Seeing Lin Yao look so confident, Xiao Dong could not help beginning to mutter inwardly. It was said that TCM diagnosis involved four methods: observation, listening and smelling, questioning, and pulse-taking. Could Lin Yao have seen something from him just now?
That should not be possible. His health had always been very good. Setting aside the fact that he went to the gym five times a week, the company had only organised a physical examination last month, and all his health indicators had been normal.
“Alright, then I’ll have to trouble Doctor Lin to diagnose me,” Xiao Dong said. Since he had confidence in his own health, he calmly stretched his hand out in front of Lin Yao.
Lin Yao smiled, leaned slightly towards Xiao Dong, and placed her fingers on his wrist.
“Mm?” Lin Yao suddenly made a sound, and her expression changed.
“What is it?” Xiao Dong became a little nervous because of Lin Yao’s sudden change in expression.
“Mm.” Lin Yao nodded thoughtfully again, as if she had only just heard his question, and comforted Xiao Dong, “Manager Xiao, don’t be nervous. It’s nothing serious.”
“Oh, that’s good, that’s good.” Why scare people by acting so startled when nothing was wrong?
“Tsk.” After a short while, Lin Yao suddenly clicked her tongue again.
“What is it now?”
“Manager Xiao, please stick out your tongue and let me have a look,” Lin Yao suddenly requested.
Xiao Dong opened his mouth as told.
Lin Yao looked a few times, then nodded again, as if she had reached a diagnosis, and withdrew her hand from his pulse.
“How is it, Doctor Lin? Is there anything about my body I need to pay attention to?” Xiao Dong asked.
“Manager Xiao’s body is indeed very healthy,” Lin Yao replied.
“I told you.” Xiao Dong immediately relaxed, picked up the coffee on the desk, and took a comfortable sip.
“But you should restrain your nightlife,” Lin Yao said slowly, waiting until he had taken the coffee into his mouth before adding the second half.
“Cough… cough, cough…” Xiao Dong choked so badly his face turned red. He coughed for quite a while before recovering, then looked at Lin Yao awkwardly. He thought to himself, Is TCM really this amazing? Can she even tell from my pulse that I had a one-night stand last night?
“Manager Xiao, are you alright?” Lin Yao asked, pretending to be worried.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Xiao Dong cleared his throat and said with a flushed face, “I… I’ll pay attention in future.”
“That’s good. After all, drinking too much alcohol is very harmful to the body.” Lin Yao deliberately pronounced the last word vaguely, making it hard to tell whether she meant harmful to the body or harmful to the kidneys.
“Then… is there anything else I should pay attention to?” Xiao Dong was made even more embarrassed by Lin Yao’s ambiguous wording.
“I just said, Manager Xiao, your body is actually quite healthy.” Lin Yao smiled and added, “Apart from a few minor problems.”
“Minor problems?” Xiao Dong pressed, “What other problems does my body have?”
“Don’t be nervous.” Lin Yao looked at Xiao Dong with a kind smile. “It’s just haemorrhoids. Not difficult to treat.”
“Hae…” Xiao Dong stood up in agitation.
“You don’t need to be so worked up. I already said it’s a minor problem.” Lin Yao looked helpless.
Xiao Dong felt that he had never been this embarrassed in his life. Suppressing his feelings, he sat back down and explained, “Doctor Lin, I’ve only been a little constipated recently. I don’t have haemorrhoids.”
“Oh…” Lin Yao blinked and suggested with extreme honesty, “Why don’t you go to the toilet now and see if there’s any blood in your stool?”
“…”
For some reason, Xiao Dong’s insistence that it was only constipation began to waver.
“Manager Xiao, constipation isn’t a serious illness, but it should still be treated early,” Lin Yao said earnestly. “If it becomes severe, you might even need surgery.”
Xiao Dong imagined himself lying in a hospital with his trousers off, undergoing surgery, and immediately broke out in cold sweat. He secretly decided that later, when he went to the toilet, he would pay close attention. If there really were streaks of blood, he would hurry to the hospital and register for an appointment.
“Also…”
“Also?” Xiao Dong’s tone changed.
“Don’t be nervous. They’re all minor problems.” While insisting they were minor problems, Lin Yao reached out and pressed heavily on the Xiawan acupoint on Xiao Dong’s abdomen.
Xiao Dong could not help crying out in pain.
“Tsk, tsk. Your stomach and intestines aren’t good either. You usually eat too quickly, don’t you?” Lin Yao muttered, “People nowadays, once work gets busy, eating becomes like fighting a battle. One after another, all their stomachs and intestines are bad.”
