Chapter 8

Driving the shuttle cart over, Xiang Changge couldn’t help thinking that if she hadn’t seen those forty‑odd people line up to greet her yesterday, she would have assumed this was an empty villa.
Yes, it was raining today, and many cleaning jobs didn’t need doing. But even so, how could such a huge estate be so deathly quiet that she hadn’t seen a single person?
Getting out of the cart, Xiang Changge stepped over the fallen leaves that hadn’t yet been swept from the front steps and headed straight for the kitchen.
Sure enough, the kitchen was the liveliest place in the whole house at this hour.
Yu Qing didn’t eat breakfast, but the staff did.
The enormous kitchen was filled with dishes—Chinese and Western, everything one could think of.
A few staff members were gathered around the central serving table, eating with great relish.
When Xiang Changge appeared, everyone in the kitchen froze.
After a few seconds, someone finally spoke up, laughing as they called, “Butler, you’re here. Come have some.”
Xiang Changge didn’t answer. She simply memorized every face.
There were people in charge of cleaning the main house, staff from the laundry, and one person in charge of purchasing.
Once she had put names to all of them in her mind, she spoke in a flat tone. “If I remember correctly, the staff cafeteria isn’t in the main‑house kitchen, is it?”
The Yu family occupied an entire scenic mountain. The grounds were enormous. The staff all had room and board; their dorms and dining areas were set up in their own zones.
The main‑house kitchen existed solely to prepare food for the owners or their guests. The staff eating here like this was never part of the arrangement.
They had chosen to eat here only because everything produced in the main‑house kitchen was for Yu Qing—varied and expensive—and because Yu Qing rarely ate, the feast was left for the “mice” to nibble on once the owner looked away.
In reality, any food Yu Qing didn’t touch would be transferred to the staff cafeteria to be used up. Some people simply preferred to take advantage openly.
At her words, they exchanged glances. Eventually, the chef on duty that day spoke up with a stiff face. “Well, it’s raining today. We make all this food every day, and if the miss doesn’t eat it, it just goes to waste. They happened to be working nearby, so I had them eat here. It’s your first day, Butler Xiang. Surely you won’t be so unreasonable?”
At that, Xiang Changge’s gaze, cool and distant, landed on the chef.
In an instant, the bluster he’d been about to put on deflated.
For the first time, he actually looked at her properly.
Yesterday, when they’d gone to welcome her at the door, he’d been standing in the back and had only seen a young slip of a girl—not worth much of his attention.
Today, however, he realized that her aura and her eyes were strangely unnerving.
On her first official day, Xiang Changge was dressed quite formally for the occasion.
She wore a three‑piece white suit. The thin blazer had an asymmetrical lapel that softened the severity and added a touch of elegance.
Her knee‑length skirt and four‑centimeter heels, paired with hair tied back neatly at the nape of her neck, gave her a look that was both clean‑cut and quietly refined.
Most striking of all were her eyes. When she gazed at someone in silence, it felt as though they weren’t a person in her eyes at all, but an object that might vanish at any time.
The chef had no idea why he felt this way. After his heart shrank under that look, he gritted his teeth and puffed his chest back out.
She was just a fresh graduate, a little girl playing at authority. Say a few harsh words to her, and she’d probably burst into tears. That odd feeling just now must have been his imagination.
Looking at the chef, who was stuffed to the gills and still pretending to be full of righteous energy, Xiang Changge let a cold smile touch her lips. “Did you pay for any of this yourself?”
His neck twitched.
Of course he hadn’t. He was here to earn money, not spend it.
He knew perfectly well she was mocking him. Biting his tongue, he was just drawing breath to retort when Xiang Changge continued, “Since when did you get to call the shots in the Yu family?”
“Do you get to decide what’s waste and what isn’t?”
“What are you doing pretending to be some generous do‑gooder?”
“If you know Miss Yu doesn’t eat much, then why are you making so much food?”
“You say you’re afraid of waste, yet you cook like this every day at the sight of ingredients. So what is it—are you afraid of wasting food, or afraid there won’t be anything to ‘waste’ on you?”
Skimming off the top was nothing new, no matter where you went.
It took Xiang Changge only one glance to see what they were up to.
Everything prepared for Yu Qing was the best of the best. Many of these ingredients weren’t just things they couldn’t afford; they were things they had never even seen before.
Once it was cooked and Yu Qing didn’t touch it, all that luxury went straight into the staff’s bellies.
Yu Qing had money and didn’t care about this amount of food. When she’d read the novel, Xiang Changge had only grumbled that Yu Qing was wasteful. Standing here now in person, she realized that the waste wasn’t really on Yu Qing’s head at all—it was on these parasites who wanted unearned benefits.
They already had a perfectly good staff cafeteria, and their food and lodging weren’t bad. Yet they still wanted to live like masters themselves. That was nothing but greed.
When the chef failed to come up with a rebuttal, one of the others—his mouth still slick with oil—spoke up. “Butler Xiang sure is setting fires on her first day. We’re in the wrong, sure, but it’s raining and we just didn’t want to walk all the way over there. If you’re going to be this strict, we just won’t eat here anymore.”
His tone was dripping with sarcasm—complaining about her playing the big butler and mocking her for being heartless.
Xiang Changge’s corpse‑cold gaze shifted to him.
