Disobedience To Control chapter 5
Blacklist
That phone number lay in Song Siheng’s phone for a whole week.
During this time, he went overseas with Li Ke, taking a thirteen-hour flight. After landing, without adjusting to the time difference, he went straight to meet the newly appointed director at the overseas subsidiary.
After finishing all this and returning to the hotel, Song Siheng hadn’t slept properly in bed for twenty hours.
“Next time if you arrange such a schedule, I’ll deduct your salary,” Song Siheng said as he swiped open the hotel room door, addressing Li Ke standing in front of the next room door.
“Okay, okay. Next time, I’ll come by myself, without troubling you.” Li Ke smiled and also swiped open the door, walking into his room.
The body aches from the long-distance travel and jet lag made Song Siheng very uncomfortable.
He closed all the electric curtains, plunging the room into utter darkness. He closed his eyes, and drowsiness washed over him like a tide.
But he didn’t sleep deeply. He vaguely dreamed of something. When he woke up again, he felt like his bones were falling apart.
In the darkness, he opened his eyes. There was only a very short fragment left in his mind, the scene somewhat blurry.
Then, the next second, he suddenly realized what he had dreamt of.
With a leap, Song Siheng got out of bed and rushed into the bathroom with a splash. When he came out again, he had changed his clothes.
Meanwhile, Li Ke in the next room, asleep, suddenly received a voice call from his superior.
“Wake up.”
“…What for?” Li Ke was full of question marks, squinting at the screen of his phone. It was 2:30 in the morning local time.
“Let’s go downstairs and have a drink.”
At exactly 3:00 a.m., the hotel elevator doors opened, and two lone souls walked out.
“Are you worried about the contract here?” Li Ke asked as they walked.
Song Siheng didn’t answer, just leading him into the hotel lounge. The spacious lounge was empty at this moment.
Thinking that Song Siheng was worried about the negotiations tomorrow, Li Ke brought him a drink after they sat down.
“If they don’t want to cooperate longterm with us, we’ll sign a short-term contract, just buying the services we need. After all, it’s just a matter of mutual benefit,” Li Ke’s voice trailed off, and Song Siheng suddenly looked up at him.
Li Ke didn’t know if he had been able to comprehend it, but he nodded slightly.
“Don’t worry, the legal department has drafted two alternative versions of the contract. We’ll see how tomorrow’s negotiation goes. We can adapt to any situation,” Li Ke added.
The clouds outside the glass window seemed thick, and tomorrow might not be good weather.
“It’s foggy over here,” Li Ke followed his gaze out the window, “Just like when we were in school before.”
Uncharacteristically, Song Siheng hadn’t said much, just drinking silently.
The next morning, Song Siheng went spiritedly to sign the contract with the cooperating company, then rushed to the airport with Li Ke and boarded the flight back to Jiangcheng without even changing his suit.
Li Ke didn’t ask him why he was in such a hurry to return. He just saw him making a phone call alone in the airport lounge.
When the plane landed in Jiangcheng, Song Siheng didn’t go back to the company first. He gave Li Ke a day off and drove to the other end of the city.
Half an hour later, he sat in a coffee shop private room, still not changing out of his suit. He waited for more than ten minutes before the person on the other end of the phone finally arrived.
“You mean, you want to support me?” Across the coffee table, the man in a white sports tank top chuckled.
Song Siheng looked at his face, enduring the muscle soreness from the long journey, and stated his price.
After a brief negotiation, Song Siheng got back into his sports car.
The radio announced that a typhoon was about to pass through.
As he pressed harder on the gas pedal, the figure of Yang Xiaobei in the rearview mirror grew smaller and smaller. The radio switched back to its regular news broadcast.
After driving further away, Song Siheng suddenly remembered that he forgot to ask why Yang Xiaobei left the hotel in a hurry that morning after leaving his number and left.
But there was no need to ask. What kind of person Yang Xiaobei was had nothing to do with him.
Yang Xiaobei could make him feel good and satisfied. That was the value of this person’s existence.
The weather forecast was unusually accurate. Starting from Friday, Typhoon No. 12 officially landed in Jiangcheng.
Most of the city’s shops were closed, and the subway was shut down early. The crowds in the entire city dispersed to various residential areas.
Song Siheng glanced at his schedule on his phone. Several offline meetings had been canceled due to the typhoon. The tennis club also sent a notice to suspend classes. He unexpectedly had a free weekend.
Since the day he parted ways with Yang Xiaobei on the roadside, he had heard nothing from him. Song Siheng was quite satisfied with that.
