Looking at the curtain of rain filling the sky, Lin Yao, trapped at the subway station by the thunderstorm, regretted for the hundredth time that she had never developed the habit of checking the weather forecast before going out.
It had clearly been sunny when she left the house in the morning. How had it turned into a torrential downpour outside after she had taken the subway for half an hour?
Lin Yao gloomily glanced at the weather forecast on her phone.
**Thunderstorm from 8:30–9:30 this morning. Please bring rain gear when going out.**
Heavens. The rain would not stop until half past nine. She was absolutely going to be late.
If something had delayed Lin Yao, she would have accepted it. But the walk from the subway station to the company was less than five minutes. The company was clearly right in front of her, yet she could only watch helplessly as she became late. That feeling was truly unbearably depressing.
Lin Yao had only been working for a week and did not have any familiar colleagues yet. Asking someone to come pick her up was not very realistic. In the current situation, she could only wait for the rain to stop. She wondered whether her salary would be deducted.
“Beep, beep.”
Just as Lin Yao lowered her head dejectedly and stared at the tips of her shoes while waiting for the rain to stop, two urgent horn sounds suddenly rang out. Lin Yao lifted her head in confusion and looked over. She saw a black Audi parked on the road in front of her, and then the car window slowly lowered.
“You didn’t bring an umbrella?” Yan Luji’s handsome ice-block face appeared behind the window.
“Director Yan?” Lin Yao froze.
Yan Luji had seen Lin Yao standing alone at the subway entrance, staring blankly at the rain, from a distance as he drove over. He understood that she definitely had not brought an umbrella, which was why he had deliberately stopped the car at the subway entrance.
Yan Luji took an umbrella from the back seat and handed it out through the window.
“For me?” Lin Yao asked in disbelief.
“You don’t want it?”
“I want it, I want it, of course I want it.” Lin Yao hurriedly took the umbrella, thought for a moment, then asked, “Director Yan, aren’t you going to the company?”
“I am.”
“Then… then give me a lift.” Lin Yao’s eyes lit up. If she could ride in the car, her shoes would not get wet.
“Heh… no time.” Yan Luji coldly dropped those two words, then stepped on the accelerator and drove away.
Lin Yao stared in disbelief at the rear of the car disappearing into the rain. She was so angry that she threw the umbrella in her hand out.
“Yan Luji, what do you mean? Would giving me a lift break your car or something?”
Lin Yao stomped her feet in frustration. She seriously suspected that something was wrong with Yan Luji’s brain circuit.
But the car had already driven away, so being angry was useless. Lin Yao picked up the umbrella she had just thrown onto the ground again. As she lifted her trouser legs and walked towards the company, she muttered, “If you’re going to help someone, help them properly. What is this supposed to mean? He deliberately stopped to give me an umbrella, and he’s clearly going to the company too, but he refuses to give me a lift? Could it be that he only came over on purpose to annoy me? This person is seriously too boring.”
From the rear-view mirror, Yan Luji saw Lin Yao stamping her feet behind him. For some reason, his mood improved quite a bit.
“Yo, did you pick up money on the way here?” Xiao Dong saw Yan Luji walking over and pressed the elevator door-open button.
“What nonsense are you talking about?” Yan Luji walked into the elevator and pressed the button for the twelfth floor.
“Your mouth is curved up so high this early in the morning. If you didn’t pick up money, then something good must have happened?” Xiao Dong asked nosily.
“I saw a joke on the road just now. It was quite funny.”
“A joke? You look at that kind of thing?” Xiao Dong asked in surprise. “Tell me about it too. Let me have a laugh.”
Yan Luji turned his head and glanced at his friend. Under Xiao Dong’s expectant gaze, he smiled without saying anything. Soon, the elevator reached the twelfth floor.
“I’m here.”
“Then tell me during lunch!” Xiao Dong still did not give up and shouted while clinging to the elevator.
