Chapter 3: The Stolen Number

Finishing her patrol, Clara returned to the office.

The moment she sat down, she noticed Kelly Zhang, who sat at the neighboring workstation, had also just returned from her rounds.

Clara couldn't help offering a warm, bright smile. "Kelly."

Kelly was the property butler in charge of Villa No. 9. Holding the same rank as Clara and having been hired earlier, she was essentially Clara's senior. When Clara had first joined, they weren't close at all, but through calculated attempts to cozy up to her, Clara had eventually managed to break the ice and befriend her.

If you needed something from someone, you had to learn to read the room and play along.

And what did Clara want from Kelly?

She wanted to extract information about Julian and anyone else sharing Villa No. 9 from Kelly's lips.

Every property employee was required to sign a strict non-disclosure agreement upon onboarding. The contract explicitly prohibited leaking homeowner information to outsiders, and colleagues weren't casually allowed to gossip about the owners they managed either. Anyone caught violating the rule faced immediate termination without severance.

Since she wasn't assigned to Villa No. 9, getting any inside details meant going through Kelly.

After growing close, Clara had painstakingly learned from Kelly that Julian's name was Julian Vance, and aside from his butler, maids, and other domestic staff, he was the sole master of Villa No. 9.

To be honest, she was grateful to Kelly—though this was also the very beginning of her descent into the "abyss."

Back then, she had merely been curious about everything concerning Julian, wanting to know if he was married or had a girlfriend. Gradually, that wasn't enough; her desires and curiosity grew out of control, eventually spiraling into an unstoppable compulsion to trail him wherever he went.

Kelly returned Clara's smile, wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, and asked, "It's so scorching today. Do you want to grab some milk tea this afternoon?"

"Let's do it, my treat!"

"How can I let you do that? You're always treating me."

"A cup of milk tea doesn't cost much anyway. Besides, my financial pressure is lower than yours," Clara said generously.

"Thanks a lot." Kelly didn't bother arguing with Clara. Having worked together for a year, she knew Clara was a local native, meaning her financial burdens were genuinely lighter than hers as an out-of-towner. "My family sent me some cured pork. I'll fry it up tomorrow and bring some for you to try."

Give and take was the foundation of any lasting relationship, and she regularly brought her own packed lunch to work anyway.

"Sounds good," Clara agreed with a beaming smile.

After finishing her chat with Kelly, before diving back into work, she sneaked a moment to check her new WeChat notifications.

What on earth are you up to lately?

I can never pin you down for hangouts anymore!

Her good friend, Chloe Taylor, was complaining about her. Clara let out a soft, internal sigh.

Recently, all her days off had been consumed by tracking Julian, leaving her zero free time to accept Chloe's invitations.

Didn't I tell you? I've officially become a broke 'moon-tribe' member—no cash left to go out and play!

My salary drops tomorrow. Want to hang out during my day off next week?

Every word of Clara's reply was the absolute truth.

Her consumption levels had skyrocketed, turning her solidly into a living-paycheck-to-paycheck dependent.

I told you not to buy a car, but you refused to listen!

On top of that, you've started buying luxury goods way beyond the budget of us poor folks!

Chloe completely failed to understand why Clara had suddenly burned through almost all her savings to buy a vehicle.

Not only that, but Clara's previously thrifty and plain personality had nearly vanished. She had developed an interest in luxury brands and even dared to buy things at stellar plaza, a high-end luxury shopping mall.

Chloe guessed it had to be tied to the shift in Clara's living environment.

After all, Clara worked in a villa community with terrifyingly high property prices, interacting with wealthy people every day; her consumption mindset was bound to be influenced.

Seeing Chloe's ongoing rant, Clara massaged the bridge of her nose.

She hadn't wanted to, but an invisible, powerful force kept driving her to do it.

After locking down the time and place for their outing, Clara prepared to put her phone away when a thick, heavy hand rapped sharply against her desk, startling her out of her skin.

Then, a raspy, duck-like voice rang out.

"Clara Lin, what do you think you're doing?"

The tone of an inquisition spelled nothing but trouble.

Clara squeezed out a smile and slowly raised her gaze. "Manager."

The man standing before her was her direct supervisor, Wu Qichao. While he wasn't quite as sickening as Butler Li, and didn't actively make things difficult for her on a daily basis, he wasn't much better either.

"Get into my office."

Dropping those words, Wu Qichao turned on his heel and strode toward his private office.

Biting the bullet, Clara followed right behind his footsteps.

