After Forcing Me to Work, the Boss Regretted It - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Seven years passed in the blink of an eye.

After graduating from university, Shen Yueheng chose not to continue on to graduate school. Instead, he plunged headfirst into the then-emerging real estate industry.

During that period, he left early and came home late every day, often reeking of alcohol when he returned.

I had no idea how much money he had actually made. All I knew was that we moved out of our rental and into an apartment complex with an elevator.

Then we moved again, into a large flat, and finally into this villa district developed in City A two years ago.

It was only on the first day we moved in here that I realized Shen Yueheng had made that much money over the past few years.

This eagle had finally found the sky that belonged to him. From then on, the heavens were high and birds could fly free. All of City A became part of his business empire.

After coming to City A, I gradually learned many things as well, and understood that people like us really weren’t sick.

I heard that over in America, people like us could even get married and receive a marriage certificate.

Half a month later, Shen Yueheng took me on a flight to the United States, where we exchanged rings in that country across the ocean.

Aside from the occasional boredom, there wasn’t much wrong with days like these.

Until that night, when I curled up on the living room sofa and finally cleared every level of a game. It was a limited-edition Nintendo handheld that Shen Yueheng had specially brought back for me from a business trip to Japan.

After that, I fell into a deep sleep. It wasn’t until Shen Yueheng came home that he carried me to bed.

Being in that familiar embrace only made me feel even more at ease. His movements barely woke me at all.

Until he suddenly stroked my face and said, “I’m sorry, baby.”

His voice was as low and gentle as ever, slipping into my muddled dream and softly drawing me awake.

I opened my eyes. At first, I thought it was a dream.

So I joked back, “I don’t accept your apology.”

Then I went right back to sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, Shen Yueheng inexplicably wanted me to go to work.

First thing in the morning, it was nothing short of a bolt from the blue!

I asked him in shock, “Did our family go bankrupt?”

“No.” Shen Yueheng chuckled softly.

He had always woken earlier than me. No matter how late he went to sleep the night before, he would definitely be up before me the next day.

At that moment, he was wearing linen-colored loungewear and sitting on the edge of the bed. As he answered me, he smoothly handed me my first glass of water for the morning.

I didn’t take the water. Instead, I pointed back at myself, tears instantly welling in my eyes. “Ge, are you not going to support me anymore?”

“Of course not. I just think you should have your own life and career too.”

Generally speaking, as long as I shed a few tears, Shen Yueheng would stop forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do.

But when it came to making me go to work, he seemed dead set on it.

No matter how much I threw tantrums, rolled around, or played shameless later on, Shen Yueheng insisted that I had to go to work.

Seeing that nothing was getting through to him, my temper flared too.

I threw away all the job postings from his company that he had handed me and made my decision with great backbone. “I’m finding a job myself!”

“Stop messing around, baby. Come train at our company first. Otherwise, if you work somewhere else, I won’t be at ease.”

Shen Yueheng seemed genuinely worried, but his determination to make me work had not lessened in the slightest.

I immediately slapped the table, raised a brow, and said, “Aren’t you the one forcing me to be independent? Then I’m not going to be some nepotism hire. I’m finding a job myself!”

After that, I made a big show of submitting resumes on some job app for half a month straight, and not a single company was willing to invite me in for an interview.

I was so mad I barely spoke to Shen Yueheng for the next two weeks.

Then, finally, the last resume I sent out got a reply. The company was a small startup that had only recently gotten off the ground.

They happened to need an office clerk.

There was only one requirement: proficiency with computers.

I held my forehead and thought about it. Being able to play games on a computer should count as computer proficiency, right?

Although the internship salary was only thirty-five hundred, the upside was that it was nine to five with weekends off.

I felt a little gloomy. I never thought “nine to five” would become a perk companies specifically advertised to attract people.

Wasn’t that phrase originally used to describe how hard people worked?

On the day I went out for the interview, I marched off with my head held high, looking for all the world like a proud rooster.

I even made a point of wearing the custom suit Shen Yueheng had given me before.

For one shining moment, I felt unbelievably handsome.

The interview was very simple. In fact, it was so simple it almost went too far.

Not a single one of the interview templates and talking points I had specially looked up came in handy.

“Do you have any other expectations for the company?”

“Do you have any questions about the salary or benefits?”

I shook my head at all of them, feeling like everything seemed pretty decent.

In the end, he told me to go home and wait for the notice.

My heart started pounding. I felt like the interviewer had been a little emotionally indifferent toward me.

How come he hadn’t asked me a single difficult question?

He probably hadn’t taken a liking to me.

That day, Shen Yueheng even specially cooked a whole table of food for me, saying it was to celebrate my first interview.

Faced with that table full of delicious dishes, I really couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.

In the end, Shen Yueheng got up and served me a bowl of black-bone chicken soup.

“Baby, your interview will definitely be fine.”

I asked him why he was so sure.

He raised a fist to his lips and coughed lightly before saying, “Small companies that have just started up usually don’t have very high requirements for employees.”

Sure enough, I passed the interview without a hitch after that, and they notified me to officially start work the following Monday.

The night before I started, I lay in bed tossing and turning.

For the first time in years, I had insomnia.

Shen Yueheng pulled my twisted-up self into his arms in one move, stopping my restless fidgeting. As if he had seen right through me, he comforted me gently. “It’s all right, baby. You’re just going out into society to get some experience. If you suffer any grievances, don’t bottle them up. Worst case, we’ll just find another job.”

In the dark, I curled up in his arms and asked in a muffled voice why he had insisted on forcing me to find a job.

His breathing brushed evenly over the top of my head. After a long while, he sighed.

His arms tightened slightly, pressing my skin closer to his.

“All these years, you’ve always been the one waiting at home for me. I feel like I’ve trapped you.”

I froze, suddenly remembering that night when I had fallen asleep on the sofa and he had picked me up.

So that apology of his hadn’t been a dream.

Nestled in his warm embrace, I thought back on how, for the past twenty-some years, I had been kept by his side just like this.

Depending on his arms, sinking into his protection.

Did that count as him trapping me?

It wasn’t a question only Shen Yueheng would think about. I would think about it too.

But after thinking it over and over, I could only conclude that there were countless kinds of relationships in this world, and countless kinds of love.

In the end, wasn’t it all just a matter of mutual willingness?