Becoming a Confidence Coach to an Arrogant Director - Chapter 31

Chapter 31: Pains

The small sense of anticipation in my heart was cut off by a delivery call.

Stray cats and dogs, once they are domesticated, still know how to be attached to their owners. How could this person be so heartless? She would rather find someone else, order delivery, than come and see me herself.

Even if she had to find some random excuse to approach me, just like she used to do to earn points, I wouldn’t have the heart to drive her away again…

The Director limped to the door and took the delivery box from outside.

This was the food the puppy had given her. She had to use this to maintain her body, waiting for that machine to wander enough and then come back and beg her for shelter.

Or perhaps, once she earns enough points from others, she won’t come back…

She took a few bites of the cold dumplings in the box and then languidly curled up on the sofa again.

After the despair and numbness passed, what was left was more worry.

— She’s just a machine. What if she runs out so brazenly and breaks down like last time with no one around? What if she gets discovered?

— But she’s so smart. She’s the one who messes with others, isn’t she? Maybe right now, she’s in some hidden corner, executing some cute command to earn points…

The Director was tormented by these thoughts, and she finally couldn’t hold on anymore, curling into a small ball and falling asleep.

She spent the entire afternoon sobbing in her dreams, while that machine, since entering standby mode, had once again lost contact with this world.

…

Ding-dong~

The Director was woken up by the doorbell. Just as she was about to get up, her phone rang again.

“Hello, your delivery is at the door. Remember to pick it up!”

She was on time. Not a single meal was missed, except for the person herself.

The Director hung up the phone expressionlessly and limped to get the delivery.

— Some people are really putting in a lot of effort. It was delicious dumplings at noon and now shrimp fried rice in the evening. She doesn’t even have any points to earn from me, so why is she so active?

She couldn’t figure it out. When she was eating the stir-fried cucumbers from the shrimp fried rice, her heart didn’t hurt as much as before. It just felt empty, like a huge mark left behind after a piece of furniture was moved.

Ding-dong~ Ding-dong~

Less than half an hour later, the security door was rung again.

The person who was eating felt a sudden flutter in her heart. She dropped her small spoon and limped to the door.

When she got to the door, she hesitated, not wanting to open it. She leaned against the door, secretly swearing to herself while paying attention to the movement outside.

— I’m not going to forgive you so quickly. Just stand outside!

Guagua and Li Cheng, who were standing at the door, were nervously pinching each other’s thighs.

Li Cheng: “There’s no response. What should we do? Should we just run away? I’m a little scared to die!”

Guagua: “You already rang it, you bastard. Now you want to run away? If she comes out and can’t find anyone and looks at the surveillance, I don’t want to die either!”

Li Cheng: “But what should we do?”

Guagua: “How should I know!”

Li Cheng touched Guagua’s arm and softly and coaxingly probed, “How about you try again?”

The coaxed Guagua was very agitated. “Damn it, why don’t you try!”

After a few seconds of hesitation, Guagua grumbled and put his hand on the doorbell.

“It’s all your fault, you idiot. I’m with you, and I’m in this mess because of you!”

Ding-dong~

The Director, who was clinging to the door and couldn’t hear anything, was startled by the doorbell and shrank back.

— Forget it. I’ll let you in since you’re so pitiful! But I’m definitely not going to forgive you so quickly!

She specifically prepared her emotions, put on a cold face, and opened the door a little.

Outside, the moment the door opened, Li Cheng instinctively pushed Guagua in front of him and shrank behind him, trembling.

Guagua was clearly not mentally prepared either. His face turned pale with fright.

“Uh, Director… Director Gu, we…”

The cold wind in the hallway poured into her still-healing wounds, bit by bit, chilling her. Her frail body shivered.

Director Gu wanted to let them in out of politeness. She opened her mouth, but not a single sound came out. She could only helplessly push the door wide open and gesture for them to come in.

In the entryway, Director Gu’s silence made the two handsome young men’s hearts pound. They followed her in cautiously.

She pointed to the sofa, telling them to sit, and then she limped to get water for the two kids.

The two nervous guys then noticed that Director Gu’s foot was injured.

In just a few seconds, the two pushed each other back and forth twice. In the end, Guagua was pushed to the edge of the sofa by Li Cheng as a scapegoat and reached out a hand.

“Director… Director Gu, is your foot injured?”

Director Gu glanced at him expressionlessly, said nothing, and continued to limp toward the pantry.

Guagua turned his head and glared at Li Cheng. Li Cheng shrank his head, bit his lip, and squinted his eyes, afraid of being beaten.

Director Gu held two cups of water and walked over, enduring the pain in her foot. She still gave a cup to each of the two children expressionlessly.

She wanted to speak, but she couldn’t make a sound. Seeing the two little guys’ palms sweating from nervousness, she had no choice but to take out her phone from the coffee table and start a group chat with the three of them on WeChat.

Director Gu tapped the back of her phone, gesturing for them to look at their phones. The two young men finally reacted slowly. They quickly took out their phones and glanced at them.

— I can’t speak, so I can’t communicate with you directly. Is there something important you need to talk to me about?

The two kids who received the message looked at each other.

Li Cheng was especially brave this time. He quickly opened his chat window and typed furiously.

— Director Hu, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Is your throat uncomfortable?

