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Si Xi had not intended to come to Jinhao today or to even be on the third floor of the Business building.
He had intended to finish the acquisition of an overseas company with the Lawyer, review the Company's report, and go for a business trip.
Now he was on the third floor of the Business building because Lin Feng had mentioned — very carefully, very neutrally — that Professor Chen's classroom was up here and the professor had filed an interesting note about a new student that Si Xi had read twice this morning in his office and—He was on the third floor of Jinhao.
That was all.
The sound hit him before the door fully opened.
Crying.
Not quiet crying. Not polite crying.
The raw, broken, completely destroyed crying of someone who had been pushed past their limit by something genuinely awful.
On Normal occasions, Sixi wouldn't care as he has seen blood and bathed on it, he could kill without blinking and keep a straight face, a mere cry was nothing worth mentioning in his presence.
But upon hearing that voice, something in him shifted.
The door swung open.
Si Xi looked in.
Five girls standing in various states of frozen.
And in the middle of them—Small. Trembling. Both hands over her face. Shoulders shaking with every sob.
Yun Jiao?
Something happened in Si Xi's chest.
He was not going to examine what it was.
But it happened.
It was fast. Involuntary. The kind of thing that bypassed every rational process he had and landed somewhere much more inconvenient.
His eyes moved to the five girls.
Then back to her.
Then to the five girls again.
His expression taut.
The temperature of the hallway dropped approximately ten degrees just from the quality of his attention.
Sharp Bob opened her mouth shivering.
"We were just—"
"Get out," Si Xi said.Two words.The same way he said everything.
Except this time the two words had a quality that made Sharp Bob's sentence die before it finished.
"We weren't doing anything—"
"Get. Out."
He didn't raise his voice.
He didn't move.
He just looked at her like she was a corpse already.
And Sharp Bob — who had never backed down from anything in three years at Jinhao — found that her feet were moving involuntarily and shaking towards the door .
Her four friends had already escaped in the hallway.
The door closed behind them.
The teacher who had been walking with Si Xi appeared at his shoulder, took one look at the situation, and began the process of following the five girls down the hallway with the energy of someone who had a lot of questions and a disciplinary form with their name on it.
The hallway outside erupted into the urgent whispered chaos of students who had witnessed Something Happening and were processing it at speed.
The bathroom was quiet.
Si Xi stood in the doorway.
Looked at the girl.
She was still crying.
Or — she appeared to be still crying. Hands over face. Shoulders moving. The whole picture of someone completely falling apart.
He had seen her dispatch six men on an east road at night, With a lollipop....something that can make her cry and act so badly must be really bad.
He looked at the trembling shoulders.
Something moved in his chest again.
He still wasn't going to examine it.
"Are you hurt," he said.
A sob.
Then, muffled behind both hands, in the smallest, most broken little voice:
"N-no..."
He stood there.
He was not, generally, a man who stood in doorways not knowing what to do or interfering in situations like this.
Now, He was standing in a doorway not knowing what to do and interfering.
She lowered her hands slightly.
Just enough to show her face.
Eyes red. Cheeks wet. Lower lip trembling in a way that should not have been possible for a person who had looked at five hostile girls sixty seconds ago with the calm of someone deciding how to kill a girl.
Those eyes looked up at him.
Wide. Wet. Devastatingly, unfairly, bright and completely helpless-looking.
Something cracked.
Very quietly.
Somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.
He was going to examine this later and find that it made no sense and that was a problem for later-him.
"Come out of the bathroom," he said.
His voice came out slightly less lower than usual.
He noticed.
He chose not to address it.
—
Outside in the hallway—Lin Feng stood very still.
He had watched the entire thing.
He had watched his boss — Si Xi.
The man whose name made entire financial sectors restructure themselves. The man who had sat across from government officials and major corporation heads and literal crime lords with the same expression he used to look at walls — stand in a bathroom doorway and have his voice come out slightly different because a girl was crying.
Lin Feng looked at the ceiling.
Looked at the floor.
Looked at a spot on the wall that was very interesting.
Thought about every life choice that had led him to this moment.
Said absolutely nothing.
—
In the hallway, word was already moving.
Master Sixi.
Here.
Third floor bathroom.
He went in himself.
Sent the girls out personally.
Did you SEE his face when he looked at them—
A second year student grabbed her friend's arm.
"The new girl,"
she whispered. "The one who made Feng Zichen stop talking at lunch."
"What about her?"
" Master Sixi just—"
They looked at each other.The information was too large for normal processing speeds.They looked at the bathroom door.
—
Inside, Yun Jiao lowered her hands completely.
The tears were still there — she hadn't manufactured them, exactly, she'd just — redirected. Opened a door she kept closed and let a little of what was actually inside come out through her eyes. The genuine things. The things she didn't usually let see daylight.
It hadn't been hard.
She had a lot of material to work with.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand Sniffling and Looked at Si Xi standing in the doorway.
He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't fully read.
Somewhere between concern and something more controlled that he was keeping very carefully behind his eyes.
She sniffled.
Looked down.
"Sorry," she said quietly. "I'm fine. I just— it was just a lot."
"What did they say to you."
His voice was even.
But underneath the even was something that wasn't.
She shook her head slightly. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters."
She looked up at him.
He was still looking at her.
Still. Dark eyes. The cold that wasn't cruelty, just distance — except right now the distance was doing something it didn't usually do.
Closing. Just slightly. Just a fraction.
She held his gaze for exactly three seconds.
Then she looked away.
Sniffled again."Thank you," she said softly. "For coming in."
A pause.
"Mn," he said.
She almost smiled.
She didn't.
She pressed her lips together, picked up her bag from the floor where she'd dropped it, and walked toward the door.
He stepped aside.
She walked past him into the hallway.
Stopped.
Turned back.
He was watching her.
She looked at him with those eyes — wet, soft, the picture of a girl who had just had a hard moment and was pulling herself back together with great effort and dignity.
"I'm sorry if I caused trouble," she said.
"You didn't," he said.
"The girls—"
"Don't worry about the girls."
She nodded once. Small. Tucked her chin down.Walked away.
He watched her go.The hallway parted around her — students stepping aside, some staring, the wake of attention that followed her everywhere she went.
She didn't look back.
She never looked back.
Si Xi stood in the hallway.
Very still.
For approximately five seconds.
Then Lin Feng appeared at his elbow.
Said nothing.
Si Xi looked at the end of the hallway where she had turned the corner.
"The five girls," he said.
"Sir?"
"Find out who they are? Which families? What their disciplinary record looks like."
Lin Feng blinked.
"...Yes sir."
"And their connection to the Yun family"
Another blink
"Yes sir."Si Xi turned.
Walked in the opposite direction.
Lin Feng fell into step behind him, Looked at the back of his boss's head.
Thought about five seconds of standing still in a hallway.
Thought about a voice that had come out slightly uneven.
Thought about the instruction to find out who the girls were and their connection to the Yun's.
He had worked for this man for six years.
In six years Si Xi had never once asked him to investigate a student disciplinary situation.
Not once.
Lin Feng sighed and looked forward.
Kept walking.
Somewhere around the corner, he was fairly certain, a girl with wet eyes and a strawberry lollipop in her pocket was currently doing something that looked nothing like what it was.
He said nothing.
Some things, he had decided, were above his pay grade.