Chapter Sixty-Nine: Shifting Responsibilities

The Textile City was as usual.

When Yishu got out of the car, she forgot to take the folding umbrella she had left under the seat. Tang Chao’s car still lingered on the side of the road in front of the building.

She paused for a moment where she stood, then decided to forgo retrieving the umbrella and walked straight toward the shop.

The fine, drizzling rain wove over her hair like a web of spider silk. After stepping through the entrance, she gently patted the beads of moisture clinging to her hair, let out a sigh, and climbed the stairs.

Guo Yamei was trying to communicate with two foreigners in white lab coats, gesturing animatedly. Their exchange had made no real progress.

Guo Yamei often thought her three years at the technical college had been little more than a waste of money and time. She hadn’t learned a single useful thing. The vocational school she attended didn’t require students to pass English proficiency exams, so those who took the Level 4 or 6 exams each year were as rare as stars at dawn. Many, in fact, hadn’t even passed the basic Level B test.

Guo Yamei was among them.

Back in vocational high school, she had been considered a top student, but only because most of her classmates had been pressured or tricked by teachers into giving up the entrance exams and enrolling early, a motley crew of underachievers. As the best among the short, she received special attention from her teachers. With her inherently competitive nature, her three years of high school life were smooth sailing. But all that changed when she entered college. Many students who’d failed the regular college entrance exam now crowded into the technical colleges, and those who’d outperformed her in academics soon became the school’s new paragons.

She even regretted pressuring her parents to pay for her college education. The family’s finances were already in dire straits, and scraping together three years’ tuition had only made things worse.

Perhaps she was just fated to struggle with English; no matter how hard she tried, she never managed to pass.

Yishu entered the shop, set down her crossbody bag, and turned on the computer. The two foreigners, as if spotting a glimmer of hope in the darkness, greeted her with excitement, “Oh, finally, you’re here! Wonderful!”

Their Chinese was thickly accented and awkward.

“Late, and stealing someone else’s client,” Guo Yamei muttered viciously through gritted teeth.

The computer was an antique, handed down from Kaisheng headquarters and in use for seven or eight years, still running its original XP system. The mechanical hard drive took at least a minute to boot up—now, it needed even two. Yishu glanced at the time in the lower right corner: 9:07. Subtracting the time for booting up and walking in from the door, she’d arrived around 9:03. She was, indeed, late.

Three minutes late was still late.

Yishu explained the situation in fluent English to the foreign clients, directing them to Guo Yamei, since company policy forbade her from forcibly taking over a colleague’s order.

The foreign clients shrugged helplessly, spreading their hands. They explained, in their way, that Guo Yamei’s English was simply too poor. Did she not realize that in Textile City, foreign clients were just as common as domestic ones? How could someone with such a communication barrier be allowed to dampen everyone’s spirits and lose the company business?

Yishu brushed her bangs from her forehead, her smile freezing on her lips. Were foreigners always so blunt? She couldn’t think of a response; even if she spoke in riddles, Guo Yamei wouldn’t understand. But stabbing a colleague in the back went against her principles.

Yishu’s hesitation caused the foreign clients to lose patience; their faces darkened, eyes wide and bristling beneath unruly beards. For a delicate young woman, their anger was not a small thing to bear.

It seemed she had no choice but to handle it herself.

Their demands were simple: price, delivery time, and so forth. Yishu wrote everything down on paper, then brought it to Guo Yamei’s desk.

After seeing Yishu enter, and realizing the clients’ attention was wholly on her, Guo Yamei decided to wash her hands of the matter. Why bother flattering people who didn’t care? In a physical shop, situations like this occurred a hundred times more often than in customer service.

“What’s this?” Guo Yamei glared. “Showing off?”

Yishu had no desire to argue. These past days—or perhaps this whole period—had drained all her energy for anything beyond breathing, blinking, and eating. “The order—these are the client’s requirements. Payment hasn’t been collected; you should ask them for it.”

