Chapter 136:
Sister Pomegranate Uproots The Weeping Willows, abbreviated as Sister Pomegranate.
Currently the only one of the four female players in the game《Reality Realm》.
With an outstanding appearance and a generous personality, due to being a fellow alumna and Niuniu’s relative, she has a very good relationship with the student party members. Additionally, because of her excellent leadership skills, she has become the flag-bearer and standard-bearer for the student party.
However, this sister is a hidden mischief-maker.
Previously, she had the student party share three-fifths of the Blood Vulture Sword Arts Master’s manual on the forum, which showed that she truly “plays” the game.
No matter how fun it is, she goes with it, a lover of enjoying the spectacle, the kind that doesn’t mind big events just to see the fun.
But Sister Pomegranate’s ability to become the backbone of the student party is not just because of her generous personality. She truly has the skills, as a former national athlete with multiple outstanding achievements still hanging in the student party’s outstanding alumni column. After retiring, she went back to school and obtained a master’s degree in finance.
From any perspective, Sister Pomegranate is undoubtedly a “child from another family.”
But now, this well-behaved child from another family is sitting awkwardly in her company’s main conference room, head lowered, receiving a verbal lashing from her own boss.
“You mischievous Pomegranate! I’m paying you tens of thousands a month, and you’re just coming to work to idle and play games? No wonder this month’s performance dropped by 20%! It turns out it was your doing!”The slightly panicked and agitated voice of a young man echoed from the other end of the conference table, where a young man in his twenties wearing casual business attire was slamming the table.
He was very young.
A few years younger than Sister Pomegranate.
But that didn’t prevent him from becoming the boss of a company with over a hundred employees at such a young age.
Of course, this wasn’t to say that the flustered young man had any particular abilities. It was mainly due to his superior skills in choosing his birth, as a typical rich second-generation “Feel You Poor,” he was one of those kids who never had to worry about living from a young age and happily lived for over twenty years before being kicked out by his old man to “start a business.”
Nicely named “tempering.”
According to what Sister Pomegranate heard privately, it was because this ill-behaved guy had a conflict with his old man over some matters, and after causing a commotion at a family gathering that could be considered “unfilial,” he was “exiled to the frontier.”
The rich old man’s requirement for the rich second-generation was to make a pure profit of five million within three years to receive his inheritance. However, three months into this company, not only had he failed to make a profit, but even the startup capital provided by his rich old man was about to be depleted.
When Sister Pomegranate came for the interview two months ago, she immediately saw that this guy was a typical green kid living in his own imagined social environment, so she happily accepted the “Chief Assistant” position.
As she expected, her days after starting work were extremely relaxed, with each day passing by just drinking tea and reading the news.
Her young boss was indeed very busy every day, but he was just mindlessly busy and never got to the point, purely wasting his efforts. Watching him from the side while idling, Sister Pomegranate occasionally felt a pang of pity.
However, this guy was indeed not bad.
He didn’t have the bad habits of a spoiled rich second-generation, and he did have a desire to make achievements. Unfortunately, it seemed all his talent points were invested in choosing his rebirth, and he didn’t have any useful skills in the business realm.
“Why aren’t you talking?”
After venting, the young boss plopped down on the boss chair, opened a pot of goji berry tea for nourishment, took a sip, and glanced at the silent Sister Pomegranate across from him.
Feeling that his previous words might have been too harsh, he asked with some trepidation:
“You’re not mad, are you?”
“Why would I be mad?”
Sister Pomegranate rolled her eyes and hid the phone she was using to browse the forum, cleared her throat, tossed her hair back, stretched lazily, and said to the young boss in front of her:
“I’m just wondering why the company is so empty today? Usually, everyone pretends to be full of energy, but you’ve given them a day off? And how do you have time to go on the forum during work hours?
Whichever way you look at it, today’s situation seems strange!”
Faced with Sister Pomegranate’s confusion, the young boss sighed, put down the insulated cup in his hand, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked out at the bustling city under the sunlight.
After a few seconds of silence, his shoulders slumped, and he sighed dejectedly:
“I read the report you gave me yesterday.”
“Oh?”
Sister Pomegranate’s expression immediately became subtle and expectant as she said:
“So?”
“So I took your advice.”
