The barbecue restaurant buzzed with voices, hot and steaming.
The charred aroma of cumin and chili mingled with diners' chatter and the clinking of glasses, filling the air with a vivid, rough-hewn sense of everyday life.
Yet all of it seemed completely cut off from Zhang Lei.
He stood there blankly, staring dazedly at the girl in the JK Uniform, her smile blooming like a flower.
His mind was filled with that unimaginable identity.
He had worked at Zhongcheng Group for over three years, starting as a low-level salesperson and becoming a key player in channel operations at the Quancheng branch.
Then, after much difficulty, he had finally clawed his way into his current role as a specialist in the headquarters' Modern Channel Business Department.
He understood this enormous, rigidly hierarchical organization, with its tangled web of connections, very deeply.
Standing Director Tian Chengye was not only the group's second-largest shareholder, but also one of the core figures among those with real power within the company.
It was said that at least half of the group's current executives had been personally promoted by him.
He was the true controller of the group's most crucial revenue-generating division.
Even though he had gradually begun delegating authority and brought in new directors like Qin Dechang to keep things in balance,
his influence and connections, built up over more than a decade within the group, remained immensely significant.
And Tang Song's girlfriend was actually Tian Chengye's daughter—
"Zhang Lei? Zhang Lei!"
Tang Song's voice seemed to come from far away, pulling him back from his muddled thoughts.
"Oh, oh! Coming!" Zhang Lei suddenly came to his senses and instinctively pinched his own thigh.
"Hiss."
The sharp pain proved that everything before him was not an illusion.
Zhang Lei stiffly sat back down across from