“Please pay”—surely even Guo Yamei could manage those two simple words.

“Are you pitying me?” Guo Yamei, ever suspicious, couldn’t even say thank you, twisting someone else’s kindness into an ulterior motive.

“Pity?” Yishu scoffed. “What’s there to pity? No one’s less in need of pity than you! How pathetic must you be to mistake every ordinary act as charity?”

Her words left Guo Yamei speechless.

Yes, what had become of her? Guo Yamei couldn’t help asking herself. Perhaps, after glimpsing sunlight, she could no longer endure the loneliness of darkness. But that same sunlight only made her desolation more profound.

The foreigners watched, wide-eyed and baffled, unable to follow the Chinese—like spectators at a silent film, their ears left out entirely.

Without a word, Guo Yamei entered the order into the computer system and sent it to Min Hangrui. In the partner field, she noted both her own and Yishu’s names. The order was the result of both their efforts; neither would take advantage of the other.

Yishu sometimes admired Guo Yamei for her forthrightness—her ability to love and hate openly, to act and take responsibility, to show her displeasure plainly rather than resorting to schemes and tricks. Open attacks were always easier to defend against than those from the shadows.

Suddenly, Liu Hanzhang tagged both Su Yishu and Guo Yamei in the group chat, proposing that, alongside running the physical shop, they also take online orders in their spare time. Essentially, he wanted to transplant the work processes, energy, and internal competition from Kaisheng’s customer service department into their current roles.

Company management, seeing the erratic performance of the physical shop in recent months, was at their wits’ end. They now agreed that their earlier rush to expand had been reckless. After deducting rent, utilities, and wages, monthly sales barely broke even. Any increase in income was negligible. In their eyes, even Su Yishu and Guo Yamei—once the stars of the customer service department—were struggling; what about the rest?

Yishu pretended not to notice, waiting for Guo Yamei’s response.

After organizing the orders, Guo Yamei unlocked her screen and sat expressionless, lost in thought. Yishu grew anxious as Liu Hanzhang tagged them again.

—I think it’s doable. But will there be any changes to our pay?

Clearly, Guo Yamei cared only about her wages, not whether she was busy or idle. Sometimes, a whole day would pass without a single customer, leaving her so bored she felt she might sprout leaves from her head—only to wither for lack of sunlight.

—All the money you earn is yours. Have you grown so comfortable in the shop that you’ve lost your ambition?

Liu Hanzhang’s words, though never mentioning base pay, avoided the issue at every turn.

Yishu saw through management’s intentions—it was just a way to squeeze cheap labor.

—Su Yishu, your opinion?

Liu Hanzhang now called on Yishu directly.

—I’ll go along with the company’s decision.

After much thought, Yishu concluded that in this world, people are often powerless; fate is a matter of luck. Since she had joined Kaisheng—and not only Kaisheng, but any company—it was always about profit. Still, Liu Hanzhang had a point: the money they earned was their own.

There was no use splitting hairs.

—And Guo Yamei?

Liu Hanzhang issued an ultimatum.

Faced with the situation, Guo Yamei had no choice but to yield.

—Agreed.

Two crisp words; even one more would have been an affront to herself. In truth, she supported the decision—why refuse extra commission? She had only wanted to use the opportunity to negotiate a raise. After all, she had four mouths to feed at home. Her mother had lost her job, was in poor health, and couldn’t even handle work as a cleaner or kitchen hand. Her son was five and in kindergarten, and these days, three years of preschool cost more than college. Her father’s health was failing; he could probably haul goods in Textile City for only two more years at most. Illnesses, big and small, had plagued the family for years.

Liu Hanzhang reactivated their accounts and, after a few more reminders, went offline.

Yishu sighed. Life only seemed to grow more difficult. She’d thought about changing jobs, scouring job sites again and again, but aside from a few waitressing positions, everything else required three to five years’ experience or at least a college degree. A high school diploma… She sighed, resigning herself to keep working steadily.

After all, a job is a job, wherever you go.