Chapter 23: I Really Am Not Cut Out for This

"I already told you, my Hongfei has nothing to do with her!"

Yang Xiaoduo felt both regretful and agitated. Had she known, she wouldn't have tried to stop the girl from speaking—who could have guessed that this girl would turn out to be so sharp-tongued?

"Alright, alright, hurry off to work."

With that, she turned and fled as if escaping a disaster.

Wei An: "..."

She hadn't even finished what she was saying; what was she running for?

"Aunt Yang, I'll come look for Xie Hongfei tomorrow or the day after, then. I want to see when he's heading to the countryside so I can see him off."

"Does Aunt Yang really have the heart to let Xie Hongfei go to the countryside?"

Su Yuping had needed to use the restroom before leaving the house and only walked over with Du Haibo in time to hear Wei An shouting that last sentence at Yang Xiaoduo's retreating back.

Wei An gasped: "As if she'd have the heart."

She was probably already secretly making arrangements, just waiting for the year-end conscription period to arrive.

"Sister, I've written letters to Eldest Sister and Second Brother. Could you please mail them for me when you pass by the post office?"

She reached into her bag, pulled out two plump envelopes, and handed them to Su Yuping.

It was only last night, after Su Yuping had returned home and she was organizing her spatial storage, that she remembered to send letters and gifts to her eldest sister, Su Yuning, and second brother, Su Xining.

Su Yuping gripped the envelopes, looking as though she wanted to say something but held back. Wei An acted as if she hadn't noticed.

In her past life, she had been an only child until her parents divorced, after which she gained a step-sister and step-brother with whom she shared no blood relation. Her relationship with them hadn't been close, though certainly not as close as the siblings in this life. Of course, the "closeness" she spoke of did not include Su Yuping.

Su Yuping was a rather selfish girl. Growing up with her siblings, while she didn't exactly fight for food or clothes, she had always been secretly looking out for herself. Wei An actually understood this approach quite well. There were five siblings in total, and as the middle child who received the least attention, if she didn't look out for herself, could she really count on parents who favored the eldest son and daughter or doted on the youngest?

It was much like her own past life. After her parents divorced, hadn't she asked them for hundreds of thousands of yuan? While it was true that she needed to hoard supplies because she had obtained a spatial dimension, it was mostly about planning for her own future.

And now, by giving the letters to Su Yuping to mail, Wei An was actually hoping to find a way, together with Su Yuping, to bring Su Yuning and Su Xining back. In the original plot, because the book hadn't finished, the ending for the twins, Su Yuning and Su Xining, only mentioned that they were still in the countryside and had not returned to the city. Worried that her own presence—the butterfly effect—might negatively impact them, Wei An was determined to find a way to bring them back.

But to bring them back, how much power could she, a junior clerk who had only been working for two months, possibly have? Should she tell Qu Xiurong and Su Jinhe that their twins would still be in the countryside more than a decade later?

Hmm, she had actually considered that. She had thought about using a "dream" as a pretext to tell the Su family their eventual outcome, but in the end, she dismissed the idea the moment she saw Su Jinhe.

"Mm, I'll mail them in a little while," Su Yuping replied in a low voice.

She actually wanted to ask Wei An why she had suddenly decided to write to their eldest sister and second brother, but she swallowed the question. She suddenly remembered that it had been over five years since they had left for the countryside, and yet she had never sent them a single word.

And Wei An? She wrote them two separate letters almost every year.

Su Yuping fell silent, wondering if she should also send them something. She had heard that the winters in the Great Northern Wilderness were exceptionally cold.

...

"Little Su, Section Chief Li wants you to go to his office."

Chewing on a milk candy she had retrieved from her storage, Wei An ran into Sister Liu, who was returning with a thermos of hot water. Wei An smiled and popped a candy into Sister Liu's mouth, casting a glance toward Li Kunshan's office. "Is the Section Chief here so early?"

Sister Liu glanced over as well, using her free hand to take the candy Wei An had just given her and holding it in her palm. "He was already here when I arrived."

Wei An's heart skipped a beat, but she kept her expression calm and nodded. "I'll go as soon as I put my things away."

"Come over now."

Wei An: "..."

Was Li Kunshan constantly monitoring whether she had arrived? She and Sister Liu had been speaking very quietly; how could he possibly hear them from inside his office?

Sister Liu popped the candy into her mouth and reached out to take the satchel off Wei An’s shoulder. Wei An looked at her potentially saliva-covered hand, shook her head in refusal, and walked into Li Kunshan's office with her bag still on.

"Section Chief, I'm not late."

She truly wasn't. Work started at eight; it was only 7:50 when she stepped into the office building, and even now, it wasn't quite eight.

Li Kunshan gave a scoff through his nose and shoved a stack of drafts toward her. "Take a look at this trash you wrote. Take it back and rewrite it. Have it on my desk by the end of the morning."

Wei An wanted to roll her eyes at him, but she didn't dare.

"Understood."

She had never written a speech for a leader before and simply couldn't understand why Li Kunshan was so intent on pushing her to do it. She didn't believe for a second that the factory director would actually use a speech written by a lowly clerk like her.

"The Factory Director is a pragmatic and passionate leader. When you write a speech for him, not a single word or punctuation mark can be wrong. Look at you—it's filled with typos, and even the data is incorrect. And furthermore," Li Kunshan tapped the desk, signaling for Wei An to focus, "you must first understand the occasion for which this speech is being written and the purpose you intend to express. Only then do you consider the format and style, and finally, optimize the content."

"You must stand in his shoes and express what he wants to say using his identity."

Wei An blinked, confused. She understood every word and sentence Li Kunshan said, but when strung together, it still didn't make much sense. What did it mean to stand in the Factory Director's shoes and use his identity to express his meaning? As a mere junior clerk, could she really achieve that? Factory Director Wei ran a factory of ten thousand people; Li Kunshan was being far too demanding.

"Uncle, how about you train someone else? I'm really not cut out for this." Wei An shrank back, flipping through the speech she had spent half the day writing. Honestly, she couldn't see what was wrong with it.

Li Kunshan tapped the desk again, this time with a louder thud. "Did you not hear me? Factory Director Wei is a pragmatic leader. Get rid of all that flowery, empty nonsense in this speech!"

Li Kunshan was actually feeling a bit torn between laughter and frustration. It was clear that neither his cousin nor her husband were particularly eloquent people, so why was it that this girl—not only was she glib and sharp-tongued in daily life—but she also filled her speeches with oily, flowery language? Another leader might have fallen for it, but not Factory Director Wei. Of course, he also wanted to correct her habits; he couldn't let her get used to writing this way.

Wei An blinked, finally seeming to understand what Li Kunshan meant.

"Oh."