Gazing at the Rainbow

Chapter 28: Envy and Jealousy

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

As Christmas approached, Lingyun Industry suddenly became busy.

Although Christmas wasn’t a traditional Chinese holiday, it was still the most important holiday of the year for many foreign customers.

Now that it was the Internet age, Lin Yun had ingeniously proposed to let the employees in the company carefully craft Christmas + New Year greeting cards for all customers or potential customers, and then send them out via airmail, together with a special bookmark with the Lingyun Industrial logo, to the person in charge.

A total of two hundred greeting cards needed to be made and distributed to the heads of six foreign trade salesmen. Each person needed to make thirty cards.

This daunting task wasn’t without difficulty, and they had to seize every minute and second to ensure that customers would receive the cards before the Christmas + New Year holidays.

The greeting cards made by the salesmen were filled with Christmas + New Year greetings, and then finally handed to Lin Yun for signatures.

Lin Yao was an office worker. She had the fastest typing speed and was therefore responsible for miscellaneous tasks such as printing and pasting the recipient’s address.

Everyone was extremely busy.

Since they were too busy, Lin Yao threw Jiang Mingshu’s affairs to the back of her mind. When she remembered Jiang Mingshu again, she suddenly realized that the two of them hadn’t been in contact for several days.

Even if these were normal times, there wasn’t anything abnormal about that.

They worked at different places, in different industries, lived in different communities, and had different interests and hobbies. It was impractical for them to stay on the phone for long hours every day, and it was impossible for them to get together every day.

Besides, they were both active on the Hang City Forum. If one of them had something come up, they could always find out from the forum.

The problem was that ever since Jiang Mingshu made that call the other day, she had practically vanished from the Hang City Forum!

Even if Lin Yao occasionally saw that Lemons Aren’t Cute was active on the forum, she neither posted anything nor replied to anyone else’s post, but lurked on the forum browsing around before going offline.

All these signs suggested that something had happened to Jiang Mingshu!

At her last job, Lin Yao had just stood up and smacked the table in frustration after getting off work to vent her anger, yet, coincidentally, her boss saw it and fired her on the spot.

For someone like Jiang Mingshu, who slacked off at work while pretending to work overtime, and was caught by the CEO himself, the consequences may be even more severe.

Lin Yao blamed herself. Just when she was about to call Mingshu to ask what was up, she saw that Lemons Aren’t Cute had appeared again on the list of users active on the singles forum.

Lin Yao immediately sent a private message to her using her Peaches Aren’t Naughty ID.

Peaches Aren’t Naughty private chat: Mengmeng cutie hasn’t appeared on the singles forum for a long time, no?

Lemons Aren’t Cute sent a crying emoji.

Lemons Aren’t Cute private chat: Don’t mention it~~~, I’ve been feeling so annoyed lately~~~

Peaches Aren’t Naughty private chat: What’s wrong?

Peaches Aren’t Naughty private chat: Is it convenient to answer a call?

Lemons Aren’t Cute private chat: Forget it. Don’t mention it. Wait for me to call you.

A few minutes later, Lin Yao received a call from Jiang Mingshu.

Jiang Mingshu let out a long sigh, then she lowered her voice and said, “There’s this colleague, a guy, who keeps following me around, to the extent that I feel ill at ease doing anything. It’s so annoying~~~”

Lin Yao was stunned for a moment, then grasped it. “So that’s what happened.”

All the way back to their school days, Jiang Mingshu had always been extremely popular with boys, and one couldn’t imagine how many pursuers she had. But this wasn’t necessarily wholly a good thing. More boys crushing on her and pursuing her had meant more girls secretly hating her.

The situation was the same even at Jiang Mingshu’s work. Although Orlando had swarms of beautiful women, upright men who bluntly or indirectly expressed their interest in Jiang Mingshu were still just as plentiful. For the same reason, there probably wasn’t a shortage of female colleagues who secretly hated her guts.

Although, recently, her cupid’s luck had experienced a downturn. Lin Yao speculated that the reason might be that Jiang Mingshu had recently gotten hooked on smoky eye makeup, and had successfully scared away many upright and cheery young men.

It wasn’t that Lin Yao didn’t think of persuading her to change her present style, but Jiang Mingshu had always been someone who did her own thing.

