Chapter 63: The First Shareholders’ Meeting of the “Asia’s Top Styling Studio”
If only everything in the world could be resolved through simple acts of revenge—if you liked someone, you could offer them a drink, and if you disliked someone, you could just confront them and fight it out.
Unfortunately, even martial arts novels don’t follow such straightforward plots anymore.
Jiang Xiaoyuan watched Ms. Fan’s hysterical and twisted expression with a sense of satisfaction, though it wasn’t entirely fulfilling. This indirect attack wasn’t as gratifying as slapping her in the face right then and there.
But no matter how delicate and fragile the Empress Dowager Jiang might seem, he was still a grown man. How could he assault an elderly woman on the street?
It would neither be lawful nor appropriate.
Jiang Xiaoyuan did want to step up herself, but she had neither the standing nor the physical prowess to do so. Her natural strength was practically in the negatives, and she doubted she could beat anyone in a fight.
In moments like this, being a villain had its perks. Villains didn’t have to care about laws, decency, or their reputation.
Qi Lian pulled the car up and rolled down the window. “Let’s go, I’ll take you back.”
At that moment, Fan Xiaoxiao seemed to feel Jiang Xiaoyuan’s gaze and angrily turned around. Reflexively, Jiang Xiaoyuan gave her a noble and icy smile, opened the car door, and waved her competition pass at Ms. Fan with a sweet tone:“Goodbye, Teacher Fan. Thank you, Teacher Fan.”
A red light flashed in Fan Xiaoxiao’s eyes, resembling a rabid dog’s glare. To Jiang Xiaoyuan, it looked like two festive red lanterns, instantly relieving her pent-up frustration. She let out a long sigh, closed the car door, and casually tossed her semifinal pass onto the back seat.
Qi Lian glanced at her with a smile and turned on some vague folk music from the car’s stereo.
The sun was setting, the sky was draped low, and even the mundane task of driving in the city seemed to take on a pleasant quality.
Qi Lian said, “It seems my future returns are secured, Ms. Jiang.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan adjusted her seat, stretched out her legs, and took a long, satisfying stretch.
She had been on edge all day and now, finally able to relax, she felt a bit drained.
“Just now, Empress Dowager Jiang accused me of being cunning,” Jiang Xiaoyuan muttered, half-jokingly complaining, “I’ve got a mountain of work waiting for me back home. Just thinking about it makes me tired.”
She complained a little, then calmed herself down from the post-competition jitters. Reflecting on her actions throughout the day, she realized she had indeed been quite cunning.
Some people are naturally persistent, relentless in their pursuits, refusing to turn back even when they hit a wall.
Others, on the other hand, take the opposite approach. It’s not that they’re lazy on purpose, but when faced with obstacles, they instinctively dodge and maneuver without even realizing it, as if they were born with an extra set of turning wheels.
Jiang Xiaoyuan clearly belonged to the latter group. She was good at being clever and occasionally took pride in it. But thinking about it carefully, it wasn’t exactly a good habit.
Suddenly, she said: “Who was that guest who left early? She had a point. I have shortcomings, but I didn’t dare show them on stage. I got lucky this time, but I might fail next time… I really haven’t had enough male clients.”
Her voice suddenly trailed off. Qi Lian waited for her to continue, but when the light turned red, he glanced over and was startled by the eerie green glow in her eyes. “What are you planning?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan leaned against the window, her fingers tapping rhythmically on her knee. “I think some people are particularly handsome—perfect for being a model.”
Qi Lian replied: “…Don’t start, I don’t wear makeup.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan, with a teasing smile, said: “I didn’t say that handsome person was you, did I? Handsome boy.”
“…” Qi Lian was unsure whether to have a heart attack or be flattered.
He realized that Jiang Xiaoyuan had not teased the host enough, so she brought down the trick she used on stage and used it on him.