"Look at you, what number complaint is this for the month?!" Wu Qichao glared with a cold, horizontal scowl down at Clara, who kept her head slightly lowered. "Butler Li just called to complain about your bad attitude again."

Clara tried to explain that her attitude had been completely fine, but Wu Qichao refused to listen, cutting her off mid-sentence.

"If there are any more complaints this month, we'll dock five hundred yuan from your pay in accordance with company policy."

"..."

"You've been here a while, and your complaint rate among the property butlers is consistently through the roof. You—"

Before Wu Qichao could finish, his phone rang. Mid-sentence, his attention instantly shifted to his computer screen. While frantically clicking and typing away on his keyboard, he spoke into the phone with unctuous, flattering obsequiousness: "One moment, please. Once I get everything sorted out, I'll have the property butler hand-deliver the access card to you."

Stuck halfway through a scolding, Clara ignored whatever Wu Qichao was busy with and let her mind drift into a blank void.

Suddenly, Wu Qichao snapped back into his fierce, glaring expression, fixing his eyes on her. "Get a better attitude! Is it really that—"

"Manager, someone's looking for you at the front desk."

A call came from outside, leaving Wu Qichao with no time to finish chewing Clara out. He hurriedly stood up and rushed toward the front desk.

Knowing Wu Qichao's toxic habits, Clara knew she mustn't wander off before he had fully satisfied his urge to lecture her; otherwise, he would just scream louder and longer next time.

Waiting was mind-numbingly boring, so her gaze began to wander around the room.

As her eyes swept across the neighboring computer screen, Clara's gaze abruptly froze.

Resident Information Registration Table

The text was emblazoned in bold across the top of the spreadsheet.

She had a table like this on her own computer too, but it only contained data for Villa No. 8—nothing like the master spreadsheet on Wu Qichao's screen.

As a manager, Wu Qichao had to oversee everything, meaning his spreadsheet aggregated the data for every single resident living in the entire villa district.

For some inexplicable reason, this spreadsheet possessed an overwhelming, irresistible temptation for her.

Driven by an impulse she couldn't control, Clara walked over to the computer, slid the mouse, and rapidly scrolled through the columns.

Until her eyes locked onto a single entry, a flash of transient joy bursting through her pupils.

Julian Vance, Villa No. 9, Homeowner, 13xxxxxxxx

Back then, she had wanted to wheedle Julian's contact info out of Kelly. Property butlers naturally had access to the homeowners' direct numbers, but the non-disclosure agreement loomed like a shadow, and Kelly wasn't stupid enough to cross the line on where she could leak information.

In the modern digital age, a phone number was tied to virtually everything!

She could use that number to dig up other details about Julian and peer even deeper into his world.

Right now, an unrepeatable opportunity sat right in front of her. If she didn't write the number down, she might never get another chance to lay eyes on this spreadsheet.

With that thought flashing through her mind, Clara darted a glance outside.

Taking advantage of the fact that Wu Qichao hadn't returned yet, she frantically grabbed a sticky note and a pen, copying down the sequence of digits.

The moment she placed the pen back in its exact spot, the faint sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears. Clara's heart rate spiked slightly. She hurriedly stepped back to her original spot, pressed a hand over the pocket holding the sticky note, and assumed a calm, composed posture as if she had done absolutely nothing at all.

Having dealt with his visitor, Wu Qichao returned to his office. Seeing that Clara was still standing obediently in place, he nodded with satisfaction, though his nagging didn't let up by even a single word.

Once the tongue-lashing finally ended, Clara stepped out of Wu Qichao's office. The moment she turned around, her expression lacked the usual irritation that followed one of his lectures; instead, it was laced with a trace of triumphant giddiness.

The second she sat down at her desk, Kelly leaned in close to her ear, lowering her voice to a hyper-secretive whisper. "Did he chew you out again?"

Wu Qichao loved screaming at people, finding excuses to yell whether there was an issue or not. Dragging subordinates into his private office for one-on-one tongue-lashings was a regular occurrence, known to everyone in the department.

Clara nodded silently without speaking.

Kelly didn't pry further, giving Clara's shoulder a sympathetic pat.

Immersing herself back into her work, Clara's mind kept drifting back to Julian's phone number. Halfway through, she opened her phone's contact list and saved the number, making sure she'd never lose the sticky note and find herself stranded without it.

The moment quitting time arrived, she happily boarded the subway heading home.

"Honey, did something make you extra happy today? You look like you're walking on air," her mother remarked, timing her arrival right as she walked through the door. She had just finished cooking dinner and wanted Clara to wash her hands and eat, only to be caught off guard by her daughter's beaming smile.

