Heartthrob, Your Image is Crumbling!

Chapter 608: You Left Lanjing, and From Then On I Had Nothing

"Uh, it's like this. I just communicated with my boss. Are you saying that you want to lead a team independently?""Yes?"

"So that means you already have target clients, right?"

"I don't have any target clients at the moment, but once I join the company, I will find them," Chen Wan stated firmly.

"Uh, well, Miss Chen, we might need to discuss this further. Currently, our company only has two teams in total. If we were to create another group, it would put a lot of pressure on us. Please understand."

"It's alright, I understand."

And with that, the call ended. While Chen Wan was job hunting, Zhou Yuwen's Xianlin Planning had already leaped to become a rather well-known planning company in Jinling. Therefore, upon learning that Chen Wan used to work at Xianlin Planning, the company boss thought he had struck gold, figuring he could somehow use her to build a connection with Zhou Yuwen.

But who could have anticipated that Chen Wan would demand to lead her own team right off the bat.

This was no small feat.

The boss could not help but feel a bit apprehensive. After mulling it over for a long time, he decided it was best to look into this Chen Wan. After all, letting a fresh graduate lead a team was truly a bit of a stretch.

It would have been fine if he had not investigated, but once he did, his face immediately darkened.

He immediately called the HR manager into his office and gave her a severe scolding, questioning what kind of person she had found. So much for being young, easy to fool, and highly cost-effective—she had clearly been fired by Xianlin Planning!

Moreover, rumor had it that she had offended the boss of Xianlin Planning!

Getting a little bit of success and immediately letting it go to her head, thinking she achieved everything entirely on her own?

When running a company, these were the absolute worst types of people to deal with.

The boss then reviewed Chen Wan's resume again and could not resist complaining, "What is all this nonsense? During her time as the Student Union President, she organized such-and-such events!? Isn't this just a standard fresh graduate's resume?"

"I really thought you found me a top talent, and it turns out to be this?"

"And she expects a salary of twelve thousand? Can she even bring me any clients?"

The more the boss spoke, the angrier he became. To be honest, second-tier companies were all roughly on the same level; success mainly depended on connections. With a decent client base, one could live very comfortably. Someone like Chen Wan, who had offended her previous employer and lacked her own clientele, not only demanded a high salary but also expected the company to build a team for her?

What a joke. Were the company's resources meant for her to play house with?

The boss directly told the HR manager to go reflect on her mistakes.

After being chewed out by the boss, the HR manager felt extremely frustrated. She could not help but recall what Chen Wan had said earlier—something about staying at Xianlin Planning being too comfortable and wanting to challenge herself.

Thinking about it now, wasn't that just pure nonsense?!

And to think she had actually used respectful honorifics with her?

Looking back on it, she really wanted to slap herself across the face.

Of course, she had no desire to call Chen Wan back just to scold her.

Everyone was quite pragmatic, and time was precious.

However, having received such courteous treatment from them, Chen Wan was naturally thrilled. She eagerly waited for their call, ready to once again make waves in the corporate world.

While waiting, Chen Wan even went shopping and looked at two rather expensive sets of clothes.

Admittedly, this was a bit of a luxury for her.

But thinking that she needed them to avoid being looked down upon as she entered the workplace, Chen Wan gritted her teeth and bought them anyway.

It did not matter if she did not have enough money.

Coincidentally, Zhou Yuwen had just launched a lending software. While ordinary university students could only borrow a few hundred yuan, someone like Chen Wan, who had an excellent cash flow history, could borrow up to two thousand yuan.

It was just enough to buy a set of clothes.

So, Chen Wan steeled herself and went through with the purchase.

'I'll just pay him back once I get my salary!' she thought.

Thus, Chen Wan changed into a new OL uniform, expectantly waiting for the other party to get back to her.

She waited for an entire week. Unable to hold out any longer, Chen Wan could not help but call them back.

As for the HR manager, she had probably forgotten all about Chen Wan by this point. Upon answering the phone, she simply said, "Hello?"

"Hello, I am Chen Wan. About what we discussed last time."

"Chen Wan?"

The woman on the other end froze for a moment.

Chen Wan immediately clarified, "Yes, we spoke on the phone before."

"Oh, I know you."

This time, the HR manager's tone was completely different from before. Not only was her remark dismissive, but it also carried a hint of resentment. Before Chen Wan could say anything, the woman on the other end proceeded to scold her severely, "You actually have the nerve to call me?"

"You little lass, instead of learning good things at your young age, how did you learn to lie?"

"Lie? Uh, Sister Wang, is there some misunderstanding between us?"

"What misunderstanding? Let me ask you, did you really leave Xianlin Planning because you didn't like things being too comfortable?" the HR manager asked bluntly.

This plunged Chen Wan into silence.

The voice on the phone continued directly, "What do you take our company for? Did you really think we would just take your word for it? Did you think we wouldn't do a background check?"

"And expecting us to build a team for you. Let me ask you, you don't even have an established client base, so what do you need a team for?"

