Caught Checking Women's Clothing at Work, Cold Snap Incoming!

By September, the sun in Hangzhou had not changed one bit. It was past ten on Wednesday morning, the air conditioners hummed through the office, and the clatter of keyboards merged into one continuous sound.

After reviewing a batch of merchant submissions, Lin Fan returned to his desk with a cup of water and casually opened a page that had nothing whatsoever to do with 3C products.

The homepage for the women's clothing category.

He looked at that page three times a day now, openly and without hiding it. The more he tried to conceal it, the more suspicious it would look.

The logic was simple. He had staked the rest of his year on one day in mid-September. Once the weather turned cold, searches for leggings would skyrocket overnight. In his previous life, he had watched that curve play out firsthand from the merchant side. He knew exactly where it began and where it peaked.

What he needed to do was catch the two or three days right before demand took off.

Applications for seasonal campaigns had to be submitted early. Calls to chase inventory had to be timed around payment collections. Too early, and money and stock would be tied up sitting idle. Too late, and the slots would be taken by others, leaving him without even a sip of the soup.

Over the past half month, his listings had climbed the rankings one position at a time. Sales and reviews accumulated day by day. He had secured low prices from suppliers, and all he had to do was wait for that day. Once searches exploded, the listings at the front would catch the first wave of traffic, daily sales would leap from dozens to hundreds, and then a campaign slot would bring another surge. That would be enough to secure his footing for the autumn.

So he could not afford to miss a single movement on the women's clothing side.

Today was a little different.

On the trending search rankings, the keyword "leggings" had jumped up three places.

The weather had not cooled yet, but the keyword was already moving. Some places in the north had begun to cool down, and orders there had started picking up. This was the earliest signal before demand exploded, and it matched the curve from his previous life.

He leaned closer and checked the rankings above and below it once more.

"Well, well."

A voice sounded from behind him. Zhou Bin stood behind his chair with a tea cup in hand, his eyes on the screen. That "well, well" came out with the satisfaction of someone who had waited half a month for this.

"Lin, studying women's clothing during work hours?"

His voice was not quiet. Half the office could hear him. Several nearby heads lifted, then quickly lowered again.

Lin Fan did not reach for the mouse. The page remained open. Frantically closing it now would only make him look guilty.

"Brother Bin."

"I've been standing behind you for half a minute." Zhou Bin walked around to the side of his desk and set down his cup. "A 3C category associate staring at a women's clothing page without blinking. I thought you'd transferred departments."

"I was just taking a look."

"Just taking a look?" Zhou Bin raised his voice. "Lin, it's not that I want to lecture you. The supervisor praised you a couple of times recently. Young people getting a little full of themselves is normal, but you need to watch where you're floating off to. Floating off into women's clothing—what kind of nonsense is that?"

He patted the edge of the desk, putting on the air of someone speaking from the heart.

"That shipping-origin figure last week—I presented it at the meeting. You saw the supervisor's expression. The team finally managed to build up some dignity. Don't let one person ruin it all."

Who had stayed up on duty, checking those figures line by line? And who had talked himself hoarse presenting them at the meeting?

Anger surged up from Lin Fan's chest.

He lowered his head and forced it back down.

"Let me say something harsher." Zhou Bin leaned closer and lowered his voice a little, though everyone around them could still hear clearly. "In your confirmation paperwork, I'm the one who has to sign the mentoring evaluation. How do you expect me to write it? That your performance is outstanding because you study women's clothing every day?"

"Brother Bin is right to criticize me. I was in the wrong."

"Good that you know it." Zhou Bin straightened up, carried a stack of documents over from his own desk, and slapped them onto the corner of Lin Fan's desk. "Recheck these merchant qualifications before the end of the day. Get your head back in the game."

He left with his cup in hand, his steps far lighter than when he had arrived.

The work area went quiet for a while. Someone muttered softly that he had just earned praise, only to get scolded right after. Being a newcomer was tough.

Lin Fan dragged the stack of qualifications in front of him and turned through them page by page.

He had heard this routine so many times over two lifetimes that it had grown calluses on his ears. In his previous life, it had been this same work area and the same line about young people getting carried away. Back then, he had truly believed it. He had lowered his head, and he stayed that way for two whole years.

Hearing it again in this life, the anger was still anger. But once it burned out, calculation followed.