"You could say that," Clara answered vaguely.

"Want to share it with Mom?" her mother probed casually.

"Mom, what did you cook? It smells amazing." Knowing she couldn't share the real reason, Clara decided to pivot the topic.

"We have your favorite braised pork!" Her mother affectionately patted her daughter's head. "Go wash your hands quickly."

"You're the best, Mom."

Clara washed her hands meticulously like a good little girl, completely unaware that her mother was studying her closely.

As a mother, she knew her child inside and out. Her mother had noticed long ago that this year, her daughter carried an unusual, constant radiance, suddenly showing a deep passion for dressing up. She had bought plenty of high-end cosmetics and skincare products, picked out numerous new outfits, and cared about her appearance far more than ever before.

Every single change pointed heavily in the direction of romance.

Yet when she had asked her daughter point-blank if she was dating someone a while back, she had been met with a flat denial.

After washing up, Clara turned around only to run right into her mother's assessing gaze. Raising an eyebrow, she asked, "Mom, why are you staring at me like that?"

"Nothing." Her mother pointed toward the food on the dining table. "I'm going to pack a container of food and take it to the vegetable market for your dad later. I won't bother cleaning up—make sure you tidy the kitchen when you're done."

Her parents usually stayed late at their market stall, so Clara was well accustomed to this routine. "Got it, Mom."

After eating, washing the dishes, and tidying up the kitchen, she retreated to her bed, pulled up Julian's phone number from her phone, and gazed at it repeatedly, a smile pulling uncontrollably at the corners of her lips.

In the information-exploded internet era, the pros and cons were starkly obvious. The downside was that privacy had plummeted to near zero; anyone could dig up vast amounts of personal info on someone else just by catching a single trail of breadcrumbs. The flip side was that the reverse was just as true—if you wanted to check someone out, it was shockingly easy.

Back when she tracked Julian all the way to Yinteng Tower, she had casually plugged his name and Yinteng Group into an online search engine, instantly discovering that he was the new-generation head of Yinteng Group and the grandson of founder Chairman Vance.

Where should she search this time?

After a brief moment of thought, Clara opened the WeChat search bar.

She wondered: had Julian ever registered a WeChat account using this phone number?

Without harboring any real expectations, she copy-pasted the sequence and hit search.

To her utter shock, a profile picture featuring the Chinese character for "Heng" written in traditional calligraphy popped up instantly.

Chapter 4: The Friend Request

Wow, Julian had registered a WeChat account with that number!

And it was actually searchable!

Wide-eyed with a mix of shock and pleasant surprise, Clara felt a sudden flurry of emotions ripple through her heart.

Having lived in the shadows for so long, it was only natural to crave some form of direct contact.

Yet her social standing and status simply did not allow for any real intersection between their lives.

Hovering her fingertip tentatively over the "Add to Contacts" option, Clara forced herself to rein in her racing thoughts.

The employee handbook explicitly stated that property staff were strictly forbidden from harassing homeowners; once a homeowner filed a complaint, the employee faced immediate termination without severance.

However...

What if she added him using a fake identity?

Wouldn't that bypass the employee rule entirely?

Surely Julian wouldn't be so idle as to track down the person sending a friend request and investigate who was lurking behind the screen, right?

Besides, adding him as a friend didn't mean she was going to harass him!

She would just quietly browse his Moments and things like that.

Back and forth her mind wrestled, leaving Clara completely undecided.

There was also another problem: Julian might not necessarily accept a friend request from a stranger.

Staring intently at his profile picture for a long moment, she decided to check out his Moments first.

She wondered if he had enabled the privacy setting that restricted non-friends to viewing only his last ten posts?

Her hopes were instantly dashed. Tapping into Julian's Moments homepage revealed nothing but a flat, empty line, causing her to pout in bitter disappointment.

Next, she skillfully used the phone number to run searches across various major social platforms.

Alas, absolutely nothing came up.

Oh well, if it doesn't show up, it doesn't show up.

A second-generation elite sitting at the absolute peak of the pyramid was bound to place a heavy emphasis on privacy protection.

Even with all her frantic online digging in the past, she had never been able to unearth a single photograph of him, and information about him online was exceedingly scarce.

Though, a rumor circulated in a very tight, private circle—allegedly originating years ago from an internal employee at Yinteng Group—claiming that their newly appointed boss was outrageously handsome and exceptionally young.