“Is… is it serious?” Without realising it, Xiao Dong had already started believing Lin Yao’s diagnosis.
“Didn’t I already say? Minor problems.” Lin Yao smiled kindly.
“Doctor Lin, what other minor problems do I have? Can you tell me all at once?” Xiao Dong said with a bitter expression.
Lin Yao looked troubled. “All at once? That won’t do. I have to explain them to you one by one. Otherwise, you won’t understand. So, have I passed this interview or not?”
“You passed, you passed. As far as my interview is concerned, you’ve passed,” Xiao Dong said decisively.
Seeing him like this, Lin Yao could not help giggling. Only after she had laughed enough did she say, “Alright, then. These minor problems of yours aren’t serious. Later, I’ll write a list of things to pay attention to and send it to you. Usually, just be a little more careful. You don’t need to take medicine.”
“The more troublesome one is the haemorrhoids. I suggest…”
“I… I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow.”
For this kind of illness, it was better not to let a female doctor examine him, right? What if she asked him to take off his trousers for an examination? Xiao Dong decided he would go find a familiar doctor tomorrow and get some medicine himself.
“That’s fine too…” Lin Yao did not insist.
“And also…” Xiao Dong added, “This is only the first interview on my side. If you’re officially joining the company, you’ll still need to go through a second interview. But I believe that with your abilities, the second interview definitely won’t be a problem.”
“A second interview?”
“Doctor Lin, don’t misunderstand. After all, this is the first time our company is hiring someone in the field of traditional Chinese medicine, so we invited an old professor from the University of Chinese Medicine to help check things over,” Xiao Dong explained.
“Which professor?” Lin Yao asked.
“Professor Fang Zhongfang,” Xiao Dong said. “Doctor Lin graduated from the University of Chinese Medicine too, so you must have attended Professor Fang’s lectures before.”
“Professor Fang?” Lin Yao looked delighted. “I’m very familiar with Professor Fang. He even asked me to apply for his postgraduate programme before, but later I insisted that I didn’t plan to take the postgraduate entrance exam, so he recommended me to the Sixth Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.”
“What a coincidence?” Xiao Dong froze for a moment.
“When is the second interview? Where will it be? Here at the company or at the university?” Lin Yao asked.
“Professor Fang is getting on in years, so originally we planned to take the candidates to the university for the second interview. Since you know Professor Fang and were even recommended by him, there’s no need to make it so troublesome. I’ll just call Professor Fang and confirm with him.”
“That works too. In a few days, when the weekend comes, I’ll go visit the old man,” Lin Yao said.
“How about this? I’ll first take you to see your workplace,” Xiao Dong suggested.
“Okay.” Lin Yao nodded readily.
Xiao Dong took Lin Yao in the elevator to the eighth floor. As they walked, he introduced the place. “Tengfeng Tower has thirty-two floors in total. The first to twentieth floors are Tengfeng Group’s office area. The remaining floors are rented out to other companies.”
“The tenth floor is the employee cafeteria. The sixteenth floor is the recreation centre, with table tennis, badminton, bowling, a gym, and other leisure facilities for employees to relax.”
“Then there’s the eighth floor. The eighth floor is the office area for the group’s administrative departments, and the medical room is also set up here.” Xiao Dong pointed to the far-left corner and said, “Over there is the Western medicine health-care room. The TCM health-care room is over here.”
Xiao Dong led Lin Yao to the right. Before long, Lin Yao saw an antique-looking TCM clinic appear before her.
Unlike the other offices, which used glass decorations, the TCM health-care room was entirely partitioned with wood. There was even a plaque hanging directly above the entrance, written in beautiful cursive script with five large characters: **Traditional Chinese Medicine Health-Care Room**.
“There are actually medicine cabinets?” Lin Yao could not help exclaiming when she saw the neat row of medicine cabinets inside.
“The logistics department arranged it according to the TCM clinics on the market, and also purchased some common Chinese medicinal herbs,” Xiao Dong said. “You could say everything is ready except for a TCM doctor. Are you satisfied?”
“Satisfied, satisfied. I wish I could start work right now.” Lin Yao pulled open a medicine cabinet to check the quality of the herbs inside, speaking without even turning her head.
“That’s fine.” Seeing Lin Yao dive into the medicine cabinets as if she wished she never had to come out, Xiao Dong could not help laughing. “Today can count as your first day of work, but the onboarding procedures can only be handled tomorrow.”
“Then today I’ll first organise the medicinal herbs here.”
