Chapter 88: Porcelain Doll

She had meant to pet the cat while she was at it, but that hope had clearly come to nothing. What she had just seen was no place for her to stay in such thoughtless fashion.

Then she would come again after work.

Lin Luyou made that quiet promise to herself.

With that settled, she let out a heavy breath, as though she meant to cast the whole affair behind her.

“Xiaoxiao, your mocha!” Lin Luyou said as she handed over the coffee, frowning under her breath. “Why are all the lights in the hallway out? It’s awfully dark.”

“The power’s gone out. Luckily our company bought a generator, or we’d really be in trouble.”

As a company that had begun as an e-commerce platform, Max possessed user data measured in the hundreds of millions. All of that information was stored in a local database.

Both the database’s data storage and the immense computing power required to keep the platform running smoothly depended on electricity. Although a blackout in the tech park was almost impossible, the head of the information department had still, against much opposition at the board meeting, insisted on purchasing a high-capacity generator.

And as it turned out, that decision had been brilliantly farsighted. Who could have imagined that, during construction of the third phase, someone would accidentally cut a cable and plunge the entire park into a massive outage?

After all, the power supplied by a generator could not compare with that of the grid. And since that electricity had to be reserved first for keeping the platform running, departments such as operations and marketing, which were not considered “core,” were naturally allotted a little less.

As Tang Xiao put it, “Be glad they were in a good mood and didn’t cut your power altogether. Stop complaining.”

Meanwhile, on the other side, after Lin Luyou had left the coffee shop, Qin Shishen only then drew a breath and slowly made his way toward his chair.

It was not even three meters away, yet Qin Shishen felt as though he had just run a kilometer.

“It looks like a few more orders came in during the outage. Xiao Song, check them. If you can make them, make them. If not, send the customers a message and refund the orders.”

Holding his temple with one hand, Qin Shishen gave the instructions to Xiao Song.

“Oh, and be careful. I accidentally broke two tall glasses just now.”

Xiao Song slipped on an apron, then looked at Qin Shishen with concern.

“Boss, why don’t you go upstairs and rest for a while? I’m guessing the power won’t be back for some time.”

Without waiting for a reply, he kicked the glass shards aside with his foot and, leaving no room for argument, simply hauled Qin Shishen to his feet.

“I’m fine. I just need a moment.”

“Come on, boss, you’re in no condition to be stubborn. You can lie down upstairs and recover just the same. Besides, you know how narrow the workspace is here. You’ll only get in the way.”

Xiao Song felt that his instinct for self-preservation had once again gone astray. But then he thought of the imperial decree he was holding from Aunt Shuang, and his nerve returned.

What Qin Shishen had gone through in the war-torn region of the Middle East had, apart from the man himself, only ever been told to his psychiatrist. His family knew he had suffered severe psychological trauma and had once sunk into complete self-isolation, but no one knew how severe it had truly been. Qin Shishen was simply too adept at hiding it.

If Qin Shiguang had not once accidentally dropped a plate while washing dishes at home, causing Qin Shishen to collapse to the floor and faint on the spot, none of them would ever have realized just how seriously he had fallen ill.

After that incident, Qin Shishen had become something of a porcelain doll in the family. Everyone walked and handled things with extraordinary care, terrified of breaking something and triggering that one place in his mind that could not be touched.

Yet it was precisely for that reason that Lu Yushuang no longer believed the nonsense Qin Shishen had been saying about recovering on his own at home. She had simply handed the coffee shop she kept as a hobby over to him, forcing him to deal with the outside world whether he liked it or not.