Clara wholeheartedly agreed with that whispered rumor; Julian was indeed breathtakingly good-looking.

As for his age, she visually estimated that Julian couldn't be more than a few years older than her, putting him well under thirty.

Finishing up her online searches, Clara promptly dove straight into her online courses for upgrading her junior college degree to a bachelor's.

After graduating last year, she had been brutally beaten down by the job market, coming to the visceral realization that any formal company required a bachelor's degree as an absolute baseline. Even if she didn't want to raise her educational credentials, she had no choice if she wanted to make lateral job moves in the future.

Working as a property butler was not a career she could sustain for a lifetime.

In the blink of an eye, her next day off rolled around. Clara arrived right on time at the restaurant where she had agreed to meet Chloe.

Chloe had beaten her to the spot, and the table was already crowded with a battery of equipment.

"Are you shooting purely for video, or streaming while shooting?" Clara asked.

Unlike her, Chloe had graduated this year and chosen not to look for a traditional job, becoming a full-time restaurant-review vlogger.

"Pure shooting," Chloe said with a cheeky, confident smile. "And the merchant is treating us to this meal for free."

As a review vlogger whose most popular short-form video platform boasted over two hundred thousand followers, Chloe frequently received free collaboration invites from local restaurants due to her restaurant-rating niche.

"Awesome, that saves me a meal's worth of cash," Clara said happily.

"Look at you, all thrilled." Chloe pulled out her phone and texted a link to Clara. "I've got another free promotional review video to shoot in a few days at a high-end Japanese restaurant that runs about a thousand yuan per person. Want to come along?"

"Not a chance!" Clara flatly refused.

Once, when she was tracking Julian, she had grown curious about what the Japanese restaurant he frequented tasted like. Desperate to experience a slice of his daily life, she had splurged nearly half a month's salary there, only for the food to almost bring her to tears of regret—it tasted awful.

It was her first time ever eating high-end Japanese cuisine, and it left her with severe remorse.

"It's a thousand yuan per head! And it's free!" Chloe emphasized. "Haven't you ever tried it? Let me take you to broaden your horizons!"

"Already tried it. Not my thing—I can't stomach raw food."

"…Fine, suit yourself."

While the two chatted, the waiter began bringing out the dishes one after another.

Clara focused entirely on eating, while Chloe chattered away into the lens, reviewing and explaining the food as she bit into each dish.

After the meal, Chloe suggested, "Let's wander around the neighboring mall for a bit to walk off the food?"

"Sure, hold on a sec."

Seeing Clara pull out a tube of lipstick and a small mirror from her bag, applying the color with a level of intense, laser-like focus that felt entirely uncharacteristic of her former self, Chloe blinked rapidly in confusion. "Since when did you pick up such high-maintenance habits?"

"Applying lipstick gives you a healthy glow and makes you look energetic." Clara turned squarely toward Chloe, letting her properly inspect the vibrant enhancement the lipstick provided. "Doesn't this shade look great?"

She had only started dipping her toes into makeup this year, still lingering at the beginner's stage of the holy trinity: daily tone-up cream, eyebrow drawing, and lipstick, all in a bid to make herself look a bit prettier.

"Are you... kidding me?" Chloe scanned Clara up and down. "With bright red lipstick like that, if you put it on too thick, it makes you look mature and garish. Tone it down."

In her professional opinion, Clara possessed a textbook soft-featured aesthetic, meaning she wasn't suited for flashy, loud styling, nor should she plaster too many brightly colored cosmetics onto her face.

"Really?" Clara instantly began to doubt her own aesthetic judgment.

"Really." Chloe nodded emphatically. "Wipe it off."

"..." Clara silently reached for a tissue and rubbed the lipstick away.

Packing up her equipment, Chloe told the owner they were done shooting, then led Clara over to the nearby shopping mall.

The mall catered primarily to ordinary consumers, with item prices locked safely within a budget average people could afford. Clara browsed back and forth, but perhaps her tastes had elevated—she couldn't find a single thing that caught her eye.

"How about we head over to Stellar Plaza?" she asked, turning to look at Chloe, who was currently fidgeting with a small trinket.

"Wait, girl, did you strike it rich?" Chloe asked in astonishment. "Why are we going to Stellar Plaza again?"

Stellar Plaza was a luxury concentration camp exclusively built for the wealthy, where price tags looked like they didn't matter, trailing behind endless strings of zeros. They were both ordinary people with tightly capped incomes.

"The stuff there just looks better."

"…And the prices look even better."

