I quit

The conference room hummed with restrained chatter. Whispered conversations rose and fell, creating an irritating echo in the enclosed space.

Pei Yang stayed silent for a long while before speaking. "I was only looking at the facts."

"The facts?" Lan Shuang scoffed. "Then, looking at the facts as you suggest, who would have taken responsibility if one of the children there had been injured? You, sitting here making snide remarks?"

"What if someone caused this deliberately?" Pei Yang stared at Lan Shuang. "I took photos at the scene. Those broken crossbeams had clearly been tampered with. If Yin Sufang's negligence really led to a structure that violated regulations being brought into the exhibition hall, why did it only start breaking apart after the exhibition ended? Because whoever tampered with it also knew those children were too precious to hurt."

Lan Shuang's expression changed.

Pei Yang continued, "Whoever did it wanted nothing more than a plausible excuse to destroy everything Yin Sufang had worked so hard on for so long. Tell me, who stood to benefit if something went wrong with Yin Sufang's exhibition?"

The whispering stopped. One disgruntled colleague said, "Curator Pei, what are you implying?"

"My meaning is obvious. Everyone in the Exhibition Planning Department is a suspect."

"Including you?"

"Including me," Pei Yang said. "And I'm the prime suspect."

Yin Sufang's expression shifted, and he looked at Pei Yang in confusion.

"After all, rumor has it that the person going to Headquarters will be chosen between Yin Sufang and me. If something went wrong with his exhibition, wouldn't I benefit the most?" Pei Yang's gaze swept over everyone at the square table as he said evenly, "Besides, if I hadn't missed that trip hazard that appeared out of nowhere on the floor, the eaves wouldn't have fallen apart."

Lan Shuang lifted her eyes. "Pei Yang, are you admitting you did this?"

"I'm not low enough to resort to underhanded tricks like that." Pei Yang's voice was slightly rough as he said something that stunned everyone. "I just feel I can't escape responsibility for this. If the company intends to punish Yin Sufang, I'm willing to be punished alongside him."

Yin Sufang's hand tightened on his thigh in shock. "Pei Yang..."

The conference room had barely settled before another round of whispers began. "What is Pei Yang doing? He's asking for trouble..."

"Since when were he and Fangfang so close?"

"Could he be the culprit pointing fingers, trying to make Boss Lan and Fangfang trust him..."

"Enough! Shut up!" Lan Shuang shouted in irritation. "Everyone out. Pei Yang, stay."

"Lan!" Yin Sufang started to say something, but a glare from Lan Shuang stopped him. "Get out. Don't you understand plain language?"

The others wished they could vanish on the spot. They grabbed their notebooks and hurried out, scattering in all directions.

Yin Sufang glanced at the relaxed Pei Yang, then followed his colleagues out with his head down.

Only Pei Yang and Lan Shuang remained in the once-bustling conference room. Lan Shuang looked at him in exasperation and let out a long sigh. "Pei Yang, you've been with me since you graduated. We've worked together for at least two years. There are over a dozen people in the Exhibition Planning Department, and you're the one I understand the least!"

Pei Yang said nothing.

"You and Yin Sufang have been competing since your internships. After all this time, we're finally about to have a winner, and you want to lose alongside him?" Lan Shuang tapped her fingers on the table and swept her long hair back. "This was such a good opportunity. Yin Sufang's negligence caused an accident-the most basic mistake a curator could make! As long as you take charge of general operations on the next project and do better than him, you'll have earned your place at Headquarters! Why would you announce in front of all those people that you wanted to stand by him through thick and thin?"

"So it was you after all, Boss Lan." Pei Yang raised an eyebrow, his face expressionless.

Lan Shuang's pupils widened slightly. "What are you talking about?"

"Today, you seemed more like a stranger than at any other time since I've known you," Pei Yang said. "You knew how proud Yin Sufang was, yet you humiliated him like that in front of the entire department. You were trying to force him out."

"What nonsense are you talking? Why would I force Yin Sufang out?"

"Because you wanted to send me to Headquarters without anyone questioning it." Pei Yang sat ramrod straight, a thin frost settling over his expression. "Just as you said yourself, you wanted me to have 'earned my place.'"

Lan Shuang's breathing grew shallow, her gaze darting about. "I mentored both you and Yin Sufang. Either of you going to Headquarters would make me look good. Besides, Yin Sufang is a better talker than you. Why would I insist on sending you?"

"Yes, you wanted to send Yin Sufang to Headquarters from the start, didn't you? Professional ability doesn't matter to you at all. You only fought for a place at Headquarters for us so you could climb higher yourself. As long as 'one of your own' got into Headquarters, there would be a chance to meet the group's senior executives and get the company relocated, just as you wanted."

"Yin Sufang is good-looking and knows how to sweet-talk people, and he goes through boyfriends one after another. You thought he had a knack for hooking men, so you wanted to stay on good terms with him. Your goal was to put him in front of the senior executives one day so he could put in a word for FK Exhibitions. Otherwise, as president of a company stuck out in the middle of nowhere, you'd never get ahead."

Lan Shuang's eyes instantly reddened. "Shut up!"

"But later, you believed the rumors from Headquarters and thought one of the senior executives there had taken a fancy to me. You immediately switched targets from Yin Sufang to me. When discussing it with me got you nowhere, you changed your mind and decided to send me to Headquarters. After all, you'd mentored me yourself. Once I got there and made contact with that 'senior executive,' I'd surely bring up relocating my 'former company's' office for the sake of our relationship."

"But you'd already given Yin Sufang the chief curator role. What could you do? As long as his exhibition went smoothly, you could no longer send me to Headquarters on 'merit.' So you came up with another plan: tampering with the exhibition hall."

"That's absolute nonsense!" Lan Shuang's shoulders jerked, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing the hem of her clothes. "Your imagination is running wild!"

"Then please tell me, Boss Lan, why was the exhibition hall's surveillance footage deleted?" Pei Yang's voice was like a stream beneath the ice, every word radiating cold. "I didn't suspect you at all before I tried to retrieve the footage. Of the nineteen people in the Exhibition Planning Department, who had the means to pay someone off to delete it?"

With a smack, Lan Shuang slammed her hand on the table and sprang to her feet. "Pei Yang!" she snapped. "You're impossible to reason with! What's so difficult about going to Headquarters and putting in a word for our company with that 'senior executive' while you're there? It's clearly a win-win! Don't you want to work at the renowned FK Group Headquarters? You're still so young. The working environment and opportunities for advancement there are a hundred times better than what you'd have staying here!"

"Honestly, I do," Pei Yang said. "But I'd rather get there fairly, not through dirty tricks."

"If you don't play dirty, plenty of others will. You're helping Yin Sufang so much because you have no idea how many times he's sabotaged you behind your back, do you?"

Barely had Lan Shuang finished speaking when the conference room door was kicked open. Yin Sufang stood in the doorway, his eyes blazing with fury. "If I, Yin Sufang, have ever sabotaged Pei Yang behind his back, may I die a horrible death."

Pei Yang looked toward the door in astonishment. "You..."

Lan Shuang panicked completely. "Fangfang? You were eavesdropping outside the door?!"

"If I hadn't listened, I would never have known that the Lan I've always respected was this kind of person." Yin Sufang gave a sorrowful smile. "As you wished, I quit."