A year later, the biggest change for Old Liu was that he was no longer an unofficial tagalong, but a full-fledged member.
Though his duties were much the same, at least he no longer had to pay his own way to travel with the group. He had successfully landed himself a position with reimbursable expenses.
There were considerably more people in the meeting room this year. Last year, Coach Jia Qiong had essentially done all the talking, with Nurse Joy and Li Han helping him out.
This year, they had a more complete team, but the meeting also featured more pointless topics, leaving Xin Mu struggling to stay awake.
Beside him, Meownei was boredly grooming the leaves on her back and counting their veins.
"Ahem. All right, enough small talk. Let's move on to the main business."
At those words, Xin Mu jolted awake and pulled out his phone to check the time. Twenty whole minutes of talking, and not a single useful point.
"I feel like I should find an excuse to leave..."
"Meow. (Good idea, but I have a plan.)"
Equally bored, Meownei glanced out the window. Seeing that the rain had stopped, she fished the car keys out of Xin Mu's pocket.
Then she pressed the button several times, and the car parked outside immediately began blaring its alarm.
"Sorry, something seems to be wrong with my car. I'll be right back."
Xin Mu understood what Meownei was getting at and left the meeting room with a perfectly reasonable car-related excuse.
The speaker frowned but said nothing. This was one of their star players, the one responsible for guaranteeing the team a respectable result. It was only natural that he had things to attend to.
But before the speaker could continue, Old Liu stood up as well.