"Even if we just look and don't buy, it's good for broadening our horizons." Even if she wanted to buy something, Clara couldn't afford it anymore anyway.

Chloe nodded. "Alright, fine."

They were already out anyway; wandering through one place was no different from another.

The moment they stepped through the main doors of Stellar Plaza, a wave of opulent extravagance hit them head-on. Chloe didn't feel particularly intimidated, but looking down at her own suddenly inadequate, budget-tier clothes, she sighed regretfully, "Why couldn't my reincarnation luck have been a little better?"

"My thoughts exactly." Clara figured her reincarnation luck wasn't entirely atrocious, just not quite good enough.

Entering the mall, Chloe followed right behind Clara just like last time.

Clara didn't step foot inside the boutiques; instead, she stood on the outside looking through the glass at the merchandise displayed in the display cases.

Curiosity piqued, Chloe asked, "Why aren't we going inside?"

Clara answered with brutal honesty, "I don't have the confidence. Saves me from getting side-eye from the clerks."

Store clerks spent every day dealing with wealthy clients; their gazes were razor-sharp, letting them sniff out a customer's purchasing power at a single glance. When she came here last time and gritted her teeth to buy a bag costing over ten thousand yuan, she had still caught plenty of snide looks from the staff.

"Fair point." Remembering the cold glares she had endured last time as well, Chloe let out a depressed breath. "When will I ever strike it rich? Is starting to buy lottery tickets every single day going to do the trick?"

"If you weren't born into it, it's pretty hard to get," Clara muttered. She wanted to strike it rich too, but the ceiling for ordinary people was so agonizingly low that even maintaining basic subsistence was a struggle. Blabbing about getting obscenely wealthy every day was no different from daydreaming.

"Right through the heart." Chloe put on an exaggerated, tearful pout before her attention was instantly hijacked by a wristwatch glowing inside a nearby display window. "Holy crap, am I seeing this right? Seven zeros?!"

"Yep, you're reading that right." Clara knew exactly which watch Chloe was staring at.

"That's enough to buy us two or three apartments," Chloe sighed in envy. "It must be nice to have money."

Clara remained silent, casting a sideways glance at the brand logo.

Vacheron Constantin.

Even the cheapest watch from that brand was completely out of reach for an ordinary person.

Standing right beside the display window now, gazing at the luxury item trapped behind the glass...

In truth, it felt remarkably similar to how she secretly watched Julian from the shadows—like an ordinary person coveting an outrageously expensive, gorgeous luxury item that was utterly unobtainable no matter how hard she tried, leaving her with no choice but to simply look and walk away.

Yet every time she thought about it, a surge of raw irritation bubbled up inside her.

Why couldn't Yinteng Group just collapse?

And then Julian would go bankrupt, forced to sell off everything at a heavy discount!

After sighing over the extravagant lifestyle of the rich, Chloe felt it was a bit awkward to keep camping out right in front of someone else's storefront. She nudged closer to Clara and whispered, "Let's switch shops, otherwise the clerks are gonna start—"

Mid-sentence, her gaze dropped downward, and she realized Clara wasn't staring at the watch at all—she was completely transfixed by her phone screen.

Driven by a natural instinct of curiosity, Chloe peeked over at Clara's mobile display.

The screen was parked squarely on a page showing that a stranger's WeChat account had been successfully found, featuring the option to send a friend request. Instantly, Chloe demanded, "Who's this?"

With her mind completely wrapped around everything concerning Julian, Clara had pulled out her phone instinctively, just like she had over the past few days, using his phone number to search his WeChat out of pure habit.

Even though that number yielded nothing else besides WeChat across the internet, the digital bridge made her feel so close to him—so close that a mere flick of her finger could grant her access to him. It meant she didn't have to hide like a thief when catching glimpses of him in the villa district, constantly terrified that he would recognize her face and catch her in the act of tracking him.

"Just..." Clara paused for a fraction of a second. "The person I like, like I told you before."

She had confessed to Chloe back when she first fell in love with Julian at first sight.

"Oh, him!" Since they had been best friends since elementary school, this was the first time Chloe had ever seen Clara take an interest in anyone, making it unforgettable. "Congrats on finally getting his contact info! But wait, why haven't you added him yet?"

Bound by deep self-awareness, Clara hadn't dared to reveal Julian's true identity.

After all, a chasm separated her and Julian; saying it out loud would sound like a common toad trying to eat swan meat, inviting mockery and making Chloe mistakenly assume Julian was just another ordinary guy.

