The phone was quickly answered, and a voice came from the other end, saying, “Hello?”
The voice was pleasant and familiar. It rendered Xia Wan’an completely speechless, preventing the words she had planned to say from leaving her lips.
The person on the other end of the line waited for a moment, but since no one spoke, sounding somewhat impatient, he spoke again, “Hello?”
The voice sounded again, confirming that it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her. The person answering the call was indeed him… Han Jingnian.
Because his tone wasn’t particularly friendly, she was afraid that if she didn’t speak up, he might just hang up. So she hurriedly said, “Um, it’s me.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone before an “Hmm?” came through.
Hmm? What did that mean? Did he… not recognize her voice?
Xia Wan’an’s fingertips clenched the phone tightly, and then she managed to utter, “Xia Wan’an.”
He replied with a simple “Oh” and didn’t say anything else.
They rarely talked to each other under normal circumstances, and now his words felt distant, leaving Xia Wan’an momentarily at a loss for words. After a while, she organized her thoughts and began, “I called to let you know that I might not be able to go home for the next couple of days. I…”
Xia Wan’an paused for a moment, not mentioning her injury, “…I suddenly have some business to attend to, and I might be away on a business trip for two days. I’m worried that if something happens, my parents might call you, and you might not know how to respond…”
Xia Wan’an said many words, and when she finally stopped talking, three seconds later, Han Jingnian’s voice came from the other end of the line, “I understand.”
After that, he fell silent again.
Should she… hang up the phone now?
Xia Wan’an hesitated for two seconds, but before she could speak, she heard his voice again, his tone still lacking strong emotions, “Is there anything else?”
“No…” The sudden sound of his voice startled Xia Wan’an, causing her to accidentally jostle her injured back. The pain made her voice quiver, “…nothing.”
She endured the pain, tried to keep her tone steady, and finished her sentence, “I’m going to hang up now, goodbye.”
As she spoke, she was about to take the phone away from her ear.
However, before she could act, he said, “Wait.”
Xia Wan’an stopped, not saying anything.
After waiting for a while and seeing that it had remained quiet on the other end of the phone, she couldn’t help but softly ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing…” He said three words, paused for two seconds, and then hung up the phone.
Hearing the busy tone of “beep beep beep” in the phone, Xia Wan’an was stunned for a moment before she lowered the phone from her ear.
…
Han Corporation.
Han Jingnian, who was temporarily overseeing this assistant’s work, picked up the phone from the table that had been ringing incessantly. As the assistant returned, he hung up the call and glanced at the caller ID on the landline phone absentmindedly, casually saying, “It’s a call from Madam. Is she traveling or on a business trip?”
Ignoring the assistant’s words, Han Jingnian stared at his computer screen, searching for the information he needed. Once he found it, he stood up and headed to his office. After a couple of steps, he seemed to remember something and turned to look at his assistant, “Does she often call you?”
“That’s not the case. Madam rarely contacts me. When you two first got married, she called me once, and you told her to contact me if she needed something. At that time, she used to call me quite often, asking if you had time, but she never mentioned any specific matters. When you told her you were busy and couldn’t talk, she would just hang up. But later on, she rarely called, maybe seven or eight times in these two years. Every time, it was the same thing. Either she was away on a business trip and wouldn’t be home, or she was traveling and wouldn’t be back.”
“However, every time Madam called, she would say a sentence: ‘Just let me know if you’re aware.’ So, if you need to know, I would inform you, and if you don’t need to know, I wouldn’t say anything. Interestingly, for the past couple of years, every time she was away on a business trip, you were engrossed in your own affairs and didn’t plan on going back home, so I didn’t inform you.”
After the assistant finished speaking, he looked at Han Jingnian, who remained standing without saying anything or showing any sign of leaving.
The expression on Han Jingnian’s face wasn’t much different from usual, but the assistant felt that at this moment, his boss seemed different from his usual self. However, he couldn’t quite figure out what exactly was different.
After pondering for a while, the assistant finally understood and asked, “So, Mr. Han, if Madam calls again in the future, should I let you know?”
Han Jingnian remained silent.
The assistant asked again, “Mr. Han?”
Han Jingnian snapped out of his thoughts, lifted his foot, and headed toward his office.
His question was unanswered… The assistant hurriedly caught up, “Mr. Han, about what I said earlier, what’s your instruction?”
Han Jingnian quickened his pace.
The assistant grew even more anxious, “Mr. Han, should I or should I not inform you if Madam calls in the future?”
As Han Jingnian reached the entrance of his office, he glanced at the assistant, “What do you think?”
Without waiting for the assistant to respond, he pushed open the door to his office and, in the process, let the door slam shut in the assistant’s face.
As he stared at the closed door that had made a “bang” sound, the assistant scratched his head.
What did he think? How was he supposed to know.
When Madam had come to see the boss and said she was willing to marry him, he had clearly refused. Later, he didn’t know what legal document Chen Lu had sent over, but the boss had inexplicably agreed. Then the wedding, wedding dress, and wedding ring weren’t prepared, and they just went to get their marriage certificate. He remembered accompanying Madam to the civil affairs bureau to get the certificate.
He thought, as an assistant, was he the first to stand in for the boss to get married?
After marriage, the boss rarely went home. He had been with the boss for so long and hadn’t heard him mention Madam. So he was quite sure that the boss didn’t like Madam. Hence, he was curious about why the boss, who didn’t seem to like Madam, had still married her.
He had wondered before, maybe the boss had a secret crush, but after observing him for so long, he hadn’t heard the boss mention any other women. Even in his contact list, he could only count a handful of women.
If it weren’t for the fact that this handsome gentleman of a boss had been around him for so long without showing any interest, he would have suspected that his boss was indeed as rumored in the world, having a preference for men over women.