In his haste, “Director Gu” was typed as “Director Hu,” and “sick” was typed as “what’s wrong?”

Guagua looked at the screen full of typos and was speechless. This guy was really a liability. He gave Li Cheng a look that said, “Director Gu is mute, but you’re not,” and cleverly fixed the bugs in someone’s chat box with face-to-face communication.

“Director Gu, are you okay? Do you want to go to the hospital?”

Director Gu sat upright on the small sofa. She glanced at the person who was speaking and quickly tapped her long fingers on the screen.

— I’m fine. Did Yuan Yishan ask you to come? Where is she?

“She went back to her hometown this morning…”

Li Cheng couldn’t hold it in and almost sold out the little darling. Luckily, Guagua pinched his thigh in time.

“Uh, no, Director Gu. It’s just… you weren’t here today, and we ran into some problems with the front-end work, so we thought we’d come and discuss it with you!”

He felt embarrassed after he finished speaking.

Li Cheng quickly chimed in.

“Yes, Director Gu. It’s… it’s true that we ran into a bug with the front end that we couldn’t fix!”

Director Gu looked at them indifferently, then lowered her head and typed on the screen.

— Where did she go? Why didn’t she come herself and sent you two to test the waters?

The air suddenly became silent. The atmosphere became subtle. The exposed Li Cheng and Guagua were so embarrassed that they wished they could find a mouse hole to crawl into. Unfortunately, the room was so well-decorated that there were no holes for them to crawl into.

Director Gu’s fingers tapped the soft keyboard both quickly and heavily.

— Answer me!

“She went back to her hometown!”

“She went on a business trip!”

Li Cheng and Guagua said two different reasons in unison. Facing Director Gu’s murderous stare, they almost died of embarrassment on the spot.

The three of them stared at each other in silence for a while. Director Gu didn’t make things difficult for them anymore and let the two kids go back.

What could she do about that little darling? She didn’t come herself and sent two stupid little brothers to torture her.

Their relationship was at an awkward stage. She couldn’t push her too hard. She could only wait for her to wander enough and come back on her own.

Even if she came back, she couldn’t scold her or hit her in her current state of muteness. She would just wait a little longer until things got a little better, and then she would bring her back and teach her a good lesson.

Director Gu opened WeChat, ready to transfer some money to her work phone, but after thinking about it, she transferred the money to Li Cheng instead.

— You transfer it to her!

The little Cheng who received the message on the other end: So I’m just your tool for transferring money? The middlemen at least earn a difference in price!

Despite his deep complaints, he replied tearfully.

— Got it, Director Gu.

After everything was settled, Director Gu took a blanket from the bedroom and returned to the sofa. She wrapped herself up and went to sleep. She didn’t turn off the lights, thinking that if she came back in the middle of the night, she would be able to hear the knocking on the door more clearly.

In the cold, dark night, the beautiful Encourager Yuan, a machine, had parked herself in a deserted, ruined building. Without consciousness, she couldn’t feel the biting cold of the night or the scary sound of the wind blowing through the weeds and broken bricks.

If it weren’t for the system upgrade, a normal shutdown and restart would be very fast. But this time, it took her a whole day to shut down because she had to guide the little spiritual entity to familiarize itself with the various checkpoints of the internal program.

After shutting down, she had to wait for 48 hours. All of her points and memories had to be completely cleared when the system was in a deep sleep state to ensure that nothing went wrong. Therefore, for the next 48 hours, Yuan Yishan’s consciousness was still in a standby state, and she couldn’t feel anything from the outside world.

The sleepless Director Gu spent the next few days with three meals of takeout. In her current situation, she couldn’t go to the office and could only work from home.

To prevent herself from thinking about the irrelevant person, the Director chose to immerse herself in work.

Her life seemed to have returned to before the liberation. As soon as she sat in front of the computer, she would stare at the code in the editor day and night. The number of times her migraines flared up was frequent. She would endure it over and over again. When she really couldn’t bear it, she would lie on the coffee table to rest for a while. Sometimes, she would feel very sleepy, but she couldn’t fall asleep, which was very uncomfortable.

It was so common for her to be in this situation before, but now she felt sad. It seemed that once you tasted the sweetness, you became greedy and didn’t want to go back to a bitter life…

…

About a week later, the Encourager Yuan’s consciousness gradually woke up as the program restarted. The morning sun shone on her face through the window covered with weeds.

A light flashed in her electronic brain, which had been in a long period of hibernation. She subconsciously dodged it out of habit.

Yuan Yishan looked at the time on the control panel and realized that she had been in standby for seven days and seven nights.

She didn’t know why, but the first thing she, a machine, did after waking up after being in standby for so long was to touch the other machine next to her.

Her phone had run out of battery and turned off automatically. Fortunately, since she found out she was a machine, the Encourager Yuan had developed the habit of carrying a charging cable with her, and it came in very handy.

Yuan Yishan used an adapter to plug her phone into her neck to charge it. After turning it on, her phone was flooded with messages.

For three days, her user, who had kicked her out, had been calling and sending her messages one after another. The most recent one was sent half an hour ago.

— Where are you? I really can’t find you.

Just as she finished reading the message and was thinking about whether to reply, Boss Pei called.

“Yishan, have you returned from your hometown? Something happened to your senior sister, just half an hour ago!”