“Only part of the herbs have been placed out. There are still some in the storage room inside.” Xiao Dong walked to the wooden desk beside them, pulled open a drawer, took out a key, and led Lin Yao to the rest area at the back.
There were two simple folding single beds in the rest area, provided for patients to rest on.
Xiao Dong felt around the wall for a while, found the keyhole, inserted the key, and turned it. Then he raised his hand and gently pushed.
Only then did Lin Yao realise that this was an embedded storage room. The door’s design looked very similar to the wall decoration, so if one did not pay attention, it would be hard to notice there was a door here.
Lin Yao turned on the light and saw that the small storage room was densely packed with medicinal herbs. Her eyes immediately lit up, and she did not want to come out.
Seeing how much she liked the place, Xiao Dong thoughtfully said, “Then you can familiarise yourself with the work environment here on your own first. Tomorrow, I’ll have someone from HR come over and help you complete your onboarding.”
“Mm-hmm.” Lin Yao did not even turn her head.
“Our company works from nine to five, but since it’s your first day, you can leave a little earlier.”
“Aiya, I know. Don’t you have work? Why are you so free?”
“…”
The disliked Xiao Dong could only quietly retreat, planning to return to his office and further confirm Lin Yao’s medical skills with Professor Fang Zhongfang.
Left alone in the TCM health-care room, Lin Yao only had to think that all these medicinal herbs would be under her control from now on, and that this entire large TCM clinic would be hers. She tossed her bag aside, rolled up her sleeves, and began organising everything according to her own preferences.
First, she would sort out the herbs in the storage room. Tomorrow, she could just fill up the medicine cabinets outside.
==
At twelve-thirty noon, the case that had taken a whole week of overtime was finally completed just now. As long as no problems came up during testing, the task could be considered successfully finished.
Yan Lüji, who had slept only six hours in total over three days, rubbed his aching temples and decided to go to the empty TCM health-care room to rest for a while before going home. After all, driving while exhausted was not safe either.
Enduring his headache and his rare drowsiness, Yan Lüji arrived at the TCM health-care room and went familiarly to the rest area at the back. He discovered that the things in the rest area seemed to have been moved around. All kinds of bags were piled near the simple single beds.
Yan Lüji frowned, looked left and right, and saw an empty space nearby. So he pushed the bed over there, casually took a blanket, and lay down comfortably.
So when Lin Yao finished organising the items and pulled open the storage room door, she saw someone lying directly in front of the storage room, sound asleep, blocking the doorway completely.
Lin Yao was terribly depressed and was just about to wake him up. But when she turned her head, she dismissed the idea.
She had seen this person that morning. He was the uncle who had brushed past her in the corridor. The uncle had a scruffy beard and greasy hair. One look was enough to tell that he had not taken care of himself for several days.
His deathly pale face, the dark circles beneath his eyes, and his brows that were still furrowed even in sleep all gave off the appearance of severe deficiency. Lin Yao did not even need to take his pulse to know just how poor this person’s physical condition was.
It was better not to wake him.
But how she was supposed to get out was another problem. Before she knew it, it was already two in the afternoon. Lin Yao, who still had not eaten, was so hungry her stomach hurt.
Lin Yao crouched down and looked under the bed. There was a folding support frame. She could not crawl under it.
Looks like I can only climb over.
Once she decided, she acted. Lin Yao took off her shoes, pushed them under the bed to the other side, then carefully and laboriously stepped onto the edge of the folding bed and climbed up. Her whole body hovered above Yan Lüji.
Lin Yao strained to support herself on the bed frame with all four limbs. She carefully let out a breath and was just about to push through in one go and climb over when the man who had been sleeping soundly just a moment ago chose that exact unfortunate moment to open his eyes.
As soon as Yan Lüji opened his eyes, he saw a woman lying above him. His dark eyes slowly sharpened.
“You… you’re awake.” Lin Yao, startled, gave an awkward smile.
“May I ask, what are you doing?” Yan Lüji asked hoarsely, gritting out each word through clenched teeth.
“Climbing over the bed,” Lin Yao answered instinctively.
“Shameless!” A trace of disgust flashed through Yan Lüji’s eyes, and with a wave of his hand, he pushed Lin Yao off.
“Aiyo, that hurts! Are you sick or something?” Lin Yao, caught off guard after being shoved, jumped up and cursed.
**Author’s Note:**
For the male and female leads to officially meet, Crab wrote an extra thousand words… Crab really is amazing.
P.S. Because Crab did not study medicine, please don’t look too deeply into the medical knowledge involved in the text… I’ll work hard to look up more relevant information.
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