The Fading Away of Our Youth (So Young) Vol 2 Chapter 8.2

Chapter 8, 2/2

It is given that people will mature; the short-tempered little girl of the past became a skirt-wearing, repectful, sincere, composed manager’s secretary. So, the clearly rough of the edges Chen Xiao Zheng learning how to wear a mask while interacting with others was not a noteworthy strange thing. She was only afraid, when he gave Feng Dasheng a cup of tea, that old man actually ingratiatingly stroked/felt his hand and said, “As expected, you are not a local. Xiao Zheng (an endearing nickname, in this context, it sounds very gross), the skin on your hand is even much better than that of the local girls.” (Ummm, CREEPY much?)

Zheng Wei became both distressed and very angry, and split their hands apart on the spot, teacup falling to the ground. The hot water splashed all over th floor. She resisted, with great difficulty, the urge to strongly scold/abuse him (Feng Dasheng, I think), gritted her teeth and said, “Manager Feng, I respect that you are in elder and in a leadership position. We (everyone) are all colleagues, there is no need to do these kinds of unbearable (despicable) things.”

Feng Dasheng did not expect that her, a little secretary, would retaliate/strike out in this intense way in front of Chen Xiao Zheng. His face immediately could not contain itself any longer and he said mockingly, “It was only a joke, Xiao Guniang’s (it means little girl’s/miss’s) temper is really big, is it that only your boss can touch? You cannot not know, back when I was project manager, Zhou Qu was still only a small technical worker. Don’t say anything about me (the way he acts), I’m teaching you some manners (how to behave), Zhou Qu wouldn’t dare say anything.”

All of the blood in Zheng Wei’s body rushed up, and tears filled and spun around in her eyes. She subconciouly glanced over at Chen Xiao Zheng, his head was lowered and was controlling himself, face indifferent, like everything that had just happen had hardly anything to do with him. Zheng Wei suddenly felt cold,  even her previous raging fury had slowly cooled, and her tears were not falling anymore. Only a sneer remained. She secretly tightly pinched her hands, in the end controlling herself. Without saying anything, she rushed out the door. Before she had even left, she heard Fend Dasheng say to Chen Xiao Zheng, “I told Zhou Qu long ago that this little girl’s temper was very big, just like how he was.”

THat day, when Zhou Qu returned from his outing, and saw both her eyes were red and swollen, face distracted, he asked her, “What happened, who irritated you?” (It’s actually a period here, because in Chinese in makes sense but in English it really doesn’t so I just made it into a question mark)

Zheng Wei took a mirror and looked at her eyes, laughed and said, “Nothing really, I thought of the Korean drama I watched last night (OMG, YEEEESSSS I just love it when characters in asian novels/mangas/dramas like watching dramas). Koreans eat a lot of kimchi, and lots of leukemia, it was really miserable.”

Zhou Qu shook his head and laughed, saying, “Generation gap, there’s a generation gap.”

After he entered his office, the smile on her face vanished. Who was the person in the mirror who wanted to cry but had no tears? Haha, that year’s impressive  Small Jade Flying Dragon, after fighting through all the evils of society for a few years, finally became loach (gave up, or became very pitiful I think).

The next day, Chen Xiao Zheng’s office phone called Zheng Wei’s office. “Secretary Zheng, I urgently need the project files of last year’s x.x.x project, [and] there’s no one in the archives room.”

She said, “Today, the workers in the archives room have a training at headquarters, a.s.sistant Manager Chen wait a bit, the keys are with me, I’ll go open the door for you.”

She hurriedly ran up 7 floors to help him unlock the file room. According to the file number that he had indicated, she finally, with much difficulty, found the file he wanted within the rows and rows of files.

“What you want is here. a.s.sitant Manager Chen, I’ll have to trouble you to come over to the file room and sign it out on the file lending record sheet.” She walked towards the archives office desk. He was standing in between the narrow shelves of files, waiting at the end of the aisle. She walked over to him and lowered her head, saying, “Excuse me.”

She waited for a few seconds before realizing he had not moved at all.

In order to preserve the hard copies of the files, the archives room’s lights were always dusky. Even when the sun outside was shining brightly in, the tightly wrapped curtains and the temperature and humidity level regulator still made this little corner of the company seem very cool and desolate, along with the slight smell of mold. Zheng Wei took deep breaths, and suddenly felt that her own painful memories were also becoming this kind of flavor. She raised her head and saw Chen Xiao Zheng, back facing the direction of the light, and she was unable to recognize his facial features, and only felt as if he were a stranger.