Ignoring his words, she said evenly, “You’re in charge of purchasing.”
“Good—you’re here too. Bring me the daily ledgers later. I want to know why, when Miss Yu doesn’t eat much, you still buy enough food every day to feed a hundred of her.”
At that, the buyer’s face froze; unease flickered plainly across his features.
His mouth, however, still tried to hold its ground. “What would you know, you just got here. This is all how the previous butler set it up. Everything Miss Yu eats and uses has to be the best. If I buy too little and she needs something that isn’t there, who’s going to take the blame?”
Xiang Changge let out another cold laugh. “Then go on. Tell me exactly what Miss Yu ‘needs’ every day, and what she actually eats.”
The buyer’s tongue stalled. He had no answer.
By then the chef had recovered. Seeing this little girl acting like an avenging judge, his temper snapped; he slapped his palm on the table hard enough to make it shake. “What do you mean by all this? You come in here on your first day just looking for trouble? Who do you think you are?”
“Who else would I be?”
Facing a nearly two‑hundred‑pound man in a rage, Xiang Changge showed no fear at all. She even took a moment to give him a once‑over. “You work in the kitchen and don’t even bother with a chef’s hat or a mask. No professionalism, wasting food every day, no sense of planning…”
After listing off his faults one by one, she delivered her verdict in a mild voice. “You’re fired.”
It was like a bolt from the blue.
“F‑fired?!”
A job at the Yu residence—good pay, light work, and plenty of perks—was the kind of position one would be hard‑pressed to find, even by lantern‑light. The chef could hardly believe he was being dismissed.
Smashing someone’s rice bowl was no different from killing their parents.
He finally lost control and charged at her, a dark, bulky mass lunging forward. “Screw you! Who do you think you are? ‘Firing’ me? What are you, huh? Believe it or not, I’ll beat you to death!”
Much as she wanted to teach him what “death” meant, Xiang Changge knew this was not the lawless apocalypse. Killing people here meant going to jail.
So she held herself back. To keep from lashing out by reflex, she folded her arms over her chest.
The moment he came within reach, she slipped lightly aside, letting him barrel straight past the kitchen threshold. He only just managed to grab the doorframe to keep from going down.
Xiang Changge didn’t even spare him a glance. She pulled out her walkie‑talkie. “Security, to the main‑house kitchen.”
Only static answered. After a few seconds of silence, no one responded. Xiang Changge wasn’t surprised. She had already decided she was going to have to replace the entire staff from top to bottom.
The chef, however, grew even more full of himself.
“Security? You think they can save you? You stupid woman, you really think you’re something special!”
He raised a hand again and lunged, aiming a slap at her face. Xiang Changge kept her arms folded. There was only the sharp tap of her heels on the floor—and then a loud crash.
The others around the table hardly registered her movement. One moment she had been standing there; the next, she had sidestepped, hooked a small stool used for prepping vegetables with her foot, and kicked it into the chef’s path.
He tripped over it and, unlike the first time, had no chance to catch himself. He went down flat, face‑first, with a solid thud.
Just the sound was enough to make everyone’s skin crawl.
Xiang Changge turned to the others. “You’re all fired as well.”
“You’ve broken staff rules, skipped work without cause, and helped yourselves to the owner’s private property on company time. Expect a lawyer’s letter.”
“And as for the buyer—if there’s anything wrong with those ledgers, I’ll see you in court.”
Yu Qing didn’t drag herself out of bed until after one in the afternoon.
The rain that had been falling for days had finally paused. After washing up, she wrapped a robe over her nightgown and leaned against the window, looking out at the little garden.
Her mother had loved osmanthus, so all the trees near the main house were osmanthus trees.
They were all different varieties and bloomed in turn, so there was almost always the scent of blossoms on the air.
Right now, the ground outside was wet. Fallen leaves and osmanthus petals were mixed with mud in the still‑damp rainwater, scattered in disarray.
“Just like me.”
The helpless osmanthus in the wind and rain were like her, helpless before everything in the world.
Knock, knock, knock.
No sooner had she murmured the words than someone knocked on the bedroom door.
Interrupted, Yu Qing frowned in irritation.
But she didn’t respond.
It had always been this way. If Aunt Yang and the others didn’t hear her answer, they would know she either wasn’t awake or was awake but didn’t want to get up yet—and they would quietly leave.
Today, however, things were different.
After a while, the knocking came again.
Yu Qing’s brows furrowed tighter.
Outside, the rain had started up once more, pitter‑pattering against the glass. All she wanted was to sit and listen to it for a while in peace, without being disturbed.
But the knocking continued, doggedly sounding a third time, then a fourth.
At last, Yu Qing turned, intending to open the door.
She had barely taken two steps when a wave of dizziness washed over her, followed by a swell of nausea rising in her chest—whether from getting up too quickly, or from low blood sugar, she couldn’t tell.
She clapped a hand over her mouth and bent over, retching dryly.
Her head grew fuzzier, cold sweat breaking out across her skin.
She wanted to call out, but her mouth wouldn’t open.
As the room spun and the floor rushed up to meet her, one last bitter thought flickered through her mind: With a body this weak, what was the point of staying alive?
At the very moment she lost consciousness, Yu Qing felt herself being pulled tightly into someone’s arms.
The touch was unfamiliar yet warm, and it carried a strong, mouth‑watering scent of…
Fried chicken?