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Two days later, He Jianshan made an appointment to meet with Wei Xuan at a law firm.
Wei Xuan had been the one to choose the location. She didn’t want to meet up at Wanzhu. She also demanded that they meet up at a place with surveillance and record the entire negotiation process. He Jianshan agreed. Originally, the legal department and public relations department were supposed to go in with him, but He Jianshan declined. “No need. I want to talk to her alone.”
Contrary to her aggressive impression online, the Wei Xuan that was in the conference room was a lot more haggard. She had a somewhat dazed expression on her face. It was clear that Zhou Donghui’s death had been a great blow to her. He Jianshan put down the documents in his hand and took the initiative to speak. “Hello, I’m Wanzhu’s CEO, He Jianshan.”
Wei Xuan seemed to be taken aback. Perhaps she didn’t expect this person, whom she had only ever seen in the news, to be so indifferent towards her. After all, they didn’t exactly leave a good impression on each other. However, He Jianshan was simply too intimidating. Although he was polite, Wei Xuan couldn’t help but feel nervous.
He Jianshan got straight to the point. “Now, let’s talk about the claims that you’re making.”
Wei Xuan came back to her senses. She sneered, “A lot of people have cursed at me. They say that I’m just trying to wring out as much money as I can from the situation. I’m going to clear things up today. I will accept whatever the compensatory damages come out to be. I will not ask for anything more. However, Wanzhu needs to apologize. You need to publicize the names of those who bullied my husband and dismiss them all. I just want justice.”
He Jianshan nodded. “First of all, we need to make one thing clear. The company contacted emergency services as soon as Zhou Donghui collapsed. There are surveillance cameras and police records backing this up. I’m sure you don’t have any doubts about that. As for your other claims, there wasn’t any bullying going on and there was no such person. You might not know this, but the company has an excellent reporting system. Any employee can directly bypass their superiors and send their complaints straight to me. ”
“That’s not possible! My husband was such an honest and sincere person. He worked at the company for so long! He was perfectly fine when he left that morning…” As she spoke, Wei Xuan choked up. “You people always bully the quiet ones. That guy from last time was the one who cut my husband’s salary…”
He Jianshan patiently waited for her to calm down a bit. Then, he said, “Mrs. Wei, you’ve always believed that someone within the company was bullying your husband, but the only proof you have are the chat records with him and your own speculation. Have you ever considered that your husband may have lied to you?”
Wei Xuan looked at He Jianshan with red eyes. “What could he have lied to me about? Why would he lie to me? What’s the point of lying about such a thing?”
He Jianshan pulled out a document and handed it to Wei Xuan. “It is true that Zhou Donghui had been working overtime. However, all the work he did was for his side jobs. This is a file we found on his computer. Here’s a record of the last time it was modified. You can take a look at it. It’s all work he was doing on the side. There’s advertising proposals, video scripts, stuff like that. We contacted some of the companies involved and confirmed that he was, in fact, working for them. We also obtained some communication records.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Lf kjr vfwbafv cba yfmjerf batfgr kfgf ajgufalcu tlw, yea yfmjerf tf qfgobgwfv qbbgis bc tlr qfgobgwjcmf fnjiejalbc. Ktf kbgx tf kjr vblcu bc atf rlvf kjr joofmalcu atf kbgx tf kjr vblcu er. Ktf mbwqjcs tjv bglulcjiis lcafcvfv ab olgf tlw. Crrlrajca Olc kjr atf bcf ktb rqbxf bc tlr yftjio.”
Wei Xuan shot up from her seat. “That’s impossible!”
“You haven’t even looked at the documents. Is it really so shocking that he hid this from you?”
Wei Xuan stared at He Jianshan.
He Jianshan brought out another stack of paper. “Here are chat records from various chatting platforms. All of them are related to Zhou Donghui. You can tell a lot from the messages. For instance, you’ve been managing his salary. Over the past two years, you guys have been saving money to buy a house. There’s also a record of the money he borrowed from the people around him.”
Wei Xuan pushed the documents away. “Are you trying to say I’m the one to blame? I pressured him to buy a house and that’s why he overworked himself? Do you think his death is my fault?”
He Jianshan didn’t say anything for a while. Then, he asked a seemingly irrelevant question. “Mrs. Wei, why did you confiscate his payroll card in the first place? According to what he said, it appears that you only started to manage his money about two years ago.”
Wei Xuan averted her eyes and didn’t answer.
“Was it because of the lottery tickets? His colleagues said that he liked to buy lottery tickets, and they said he bought them almost every day. He would suddenly become talkative when it came to lottery numbers despite the fact that he was usually a quiet person. We found this file in his computer. He recorded all the lottery numbers he picked and the amount he spent on them. To be honest, he spent a lot more than we expected.”