“Excuse me.” She placed the thick file box against her chest, and repeated this once again.

This time, she was certain that it wasn’t that he hadn’t heard her, but didn’t want to let her go past. The two of them were deadlocked in silence for a bit, and the ticking of the clock made her ineffably impatient, and he could not give his duties to her, so she moved sideways and forcefully squeezed past him. After she b.u.mped into him with her shoulders, he swayed a bit. Placing on hand on the file cabinet, he (I think this is Chen Xiao Zheng) cut off her way out.

“I will not let him (Feng Dasheng) go.” He said suddenly and hastily.

Zheng Wei laughed.

“I definitely won’t let him go.” (I don’t quite understand this, I’m not sure who he’s talking about. Any ideas? Some people brought up that is could be Feng Dasheng, and I think that makes sense, so I added him in like that) He repeated again, the worry in his voice almost tricking her into believing the person in front of her was that same bickering young man looking for a tie (in chess) from that time [back then].

She slowly took his hand on the cabinet off, and said, “a.s.sistant Manager Chen, please come over and sign.”

[Not waiting] until he completed the procedure (signing the file out), she closed the archives room door and left, and they never said a word to each other again.

After a few days, his paper shredder began to break down often, so Zheng Wei went over to see a few times, and also called people up to fix it. Sometimes there were good results, sometimes bad results. When he finally couldn’t bear it any longer, he called her and said, “Secretary Zheng, you should come over to take a look, and get to the bottom of this problem.”

Zheng Wei said, “Yesterday I asked people to come and take a look, can’t you already use it normally again?”

He said, “But unfortunately, I can’t use it now. If you think it can work normally, why don’t you come over and help me shred these doc.u.ments.”

Zheng Wei hung up the phone, and called the bored logistics office. She heard they did odd jobs for Chen Xiao Zheng, and they nodded in a.s.sent without any objections. A few minutes had not even pa.s.sed when Zheng Wei saw her walking embarra.s.sedly out from the neighboring office.

“You finished shredding it?” Zheng Wei asked.

The small logistic worker grimaced, and pointed weakly at Chen Xiao Zheng’s office. She said, “It’s like eating an explosive, and I can be considered to have hit the opening. He said these were all cla.s.sified bid doc.u.ments. Zheng Jie (sister Zheng), you should go.”

“I can’t leave right now, you go get it for me and bring it over. Just say that I can shred it for him at my paper shredder.”

The second time the small logistics worker ran out of the firing line (as if his office is like a war zone), she didn’t even wait for Zheng Wei to say anything before pleading, “Zheng Jie, don’t torment/punish me anymore. Even if he is a shuai ge (hot/handsome guy), getting scolded twice is enough!”

Zheng Wei pacifyingly sent off the feeling wronged young girl, right when she was planning on going over, Chen Xiao Zheng holding a pile of useless bid submissions walked over, and placed them on her desk. “You’re really that busy? Don’t you understand that there are some doc.u.ments that can’t be carelessly put into someone else’s hands?”

His tone of voice wasn’t polite at all, and seeing the look on Zheng Wei’s face, he thought she would lash back out. He didn’t antic.i.p.ate that her face would fall and would pick up the doc.u.ments on her desk, saying, “I understand, I was just busy for a moment, and did not think of this. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

He was suddenly bewildered for a few moments, like he had just realized that the person standing in front of him was not someone he knew [anymore].

“Are you still angry?” He placed his hand on top of the bid doc.u.ments.

“How could that be, a.s.sistant Manager Chen.”

He frowned and said, “Don’t keep saying a.s.sistant Manager Chen.”

Zheng Wei said, “Until you leave your job, I will naturally call you a.s.sistant Manager Chen.”

The proud Chen Xiao Zheng’s face finally showed defeated dismay, and he closed his eyes for a moment and said quietly, “Wei Wei, don’t be this way… … ” His tone of voice was already similar to pleading.

It’s been 3 years, she finally heard again that familiar voice call of that name, it was like a dream.

“Chen Xiao Zheng, how else can we be?” (aka, how else can we act with each other)

They can only be this way.

Zhou Qu opened the door of the inner office and came out, and felt a bit of astonishment seeing these two people in front of him. He asked, “What happened, what’s going on?”

Zheng Wei was extremely relieved, and said, “Nothing, manager, I’m just discussing with a.s.sistant Manager Chen on how to get rid of these useless bid doc.u.ments.”