KC | Chapter 33

Late at night, Lin Yiran lay on the bed, unable to fall asleep for a long time.

When Lin Yiran first joined Lanhai, he had been polite and well-mannered, and his coworkers all got along well with him. Most people described him as “a gentleman, refined and warm like jade,” and only Zhang Guangming saw that he was an eagle, saying he was born to do sales.

Lin Yiran thought that compared with an eagle, he was more like a fox or a weasel, sly, filthy, and vile. But Zhang Guangming had been right, he did truly enjoy the joy of closing a deal.

When he had first started in sales, Lin Yiran had been just like Chen Xi now, not knowing where the key clients were, unsure whether the next visit would end in a contract, afraid to think about the future and afraid of suddenly being evaluated.

Because of performance pressure, Lin Yiran had occasionally suffered from insomnia, had felt lost, confused, and complained… more than once asking himself: why did he have to schedule his time so full, what was the point of living such a tiring life, and what was the use of earning so much money?

But all those negative emotions vanished after he signed a key client. No matter how much suppression there was, it could not compare to the delight brought by closing the deal. To Lin Yiran, key clients were like taking opium, trading long silence for a brief peak of excitement, and after every burst of excitement came an even longer emptiness.

To get more pleasure, Lin Yiran could only keep signing key clients, forcing himself to keep moving forward.

He could force himself to work out deep into the night after a round of drinking and socializing, could backstab the media agency that was hard to win over while laughing and chatting with the client, and could face heavy work alone in the middle of the night… He could see through the client’s real needs, could see through the scheming among competing agencies, could make out the dark currents surging between coworkers, but he would never say it out loud.

He saw through it but did not expose it, because once he exposed it, things would not be manageable anymore.

He made himself look sociable, but in truth he was terrifyingly clear-headed.

Lin Yiran had always been lonely.

Everyone had their own reason for doing sales, most people, like Chen Xi, did it for money, while Lin Yiran did sales to seek stimulation.

Lin Yiran’s parents divorced when he was young. His mother remarried and it was inconvenient to take him along, while his father got custody but was busy with his career and had no time to care for him. A child who did not get parental love would naturally grow withdrawn. Once during Spring Festival, his father took him to visit relatives, and the aunts and uncles gossiped and asked, “Why doesn’t this kid like talking?” So his father, who was always swift and decisive, did not even wait until the Lantern Festival had passed before sending him to a child autism treatment center.

Thirty years ago, the treatment center did not use methods as gentle as they did now, and most of them forced children to speak. Lin Yiran watched an older girl, one year older than him, being locked in a dark room because she refused to talk, and inside that dark room she pulled out all her eyebrows. When her parents came to pick her up, the treatment center said she had a tendency toward self-harm and recommended continuing treatment. So when the staff at the treatment center asked Lin Yiran questions, he forced himself to say many things. From that moment on, he learned how to disguise himself.

After coming back from the rehabilitation center, Lin Yiran became cheerful, and his father believed the treatment had worked.

Last year his father retired and bought property in Beishi, saying he could arrange a job for him. Lin Yiran replied, “I don’t like talking to people, I’m afraid I’ll embarrass you at work. You settled in Beishi and didn’t come back to Yucheng because you didn’t want to see me, what a coincidence, I don’t really want to see you either. If you feel guilty and think you owe me, then give me some money.”

At the time, his father said he would give him 10 million yuan, but the money still had not arrived. Even clients never withheld payment for a whole year, and Lin Yiran found it funny.

Compared with his father’s verbal promises, his mother was much more reliable. At least when he got married, his mother came. It was just that now his mother still did not know he had divorced.

His mother said she could not stand his father being like a workaholic and ignoring the family, which was why she divorced him, and told him not to be too busy with work. Lin Yiran said, “Okay, if I’m not busy with work, then I won’t have money. Can you give me money?”

His mother gave him 100,000 yuan, saying it was the down payment for marrying a wife and buying a house, and after that she rarely contacted him. Yucheng counted as a second-tier city, and with a 100,000 yuan down payment, buying a 40-square-meter secondhand single-room place was about right. Lin Yiran had never invited his mother to his home, and his mother had never asked these years either.

Lin Yiran felt that family affection was optional, and love might be the same. If love were truly as unbreakable as gold and stone, how could one just say no to it and be done with it?

Those boring emotions could not be exchanged for material things. Only by putting on the skin of a gentleman and constantly signing key clients could he find himself.

Lanhai had given him a platform, Zhang Guangming had given him an opportunity, and Lin Yiran believed the value of his existence was to sign key clients. Aside from that, he had nothing worth taking out.

