When I bad-mouth him, I always do it quietly

"The second round of interviews is a personal preferences survey." After Yingjun finished speaking, a new set of questions appeared on the panel.

"Do you eat cilantro? Do you prefer going barefoot or wearing shoes? Do you chew your straw when drinking milk tea? Do you prefer sleeping on your stomach or your side? Do you like spicy or sour food? Do you prefer strawberry cake or mango cake..."

Li Yi asked uncertainly, "Are you sure these are the questions for the second round?"

"Yes. The young master designed these questions himself. There are single-answer and multiple-answer questions. Please answer carefully. An error rate above 10% means elimination."

"This is really hard," Li Yi commented, while his mind raced to work out what the person who set the questions was after.

These questions didn't seem to have much to do with Shi Yan. He didn't look like someone who would choose strawberry cake-more like someone who would smash one into someone else's face.

Li Yi swiped across the panel a few times, carefully reading through all the questions. They were all about everyday habits.

Forget it. I'll just answer however. Who knows what he means by asking these questions.

Anyone who could figure out a psycho's thoughts probably wasn't normal either.

Li Yi considered himself to still fall within the bounds of normality.

"I don't eat cilantro. I prefer going barefoot. I like chewing the straw if the milk tea has pearls, but not if it doesn't. I like sleeping on my stomach. I eat both spicy and sour food. I like both strawberry and mango cake..."

He quickly answered all the questions.

He waited for the result without much expectation.

This time, the result took longer than he had imagined. He waited almost ten minutes before hearing Yingjun's joyful voice.

"Congratulations! You answered everything correctly and successfully passed the second round!"

"Those were all right?" Li Yi looked at the robot in surprise. "How were the answers determined?"

"The young master checked them himself," Yingjun said joyfully. "You're the first person to successfully pass the second round, and you even got a perfect score."

"President Shi took part in the interview too?"

"The young master only takes part in the second round. But the first round alone eliminates 65% of applicants. The first question of the second round eliminates 50% of those remaining, and the second question eliminates another 50% of those remaining, and so on. The young master only looks at the answers to the multiple-answer questions."

"Then is he watching me right now too?"

"If you're ready now, the third round will be an interview with the young master himself."

Shi Yan was actually interviewing him personally. It seemed he really cared about this garden.

He hadn't met him at the company, but had actually managed to at the villa. He was in luck.

"I'm ready. Please begin."

"All right. Turning on the camera now and starting the video interview."

An image of an office appeared on the panel on Yingjun's face. Shi Yan sat in an office chair, presumably conducting the interview on his computer. Li Yi could see his face head-on.

The man's handsome face was expressionless, his thin lips pressed tightly together. His dark eyes stared at him for a few seconds. "Li Yi, the biological son the Lu family took back three years ago. Before that, you lived at Nanshan Orphanage.

"Am I right?"

"Yes. It seems you really did investigate me, President Shi."

"Last time, you kicked my tire. This time, you came to my villa to interview for the gardener position, and, as coincidence would have it, answered every interview question correctly.

"It seems you know quite a lot about me too.

"Li Yi, what are you after?"

If he stated his purpose now, given Shi Yan's crazy personality, he would definitely reject him on the spot, just as he had deleted him from his contacts. Completely unreasonable!

It would be safer to get hired as the gardener first, build a good relationship with him, then find an opportunity to bring up working together.

"My purpose is to get the well-paid gardener job here. If you've investigated me, President Shi, you must know that my standing in the Lu family is even lower than that of their servants.

"Now that I'm eighteen, the Lu family probably won't give me any more money, so I need to earn enough to pay for four years of university tuition.

"The pay here happens to be high. Just working over the summer would let me save enough for four years of tuition and living expenses."

"Is that so?" Shi Yan clasped his hands, and a smile suddenly appeared on his expressionless face. "But I don't hire summer workers."

"Your interview seems pretty difficult. Yingjun said I was the only one who got every question right in the second round." Anxious inside, Li Yi forced himself to look calm as he suggested, "How about you keep recruiting while I work here? Once you find someone suitable, I'll leave right away. Would that work?"

Seeing Li Yi finally show an expression befitting a teenager put him in a good mood.

A kid who had only just come of age was pretending to be an adult in front of him, and even dared to scheme against him.

Although he hadn't managed to get his ultimate purpose out of him, keeping him close would be fine too. Sooner or later, he would be unable to hold back.

"All right. Start work tomorrow, then."

"Okay. Thank you."

Li Yi breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally passed.

Yingjun turned off the camera and came closer with a grin. "Li Yi, congratulations. We're colleagues from now on."

Being colleagues with a robot was a strange relationship.

"Are you the only one in this villa?" Li Yi turned to look around.

"Aren't you here too?" Yingjun blinked his electronic eyes.

"...I mean, aren't there any other servants in the villa? What if President Shi comes back?"

"He doesn't come back often. About three or four times a month. He's reclusive and hard to get along with, and he doesn't like strangers in his home.

"Someone comes over to clean the villa every few days, and the things in the fridge are replaced every few days too.

"From now on, you'll be the second living person in this villa."

Having more or less grown used to Yingjun's way of speaking, Li Yi calmly changed the subject. "Can I look around the villa? I'd like to see my future working environment first."

"Of course. I'll take you."

Yingjun took Li Yi to the back garden. The villa's back garden was huge, much larger than the villa itself.

All sorts of expensive plants and flowers had been planted in different areas according to their growing habits.

One large patch of Chinese lantern lilies in particular caught his attention. The little golden-yellow flowers were square, hanging from slender stems like tiny gift boxes.

"These are the young master's favorite flowers. Your main job is to take good care of them."

"Why does your young master like such girly flowers? I feel like he should like flowers such as black roses or midnight tulips."

"Everyone says the young master is a psycho. What a psycho likes should be different from what normal people like, right?"

"Can your young master listen in on what you're saying right now?"

"No, don't worry. When I bad-mouth him, I always do it quietly. He doesn't know."

"Somehow, I still don't feel reassured."

"Black roses, midnight tulips?" Having opened the garden's surveillance feed, Shi Yan silently searched for the two flowers on Baidu, then gave a cold snort and uttered one word: "Ugly."