The clouds outside became heavier, and it seemed that a storm was brewing. Song Siheng instructed Li Ke to send a notice to all departments that they could leave work early that day.
As soon as the message was sent, there was a burst of cheers outside.
In the evening, Song Siheng had a remote meeting to attend. The northern branch needed to report on the R&D progress for the third quarter. They were not affected by the typhoon, and the middle and senior management were all working normally.
He arrived home before six o’clock. He changed into comfortable clothes and then opened the laptop in his study.
In the first half of the meeting, Song Siheng was just listening. In the second half, he needed to clarify the key objectives for the fourth quarter with several subordinates. After turning on the microphone, he opened a concise table and shared his screen.
The wind outside began to howl, causing some noise in the microphone. Song Siheng deliberately turned up the volume of the speaker.
The structure of Song Siheng’s company was not complicated, and the number of employees was very small.
He didn’t like complex management styles and directly dealt with several core department heads. Each department head then had frontline staff under them. Song Siheng attached great importance to R&D. Some senior executives who were recruited from abroad initially resisted him. However, after working with him for a while, they no longer had any dissent.
Song Siheng was indeed strict and didn’t mince his words. But his thinking in work was extremely meticulous, often pinpointing the flaws in their projects. The rapid iteration of core technologies allowed Sicheng to quickly win many envy-worthy projects in the industry in three years. Other small companies could only follow behind and pick up the leftovers.
Of course, these executives were able to stay because of Li Ke’s mediation and appeasement.
Li Ke had originally studied human resources management abroad. After returning to China, he helped Song Siheng build a very efficient and precise employee management system. Li Ke was humble, and to some extent, he served as the lubricant for communication between Song Siheng and his subordinates.
In less than half an hour, the online meeting was more than halfway through. Song Siheng spoke up: ‘Our goals for the fourth quarter are roughly like this. If there are any adjustments needed, you can bring it up now. If not, Li Ke will announce some arrangements from my end…’
But he hadn’t finished speaking yet. The computer suddenly made a crisp notification sound. Song Siheng’s voice was interrupted.
Li Ke also looked up from the screen and glanced over at him.
There was a new unread message in the bottom right corner of the computer screen.
To facilitate work, Song Siheng’s computer had always been connected to his phone’s email and messages.
‘Continue,’ Song Siheng closed the screen sharing and signaled to Li Ke.
After a brief rustle, Li Ke’s voice came through the microphone.
Only then did Song Siheng open the unread message. A huge window popped up on the computer screen.
There was not a single word in the message content, just a photo attached.
Sender: Yang.
In less than half a second, after Song Siheng saw the content of the photo clearly, he quickly returned the screen to its original page. Then he carefully confirmed that his screen sharing was indeed closed.
If they weren’t still in the meeting, Song Siheng would have wanted to smash the computer.
Yang Xiaobei was insane.
He didn’t even say hello, he just sent a half-naked photo of himself.
Song Siheng realized that he had underestimated this person’s audacity.
Yang Xiaobei didn’t have his WeChat, only a phone number Song Siheng had called him on. Even so, he managed to send a photo of himself using that number.
Five minutes later, Li Ke wrapped up the meeting for him.
Song Siheng slammed shut the laptop. The sky outside was already dark, the wind was howling, and the rain was pouring.
He opened his phone, clicked into the message list, and finally saw the details of that photo.
Yang Xiaobei didn’t show his face, but obviously found an angle to deliberately take a picture of his upper body. Under the light, the contours of every muscle were extremely clear.
The picture disappeared at the end of the oblique lines of his torso. Song Siheng subconsciously scrolled down by a centimeter and then made a sound of disgust.
Five minutes later, a new message popped up on the opposite side.
Yang Xiaobei: ‘I went for a physical examination in the heavy rain today, and my clothes were all soaked.’ There was a crying emoji followed by ‘TOT’.
Song Siheng didn’t understand what he meant and replied with a ‘?’.
But ten seconds later, another line of text appeared on the screen: ‘You haven’t told me where we’re meeting tomorrow night.’
After thinking for a moment, Song Siheng remembered that he hadn’t specified the exact location for the meeting.”
He opened the map app, found a location, copied the address, and pasted it into their messaging window.
Swoosh—The address was successfully sent, and instantly showed as read on the other side.
With his phone in hand, without waiting for a response from the other side, Song Siheng lightly tapped on the name on the screen and added him to the blacklist.
[📢Author’s Note]Boss Song: Don’t contact me unless it’s for official business.