"Sister Wang..."

Chen Wan braced herself and said, "I just don't have an established client base yet, but I will find one on my own. And although I had a slightly unpleasant falling out with Xianlin Planning, my abilities speak for themselves. Besides, I used to be the Student Union President, so I have a lot of planning experience."

Hearing Chen Wan's words, the woman sneered even more coldly, "And so?"

"What does you being some president or department head have to do with me? Pure nonsense."

"I get heaps of resumes here every day. Forget about student union department heads, we even get former university teachers applying. But what the hell is the use of that? If it weren't for the fact that you used to work at Xianlin Planning, did you really think I would waste so much time talking to you?"

"Damn it, because of you, I got yelled at by my boss, and you still have the audacity to call me?"

"I'm not afraid to tell you, your only value was that you worked at Xianlin Planning. Now that you've had a falling out with them, you are absolutely nothing!"

Having said her piece, the HR manager finally felt vindicated and slammed the phone down.

Listening to the beep-beep-beep dialing tone echoing from the phone, for some unknown reason, Chen Wan felt an unusual sense of calm. She was overcome by a feeling of powerlessness, yet she had no idea who she could even vent this helplessness to.

After leaving the school, she had not found a job, nor did she have a single person by her side to confide in.

After hanging up that call, for a period of time, Chen Wan fell into a state of complete silence.

Every day, she stayed in her rented apartment with unkempt hair and a dirty face, simply lying in bed and scrolling through her phone.

When she got hungry, she would make herself a bowl of instant noodles.

In the beginning, she would still take out the trash, but as time dragged on.

She did not even want to bother cleaning up the trash anymore.

Eventually, the garbage piled up like a mountain.

Just like that, the once radiant Student Union President, Senior Sister Chen Wan, devolved into a degenerate woman for a long stretch of her internship period.

No one knew what she was thinking about every day.

Eventually, Chen Wan spent all the money she had on her, and her credit loan became overdue. When her phone received text messages, she naturally chose to ignore them completely, even going so far as to uninstall the Fun Campus app.

Later on, her parents gave her a phone call, asking how her work in Jinling was going.

Were she short on money?

Hearing her mother's voice, Chen Wan could not hold back her urge to cry. She said no, that everything was going fine for her in Jinling.

Then, her mother mentioned that they had received a call today saying she had borrowed money.

"Wanwan, if you don't have money, just tell us. The family has money."

"You've just graduated, this is exactly the time when you need to spend money."

"Your dad went to the bank today and transferred five thousand yuan to you. Check and see if you got it."

At that moment, Chen Wan could no longer hold it in. Tears streamed down her face instantly. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed out a tearful, "Mom."

But her mother merely chuckled gently and asked her what was wrong.

Mother Chen said that it was bound to be exhausting when first stepping out into society. She and her dad had been exactly the same back in the day, and things would gradually get better.

"If it's truly too hard, you can always come back home. Our family can still afford to support you."

After that phone call, Chen Wan ceased her degeneracy. She felt that she had to be strong. Fun Campus's credit loan was already linked to personal credit. Even though Chen Wan had uninstalled Fun Campus, there would still be text messages for debt collection, and they would even call her relatives and friends.

Although Chen Wan was incredibly annoyed, in order to avoid being harassed over the credit loan, she had no choice but to pay the money back first, returning a total of 2,200 yuan including the principal and interest. Afterward, Chen Wan sold everything on her that could be sold in exchange for some cash.

She started to look for a job again. To be honest, Chen Wan had never thought about contacting the clients she had met through her previous work.

But now that she had nowhere left to turn, Chen Wan thought about the praises they had given her.

She recalled them saying that if she ever stopped working under Zhou Yuwen, she should contact them.

Chen Wan knew the chances were slim, but she felt she still had to make a desperate attempt and give it a try.

So, Chen Wan gritted her teeth, braced herself, and dialed one of their numbers.

Ring...

Ring...

The phone rang twice before it was connected, and a cold voice came through, "Hello?"

"Hello, Brother Wu, it's me. I'm Chen Wan."

"Chen Wan?" The person on the other end sounded confused.

"Have you forgotten? I planned your child's first birthday banquet for you."

"Oh, what do you need?" Brother Wu remembered who Chen Wan was—the one who had been fired by Boss Zhou. His voice became even colder.

"Um, nothing much. I've resigned from Xianlin Planning," Chen Wan said cautiously.

"Yes, I know."

"You know?"

"Yeah, I heard about it right after you left. Sigh, regarding this matter, Little Chen, I have to give you a good talking to. Xianlin Planning is such a good company, why would you make such a foolish decision?"

"You don't seriously think that everyone thought so highly of you because of your personal abilities, do you?"

Brother Wu's rhetorical question instantly silenced Chen Wan.

Taking on a patronizing tone, Brother Wu continued his lecture, "Sigh, the biggest problem with you young people is that you love to mistake the platform you stand on for your own abilities."