The young boss “Feel You Poor” turned around, looking at the “culprit” Sister Pomegranate with an expression of utter despair, and said:
“This morning, I went to deregister the company. Before I caught you slacking off, all the employees were fired, as you wished. After persisting for three months, this broken company finally closed its doors for good, and I myself have gone from being a promising young entrepreneur to an idle rich man without a job.
Are you happy now?
Just tell me honestly, do I really look like a fool in your eyes?”
“Hahaha, you little fool.”
Sister Pomegranate immediately burst into laughter, slapping the table as she said:
“This company shouldn’t have been opened in the first place!
You don’t even understand the entire business process. The five suppliers you have now are offering prices 10-20% higher than the market average, and you still think you’re getting a good deal.
As for the internal company.
I don’t know where you found this group of supernatural beings, but let me tell you, there aren’t more than fifteen capable workers among them. You do have a talent for picking up trash, as you’ve managed to gather all the local old-timers in this trade under your command.
Those who know think you’re starting a business, while those who don’t know probably think you’re cleaning up the market environment.
I know you thought offering them high salaries and good benefits would make them work hard, but it’s clear you haven’t seen the dark side of society.
I’m not lecturing you.
But the fact is, as I said in the report I submitted to you yesterday, along with my resignation letter, the work output of our marketing department in a week is not even as good as outsourcing the work to a three-person studio.
But it’s alright, at least you know how to take advice, there’s still hope.
Running this broken company of yours really isn’t that interesting, it’s just a bottomless pit, swallowing up all your pocket money and only fattening the rats. Want to know what nickname those old-timers have given you?”
“No, no, don’t say it. I don’t want to know.”
The young boss had now lost even the interest in drinking his nourishing tea.
He believed what Sister Pomegranate said.
Not only because yesterday’s report from Sister Pomegranate laid out all the facts, but also because apart from the entire company putting on an act for him as the reason, there was really no other explanation for why he had spent so much money persisting for three months without any results to show.
Most importantly, he believed in Sister Pomegranate’s character!
After all, Sister Pomegranate herself might have forgotten that a week before she started working here, while she was busy sending out resumes and interviewing everywhere, she helped an old grandfather stop a thief at the high-speed rail station, and this whole scene was witnessed by the young boss who happened to be passing by at the time.
Although this young boss of hers was not suitable for business, he definitely didn’t pick his assistants and secretaries at random.
“You knew all this all along, why didn’t you tell me?”
Although the young boss had deregistered the company, he was still angry at the moment, feeling that Sister Pomegranate was being inconsiderate.
But he was immediately shut down by a single sentence from Sister Pomegranate.
“Are you stupid?”
She rolled her eyes and said,
“Why don’t you check the reports I submitted every week to see if I ever suggested optimizing the company structure? Don’t you understand what ‘optimize’ means? Nevermind, seeing that you’ve finally escaped misery puts my mind at ease.
I’m not really interested in going to work these days.
That game is quite fun, worth me spending some time on it. But how did you catch me on the forum?
When did you fill out the test application?
Not to be rude, but doesn’t the test group screen test participants at all? What can a little fool like you do in there? Keep spending money lavishly?”
“Tsk, could you stop looking down on me?”
The young boss took an annoyed sip of tea, but his attitude was good, and he quickly adjusted, saying:
“I’m at least a master’s graduate from a famous university, you know? Although it’s in Chinese language and literature, I may not be a dragon among men, but I’m still one in a hundred, right? Ah, you go ahead, let me be alone for a while.”
“Alone your ass, if I’m not here watching you, I’m afraid you’ll get too upset and jump off a building, then what?”
Sister Pomegranate teased:
“And also, is this really all you’re going to do after being cheated? Crying with that long face, I thought you were going to explode or something.”
“I did explode, I was quite formidable this morning, too bad you missed it.”
The young boss snorted, hugging his water bottle and leaning back in the boss chair, seeming to have shed all burdens. He grinned and said:
“At first I thought, whatever, it’s just money, it’s not like I’m short on cash, my annual fund returns are more than this.
But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got!
Tell me, if I just throw my money in the water, at least I’d hear a splash, right? Now it’s like I’m just pissing my money away and finding trouble for myself, and I’m not even a masochist! So I had Little Chen call all the team leaders and above for a meeting!
I only gave them five minutes!
Anyone who was late had to pack up and leave immediately!
