265: Chapter 265, Part 1/3 - 1

At five in the evening, the door to Room 161 was pushed open forcefully. Ye Cheng walked in grumbling, carrying the chill of the night and the visible marks of being battered by society.

In the living room, Su Ning and Lin Wanxing were sitting opposite each other at the dining table, eating.

Hearing the commotion, Su Ning looked up with half a vegetable leaf dangling from her mouth and greeted indistinctly, "Mmm... Sister Juzi is back? Come eat quickly, it's incredibly delicious!"

Ye Cheng changed into her slippers and tossed her bag onto the entryway cabinet. Her gaze swept over the decent-looking home-cooked dishes on the table, and her brow immediately furrowed:

"No way? You cooked again?"

Su Ning swallowed the food in her mouth and curled her lip in annoyance. "Why would I cook when Sister Wanxing is back? Of course Sister Wanxing made this! She's saved us from fire and water!"

Ye Cheng let out an "oh" and went to the kitchen to get rice, rolling her eyes disdainfully as she went:

"Don't you ever cook again. Those two rotten eggs from yesterday morning were really something. I'll look for you next time I'm constipated."

"Rotten eggs?"

Lin Wanxing, who was ladling soup, paused and looked up in confusion. "What rotten eggs?"

"Oh, it's nothing, nothing..."

A flash of embarrassment crossed Su Ning's face. She quickly tapped the edge of her bowl with her chopsticks and loudly changed the subject. "Sister Juzi, how was your interview today? Any luck?"

Mentioning this caused the anger Ye Cheng had just suppressed to flare up again.

She sat down at the dining table, her tone frustrated. "Don't even talk about it. It's so annoying. A whole day wasted for nothing."

"Huh? Not even one worked out?"

Su Ning blinked. "That can't be right? With your qualifications..."

"No, no, no!"

Ye Cheng shoveled a mouthful of rice and waved her hand to interrupt. "It's not that none worked out; it's that they all did!"

"They all did?"

Su Ning and Lin Wanxing were both stunned. "Then why did you say it was a waste of time?"

"They 'worked out,' but every single one of them was bait-and-switch!"

Ye Cheng gave a massive eye-roll. "Applied for New Media Operator, but when I asked about the job content, it was just posting on WeChat Moments every day, dragging people into groups, and selling courses! Applied for Account Manager, but it's actually just telesales—I'd have to make 300 effective calls a day! Applied for Management Trainee, and they told me to do sales for three months first, calling it 'rotation' to get familiar with the business!"

She got angrier as she spoke, forcefully poking the rice in her bowl. "It's like there are no other jobs on the market right now except for sales, right?"

Su Ning and Lin Wanxing exchanged a look, both finding it somewhat humorous and pathetic.

"Didn't you also apply to an insurance company?"

Su Ning asked tentatively, "What about their 'Reserve Cadre' position? Surely that can't be sales too?"

"Oh, it's a 'Reserve Cadre' alright!"

Ye Cheng curled her lip and snorted. "They gave two development paths: one, sell insurance—if your performance is good, you can be promoted to team leader or department head; two, do HR—call people every day to recruit them to sell insurance. Your commission is tied to the performance of the people you recruit. If you can't recruit anyone, they dock your performance pay!"

Lin Wanxing took a sip of soup and frowned slightly.

She had become a Fitness Coach right after graduation, so her social experience wasn't particularly extensive, but hearing about this model, she felt something was off:

"Xiao Ye, are you sure these... are all legitimate companies? It sounds a bit like..."

Ye Cheng took a large gulp from her water cup to calm herself down. "Yeah, they're all..."

"Sigh—!!!"

Before she could finish, the master bedroom door was suddenly pushed open. A heavy, profound sigh filled with the hardships of the human world echoed through the living room.

Jiang Ye walked out with his hands behind his back, his brow knotted tightly. His face was written over with 'melancholy,' 'misery,' and 'weariness of life' as he swayed with every step.

He walked to the sofa and, as if all the bones in his body had been removed, slumped heavily into it, letting out another:

"Sigh!"

But it was as if the sofa had thorns; he sat for barely two seconds before standing up irritably. With another sigh, he paced over to the TV cabinet, picked up a small ornament, rubbed it twice, and then put it down listlessly.

Throughout the process, he also sniffed forcefully from time to time, as if trying to capture some dissipating scent in the air that could comfort his soul.

"?"

Ye Cheng, interrupted by his serial sighing, raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Jiang Ye, what are you doing? What's wrong?"

Jiang Ye glanced at her resentfully. His lips moved, but he didn't speak. His eyes were filled with the sorrow of "you don't understand me."

He turned and walked to the coffee table, pulled out a tissue, and began to mechanically tear it into strips, one by one. He would tear a few times, sigh, and then sniff again.

"..."

Ye Cheng blinked and turned to mouth a question to Su Ning: "What's wrong with him? Did he take the wrong medicine?"

"I don't know..."

Su Ning spread her hands, looking innocent and bewildered. "Big Bro has been like this for an hour, acting like he's lost his soul. When I asked him to eat, he said he wasn't in the mood and wouldn't."

Ye Cheng put down her chopsticks, stood up, walked to Jiang Ye's side, and waved her hand in front of his eyes:

"Classmate Xiao Ye, wake up! Earth to Jiang Ye! What is actually wrong with you? Heartbroken? Your funds crashed? Or... did they catch you doing 'handiwork' and now you can't face life?"

"..."

Jiang Ye lifted his eyelids, his lips curling into a bitter arc. He shook his head, his voice raspy:

"Cheng Cheng, I'm fine... really fine. You... you go back to eating, don't mind me."

After saying that, he lowered his head again, focusing on tearing the tissue in his hand into tassels, his face a picture of "the world isn't worth it."

Ye Cheng looked completely baffled and could only return to the table. "How strange..."

"The way he's acting... it looks a bit familiar."

Lin Wanxing watched Jiang Ye's restless, sighing behavior and pursed her lips thoughtfully:

"It's a bit like the reaction my dad had when he was quitting smoking—anxious, uncomfortable, just not right all over. But... Jiang Ye doesn't smoke, does he?"

Su Ning was just picking up some shredded potatoes when she heard this. Her eyes widened suddenly as if she'd thought of something terrifying. She turned to Jiang Ye in horror:

"Bi... Big Bro! You... you didn't touch *that* stuff, did you?! I'm telling you, you can never touch that! If you really did, even if you're my Big Bro, I'll have to put justice before family and call the police to arrest—"

Before she could finish, Jiang Ye stopped tearing paper and looked over gloomily, completely speechless.

The meaning in his eyes was clear: Is your brain broken?

Su Ning shrank her neck under his gaze, the rest of her words stuck in her throat. She gave a couple of dry coughs to hide her embarrassment:

"Cough... well... it looks like that's probably not it, huh..."

Listening to their conversation and glancing at Jiang Ye's occasional sniffing, black lines gradually appeared on Ye Cheng's forehead.

She seemed... to have a bit of an idea what this bastard was up to.

"Alright, alright, stop guessing wildly!"

Ye Cheng picked up her chopsticks and tapped the edge of her bowl irritably. "Eat, eat! Nothing is more important than eating! Hurry up and eat! The food is getting cold!"

After saying that, she lowered her head and began to focus intently on her meal, trying her best to ignore a certain source of noise.