On Monday morning, Zhai Yunxuan went home with Mother Zhai. She probably would not be back for over a week. His emotional fulfillment had left Dong Xuebin positively glowing. He watched the mother and daughter get into the car with great reluctance, then pursed his lips and headed for the Party School, reminiscing about the romantic evening before. He had money, he had an official position, and now he had love too. Damn, this life was simply too sweet. But when he thought about how it was Zhou Guoan's first day as Branch Bureau director, Dong Xuebin's heart hung in the air again. He wondered how Zhou Guoan would deal with him after his Party School training ended.
One day... two days... three days... In the blink of an eye, it was Dong Xuebin's tenth day at the Party School. He had accumulated eleven minutes of BACK. Tuesday at noon.
After the sociology lecture ended, Dong Xuebin packed up his notes and left the classroom. Seeing several other section-level cadres gathered in twos and threes, chatting and laughing, he gave a bitter smile and went to eat alone. It was not that he did not want to build good relationships with his classmates—he desperately wanted those connections—but these section-level leaders were either from the Organization Department or the Supervision Bureau, and even the lowest-ranking among them were deputy section-level cadres from the district Audit Bureau. When they learned during introductions that Dong Xuebin only enjoyed deputy section-level rank and worked in a relatively obscure department like State Security, they lost interest in getting to know him. It was not that they looked down on him; at his age, deputy section-level rank was already impressive. But State Security simply had little contact with other government departments.
After lunch, there was still