No one knew how much time had passed.
The office lights were still on, while the night outside had grown deeper.
Gao Mengting leaned back in the beanbag chair beside the bookshelf, staring blankly at the ceiling without moving.
She couldn't remember when she had sat down.
She only remembered that, at some point, her knees had suddenly given out and her vision had gone dark. She had collapsed into the chair and hadn't been able to stand again. Before the Beginning still lay open on her lap, its title page facing up.
She slowly lowered her head and turned the book back to its cover.
M.J.
Jin Meixiao.
Her gaze moved back and forth between those two letters and the signature beneath them for a long time.
Her thoughts began to race uncontrollably backward.
That face, those glasses, the long light golden-brown hair, the line of collarbone beneath her shirt collar, that perfectly measured smile...
If she took off the glasses, changed her hair back to blackish brown, and stripped the gentleness from those eyes, replacing it with the piercing sharpness Gao Mengting had seen on magazine covers—
That was the person who stood beside central bank governors and political leaders from around the world at the Davos Forum.
That was the person all of Wall Street called "Ms. Smile."
Smiling Holdings. Jin Meixiao.
The world's youngest female billionaire, founder of a trillion-dollar business empire.
Gao Mengting had been following that name since college.
At first, perhaps it was merely the faint resemblance between their appearances that made her pay a little more attention to this young woman who had risen step by step.
But later, it had long ceased to be a matter of looks.
To Gao Mengting, Jin Meixiao had never been an idol in the fan