My Wife is a Workaholic

Chapter 4 – Wasabi Makes People Twisted 

There was no one else that would be mistaken as someone begging for a loan.

Taking out a loan was what small salesmen would do. They would chase after people buttocks to stuff their business cards in them. Then, they wanted the people to contact them.

Didn’t she look like a beautiful and graceful high level white collar worker?

Zu Jin suddenly felt a chill in her heart when she thought about it.

She gave Yan Lin a very bad first impression last night. This proved that Yan Lin was completely not her type.

If you met someone of the opposite sex that you liked, would you want to chase after them to a remote place far from the city with inconvenient transportation?

But she and Xu Tianying had spoken badly about him at the dinner party, and he heard everything…

She could make out a faint chatting sound from the guests around them. The waiter was smiling and walking towards them with the food.

For a few seconds, Zu Jin gazed at the man’s long and bony hands, but her mind already turned 180 degrees.

She, Zu Jin, could afford to let him go! He’s just a man!

There was no need for her to be entangled with him since he didn’t like her.

There was also nothing to lose, so she didn’t have to trouble herself with it anymore.

The waiter filled the entire tiny square table with food. Zu Jin didn’t like Japanese food in the first place, so now she didn’t want to pretend any more.

She picked up her chopsticks and used her other hand to make a gesture of invitation to eat.

Without waiting for Yan Lin to respond, she picked up a slice of sashimi, dipped it in soy sauce and wasabi, and stuffed it in her mouth without caring about how she didn’t like Japanese food.

The sashimi was delicious, but there was always that fishy taste that was hard to ignore.

Even the soy sauce could not cover up that taste. Zu Jin eyebrows furrowed immediately.

After chewing a few times, she painfully swallowed it down.

Yan Lin looked at her in astonishment. Then, he silently pushed a plate of tempura in front of her.

“If you don’t like tea, then eat this to cover up the taste.”

He said it softly.

But the more Zu Jin heard his gentle tone, the more distressed she felt.

That’s why no matter how many accomplishments people have or how much older they got, they would still be naive.

When you were a child, you would cry if you did not get the toys that you liked. And if you were 30 years old and could not get the person you liked, it might…

It might be even scarier.

Zu Jin sighed secretly. She could barely suppress her low spirits.

She listened to his advice and picked up a piece of tempura. She ate it and then squeezed out a smile. “It tastes good.”

Yan Lin nodded hesitantly. He seemed to be about the same age as her, but he was born to be someone above others and had an excellent temperament. Also, he had a highly respected identity on the outside.

But he was sitting across from her at this moment. Somehow, she didn’t know why, but she felt that this man’s passively appeared to have a kind of temperament like an obedient young male servant.

He was really innocent and lovely! But also provocative and pitiful!

Zu Jin crazily complained in her heart that such a high-quality man would be captured by some other lucky woman in the future.

She smiled as gently as she could and asked, “What did you want to say?”

“I just said the wrong thing.” Yan Lin put down his chopsticks and cautiously looked at her.

Zu Jin froze for a moment, and then raised her head to look at him.“What did you say wrong?”

Yan Lin was left speechless by her and smiled helplessly. “I also don’t like Japanese food. I’ll treat you next time as an apology. What do you like to eat?”

A few sentences unexpectedly reignited Zu Jin’s hope.

It seemed like Yan Lin was not a wooden pimple1 without oil or salt2!

Zu Jin didn’t like acting coy, so she directly replied, “As long as it’s not Japanese food, I can eat anything else. What about you?”

Yan Lin said, “I’m the same as you. Then next time, I’ll invite you to eat Ding Xing Fang Hot Pot3 in a private room.”

“Yes.”

Zu Jin’s mind became alive again at the sight of another opportunity.

“I would like to ask you a personal question. May I?”

Yan Lin looked up at her and nodded.

“You just said that you thought I was a loan shark last night. Is it because you don’t like career women very much?”

The air froze for a second.

Yan Lin asked seriously, “Is there a relationship between those things?”

Zu Jin blinked and pursed her lips. “There’s not much of a relationship. I’m just asking.”

Yan Lin took a sip of tea. “There is no dislike.”

“Oh.”

Zu Jin’s mind went blank. She didn’t know whether her chopsticks were grabbing air or something else, so she stuffed it into her mouth mechanically.

As a result, eating without caring about what it was came to an end…

She abruptly put her chopsticks down and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her head dropped in pain and she bursted into tears.

She would never eat Japanese food again!

She hated wasabi!

Afterwards, the two chatted about a lot. Despite everything they talked about, the memories of these conversations became a little fuzzy to her as soon as they walked out of the Japanese restaurant.

But the content of their conversations were generally about everyday life and did not touch sensitive business topics.

Zu Jin walked back to the corporation while wondering why her memory suddenly deteriorated and how she regretted eating wasabi carelessly. She ended up being in such a state of distress in front of Yan Lin.

Fortunately, she was sure that Yan Lin did not mean to reject her completely.

And when they were chatting, she became even more secretly delighted with Yan Lin’s manners and speech, the two people’s views on some things, as well as a mutual understanding that there was no generational gap between them.

