Tenant's Secret Love

Chapter 52: Becoming friends

Harlan was still waiting anxiously for my response. After a fierce internal struggle, I finally said to him, "You're right, I'll pretend I didn't hear it."

Harlan asked again, "Are you sure?"

I nodded and turned to leave the staff lounge, but my heart was filled with an indescribable sense of depression. Harlan was indeed right. This matter was of great importance, even concerning the fate of the two shopping malls. It involved too many people. And Mark had told us about this matter precisely because he told us about this matter out of trust. If I can't bear it and leak it to Renee, then I would be doing Mark an injustice. But if I just hold it in and watch the lonely, indifferent woman being schemed by her own uncle, then I would be aiding and abetting evil!

All day long, I was distracted, and it seemed like I had been suffering for a long time before it was time to go home. Looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the intricate neon lights that had already been lit, I felt another sudden struggle in my heart.

After staring at the world outside the floor-to-ceiling windows for a long time, I finally picked up my backpack and said to Harlan, who was still working, "I'm leaving work early."

Harlan instinctively nodded, then looked up at me suddenly and said, "It's only 7 o'clock, you're leaving already?"

"It's not early, it's been an hour and a half since I finished work."

Harlan nodded and said, "You won't be able to think of anything if you stay in the office, so you can go home first. If you have any good promotional ideas, we can keep in touch."

I gave an OK sign, and without having time to say goodbye to Harlan, I left the depressing office in a hurry.

...

I swung along with the crowd, carrying my shoulder bag and smoking a cigarette. I didn't know where to go, but my mood grew heavier and heavier.

Fifty meters ahead, across the street, the giant LOGO of Jumei Shopping Center shone brightly on the top floor of the building. But who could see the struggle beneath that light? Who could pierce through the light to see the ugliness of human nature?

I walked with mechanical steps towards Jumei Shopping Center, and then my mind, running wild, dictated to my body to follow the crowd into the store.

In fact, I didn't know why I had come to Jumei at all. Perhaps subconsciously I hoped to inform Renee of the conspiracy against her and save her from this disaster, but I was trapped by another force of resistance, so I was at a loss and seemed to have lost my mind.

So I took the elevator from the first floor to the sixth floor. There were no more floors above the sixth floor, so I had nowhere to go. I found a bench for customers to rest on and sat down, staring absentmindedly at the customers coming and going.

The elevator door across the way to the Jumei office area suddenly opened, and I suddenly saw Renee walking out of it, followed by a young female assistant. Almost instinctively, I didn't want her to find me, so I got up from the bench and slipped into the nearest shop.

The receptionist's "Welcome" rang in my ears, and when I looked up, I was suddenly dazzled by the dazzling array of women's underwear in various colors.

"Sir, are you here to look at underwear for your wife?" the receptionist greeted me warmly.

"I fucking..." I forced the words "Do I fucking look like I have a wife?" back down into my stomach, and with a smile, I said to the receptionist, "Yes, can you recommend one that's a bit sexy?"

The receptionist then took one out and showed it to me, enthusiastically introducing it again. I praised it, but my eyes were scanning the outside, and I didn't see Renee anywhere. Maybe she had already gone downstairs. I let out a sigh of relief, and then interrupted the receptionist, who was still going on and on, and said, "This underwear is good, but it's a bit too cheap. Didn't you learn in training that you have to judge a customer's purchasing power based on what they're wearing?" I said, lifting the shoulder bag in my hands so that the logo on it appeared in the receptionist's line of sight, "See, it's by Rikdas. You've never heard of Rikdas, have you? Today I'll give you a crash course. Rikdas is the latest luxury brand created by a joint venture between Reebok, Nike and Adidas. This bag of mine is one of their newly released limited edition models. Just three words: extremely luxurious! Do you think someone of my stature would buy underwear from a second-tier brand like yours?"

The receptionist was a little speechless. I was about to leave with my shoulder bag on my back when I suddenly noticed Renee outside the lingerie store aisle, looking at me with a strange expression with her assistant.

I steeled myself and walked towards the lingerie store, came up to Renee, and forced a smile as I asked, "What a coincidence, running into you here."

"I work here...but what are you doing in a lingerie store?" Renee asked with a look of disgust.

I evaded the main point and exclaimed, "So you work here, are you the building manager of the mall?"

Renee shook her head and asked with contempt in her eyes, 'You still haven't answered my question, why are you running to the lingerie store?"

I answered impatiently, 'Can you stop looking at me like a pervert? I went into the lingerie store because I didn't want to run into you, and I just saw you come down the elevator."

"You're avoiding me, and I'm just grateful that you're not pestering me!" Renee said with a doubtful expression.

I sighed and said, 'I feel guilty!"

This was a true sentence from me. If I ultimately chose not to tell her about her uncle's power plot against Renee, I would feel a strong sense of guilt and remorse.

Renee smiled and said, 'You should have felt guilty a long time ago. It's not bad to find a place to live and settle down for the time being."

Renee obviously misunderstood the true meaning of my guilt, but I couldn't explain it to her, so I changed the subject again and said, "You haven't eaten yet, let's have dinner together. We'll bump into each other if we don't want to."

Renee looked at the watch and nodded to me and said, "It's time to eat. I heard that a new rice noodle shop opened on the first floor and the taste is good."

"Are you treating me?"

Renee replied with a half smile, "Your backpack is full of Ricardus products, do you need someone to invite you to a bowl of rice noodles?"

Me: "..."

...

Renee said she wasn't going to invite me, but when we got to the rice noodle restaurant, she still joined the queue with the crowd. At that moment, she was submerged in the crowd like an ordinary girl, without a trace of the CEO's airs. I felt a wave of inexplicable sadness and struggle in my heart. Maybe I really shouldn't have invited her to dinner, even if it was just a bowl of rice noodles.

After a short while, Renee sat down across from me with the order slip in her hand, and then looked at my backpack and asked with a smile, "When did a Rikdas brand come out? It seems to be pretty awesome!"

Looking at her smiling face, I realized that after countless arguments, we had come to regard each other as acquaintances. We would tease each other, invite each other to dinner, and help each other with small things within our abilities. As long as it didn't involve the old house, we had gradually become somewhat like friends.