On the other side, Lin Yao finally ran into the company at the very last minute. When she hurriedly clocked in in a panic, the beautiful receptionist kindly said, “Doctor Lin, actually, you didn’t need to rush so much. Usually, when there’s heavy rain like this, our company tacitly allows everyone to come in half an hour late.”
“Huh?” Lin Yao said gloomily. “Forget it. If I can avoid being late, then I might as well not be late. Where can I borrow a hairdryer? My trouser legs are soaked.”
“The General Affairs Department has one.”
Lin Yao nodded, took the elevator up to the eighth floor, opened the umbrella and set it aside, then went to the General Affairs Department to borrow a hairdryer. She hid in the medical room and dried herself for an hour.
“Achoo!” Lin Yao could not help sneezing. “Did I catch a cold? No way. Could it be that the air conditioner was set too low last night? Forget it. I’ll boil some medicinal tea later to prevent it.”
After drying her clothes, Lin Yao took honeysuckle, liquorice, forsythia, platycodon root, and other herbs from the medicine cabinet and prepared a simple medicinal tea. Then she brought the prepared herbs to the pantry.
However, there did not seem to be a teapot for boiling tea in the eighth-floor pantry. Lin Yao asked a colleague, “Where can I find a teapot for boiling tea?”
“The twelfth-floor R&D department,” Administrative Assistant Xiaoli said. “Their pantry has everything.”
“Thank you.” Lin Yao brought the medicinal tea and took the elevator to the twelfth floor.
When she saw the R&D department’s pantry, Lin Yao finally understood what Xiaoli meant by “has everything.” If the eighth-floor pantry was a small roadside restaurant, then the twelfth-floor pantry was a five-star luxury hotel.
Coffee machine, flower-tea pot, cakes, fruit… If one did not know better, one would think they had walked into some buffet café.
“Damn… the difference between upstairs and downstairs is way too big,” Lin Yao could not help sighing.
“Eh… it’s you.”
Hearing the voice, Lin Yao lifted her head and found a beautiful woman in a blue dress looking at her. She looked somewhat familiar.
“You don’t remember me? We came for the interview together that day,” the beauty reminded her.
“Oh, the programmer encouragement specialist?” Lin Yao remembered. This was one of the girls who had interviewed with her. “You were hired.”
“I reported for work last Wednesday, but I only saw you today. Didn’t you train with us?” the beauty asked.
“Let me introduce myself. I’m Lin Yao, the company’s health-care physician.” Lin Yao knew the beauty had misunderstood and thought she was also a programmer encouragement specialist, so she explained, “I accidentally went to the wrong interview room that day.”
“You’re a doctor?” the beauty asked in surprise. “Hello, I’m Feifei.”
Seeing that Lin Yao was holding a cup, Feifei asked, “What do you want to drink? I’ll make it for you.”
“No need. I can do it myself.”
“It’s fine. I’m good at this. My job is to make coffee and flower tea for those programmers outside,” Feifei explained. “Sometimes, I get the illusion that I’m working in a café.”
“Looks like you’ve adapted pretty well,” Lin Yao said with a smile.
“It’s okay.” Feifei lowered her voice. “High pay, little work. That’s what matters.”
“Pfft…” Lin Yao could not help laughing.
“I’ll make it for you,” Feifei said. “Coffee or flower tea?”
“No need. I should make this myself.” Lin Yao showed Feifei the herbs in her cup and said, “I’m going to boil medicinal tea.”
“Oh, then I don’t know how to do that.”
“That’s why I said I’d do it myself.” Lin Yao looked left and right and asked, “Can I borrow the teapot for a while? Because boiling medicinal tea may leave a bit of a Chinese medicine smell.”
“It’s fine. There’s an extractor fan here.” As Feifei spoke, she helped switch on the silent extractor fan above the cabinet.
“There really is everything here,” Lin Yao said in surprise.
“You don’t know this, but during our training, the supervisor said everything should be based on the programmers’ wishes as the highest standard,” Feifei said. “I even suspect that if a programmer said he wanted to take a bath, the company would build them a bathhouse.”