"To be completely honest with you, the only reason we were so polite to you back then was because Boss Zhou was backing you. Otherwise, why on earth do you think we would have chosen you to be our planner?"

"Now that you've left Xianlin Planning, the fact that I'm even speaking this much to you is already me being courteous."

"By the way, Little Chen, did you need me for something?" Brother Wu asked.

"No, nothing..."

"Alright, if there's nothing, I'll hang up."

With that said, Brother Wu hung up the phone without the slightest hesitation.

At this moment, Chen Wan finally understood the true meaning of the vicissitudes of human nature.

In truth, Chen Wan should have known this a long time ago.

But she simply refused to believe it until she hit rock bottom.

She no longer had the heart to stay in a place like Jinling.

In the end, she submitted a resume to a company in Shanghai.

In fact, she had never even heard of that company in Shanghai before.

But she truly did not want to remain in Jinling any longer.

Just like that, she left Jinling.

By the time rumors about her surfaced again, word had it that she was already working at a foreign enterprise in Shanghai.

As for the actual truth, no one really knew.

However, for Shen Yu, this rumor was quite believable.

After all, in her eyes, Chen Wan was incredibly excellent.

On this day, during the Student Union's evening party, everyone felt a bit melancholic.

Because after spending day and night together for three years, tomorrow they might all go their separate ways.

Everyone chatted and drank in the auditorium.

Under the flickering lights, they sang a chorus of "Auld Lang Syne".

On this day, Li Qiang drank a lot of beer and urged everyone else to drink more too. These beers were free, so it would be a waste not to drink them.

"Damn it! I've been the Head of External Relations Department for less than a year and I already have to leave. I really can't bear to part with it!" Li Qiang grumbled in deep frustration.

During his tenure as the Head of External Relations Department, Li Qiang had used his job role to his advantage, organizing many classmates to act as manual laborers while lining his own pockets. He had made quite a bit of money and even slept with a junior female student. It was safe to say that Li Qiang had become infamous; nowadays, among the sophomores, there wasn't a single person who didn't frown at the mention of his name.

For student part-time jobs at other schools, the middlemen would take a twenty-yuan commission at most.

But this Li Qiang ruthlessly took a fifty-fifty split.

The most infuriating part was that the school had the Xuhuai Association, which helped everyone find part-time jobs for free.

Yet this guy took advantage of the situation. At the start of the semester, when the freshmen didn't know about the Xuhuai Association's part-time group chats, Li Qiang would claim the jobs from the Xuhuai Association first and then dispatch the freshmen to do them. Out of a two-hundred-yuan part-time fee, he only paid them one hundred.

Every night in the boys' dormitory, Li Qiang's various relatives would be 'greeted' by curses from the students.

Yet Li Qiang didn't care at all. He lived a truly carefree life during that period. He would book a hotel, wrap his arms around a naive junior female student, and brag about Zhou Yuwen and Chang Hao's achievements as if they were his own.

"Ah, making money in this world is the easiest thing. Back in my freshman year, I don't even know how much money I made selling phone cards."

"Actually, I grew up in Jingcheng, which is why I still speak with a bit of a Jingcheng accent."

Unfortunately, such a beautiful life was exposed after only a few days, and rarely anyone sought him out for part-time work anymore.

Later on, Li Qiang found himself isolated even in his position as the Head of External Relations Department.

Left with no other choice, he had to go back to doing part-time work in wedding services.

In the blink of an eye, it was already time for internships.

On this day, Li Qiang drank an unknown amount of alcohol and felt drowsy, yet his cloudy eyes were filled entirely with confusion.

Throughout his three years of university, during his freshman year, he had been obsessed with finding a girlfriend.

In his sophomore year, he hooked up with Lu Hui.

He rarely attended classes, mostly skipping them to work part-time. He made quite a bit of money, but it was all spent on women.

So over the three years, Li Qiang hadn't saved much money, and he had failed several of his major courses.

Seeing that it was now time for internships, Li Qiang realized that those roommates of his, who usually only knew how to surf the internet and play games in the dormitory, surprisingly all had jobs lined up.

Zhao Yang from the dormitory next door had always been at odds with Chang Hao.

However, at this moment, they were actually able to sit together and chat.

Zhao Yang mentioned that his family had found him a position at a design company. The pay wasn't much, but it was close to home.

He planned to slack off for a few months and then seamlessly transition into a full-time employee.

"Not bad, Zhao Yang!"

"I really envy you. As expected of a Jinling local. The rest of us can only live in rented apartments."

"Brother Yang, please take care of us in the future!"

Zhao Yang's roommates were over there flattering him.

But Zhao Yang simply waved his hand, "Small matter, it's just a small matter!"

Then, Zhao Yang glanced at Chang Hao, "Hey, Jingcheng Native, where are you headed?"

Compared to three years ago, Chang Hao had indeed matured a lot. He replied calmly that his family had arranged a position for him at a state-owned enterprise, and he would be heading back tomorrow.

"Holy crap! As expected of a Jingcheng Native!"

Zhao Yang gave him a thumbs up without hesitation.