You should have seen how pathetic they looked coming in.”
“Then what?”
Sister Pomegranate was also interested and asked.
The young boss, who never smoked, took out a pack with only a few cigarettes left, took one and put it in his mouth, and lit it with a one-yuan lighter.
As the smoke rose, he tried to maintain a nonchalant smile, trying to appear excited as he said:
“I told them the company was having major operational issues, I said the company had been deregistered, and they didn’t need to pretend to come to work anymore, so we all just dispersed. But then, those idiots actually wanted to ask me for severance pay! Severance pay my ass!
Not a single yuan!”
“Ah, but that’s not proper procedure, is it?”
Sister Pomegranate blinked and drawled:
“I bet you had a fight with them?”
“Yeah, a big fight.”
The young boss waved his hand, as if recalling everything that had happened in this conference room that morning, and said in a hoarse voice:
“After reading the report you gave me, I started with the marketing department. I asked them how the bottom line for the tender on the 17th of last month got leaked? I scolded them, asking how many years they’ve been working? Aren’t they afraid of getting struck by lightning for being so blatant about playing both sides!
That immediately deflated their arrogance.
Then there was the materials department’s embezzlement, which caused the company to lose over seventy thousand across three warehouses. You didn’t see it, but when I brought that up, Old Wang from the materials department turned green in the face, didn’t care about saving face anymore, didn’t pretend to be an old veteran, and just kept begging for mercy.
Sister Liu from HR even wanted to jump!
I just asked her, how did those six new business employees from the neighboring city last month get hired? Their qualifications didn’t match, their credentials were fake, even the certificate numbers didn’t add up?
I asked her how much she took from whom, or if she was just shoving her own relatives in here to enjoy the benefits from this foolish old boss?
After that, no one wanted to argue with me about severance pay anymore. I even made them pay this month’s electricity, property management, and rent fees before leaving, as a token of my gratitude for not throwing them in jail.
Oh, and I also said I would share their ‘achievements’ from the past three months at the company with our local peers for their appreciation.
Tell me, don’t those idiots even realize they’ve broken the law?
Don’t you think I was too merciful?
Maybe I should have called Old Zhang back home and asked his fancy lawyer team to help out, throw all these scoundrels and rascals into prison? We have more than enough evidence after all.”
At this point, it seemed the smoke had irritated the young boss’s eyes, and he turned away in disarray to wipe them, but could no longer hold back the desolation in his heart and broke down crying in front of Sister Pomegranate.
He now felt that Sister Pomegranate was the only good person in the entire company.
However, he had yet to realize that the only result of Sister Pomegranate, whom he considered a good person, taking two months’ salary from him was submitting that report and resignation letter, directly bursting his “entrepreneurial dream”.
The young boss’s heart was bitter, burning like a ball of fire within.
He paid those people salaries 20% above the industry standard, gave them statutory holidays without making them work overtime, provided them with five insurances and one pension fund, and even paid out of his own pocket for benefits, just last month he spent over ten thousand on mooncakes alone.
And this is what he got in return?
He admitted he was young!
This was his first time participating in the operations of the real world as a member of society, he admitted he lacked experience, he admitted he couldn’t be as rational and cold-hearted as his old man.
He admitted he still harbored illusions about reality.
But that wasn’t an excuse for those maggots to trample all over his sincerity!
“What are you crying for, you big man?”
Sister Pomegranate sighed and patted the young boss’s shoulder, saying softly:
“Do you have to cry over something like this? If you had gone through what I did when I had to retire due to an injury despite having a promising future, you’d be even more devastated. But since the company is gone, I’m not considered resigned, but fired, so why don’t we talk about my severance pay?”
“You heartless woman! You Pomegranate! I really misjudged you! Is this the time to talk about that?”
The young boss suddenly raised his head and cursed, then waved his hand wearily and said:
“Just like those ten-plus people you listed as actually working hard in the company, I’ll gladly offer you two years’ worth of severance pay, 24 months. But you’ll have to be careful from now on. They all know that there’s no way a foolish rich kid like me could have known about their schemes, the only possibility is that someone leaked their secrets.
I’m afraid they might retaliate against you.
Why don’t I hire you a bodyguard?
I’ll pay.”
“With your judgment of people, forget about it. I’m afraid the bodyguard you hire will sell me out on their first day of work.”