If Lin Yao expressed appreciation and praise, Jiang Mingshu would respond with the utmost enthusiasm, and in turn praise her: You have really good taste!

If Lin Yao dared to question her aesthetics, she would reciprocate in kind and criticize Lin Yao for all of her flaws.

Lin Yao neither wanted to lie despite herself, nor did she want to hurt Jiang Mingshu’s feelings, so she could only continue pretending to be blind.

What Lin Yao didn’t expect was that even after she gave herself this hideous makeover, Jiang Mingshu would still get obsessive stalkers.

What was even more unexpected was that Jiang Mingshu had been watching a TV series in the office and was caught by the CEO himself, yet this incident really didn’t affect her at all!

The CEO of Orlando really must be the crème de la crème. A man of great tolerance!

Jiang Mingshu had such unbelievable luck!

On the other end of the phone, Jiang Mingshu was complaining angrily about her recent grievances. “After work, he insisted on taking me to dinner, then afterward we went shopping, and he insisted on buying me a bag, and after shopping, he insisted on taking me to see a movie…so annoying!”

Lin Yao said, untruthfully, “That… is indeed annoying.” In reality, she wanted to ask what was so annoying about it?

Jiang Mingshu probably didn’t know that many girls in Hangzhou would be tripping over themselves to dine with, shop with, and watch movies with an elite that worked at Orlando?!

Unless…

Lin Yao couldn’t help but ask, “Is he ugly?” That probably wasn’t it. She could probably check out all the employees in the Orlando group and still not be able to find an ugly one.

Jiang Mingshu, who was in the middle of sighing, paused, then said disdainfully, “I guess he’s average looking. It’s just that he’s too annoying.”

For someone of Jiang Mingshu’s standards to say average looking, he had to be on the level of Hong Kong star Bai Gu, or Hollywood’s Leonardo DiCaprio!

“So how old is he?” If the person was very old, perhaps that would be the reason why she couldn’t stand him.

“I haven’t asked his age yet, but he looks like he’s in his twenties.”

That means very young!

Lin Yao asked, with somewhat masochistic intentions, “Then where did he take you to eat, where did you go shopping, where did you go to watch the movie?”

Jiang Mingshu thought about it carefully and replied, “The place we ate at was actually pretty good. Yesterday, we went to this restaurant in XX Hotel with a revolving top floor that overlooked the entire city… He took me to visit the Hangzhou Building as well. The stuff there wasn’t good at all, and he insisted on buying me a bag. I didn’t want it! Afterward, he took me to watch a blockbuster that recently came out, what is it called? I don’t remember, anyway, so annoying!”

Lin Yao sucked in a breath. So the reason Jiang Mingshu was so upset was that an Orlando elite (handsome man) took her to a revolving restaurant in a five-star hotel to have dinner and enjoy the night view, then took her to buy luxury goods at the Hangzhou building, then took her to the movies.

If Lin Yao didn’t know Jiang Mingshu’s character and personality well enough, she’d probably think that she was showing off.

Lin Yao understood a little bit why most of the girls at school couldn’t bear Jiang Mingshu and even hated her.

At the moment, Lin Yao was experiencing a complex mixture of emotions, consisting mainly of envy and jealousy. In fact, she felt that she needed more comfort than Jiang Mingshu!

On the other end of the phone, Jiang Mingshu said angrily, “Let me tell you, it was just past ten o’clock after we finished watching the movie. Originally, I wanted to go to 571PUB, but he insisted on sending me home!”

After watching the movie, he took the initiative to send the girl home. Must be quite an upright fellow.

Lin Yao already had the urge to hang up on her!

Jiang Mingshu was still chattering and complaining, “And, not to mention, the car he drove was not only short, but it only had two seats!”

The car was very short + only two seats = sports car. Was he to blame for picking her up in a sports car?

Lin Yao couldn’t hold back for another moment and abruptly hung up the phone.

Several seconds later, Jiang Mingshu’s phone number called again and she asked belligerently, “Hello~? What happened just now? Is the signal bad? It’s not just me saying but your broken cell phone really should have been…”

Sure enough, as someone who was fired on the spot when she slapped the table, got miserably cheated on after trying to please her boyfriend, made a laughing stock, and someone who was scolded by her boss after faxing something according to a client’s request, she really had no right to advise Jiang Mingshu.

This time, Lin Yao hung up without saying a word.