First, there was the confirmation evaluation. Zhou Bin would write the mentoring comments, but Zheng Haifeng had personally seen his two consecutive successes. When confirmation day came, one word from the supervisor would outweigh ten columns of Zhou Bin's comments. Lin Fan could judge the weight of that clearly. There was no need to argue now.

Then there was today's scolding. Half the office had heard every word. From now on, he had two new labels over his head: strange and unprofessional. A loner who left work on time and browsed women's clothing during work hours—there was an explanation for all of it. He was just a lazy new hire who slacked off. No one would connect him with something as dangerous as running a store.

A scolding in exchange for another layer of disguise was not a bad deal.

He had dared to leave the page openly displayed at his desk because he had weighed the risks. The company's blade was aimed at employees running stores. There was no rule against employees viewing whatever web pages they wanted during work hours. Looking at women's clothing was, at most, slacking off. It did not even warrant disciplinary action, let alone come anywhere close to an audit.

The things that could truly kill him—names, goods, and money—were nowhere near this desk.

As for Brother Bin, that shout had publicly hammered his new label into place. He would remember this favor, along with the one from the scheduling incident. He would repay them both slowly.

He had performed this kind of qualification recheck at least eighty, if not a hundred, times in his previous life. He finished a little after five, stacked everything neatly, and returned it to Zhou Bin. At exactly six, he locked his computer, slung on his backpack, and left.

As usual, there was commotion behind him. Someone remarked that this guy had just been scolded and still dared to leave right on the dot.

At eight that night, the garage light was pulled on. The six sacks had noticeably emptied, while two more rows of packed parcels were stacked against the wall.

The first thing he had done after getting home was check the backend. Forty-two orders today.

He had recorded this week's numbers in a notebook: thirty-one, thirty-five, thirty-eight, then forty-two today. Each day was another step upward. Before the weather had even cooled, the numbers were climbing on their own through rankings and reviews.

Ma Le sat on a small stool, wrapping tape around parcels. He was far more practiced than he had been a few days ago. After finishing one, he tossed it aside.

"I did the math for you." He weighed a parcel in his hand. "Forty-two orders, five yuan profit per order—that's over two hundred. Your spending money is about to catch up to my rental income."

"This is just the loose change."

"Keep bragging." Ma Le curled his lip and jerked his chin toward the sacks. "There are over a thousand pairs. I think you'll be selling them through New Year's."

Over a thousand pairs—once the temperature dropped, they might not even last half a month.

Lin Fan did not say that aloud. Ma Le would not believe him anyway. When the time came, he would let the numbers speak for themselves.

He had barely over a hundred yuan in cash left. It would be hard to make it to mid-month, but he had to hold on. He had calculated the payment schedule; the first batch was about to arrive. It would land in Ma Le's card first, then be transferred over. The very day he received it, he would call Old He to chase the second batch—starting with two thousand pairs. Old He even had a truck ready to haul the goods.

Things were tight, but only for a few more days.

At ten, after packing the final order, the two of them went upstairs. Ma Le collapsed onto the sofa to watch television while Lin Fan sat at the computer and opened the store backend.

The application portal for the seasonal campaign had gone live today.

He entered the listing, entered the quoted price, entered the inventory, clicked through to the end, and submitted it.

The threshold for these small category campaigns was low. The women's clothing department handled the reviews, running everything through an assembly line. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small stores applied. His store was buried among them, and no one would give it a second glance. But once the campaign slot went live, the platform itself would be sending traffic to his listing.

His own store had to pass through the hands of a women's clothing category associate. It felt a little strange, but among thousands of stores, no one would stop to look closely.

Then, once the cold snap arrived, the two streams of traffic would collide. Breaking a hundred daily sales would only be the beginning.

The money generated from this wave would become the stock funds for November's big promotion. The first pot of gold he wanted would be made entirely from this gust of wind.

After submitting, he casually opened a news portal. A news alert popped up in the lower-right corner of the homepage.

The first strong cold front of autumn was moving south this year. It was expected to cross the Yangtze River around the weekend, dropping temperatures across the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region by more than ten degrees overnight.

He read the article from beginning to end twice.

Ma Le walked past behind him carrying instant noodles and glanced at the screen.

"What's so interesting about the weather forecast?"

"It's getting cold." Lin Fan closed the page and stood up. He needed to go downstairs and recount tomorrow morning's parcels.

"In the next couple of days."