"What's wrong?" Shen Mianyin turned to look at Gu Huaizhi with an innocent expression.
Looking at her face, though she seemed harmless, Gu Huaizhi couldn’t shake the feeling that if he had any different opinion, it wouldn’t end well.
Of course, he had no different opinion to begin with.
Gu Huaizhi nodded and said, "You make a good point."
So, he cooperatively parked the car behind the company. Before getting out of the car, Gu Huaizhi said, "I often work late and have social events, so I can't promise to pick you up every day."
"You still plan on picking me up at night?" Shen Mianyin hadn't expected this.
"After all, we live together," Gu Huaizhi said.
Shen Mianyin: "..."
Gu Huaizhi's words were ambiguous. They were just neighbors living in different floors, not living together. But with what he said, it almost sounded like they were cohabiting.
Thinking about this, Shen Mianyin's face turned a little red. "You don't need to pick me up at night. I can go back on my own," she said.
Gu Huaizhi didn’t respond, but he watched as Shen Mianyin first looked around, as if she were trying to avoid someone, and when she didn’t spot anyone familiar, she secretly got out of the car.
Gu Huaizhi: “...”
Seeing Shen Mianyin dash across the street like a thief, her behavior only returned to normal after she had crossed. He couldn’t help but smile, then drove away.
As Gu Huaizhi had said, he was busy every day. Even without any social engagements, he would return home very late and couldn’t manage to pick up Shen Mianyin.
Shen Mianyin, too, was busy. Especially since she had just joined the company, there were still many things she needed to familiarize herself with.
She worked overtime, going through the information on potential partner companies, looking for opportunities for collaboration.
As a result, although the two of them lived on different floors of the same building, they barely saw each other apart from in the mornings when they went to work together.
That evening, Shen Mianyin went to meet with General Manager Chen from Qitai Company at Yunjing Restaurant to discuss business.
Shen Mianyin remembered that in her previous life, Qitai had been a client of Gu Luoan's company, Sheng'an.
Qitai had developed a new material for medical devices that could significantly reduce production costs and improve stability.
However, since it was a new product and Qitai was only a mid-level company in the industry, no other company dared to take on such a new project with Qitai.
At that time, Gu Luoan took on the agency rights for this product from Qitai and helped them expand into the domestic market.
Later, they also conducted clinical trials to validate the product's reliability, which allowed both Qitai and Sheng'an to profit significantly from it.
Shen Mianyin remembered that before Sheng'an took on the agency rights for Qitai, Qitai had contacted many companies, including Jincheng.
Therefore, she had asked Gao Zhoulei to keep an eye out, and sure enough, he found an email from Qitai.
General Manager Chen of Qitai never expected that Shen Mianyin would actually be interested in their product, especially since they had reached out to many companies, but all their efforts had been in vain.
For a large corporation like Jincheng, they had sent the email with little expectation, thinking it would be just another message lost in the void.
However, they were surprised when they received a reply from Shen Mianyin's assistant. This was incredibly important for their company, so General Manager Chen treated Shen Mianyin with great respect.
Typically, in business negotiations, especially at the dinner table, women—particularly beautiful ones like Shen Mianyin—often find themselves pressured into drinking, but given the current situation, General Manager Chen insisted on respecting her wishes and refrained from pushing her to drink.
Even if they had to drink, it was Gao Zhoulei who handled it. The conversation went quite smoothly, and Shen Mianyin decided to use the restroom.
However, the one inside the room was occupied by General Manager Chen. There was another public restroom in the hallway, so Shen Mianyin gave a quick nod to Gao Zhoulei and headed to the one outside.
After walking a few steps, she ran into three familiar faces ahead of her.
One of them, quite coincidentally, was Su Yiqing. The other two were also wealthy young women she had often crossed paths with in the past.
They had their own little circle and had once invited her to join, but she wasn’t interested in such a group that thrived on comparisons, gossiping about others, and excluding outsiders.
She had politely declined. To her surprise, Su Yiqing had ended up blending in with them.
Shen Mianyin’s footsteps paused slightly before returning to normal as she walked forward without sparing a glance.
Fang Xiaoyue spotted Shen Mianyin and gave Su Yiqing a knowing look. "Look, isn’t that Shen Mianyin?"
Shen Mianyin let out a mocking sneer. She didn’t believe for a second that Su Yiqing hadn’t already noticed her.
Sure enough, Su Yiqing put on an act, turning her head as if Fang Xiaoyue’s reminder had truly brought Shen Mianyin to her attention.
She exclaimed in apparent surprise, "Sister Shen!"
Zheng Siyu, standing nearby, sneered sarcastically, "Qingqing, why do you still call her sister?"
"Exactly! Didn't she already leave the Su family?" Fang Xiaoyue smirked and curled her lips.
"She’s really something—leaving as soon as she was exposed as a fake. Why bother calling her sister? Aren’t you just giving her undue credit?"
Shen Mianyin acted as though she hadn’t heard a word. However, just as she walked past them, Fang Xiaoyue and Zheng Siyu rushed over to block her path.
"Shen Mianyin, long time no see," Zheng Siyu said with a mocking expression, her tone full of disdain.
"Exactly. Ever since your true identity was exposed, we haven’t seen you around," Fang Xiaoyue added.
"Of course not," Zheng Siyu chuckled, covering her mouth. "She’s no longer part of our circle. Naturally, she doesn’t qualify to attend any of our events. There’s no way we’d run into her."
"We didn’t have many chances to meet before, either," Shen Mianyin said indifferently.
She had always been busy with work and business, never having the time or interest to engage in their petty games of mutual exclusion.
"Oh!" Zheng Siyu sneered, casting a sidelong glance at Shen Mianyin. "Even now, when you’ve fallen so low, you’re still holding onto that old attitude of yours?"
"Shen Mianyin, you’re no longer the Su family’s young lady. You’re just an ordinary person now, so what are you still putting on airs for?" Zheng Siyu said coldly.
Fang Xiaoyue sneered. "I heard you’ve left the Su Corporation. Where are you working now?"
Shen Mianyin raised an eyebrow and replied with a question, "Aren’t you and Su Yiqing close? Didn’t she tell you?"
"You’re not exactly someone important. Why would Qingqing bother to specifically mention that to us?" Fang Xiaoyue said deliberately.
"In that case, there’s no need for you to go out of your way to ask me," Shen Mianyin replied calmly, completely unbothered by their attempts to demean her.
This left Fang Xiaoyue and the others feeling as though their punches had landed on cotton, utterly ineffective.
Unwilling to let it go, Zheng Siyu grew more frustrated. Back then, they were often compared unfavorably to Shen Mianyin, who always carried an air of superiority around them, as if she couldn’t be bothered to associate with them.
Now that Shen Mianyin had fallen from grace, what right did she have to remain so arrogant?
It seemed that even now, she couldn’t be bothered to exchange more than a few words with them.
"I never thought the day would come when Shen Mianyin would have to humble herself, smiling and drinking with people for the sake of business," Zheng Siyu said mockingly, her tone dripping with sarcasm.