The next day.
When Bai Heng stepped into the courtyard, he found Jing Yuan still sitting in the pavilion with his eyes closed, resting.
Catching sight of Bai Heng emerging from the room, Jing Yuan put on an act and asked:
"Little Bai, how did you rest last night?"
"Heh... hehehehe..." Bai Heng could not stop himself from sneering. Then he pointed at the corner of his mouth, where the skin had been bitten open. "What do you think?"
Last night, Jingliu had first bitten him hard on the mouth, then held him all night as a body pillow.
When he woke that morning, he had been shivering from the cold, and his arm was so numb he could barely lift it. He had only just managed to wriggle free.
"Looks like Master still doesn't know her own strength when she makes a move." Jing Yuan held a scroll in one hand and said with a smile, "Oh, right. I've already transferred the relevant documents you requested to your personal interstellar mailbox."
"Oh? You don't look like someone who works that efficiently." Bai Heng teased.
"You can't judge a book by its cover." Jing Yuan replied with a smile.
"All right, I know your subordinates are capable." While exposing Jing Yuan's little secret, Bai Heng took out his phone and contacted his subordinate far away at the Interastral Astronomical Society.
A moment later, a girl's gentle voice came from the other end of the call:
"Hello... is this Mr. Bai Heng? This is Shilna. I'll be handling your work coordination today. Is there anything you need?"
"The documents for this Xianzhou project have already been sent to my personal mailbox. Organize them and submit them to Professor Edmond. My itinerary remains unchanged. I'll return in seven days."
Shilna, who was specifically responsible for coordinating with Bai Heng, answered blankly:
"Mhm... understood, Mr. Bai Heng. I hope you have a pleasant week on the Xianzhou."
The call ended.
At the Interastral Astronomical Society, in the observatory's communications control room.
Shilna murmured softly:
"By all rights, Mr. Bai Heng only arrived on the Xianzhou yesterday... With that kind of efficiency, he'll probably be the company's model employee again this year..."
Beside her, a beautiful young girl with an almost childlike look dipped a lollipop into her coffee and stirred it, saying in a soft, syrupy voice:
"So Senior Bai Heng is a workaholic."
Shilna shook her head.
"No, Betty. Mr. Bai Heng slacks off quite often too, but his version of slacking off is shortening work procedures. The strange thing is, even after cutting down those procedures, he still completes every job perfectly."
Upon hearing that, the girl named Betty put the coffee-soaked lollipop into her mouth, stretched both hands forward, and sprawled lifelessly over her work chair in a lazy tone:
"Ah~ I'm so jealous that you have a leader like that. He works so efficiently, so you get to take time off too."
"Yeah." Shilna smiled faintly and nodded.
With the coffee-flavored lollipop in her mouth, Betty glanced sidelong at Shilna's delicate face and said indistinctly:
"By the way, Senior Bai Heng is way too cold whenever he talks to you, isn't he? You're the prettiest girl in our communications team, after all. The other members of our group often get harassed by those leaders when speaking with their contacts, but I feel like Senior Bai Heng has always been polite to you."
"Maybe it's because Mr. Bai Heng is a very nice person." Shilna smiled. "He's very professional and serious at work, but when he spends time with us in private, he doesn't put on any airs at all. He's very easy to talk to."
Betty blinked.
"Why does it feel like you really admire Senior Bai Heng... Though that's not surprising. If it were me, I'd admire such a young, handsome, capable leader who's so easy to get along with too."
When the conversation reached that point, Shilna lowered her head and gently rubbed her small hands together, saying softly:
"Actually, there are more reasons than that why I admire Mr. Bai Heng..."
"Oh? Then why?" Betty asked.
Shilna raised her head slightly and wrapped both hands around the coffee cup in front of her.
"Actually, I come from an asteroid in a remote star system. The living environment there was extremely harsh. Many families could not even afford enough food. There were very few people like me, born into relatively well-off families, who did not have to worry about their next meal and even had the chance to study."
"Three years ago, the Interastral Peace Corporation sent people there to try to restore my homeworld's environment. But after only a month, they determined that the value to be gained from restoring the environment there was not even worth the fuel for the round trip, so they abandoned the project."
"But after the corporation's people gave up, an ordinary Astral Society staff member secured one year from the society to conduct environmental exploration on that planet. In the end, using the corporation's advanced technology, he found a metal called 'Titanium Core' in the planet's polar regions. It was precisely because of that discovery that my homeworld regained its vitality with the corporation's help, and I was given the opportunity to come to the Interastral Astronomical Society."
"And that Astral Society staff member was Mr. Bai Heng."
After Bai Heng completed the work handover, the time on his phone had only just ticked over to six o'clock, Xianzhou time.
Exactly on the dot.
The door to the room where Bai Heng had slept last night was pushed open—or rather... kicked open.
"Ahaha, good morning, Master Jingliu."
After what had happened last night, Bai Heng awkwardly greeted Jingliu, who had already straightened her clothes and tied up her long silver hair with a green ribbon.
Jingliu first lifted her eyes to glance at the bite wound on the corner of Bai Heng's mouth, then looked away.
"What happened last night... I'll take responsibility."
Hearing that.
Bai Heng suddenly had the illusion that he had been kept by a wealthy woman?
No, wait. Jingliu did not seem to have a single Credit on her.
"Oh... all right." Bai Heng had no idea how Jingliu intended to take responsibility, but he could only agree casually.
After saying that, Jingliu walked a few steps down the corridor.
But after only two steps, Jingliu suddenly stopped. She turned sideways to look at Bai Heng and asked:
"I'm going to bathe later. Want to come with me?"
Bai Heng froze for a moment before answering solemnly:
"Just give me some soup."
Jingliu: "?"
Something came up today, so there's only one chapter.
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