Chapter 7 — My Nameless Occupation

The five of us stared at one another, frozen in place.

"The Ever-Far Group? The same company... the one you just resigned from, Sister?"

"That is correct."

I watched their expressions shift from skepticism to a form of quiet, dazed admiration.

"Sister Van..." Little Li scratched his head, "that was a seriously bold move."

"It was not bold. It was calculated."

The meeting stretched until five-thirty in the evening. As we adjourned, Shen Yi waited for me by the doorway.

"Miss Van, you caught up to the rhythm of this team much faster than I anticipated."

"Boss Shen, please, just call me Van."

"Very well. Van, I have reviewed your proposal; it is exceptionally polished. However, there is a risk."

"I am listening."

"Chu Han over at Ever-Far—if he discovers you are working for Shui-He, he might attempt to obstruct us."

I nodded slowly.

"That is exactly why I mentioned I would not be the one meeting them face-to-face. I will draft the strategy and the framework, but the actual client engagement must be handled by your team."

Shen Yi pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"And what if he manages to dig it up anyway?"

"Then let him look. The non-compete agreement will not be enough to stop me."

"Are you certain of that?"

"Boss Shen, at Ever-Far, I performed the workload of eight different departments, including legal support. I understand the clauses of that non-compete agreement far better than their own internal legal counsel does."

Shen Yi let out a soft, appreciative laugh.

"Fair enough. Let us wait for the phone to ring next week."

True to his word, on Wednesday afternoon, the administrative office of Ever-Far called Shui-He. The project had been personally approved by Ha Kien Quoc. The project title was "Optimization of the Ever-Far Group Operational Management System." The budget was eight hundred thousand. The point of contact for the project was the Operations Lead, Tran Loi. Seeing that name triggered a complex reaction in me. Tran Loi, you have your work cut out for you.

After Shui-He officially accepted the project, Shen Yi led Vu Tieu Man and two analysts to conduct preliminary interviews. I stayed behind, crafting the solutions, outlining the framework, and designing the templates. None of the deliverables bore my name. When the summaries from the first week of interviews were placed before me, I discovered something unexpected. The situation at Ever-Far was even more dire than when I had left.

Tran Loi stated during his interview: "Ever since Sister Van left, the work of those eight departments has truly been left unattended. Vice President Chu ordered the tasks to be redistributed, but even though each department was only assigned three or four additional items, everyone is complaining that they are too busy to manage."

Department Head Trieu added: "I never realized how much Van was actually doing. Only after she left did I realize that the simple task of scheduling events alone would justify hiring a new full-time employee."

Engineer Lam from the technical department noted: "That project management tool she built in Excel, while primitive, was incredibly intuitive. Now that they have switched to an official project management software, nobody knows how to use it. We have held three training sessions, and people still cannot grasp it."

The most shocking realization came from Old Vuong in the finance department.

"Every month, Van would assist me in cross-referencing the ledgers, and her accuracy rate was one hundred percent. Once she left, the very first report we generated had errors that were flagged by the external auditors."

I read these transcripts with a calm heart. It was not a feeling of triumph or validation, but rather a realization that the truth had finally surfaced. I felt neither joy nor sorrow; it was simply a quiet sense of, "Ah, so that is how it is."

Shen Yi knocked on the door and walked in.

"Finished reading?"

"Yes."

"Can you draft a solution?"

"I can. Since I built the original system, it is just a matter of breaking it down and repackaging it. However, there is a catch."

"Go on."

"Whether or not Ever-Far can successfully implement this depends entirely on Chu Han. If he does not step aside, the proposal will never be applied to reality. His management philosophy and the operational logic I built are fundamentally at odds—he demands absolute centralization, while my system is designed for distributed collaboration."