"I..." Clara massaged her brow. "I'm afraid of disturbing him."

"What's there to be afraid of? You only get a start if you take the initiative! Who knows, it might actually work out!" Chloe offered her own hard-earned dating experience as advice. "Besides, managing to get his contact info in the first place takes real skill!"

Before she could finish, seeing Clara's hesitant expression, Chloe had zero patience for cold feet. With lightning-fast reflexes, she tapped a few times on Clara's screen, successfully completing the friend request dispatch, and declared, "What are you scared of? Just add him and be done with it!"

Staring at the newly changed interface on the screen, Clara froze in place.

Unaware of the massive historical milestone she had just triggered, Chloe kept dishing out advice: "Back in the day, that's exactly how I reeled my boyfriend in. Chasing a guy is as easy as piercing a layer of window paper!"

"This..." Clara suddenly lost her voice.

The request had already been sent; there was no taking it back now.

A sudden, dizzying wave of anticipation washed over her.

What if... what if Julian actually accepted a stranger's request?

Over the next several hours, Clara checked her WeChat every few minutes.

The result remained identical: absolute silence.

Until she returned home, realized her phone was running low on battery, plugged it in inside her bedroom, and stayed out in the living room to watch TV with her parents.

As the night grew late, her mother reminded her that she needed to wash up and go to sleep since she had work tomorrow. Clara rubbed her temples with a trace of lingering irritability.

She had been hit with two complaints by that sickening old man last week, bringing her total up to four for the month. Her pay was officially guaranteed to be docked by five hundred yuan, making her loathe this job more with every passing day—yet she couldn't afford to lose it.

Pulling her emotions back in line, Clara walked back to her bedroom to grab a change of clothes and get ready for bed.

Right before heading to the bathroom, she casually picked up her phone to sneak one last look for any new notifications.

The moment the screen lit up, a notification banner from WeChat popped into view.

Heng has accepted your friend request!

Chapter 5: The Fake Identity

Up on the top floor of the Yinteng Group headquarters, inside the president's office.

Having talked endlessly until his throat was dry, Wei Hongwen decided to take a break and reach for the cup of tea poured on the coffee table. That was when he noticed Julian sitting opposite him, casually playing with his phone and treating him with an even greater level of indifference than before.

Pulling his hand back, Wei Hongwen asked cautiously, "Julian, were you even listening to me?"

He had come here today carrying a mission: to help his grandfather persuade Julian into co-developing a project. If Julian wouldn't participate, even a modest financial investment or some shared resources would make his family deeply grateful.

To secure this meeting, he had waited from daylight until evening, finally getting an audience with Julian only after the young CEO finished his heavy workload.

If Julian hadn't absorbed a single word of his pitch, he was going to have to repeat the whole thing.

"Mhm," Julian responded indifferently.

"Then... what do you think about this proposal?" Despite being peers who had known each other since childhood and shared some history, Wei Hongwen still adopted the posture of someone asking a favor, his tone deeply respectful.

"Talk to my assistant."

"You got it! Thanks!"

With just a single sentence from Julian, the deal was practically in the bag. Wei Hongwen's expression shifted instantly, and he sipped his tea in high spirits. Even so, his peripheral vision kept drifting back to Julian, whose intense focus on his phone was simply too intriguing to ignore.

"Julian, what are you looking at?" he asked out of curiosity.

"A cat," Julian replied without raising his head. His eyes remained locked on the phone screen as his fingertip slowly swiped down, until a prompt finally slid into view:

*Non-friends can only view the latest ten posts in Moments.*

After that, his finger swiped back upward, displaying the Moments posts he had just looked at once more.

Among them, a post featuring both selfies and candid shots of a smiling girl made his gaze linger for a moment longer.

Growing a bit bolder, are we?

Daring to come and add him on WeChat now.

"A cat?" Wei Hongwen was baffled. He distinctly remembered that Julian had detested furry pets since childhood. "When did you start keeping a cat?"

The moment those words left his mouth, he caught Julian casting an indefinable, faintly playful sidelong glance his way.

The next second, Wei Hongwen found himself locked in the crosshairs of a pair of ice-cold eyes.

"We're done here. You can leave."

Faced with the prompt dismissal, Wei Hongwen didn't even have time to dwell on the question he had just asked. He dropped his teacup onto the table and offered another hurried expression of gratitude: "Thanks!"

Stepping out of Julian's office, he glanced back over his shoulder a few times.