Sister Pomegranate rolled her eyes, pulling the young boss out of the conference room as she said matter-of-factly:
“Finding a bit of fun for myself outside of doing my job properly is just idling, not doing any work at all and purely causing trouble is what makes one an idiot. But it’s precisely because of the chaos caused by those maggots that even idling has become a crime, yet they still dare to complain about me smashing their rice bowl?
Pah! As if they deserve it!
Anyone looking for trouble can come!
Remember to bring more people, with their physiques they’ll probably be beaten to a pulp before the cops show up to save them. And don’t think I’m joking with you about your ability to judge people, let me tell you something else you don’t know.
Do you know why every time you had the urge to come to the company after work, you could see so many people working overtime?”
Sister Pomegranate patted the young boss’s shoulder and said softly:
“It’s not because they love their jobs so much, it’s because your driver takes kickbacks from them every month, so they know in advance whenever you’re coming to the company. Let me ask you, when your old man kicked you out to start a business, did he tell you to be sure to choose someone trustworthy as your driver?”
“Um, Old Zhang did mention that.”
The young boss’s face turned pale as he said:
“But…but I went through three rounds to pick Little Liu myself.”
“Aiya, I’ve already said you’re not cut out for this.”
Sister Pomegranate sighed.
Looking at this young man a year younger than Niuniu, like looking at her own younger brother, she shook her head and said:
“Come on, let your sister vent for you.”
A few minutes later, the young boss was sitting in his luxury car.
The two-faced driver Little Liu stood by the roadside with two slap marks on his face and a streak of blood from his nose, barely avoiding being punched into a concussion by the dashing Sister Pomegranate, who then stepped on the gas and drove off.
“A friend is coming to town tonight to discuss business, I’ve arranged to have dinner with some friends from the game.”
“Not in the mood.”
The young boss turned away, wiping his tears, and said:
“Just drop me off at my apartment.”
“Did I ask for your opinion?”
Sister Pomegranate rolled her eyes and said:
“You’ve already qualified for the game test, come play with us. Don’t waste it. And I’ll consider the fact that you were peeking at my browsing history as never having happened. Little Zhang, I’m warning you, don’t lose face!”
“I only did that to get evidence of you slacking off! It wasn’t peeking at your search history.”
The young boss wiped his eyes, snorted, and said:
“Plus, why would someone with a net worth of hundreds of millions like me go and play games with you all? You must be living in a dream!”
“Emmm…”
Sister Pomegranate tilted her head, turning the steering wheel, and said:
“Among the 60 people currently in the game, there are at least 5 with a net worth over tens of millions. If I’m not mistaken, while I don’t know about the others, Little Sword Saint Ashina’s family background is definitely more impressive than yours, and I’ve heard Lady Aqua’s family conditions are even better than hers.
That broken group I’ve been trying to squeeze into really does have a group of hidden dragons and crouching tigers.
Now now, when you’re in a bad mood, you need to learn to indulge yourself. If you can’t be a powerful figure in the real world, you might as well get your fix in the virtual world.”
“…”
The young boss fell silent.
A few minutes later, this Little Zhang must have had a screw loose somewhere, as he suddenly turned his head, his eyes red as he looked at Sister Pomegranate in the driver’s seat and said:
“Sister, you don’t have a boyfriend yet, do you? Why don’t we…”
“Hahahahaha!”
Sister Pomegranate burst into laughter upon hearing this, causing the young boss’s face to redden as he said angrily:
“What’s wrong with me? I’m a man too, right? And I’m so rich.”
“I admit you’re rich, but what I want is someone who can protect me and give me a sense of security.”
Sister Pomegranate put on her sunglasses and glanced at the young boss, who was still wiping away his tears, saying:
“A whimpering little puppy dog won’t do. I don’t want to live as tirelessly in the second half of my life as I did in the first half. Wipe your eyes, and don’t embarrass me later.”
“Is this game really that fun?”
The young boss snorted, pretending the earlier awkwardness had never happened.
He pursed his lips and said:
“Don’t lie to me, you see, I was just cheated by over a hundred people and I’m still heartbroken.”
“I’m not lying, it’s really fun.”
Sister Pomegranate smiled and said softly:
“For your current situation, it’s definitely more fun than this rotten real-life game.”