhou Zuofei fumbled her way through adulting.

By now, she had fully adapted to the grind and her downtime.

As for the story of the male and female leads, it hadn’t happened yet, and she had no idea when the plot would begin—after all, she was just a side character.

Zhou Zuofei returned to her desk and whipped up a quick checklist for tomorrow’s intern orientation.

Universal had an extremely low turnover rate, and the Administrative Department hadn’t seen a new hire in years. Now, she was the newest hire in the entire department.

So having a newcomer wasn’t a bad thing. After being called "Xiao Zhou" for three years, she could finally show someone the ropes.

After finishing her immediate tasks, Zhou Zuofei grabbed a report that needed signatures and headed downstairs.

When she reached the elevator, one was just about to arrive, so she pressed the button.

A few seconds later, with a *ping*, the doors slid open.

Inside stood two young men in tailored suits.

The one at the front was chiseled but icy, exuding an air of unquestionable authority. The man beside him seemed more relaxed, with a refined demeanor and a gentle expression. When he saw Zhou Zuofei, a faint, friendly smile appeared on his face.

At the sight of them, Zhou Zuofei reflexively greeted, "Good afternoon, President Ling! Good afternoon, Secretary Xiao!"

The man before her was none other than her boss—the CEO of Universal Group, Ling Yu.

You’d be hard-pressed to find another CEO in the world as young and handsome as Ling Yu.

After exchanging greetings, Zhou Zuofei was about to step aside and take another elevator.

Universal didn’t have an executive elevator like those often seen in novels, but when given the choice, most employees would voluntarily avoid riding with the boss and opt for another one.

Just as she started to move away, the man beside Ling Yu called out to her, "Xiao Zhou, come in."

Hearing this, Zhou Zuofei stepped right in without hesitation.

The one who had spoken was Xiao Wang, Ling Yu’s secretary and widely recognized as his most trusted go-to right-hand man in the company, which was why Zhou Zuofei obeyed without a second thought.

Once inside, she pressed the floor button and automatically took her place in a corner of the elevator.

When she first joined the company, the thought that her boss was the potential romantic lead had excited Zhou Zuofei, and she would occasionally pay extra attention, wondering if she’d encounter any story-worthy moments.

But as time passed, that interest had long since faded.

Now, Ling Yu was no longer the male lead of a romance drama in her mind—he was just a human signing machine, because no matter what application or report it was, it would eventually end up on Xiao Wang’s desk, waiting for Ling Yu’s signature.

Rather than wondering when Ling Yu would fall for the female lead, she’d much prefer him to quickly sign the reimbursement form she submitted yesterday for once.