Even though he and Julian shared a past, he couldn't deny that the chasm between them was widening by the day. Yinteng Group had been soaring to new heights ever since Julian took the helm, while his own family's company had slumped into a semi-moribund state following a disastrous strategic misstep, causing their social standing to plummet.

In a sense, he had been reduced to someone who had to rely on Julian's moods to make a living.

Yet, despite the widening inequality of their positions, Wei Hongwen felt no bitter imbalance in his heart.

Having the chance to eat off Julian's plate was an opportunity countless people would kill for.

His objective achieved, Wei Hongwen's mood grew even brighter, his footsteps practically bouncing with glee.

Gancing over at the door Wei Hongwen had just closed behind him, Julian was once again left alone in the office. He backed out of the restricted Moments homepage, returned to the notification tab, tapped accept, and promptly disabled every channel that allowed people to add him as a friend.

Since her courage had grown so big, he wanted to see just how far it stretched.

At the exact same moment, holding a change of clothes in one hand and her phone in the other, Clara repeatedly stared at the notification—**Heng has accepted your friend request!**—trying to convince herself it wasn't just a hallucination born of tired eyes.

No matter how many times she checked, a brand-new tab sat securely in her chat list.

Tapping into it revealed the system prompt:

*You have added Heng. You can now start chatting.*

Julian had actually accepted her friend request!

Unable to suppress her disbelief, Clara rubbed her eyes.

When Chloe had initiated the friend request for her, the verification message had simply been a single, casual digit: *1*.

From Julian's perspective, she was an absolute, textbook stranger!

So what on earth was she supposed to say right now?

Or should she first double-check whether the person on the other end was the real Julian?

With her thoughts spinning in a jumble, she decisively utilized the transfer feature.

The moment she opened the transfer page, the third character of his real-name authentication popped up right behind his nickname, matching the single character "Heng" in his display name. Clara's pupils widened slightly.

Next, she tested a five-figure transfer amount.

WeChat immediately prompted her to verify the other party's surname, asking her to input it manually.

Typing in "Gu", a message flashed instantly: *Input correct.*

At that exact moment, fireworks seemed to burst inside Clara's mind, sending a tingling, electric thrill cascading through her veins.

The person on the other end really was Julian!

She actually had his contact info!

Returning to the original dilemma: what should she say?

Or should she say nothing at all and just lurk quietly on his contact list?

The trouble with lurking was the constant risk of getting purged at any moment!

With the clock ticking, Clara wrung her brain dry without coming up with a single solid opening line, completely unable to cook up a convincing fake identity on the spot.

Fortunately, Julian didn't send a follow-up message demanding to know who she was.

She realized that now that she was interacting with him face-to-face across the digital divide, she was actually getting a bit timid.

Normally, when she watched him from the shadows, stalked him, and secretly wished for his financial ruin, she was acting like a stealthy, law-breaking outlaw. But direct contact didn't allow for any of that; she had to present herself as a proper, respectable person and keep her dark, twisted side locked away.

The reason was simple: nobody liked a creep who wished ill upon them.

*Hello!*

After agonizing for a moment, Clara sent a simple greeting.

She figured that once Julian asked who she was, she would drop her fabricated cover story.

To her utter dismay, she waited and waited, but half an hour slipped by without a single reply from Julian.

During that stretch of time, she ended up scrolling through his Moments all over again.

Seeing that it was nearing 11:00 PM, Clara finally gave up and headed off to wash up.

She wrapped up her bedtime routine much faster than usual, but still, no reply sat waiting for her on the screen.

Was Julian that insanely busy?

Did he just snatch a second to glance at his phone during a busy gap and then toss it aside?

As drowsiness began to creep in, Clara decided she had better just go to sleep, praying that when she woke up tomorrow morning, Julian wouldn't have deleted her.

As it turned out, the moment her head hit the pillow, her nervous system snapped awake; she tossed and turned, completely unable to fall asleep.

Her actual hours of sleep that night could be counted on one hand.

Consequently, waking up the next morning was an absolute form of torture. The first thing she did was check her phone—still no reply from Julian.

Had he ignored her? Or outright deleted her?

Terrified of the latter, she instantly tapped into his Moments page to verify.

She could still see his posts; she hadn't been blocked or deleted.

Then why on earth wasn't he replying to her?

Throughout her morning commute, Clara's mind was consumed entirely by that single question.

Yet, she hadn't anticipated that the moment she stepped through the gates of the villa district, her phone would ping with a WeChat notification sound.

Clara scrambled to pull out her phone and opened the app.

