Chapter 125: Influence
An office employee in the Southeast Metropolis Daily's Editorial Department took the first subway of the morning to the newspaper's headquarters on schedule. He took a packet of flower tea from an office drawer whose runners did not work very well, shook some into a cup with tea stains around its rim, and brewed himself a satisfying cup before sitting back down. Spreading out the newspaper before him, he prepared to enjoy the daily that had been rushed into print overnight, in a morning of curling steam and white fluff drifting past the window.
This employee in the Editorial Department had graduated from Nanjing University three years earlier. But the prestigious diploma he had thought so impressive at university had only landed him work serving tea and fetching water when he first joined the newspaper, without anyone even giving him a proper glance. He had therefore abandoned his lofty pride completely, and after three years of struggling and working his way up, he had finally transferred to the Editorial Department office.
Stripped of their halo, most graduates of so-called elite universities were really no different from ordinary university students: they had to struggle, work hard, and support their families. Yet after spending years in society, they felt an inexplicable affection when looking back at their alma mater, because it always brought back those muddled university days.
But the news before him was anything but muddled: the Senchuan Group had been publicly grilled at the economic forum during Nanjing University's homecoming. Had the story continued along those lines, it would merely have become another brief business-and-society report about a competitor's smear campaign. Like the endless instances of unfair competition these days, it left readers somewhat numb.
The unexpected turn was that a Nanjing University student had immediately taken