Lin Yiran had money, he did not lack material things, but because he had lacked so much in childhood, he always wanted to get more from clients. Material things were like that, and emotions were the same. Only, he did not dare trust others, so over the years he had kept himself closed off. The empty emotions could not find an outlet and became the reason for his indulgence.

Lin Yiran had long been used to high pressure. Even sleeping in the car had never given him insomnia, so the reason for his insomnia tonight was undoubtedly Chen Xi.

Lin Yiran got up and climbed out of bed, looked out at the bustling lights outside the window, and slowly exhaled a ring of smoke.

The cigarette he had bought this morning now had only two left in the pack. Lately he had been smoking a little too often, he should control that.

But I don’t want to control it.

I’ve already rotted into my bones, there’s no point in reforming.

Let these dirty desires keep gnawing at me, dissolving my bones, draining my flesh, turning me into a machine that only talks about key clients.

Moderate exercise was good for both body and mind, excessive exercise damaged the joints, Lin Yiran understood that logic, but every time he exercised, he pursued complete exhaustion. He was used to thinking about complicated problems while working out, and whenever he thought of the client’s unreasonable demands, he would subconsciously do a few more sets of training, repeatedly thinking through and breaking down the client’s real needs.

Exercise, sources of excitement, and sex were all ways for Lin Yiran to vent his emotions. Every time he vented, he would hate himself.

He countered suppressed emotions in abnormal ways, overused himself to the extreme, pursued exhausting workouts; smoked and drank large amounts of coffee, taking in nicotine, caffeine, and other stimulants; indulged in reckless desire, spoiling his body…

Smoking and drinking coffee would both affect heart and lung function, and were harmful to health in every way, but “health” was Lin Yiran’s “other unimportant matter,” ranked last.

By now, Lin Yiran had long since grown used to the pressure of intense work, no longer letting thoughts trap him, no longer agonizing over those unnecessary things.

Living in the present was the most important.

Lin Yiran recalled the version of himself from 10 years ago, when he had signed with Gulin, and facing all those competing agencies, he had also worked as hard as he could and pushed straight ahead. He always saw his former self in Chen Xi, clear, brave, and bright.

And the present self had already become distorted.

Before, whenever Lin Yiran thought of the key issue, he would deliberately avoid it. Now, because he could not sleep at night, he had no choice but to sort through his tangled relationship with Chen Xi again.

These days he kept thinking of that skin under moonlight, pale enough to reflect the light, the fleeing back in the elevator shaft, the thin figure in the passenger seat… His ingrained rational thinking would not accept avoidance again and again, and Lin Yiran forced himself to face the problem.

He categorized the entanglement between himself and Chen Xi as a “complex problem,” and, like solving a difficult client issue, he concentrated fully on thinking it through, insisting that he had to understand it tonight and could not let it take up time later.

Returning again to the question he had not thought through before, why did I always want to “get money” from Chen Xi?

Because if he had money, he would not want to keep working, and there was a very high chance he would quit.

But what did it have to do with me if he quit, when a 419 partner ought to be as far away as possible?

Because Chen Xi’s resignation had been caused by me, I felt guilty toward him and wanted to make up for it.

What could I use to make up for it?

What Lin Yiran thought of first was “giving money,” but he immediately denied it. He did not want to lump Chen Xi together with those messy people.

We were not in a money-for-benefits kind of relationship.

But besides money, what else could I give him?

A marketing expert could provide clients with highly time-sensitive integrated marketing plans, but when it came to Chen Xi, aside from “giving money,” there was nothing else in the plan.

It was not that Lin Yiran could not think of it, it was that he did not dare think of it.

All the behavior logic pointed clearly to a single result, and Lin Yiran did not dare reveal that certain answer.

Lin Yiran’s way of thinking had always been very clear, he believed doing things by instinct was not as good as doing them by logic, but when he asked himself, why had he insisted on going all the way that night, and if he did not like it, why had he forced himself, all logic stopped working.

The master negotiator, business elite, and marketing expert had backed down for the first time.

“That’s impossible.” Lin Yiran frowned slightly and denied it again. “That’s impossible.”

He changed the way he asked himself: besides money, what had I done for Chen Xi these past few days?

I did not help him negotiate any deal, did not give him money, I only kept teasing him one after another, using key clients as an excuse, entangling myself with him ambiguously, deliberately mixing up and blurring the relationship between superior and subordinate, and between bed partner and bed partner.

To put it nicely, this way of handling things was: measured advance and retreat, handling everything with ease; to put it bluntly, it was: having no shame, and being utterly rotten.

No wonder, he no longer liked me.

He really should not like me, because someone like me was not worth it.

I am not worth it.