The two chatted for a while longer before Feifei went off to do other things. Lin Yao stayed alone in the pantry to boil her medicinal tea. The smell of the medicinal tea was not as strong as regular Chinese medicine, and with the extractor fan running, by the time Lin Yao finished boiling it, there was almost no smell in the pantry.
Lin Yao found a glass cup, poured the extra medicinal tea into it, washed the teapot, and poured herself a cup of medicinal tea, intending to return to the medical room.
Lin Yao had originally planned to leave as quietly as she had come, but after taking only a few steps, Feifei, sharp-eyed, spotted her.
“Doctor Lin.” Feifei stood behind a desk and waved hard at Lin Yao.
Lin Yao smiled back.
“Doctor Lin, come over and help Engineer Zhang take a look. He seems to have twisted his neck.” Engineer Zhang was one of the programmers Feifei was responsible for. When he came to the company this morning, his whole head was crooked. He said he had accidentally twisted his neck while sleeping.
The corner of Lin Yao’s mouth twitched as she walked over. After looking at Engineer Zhang’s condition, she said speechlessly, “This is a stiff neck from sleeping badly. If he actually twisted his neck, he’d be dead.”
“I… sorry, Engineer Zhang. I just came back from overseas, so my Chinese isn’t very good,” Feifei quickly apologised.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. A stiff neck from sleeping badly is also because the neck got twisted. You’re not wrong. Hehehe…” With such a beautiful and kind girl, how could Engineer Zhang bear to be angry with her?
“Doctor Lin, can it be treated?” Feifei asked.
What kind of question was that? It was not a terminal illness. Lin Yao handed the cup in her hand to Feifei.
“Hold this.”
Feifei immediately cleverly moved aside.
Lin Yao stood behind Engineer Zhang, clasped both hands together, and began moving her wrists.
“Doc… Doctor Lin.” Engineer Zhang became a little frightened by Lin Yao’s preparatory movements. This Doctor Lin wasn’t going to beat him up, was she? “Actually, it’s not a big deal… it’ll naturally get better in a couple of days.”
“Don’t be nervous.” Lin Yao placed both hands on Engineer Zhang’s back, pressed around the Jianjing acupoint, then pressed twice on the Fengchi acupoints on the outer back of his neck. Then she suddenly asked, “Engineer Zhang, between Fan Bingbing and Li Bingbing, who do you like more?”
“I like… ah…”
“Crack.”
Taking advantage of the moment his attention was distracted, Lin Yao held his neck with both hands and turned it directly. With a crack, she forcibly twisted his crooked neck back into place. The programmer Xiao Wang next to them was so frightened that his hand went weak, and he failed to hold the cup in his hand steady, spilling coffee all over his desk.
“All done. Try moving it,” Lin Yao released her hands.
Engineer Zhang tried moving his neck and was delighted to discover that the neck which had hurt the moment he moved it just now could now turn freely.
“Eh? It’s really better.”
“Doctor Lin, you’re amazing.” Feifei looked at Lin Yao worshipfully.
“Extraordinary skills.” Xiao Wang next to them also gave Lin Yao a thumbs-up with a terrified expression.
Lin Yao raised an eyebrow, took the teacup back from Feifei’s hand, and carried herself with the profound air of someone who brushed off her sleeves after the matter was done, hiding her achievements and fame, as she left the R&D department with graceful confidence.
Yan Luji, who had witnessed the whole thing through the glass wall of his office, unconsciously touched his own neck. Thinking of Lin Yao’s clean and efficient movements just now, he said with some lingering fear, “Good thing that day she only used her mouth, not her hands.”
**Author’s Note:**
Are there any little angels who study traditional Chinese medicine? Crab’s information is all from looking things up and from things seen in daily life. If anything is wrong, you can gently point it out, but please don’t scrutinise too harshly. After all… Medicine Pouch isn’t a miracle doctor…
**Nomad: I’ve made some edits**
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