The most important thing was that Yan Lin did not really resent a strong and ambitious woman.

This point was really significant because Zu Jin had met too many male chauvinist men. These men were incompetent and were extremely fond of denying successful women of their worth and stigmatizing them.

It was obvious that their own abilities were average, but they had strong self-confidence to be able to say that the greatest value of a woman was playing the traditional role of a wife by doing things like cooking food or taking care of the children.

It was as if successful women were their enemies in a previous life.

 

Zu Jin returned to the corporation. Xia Tong welcomed her back as soon as she came out of the elevator.

“President Jin, how was it? Did it go smoothly?”

Zu Jin raised her eyebrow. “It went well. Wait for our wedding!”

The corners of Xia Tong’s mouth twitched. “It developed that fast?”

Zu Jin always needed to go out in the afternoon, but today there were no visitors or meetings.

She sat in her office and flew through the paperwork. She finally got rid of the backlog of official business that had been sitting in place for several days.

When Xia Tong entered with a form in her hands, Zu Jin had her chin propped in one hand and she was happily clearing up her inbox.

“Are you not busy?”

Zu Jin looked up at her and said, “What’s the matter?”

“There’s an employee from the public relations department on the floor below. Her mother has lung cancer and needs chemotherapy. Her family’s condition is not very good, so everyone is donating money to her. Do you want to donate some money to her?”

This kind of donation request basically happened every one to two months.

She used her cell phone to scan the QR code and donated 30,000 yuan.

Xia Tong left feeling satisfied.

When it was time to get off work at dusk, Zu Jin wanted to stay a little longer. She didn’t want to have to return if the production department ran into more problems and needed to find her.

But after a while she couldn’t sit still.

She called Xia Tong to come in by pressing the button on the desk.

“Did my mother call you again these days?”

Xia Tong gave a forced smile. “Yes. She called three times. Yesterday she asked me to book a plane ticket for her. I told her that there were no planes flying over there recently because of heavy rain.”

Zu Jin had a blank expression as she collected the material on her desk and stuffed it into her bag. She got up and walked out with a long stride.

“Tell the driver to wait for me downstairs. You can get off work too. There’s nothing else to do here.”

Xia Tong breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay.”

Zu Jin’s mother, Ms. Zu Hua, was an exotic flower1 whose behaviors contradicted her high IQ.

In the past, Ms. Zu Hua was the top scoring student in the city for the science college exams and she went to a key university to study.

She was a pure and gullible girl. As a result, she was completely deceived by a young and handsome male teacher and unfortunately became pregnant.

Then, the teacher found a random excuse to force her to drop out and return home.

Generally speaking, this was a cliche story about a scumbag and a female student. Who knew if the scumbag would have a bad ending, but the female student’s situation was definitely worse.

The reality of the situation was outrageous enough to make people vomit blood!

During the time when Zu Jin’s mother was pregnant and was being criticized at home, she was still infatuated with the scumbag. After giving birth to Zu Jin, she didn’t follow the traditional one-month postpartum confinement period2. Instead, she took the train alone and went back to the school to find the scumbag.

When Zu Jin was in primary school, this infatuated exotic flower had no choice but to return home after being repeatedly rejected.

Her mother was emotionally frustrated. To add to it, she had to provide for a child alone and they were disliked by her family.

Zu Hua had completely fallen. She found a random job that could feed them and allow her to rent a place to shelter them from the wind and rain. Additionally, she had no qualms about playing mahjong after work every day to pass the time or about sitting in front of the TV to watch Qiong Yao3 dramas and to mourn her love.

In Zu Jin’s memories, they had never appeared as mother and daughter—not even one moment with them chit-chatting like it was normal.

Zu Jin thought of herself as a very heartless person.

She was obviously raised by her mother, but she just hated this woman.

She rarely returned home after she went to college and was able to live on campus. Following that, she held multiple part-time jobs so that she never needed to ask Zu Hua for another penny.

Eventually, she graduated. She gave Zu Hua a large amount of money for living expenses every month as soon as her salary increased. Since then, she had never returned home.

Zu Jin became infuriated whenever she thought about Zu Hua looking at her with those muddy eyes. Zu Hua’s eyes seemed to say that her decades of misery and loneliness were caused by her daughter.

If she didn’t like her, then why did she give birth to her in the first place?

Just because she’s that man’s daughter?

In the end, what the hell was she?

She was a souvenir.

But Zu Jin was in a good mood today and her next goal in life had progressed. Therefore, she planned to visit Ms. Zu Hua soon.

She made the chauffeur buy two gifts and a basket of fruit from the nearby market. Zu Jin went upstairs with these gifts.

She put her things down when she came in. And like how she usually did when she visited, she didn’t even sit before she went upstairs in less than five minutes.

Then, she told Zu Hua that she might be getting married soon.

She saw Zu Hua’s surprised expression and she felt very excited.

This was because she had finally taken revenge on this woman. Otherwise, it would seem like she wanted to be alone in order to repay the torture inflicted on this woman because of her birth.

That’s why she wanted to be happy! She must have her husband and child heat the kang4!