**Heng:** *Hello, who is this?*

Julian had replied to her!

In a flash, a wave of jubilation surged through her, making her feel like leaping into the air.

Honestly, no amount of lurking or stalking could ever compare to direct contact.

Because observing and tracking someone from the shadows was inherently clandestine, making it nearly impossible to understand them up close. Direct contact was entirely different—it meant she was legitimately, openly infiltrating his world.

After clocking in, Clara leisurely began drafting her reply.

*Good morning!*

*Mr. Vance, I'm Bai Tianqing, an investigator with Fengyue Auction House.*

Fengyue Auction House was a fairly prestigious establishment within City A's elite circles. She had trailed Julian there twice and thoroughly dug up information on it online. Choosing to impersonate an employee from there felt like the safest bet, especially since Julian seemed genuinely fond of purchasing items through them.

*Forgive me for adding you out of the blue, I hope I'm not disturbing you!*

*I'm conducting a survey regarding your client experience with our auction house. If there was anything during your visits that made you uncomfortable, I'd like to log it and feed it back to management so we can improve and ensure your future experiences are top-notch!*

Having constructed her fake identity and wrapped it in a righteous, bulletproof excuse, Clara sent the message off and wanted to pat herself on the back for being a genius.

Meanwhile, inside his regular chauffeured vehicle on his morning commute, Julian cast a dark, inscrutable gaze over the four newly arrived messages.

Fengyue Auction House?

Bai Tianqing?

Adding him as a friend without using her real identity, opting to fabricate a fake one instead?

And before fabricating a fake one, she forgot to delete the photos leaking her real face from her Moments?

Julian tapped back into Clara's Moments page. Unlike last night, what met his eyes now was a completely blank screen.

*The user only displays the most recent three days of Moments.*

His brow furrowing slightly, he locked his phone screen and turned his gaze back to the scenery outside the window.

The entire morning drifted by without Clara receiving any further response from Julian.

During lunch break, everyone gathered to eat their respective meals. Kelly, sitting right next to Clara, noticed that even while eating, Clara's eyes were glued to her phone screen—specifically parked on a WeChat chat window—and teased with a chuckle, "Waiting for someone's message?"

At that, Clara flashed Kelly a bright smile. "Yeah, waiting on a message."

Between spells of waiting, she kept refreshing to confirm whether she had been deleted.

"By the way," Kelly leaned in a bit closer. "Do you have any of the homeowners on WeChat?"

Clara only had one WeChat account and hadn't gotten around to setting up a burner to add Julian. Since she was already friends with Kelly on her main account, if Julian ever happened to interact with her in the comments or likes of a mutual post, her fake identity would instantly blow up.

"How could we possibly have that?" For the two years Kelly had been managing Villa No. 9, she hadn't even seen the homeowner's face in person more than a handful of times, usually communicating solely through his butler. "Little nobodies like us, how could we ever be worthy of appearing in a big shot's WeChat contacts?"

As an ultra-luxury enclave, every resident of Grand Manor was fabulously wealthy. To ordinary people, they practically lived like immortals in a heavenly palace, completely out of reach for mere mortals.

Clara let out an awkward, dry laugh. "True. I don't have any homeowners on WeChat either."

"You asking this... don't tell me the butler of Villa No. 8..." Terrified of being overheard by management while gossiping behind someone's back, Kelly dropped her voice to a near-inaudible whisper. "Giving you a hard time again? Are you trying to find a way to communicate with the owner directly?"

Hearing that old man's title made Clara want to roll her eyes into the back of her head.

Working this dead-end job was utterly sickening, and a good fifty percent of the credit belonged entirely to that old man.

She hoped the old man went bankrupt and lost his job tomorrow!

And that she'd never have to lay eyes on him here again!

Haltingly, Clara sighed with a mix of reality and pretense, "Living is so hard."

"Tell me about it! Taking crap every single day for pennies." While Villa No. 9's butler didn't make things difficult for Kelly—maintaining easy day-to-day communication and a laid-back personality—their department manager was a total freak, and she had her share of toxic colleagues too, leaving Kelly thoroughly sick of her job as well. "I just want financial freedom."

"I'm greedier than you. Not only do I want financial freedom, I also want..." Clara swallowed the rest of the sentence back down.

Because she couldn't possibly say it out loud...

Her ultimate, grandest wish was for Yinteng Group to collapse, for Julian to go bankrupt and plummet down into her exact same social stratum, leaving him within arm's reach so she could finally catch him.

She certainly couldn't let anyone hear that kind of talk at work!