45: Can't I come to my house?

"Will... will my stomach really never hurt again after the acupuncture?"

Looking at her naive expression, Lin Chao couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"What kind of fantasy are you dreaming up?"

He curled his finger and made a flicking motion toward her forehead in the air.

"This isn't some magic elixir; it's not that miraculous."

His expression turned serious again.

"This will take at least several courses of treatment; we have to condition your body slowly."

"Moreover, it might need to be paired with some Chinese herbal medicine. I'll only know the specifics after a detailed diagnosis."

As he spoke, he frowned slightly, seemingly pondering a difficult problem.

Go to her house?

For a grown man like him to just show up at a single girl's residence felt somewhat inappropriate.

For a grown man like him to just show up like that felt somewhat inappropriate.

Then, have her come to his house?

That was even worse. His bachelor pad was a mess, looking like it had been ransacked by thieves. Not to mention, he planned to go back and move house this afternoon.

Lin Chao thought for a moment and suggested,

"How about this: we'll find a Wellness Club with a good environment and book a room."

"I'll check your specific condition there first?"

"A Wellness Club?"

Yan Qiaoqiao's eyes widened instantly, her small face filled with resistance.

That place sounded very expensive!

She hesitated, and her voice grew weaker.

"Can't... can't we just go to my house?"

She added in a low voice, her cheeks feeling a bit hot.

"Going to some club... feels like a waste of money."

She had just found a new job, and her pockets were cleaner than her face; she was truly short on cash.

Lin Chao was stunned again.

Looking at her cautious manner and her fear of spending money, his heart felt both soft and amused.

The next second, he deliberately put on a stern face and looked her up and down with a scrutinizing gaze.

"I say, Yan Qiaoqiao, you have far too little awareness of personal safety, don't you?"

There was a hint of teasing in his tone.

"Just letting a man go to your house so casually?"

"Aren't you afraid... that I'm a bad person?"

He expected to see a panicked or bashful expression.

To his surprise, Yan Qiaoqiao looked up at him with an incredibly clear and serious gaze.

That gaze was so clean, without a single impurity, as if it could shine right into one's heart.

She looked at him steadily and said word by word, with utter clarity,

"But you aren't."

After a pause, the corners of her mouth curled up slightly, blooming into a very faint but incredibly firm smile.

"You are Lin Chao."

"You are Lin Chao."

Those four words were like a stream of molten lava, pouring directly into Lin Chao's heart without warning.

Searing and scalding.

It made his entire heart twitch violently from the heat.

Looking at the face before him that was as clean as unstained dust, and those eyes as clear as a spring, filled with absolute trust, his Adam's apple bobbed uncontrollably.

In his chest, some emotion that had been suppressed for a long time was like a seed about to break through the soil, clamoring wildly.

He looked away awkwardly, picked up the tea in front of him that had already gone cold, and took a sudden gulp.

"Cough..." He cleared his throat, trying to use a bit of deliberate distance to hide the storm raging inside him. "Alright, let's not talk about that anymore."

Lin Chao fished his phone out of his pocket and lit up the screen. "I have some things to do this afternoon, so I might not be at the company."

As he spoke, he pulled up his WeChat QR code.

"Add me."

"After work, you can just call me directly."

Yan Qiaoqiao immediately acted like a little soldier who had received an imperial decree, hurriedly rummaging through her bag for her phone.

Because her movements were too rushed, the phone almost slipped from her hand.

She caught it in a flurry, unlocked it, and opened WeChat in one smooth motion.

With a 'beep...'

The friend request was sent successfully.

Lin Chao clicked accept, and she immediately tapped on his profile picture, solemnly changing his contact name to the two words 'Lin Chao'.

No 'Senior,' no 'Supervisor'.

Just Lin Chao.

Only after finishing all this did she look up and give him a brilliant smile, like a child who had been given candy.

After finishing lunch, the two walked back to the company side by side.

They were silent all the way, but the atmosphere was no longer as awkward as before; instead, there was a faint, subtle nuance.

Back at the office, Lin Chao briefly tidied the documents on his desk and picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.

He walked to Yan Qiaoqiao's workstation and gave a low-voiced instruction: "If there's anything you don't understand, look at the materials in the internal system first, or ask the colleagues next to you."

"Okay." Yan Qiaoqiao nodded obediently.

"Then I'm off." Lin Chao nodded to her, then turned and strode away.

The moment his front foot stepped out of the office's glass door,

The fingers that were originally flying across keyboards in the office stopped instantly.

*Whoosh—*

Several heads popped out from their respective cubicles all at once, as if they were spring-loaded, their gazes accurately locking onto Yan Qiaoqiao.

The next second, several colleagues from the Marketing Department who loved gossip most had already gathered around Yan Qiaoqiao's workstation with their water mugs, pretending to pass by but clearly having a target.

"Hey, newcomer, your name is Yan Qiaoqiao, right?" A male colleague named Zhang Wei—the one whose eyes had almost popped out earlier—spoke first, a malicious smile on his face. "What exactly is your relationship with our Supervisor Lin?"

"Yeah, yeah," another female colleague chimed in immediately. "Seeing how familiar you two are, it doesn't look like you just met today."

Although today was Yan Qiaoqiao's first day and she wasn't familiar with these people at all, she knew that workplace rumors were fiercer than tigers.

She didn't want to be rumored to have gotten in through connections on her very first day of work.

So, she looked up with a professional, polite smile. "Everyone has misunderstood."

"Supervisor Lin and I were university classmates; we've known each other for many years."

She paused, then added in a very frank tone, "However, we hadn't been in touch since graduation. Running into him here today is purely a coincidence."

"Oh—so you're old classmates!"

Zhang Wei drew out his words as if he had seen the light, but the ambiguity in his eyes didn't diminish in the slightest.

A female colleague with large permed waves nearby spoke up in a sarcastic, bitter tone.

"I see, so you're alumni."

"Then you've really latched onto a big shot. From now on, won't you be able to do whatever you want in our department?"

The sting in those words was obvious to even a fool.

The smile on Yan Qiaoqiao's face faded slightly, but before she could speak,

Zhang Wei's lewd laughter rang out again. "Hehe, just latching onto a big shot isn't enough!"

As he spoke, his small eyes shamelessly scanned up and down Yan Qiaoqiao's long legs, which were wrapped in her professional skirt suit.

"You have to 'latch onto' a different kind of leg for it to be effective!"