Chapter 30: The Second Day of Moving Bricks (1)

Although he had taken his medication, Qin Shishen woke before five in the morning. To be precise, he was jolted awake by a nightmare.

During his time as a psychological consultant with the team in the Middle East, he had absorbed an overwhelming amount of negative emotion. The final accident had forced him to cut short the project and return home ahead of schedule.

He still remembered that, just before leaving, he passed by the team’s dormitory and overheard someone inside saying, “It’s a pity about Shen. His expertise is solid, but his psychological resilience and luck just aren’t up to it…”

But only he knew that his brush with death was not something that could be explained away by mere misfortune.

Lying in bed a few moments longer, Qin Shishen finally dragged himself up, washed, and sat down at his computer. His desktop held only three icons—every bit as minimal as the rest of his apartment.

After returning, his license as a psychological consultant had been revoked by the association, and he had undergone six months of therapy. To be honest, he had grown so used to the doctor’s chair that lying in the patient’s seat was more than a little hard to accept.

He had studied psychology for eight years and worked as a counselor for five. Then one day he was told, “Given your current mental state, you may no longer be suited to this profession.”

In that moment, it felt as though a piece of his heart had been hollowed out.

The skill he had thought would sustain him for life, the craft he relied on to make a living, vanished overnight.

His mother, fearing he would seclude himself and develop new troubles, had dragged his father, who was traveling abroad, home on an overnight flight. Yet, aside from transferring legal ownership of Xingyu Café to Qin Shishen, his parents did little else. Once the formalities were done, they stayed barely a day before resuming their interrupted trip around the world.

Qin Shishen clicked on the icon composed of several graphic design tools, then rose to the kitchen to prepare a simple breakfast for himself.

He fried an egg, warmed a cup of milk, and five minutes later was back at his desk with his modest meal.

He opened iHome, a renowned domestic interior design website. Through this platform, designers could receive orders, create, and deliver their work without ever leaving home—earning high praise from its users.

In the two and a half years since returning, he had finally found something that held a modicum of interest.

After replying to emails and picking up two new commissions from his message list, the sky outside was just beginning to lighten.

**

Meanwhile, Lin Luoyou had just been startled awake by her own alarm, sitting on her bed in a daze with her hair in wild disarray.

Jiang Xiaohan, her roommate, had also been roused by the relentless, life-threatening barrage of alarms. Rubbing her eyes, she murmured sleepily, her voice muffled by a yawn:

“It’s not even seven yet! Why on earth are you up so early?”

Faced with her friend’s accusation, Lin Luoyou looked apologetic. But if given another chance, she would almost certainly be “unrepentant.”

“Sorry, sorry, but we have way too much to do. I figured the earlier I get there, the sooner I can start. If I finish early, I won’t have to take a cab home tonight.”

The forty-seven yuan she’d spent on a cab the night before still made her wince.

“I bet your plan to leave early today won’t work out,” Jiang Xiaohan muttered, refusing to leave her bed. “Don’t forget we have a meeting at school tomorrow afternoon. And knowing your company’s style… your tasks are never handed off to anyone else.”

Lin Luoyou’s enthusiasm, which had just been building, was instantly deflated by Jiang Xiaohan’s words. She had almost forgotten—besides attending Wen Chuan’s seminar tomorrow afternoon, she also needed to get her final rabies shot in the morning.

All things considered, if she managed to leave the office before nine tonight, she would count herself extraordinarily lucky.