“He said he wanted to buy a house within the school district zone. He then borrowed money from the people around him. Did you know about this?”
Wei Xuan’s breathing suddenly became hurried and shallow.
Zhou Donghui was a person who only knew how to write. He didn’t have any other skills. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and he didn’t go out. His biggest hobby was buying lottery tickets. Wei Xuan was in charge of everything within the home, and whatever she said went. It was also because of that self-assurance that Wei Xuan never bothered to micromanage Zhou Donghui’s salary. However, she hadn’t expected something like the lottery to nearly bankrupt their family. Other than a few household expenses, almost all of his salary went towards the lottery. Not a single cent was spared. They nearly got divorced because of it two years ago. Eventually, Zhou Donghui promised that he would hand his salary over to her. It wasn’t that they absolutely had to buy a house within a school district zone. She just wanted him to rein in his spending a bit. She wanted him to try and improve himself. How was she supposed to know that things would turn out this way?
Seeing Wei Xuan’s expression, He Jianshan knew that she must have been kept in the dark. “My guess is that he hid it from you because the money he borrowed went towards the lottery, not a house. Unfortunately, he didn’t win the prize, so he had no choice but to pay it back slowly through his side jobs. He didn’t have the guts to tell you about it.”
“He was cowardly.”
“Now you can push off your responsibility, right? You finally have the chance to pass judgment on us, right? Yes, we aren’t as lucky as you are. We’re poor and short-sighted. All we can do is dream of winning the lottery, so we deserve to be despised by rich people like you. We … I … ” Wei Xuan finally broke down, sobbing.
“Wanzhu will not shirk our responsibility. We will not accept baseless accusations either. We are grateful for Zhou Donghui’s dedication to the company over the years. I want to clarify that, even though we sent you a letter through our lawyer, we don’t actually intend to take legal action.”
“My colleague should’ve explained all of this to you already, but you refused to accept it and refused to communicate. Mrs. Wei, I’m going to be honest with you. If it wasn’t for the media frenzy, we would’ve been able to move past this matter already. Instead, my colleague had to endure a massive amount of speculation and abuse for something that had nothing to do with him.”
“Life is already difficult enough. Why are you trying to make things hard for an ordinary person who is simply trying to live his life like you?”
The conference room was filled with the sound of weeping.
After that, Wanzhu and Wei Xuan went through two more negotiations, essentially putting an end to the entire ordeal.
Zhou Donghui had suddenly died at work. Wanzhu still paid the appropriate amount of compensation that they were supposed to. Wei Xuan deleted her social media posts and issued an apology through both paper and digital outlets. Several media outlets received legal notices from the company. This dispute finally came to an end.
All that was left was Lin Hui. He was relieved that the issue was now resolved, but his mood was still indescribably complicated. “They clearly cared for each other a lot. If there was a problem, they should’ve just talked to each other. Why did it have to come to this?”
He Jianshan felt that Lin Hui must have been raised in one of those warm and loving families. After all, there was no shortage of couples that were of one heart but not one mind. They laid in the same bed, but he gazed up at the sky while she thought of the ground.
The most fragile thing in this world was the relationship between two people.
At the end of the meeting, Lin Hui secretly shot a glance at He Jianshan. He couldn’t help but feel that He Jianshan was a little absent-minded today. There had been several instances throughout the meeting in which the entire room had paused, waiting on him, yet he didn’t seem to notice. Just like now. The meeting was over, and everyone had left. However, He Jianshan was still sitting in his seat. It wasn’t clear what he was thinking about.
Lin Hui had no choice but to interrupt his train of thought. “President He, didn’t your father bring up dinner? I contacted the human resources department about Zhao Xiaoxiao, and it looks like everything’s good. On another note, her father, Zhao Tao, used to work for the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. You should consider it for a bit. If there aren’t any problems, I’ll arrange a time in your schedule.”
He Jianshan came back to his senses.
He Jianshan didn’t really care whether he attended this dinner or not. He was more concerned about something else. “Have you ever thought about leaving Wanzhu?”
Lin Hui froze. For a moment, he felt that he’d been seen through by He Jianshan. Countless thoughts flashed through his mind. In the end, he squeezed out a rather forced smile. “President He—”
“If you want to leave, don’t write a letter of resignation.” He Jianshan looked at him earnestly. “You have to tell me directly.”
Lin Hui was taken aback by He Jianshan’s overly serious tone of voice. “President He…”
He Jianshan shook his head, as if he didn’t want to say anything more. He got up from his seat and left, leaving Lin Hui there to watch as his back slowly retreated from sight.