Chapter 110: The Consequences of Showing Off

Chapter 110: The Consequences of Showing Off

“Does it matter whether I can draw?” Wu Chen returned the question with a smile.

Li Ruobing gave him a long, faintly resentful look, then turned her head, powered on her computer, and didn’t look at him again. “Suit yourself.” From that point on she genuinely did treat him like air, as though he weren’t there, and got on with whatever needed doing.

Li Ruobing was very busy.

She had been extremely busy yesterday, and then Wu Chen had suddenly thrown up the Su Qingying business, forcing her to go and look, after which she’d been dragged straight into it. So some of yesterday’s work had piled up, and all of it had to be finished today.

Not long after she returned, her secretary came in carrying a very thick stack of folders. Some needed her signature; others she had to review and rule on.

After that, Huancai executives came to see her about various matters. They stayed only a few minutes before leaving again.

Li Ruobing worked on, busy, and at one point rose to take a call by the window.

She wasn’t the only one treating Wu Chen like air.

Everyone coming in and out of the president’s office treated him the same way.

Not that they were truly ignoring him. They simply didn’t know him at all, and had nothing to say to him. Everyone who came to Li Ruobing’s office came for work, and with a temperament like hers they hardly dared breathe loudly in front of her, let alone strike up idle conversation with someone else in the room.

Before anyone noticed, twenty minutes had gone by.

Wu Chen hadn’t finished the drawing, but he wrote a line in the lower left corner of the page: July 12, 2020, 10:00.

Then he picked up his phone, photographed the half-finished piece, and sent it straight into the group.

He typed: Just drawing something casually. Still working on it.

He simply wanted the group to understand that this was a drawing he was making right now. Not something he’d spent a great deal of time on beforehand, not something he’d hired someone else to produce. Nobody was questioning him—he simply wouldn’t allow the thought of questioning him to occur to anyone.

All they had to do was think he was extraordinary.

He drew on.

Another full half hour passed.

It could fairly be said Wu Chen had spent a long time on this drawing. From start to finish it came to fifty minutes, because he wanted it done well. He wanted to show off his technique. He wanted the effect of a single decisive blow. He had no appetite for making a second one. One attempt, and the matter was settled.

It was already ten thirty in the morning.

Li Ruobing was clacking away at her keyboard.

Wu Chen picked up his phone again, photographed the finished sketch, and sent it into the group. Then he lifted his head. “It’s done. Want to see?”

Li Ruobing stopped typing and turned to glance at him.

Wu Chen took the sketch, stood, walked to the desk, and tossed it onto the tabletop. “It’s yours. Look at it and throw it in the bin.” With that he turned to go back.

Li Ruobing frowned slightly and picked up the sketch without much thought. In that instant she froze. Her gaze locked onto the page.

The drawing struck her like a shock.

Because it didn’t look like a drawing. At first glance it had the feel of a black-and-white old film.

It was a woman busy in an office. The office itself had a strongly three-dimensional, cinematic quality, yet it also used montage technique, so that the space carried a distorted, weighty feeling. And there wasn’t one busy figure of the woman but three: bent over the desk signing documents, lifting her head to speak with an assistant, standing by the window taking a phone call.

It was as though several transparent film negatives had been layered over one another, merging different scenes into a single image, perfectly, through the interplay of solid and void and the stitching of lines.

There was a sense of space and time in flow, expressing with great force the woman’s busyness and…