Before he could come up with a witty response, Jiang Xiaoyuan lowered her voice and said, “You know, no one has ever spoken up for me in public like that before.”
Her previous sentence had been playful, but this one was suddenly serious.
Qi Lian, caught off guard, awkwardly replied, “Well, that’s probably because you’ve never needed anyone to… If you’re tired, don’t go back to work. Let’s go celebrate instead.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “What, are you asking me out?”
Qi Lian nearly swerved the car into an “S” shape.
Had he really spent so many years fetching people around the world based on instructions from his assistant that he had lost touch with how to interact with women?
Jiang Xiaoyuan burst into laughter, her recent gloom lifted. All her struggles and uncertainties seemed to dissipate as she broke through the fog clouding her path and found a clear way forward.
Jiang Xiaoyuan had washed her face, but even though she wasn’t wearing makeup, no one would say she looked bad. Even without any makeup, she still radiated with beauty.
She felt like she had reclaimed a sense of her former life—a state from another time and space, though not exactly the same. Perhaps the difference was that she hadn’t felt this confident back then.
Qi Lian had been right: human beings’ subconscious need for self-esteem and self-worth was almost instinctual, like cats eating fish and dogs eating meat. Most of the time, people just couldn’t face their own powerlessness and so deceived themselves.
Jiang Xiaoyuan had always flirted with young men like this, but after teasing Qi Lian a bit, she suddenly felt it was inappropriate. If she kept going, she might fall into her own trap, so she stopped nervously.
“Let’s head back to the studio,” Jiang Xiaoyuan said. “I can’t think of anything to eat right now, let’s cook ourselves.”
Qi Lian: “…That would be me cooking, not us.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t help but tease: “Exactly. So considerate. Whoever marries you is lucky.”
Qi Lian’s ears turned slightly red, but he managed to regain his composure. He didn’t want to deal with her relentless mouth cannon that made Fan Xiaoxiao angry and scared the host to death, so he chose to stay silent and gave a her smile with a deep look.
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
Feeling her throat tighten, she quickly turned to look out the window: “Oh, hey, there’s a supermarket up ahead. They give discounts after 5 PM. Let’s go there.”
Qi Lian responded: “Alright. Are you cold?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan stretched out her arm and grabbed a men’s jacket Qi Lian had left from the back seat, carelessly wrapping it around herself.
The future major shareholder and executive of Asia’s top styling studio parked their unremarkable old car in the crowded parking lot of the supermarket and proceeded to raid the discounted fruit, vegetables, and meat section.
Many years later, Jiang Xiaoyuan would still think it was a miracle that she made it through the preliminaries.
Countless people had tried to push her down, while just as many had tried to pull her up. She had gone against the entire manipulative committee and still, against all odds, secured a spot in the next round.
In the past, Jiang Xiaoyuan would have felt nervous when Teacher Jiang left all the studio’s follow-up work to her, but after this ordeal, she no longer felt invincible, but she was certainly fearless.
Gradually, she realized that she had truly developed the ability to stand on her own.
Clients who initially hesitated, asking, “Where’s Teacher Jiang?” were now proactively asking for her business card by the time she wrapped up a project. Her nickname, “Little Nirvana,” had stuck—though she wasn’t sure why someone over 1.7 meters tall kept being called “little.”
Time flowed by like water, and over a month passed in the blink of an eye. The chill of early winter was approaching, and the endlessly busy Teacher Jiang finally caught a breather and rushed back. His first order of business was to check Jiang Xiaoyuan’s work.
Teacher Jiang required her to keep a daily work log, detailing what plans she made, how she thought them through, how they were revised, what the final results were, the clients’ feedback, and so on—nothing was too small to be backed up.
Jiang Xiaoyuan anxiously watched as the Empress Dowager’s handsome face turned expressionless like a blank “whiteboard,” wondering if a “red dragon” could summon a “fortune” in this situation.
As her mind wandered aimlessly, she made a funny face at Qi Lian, who was sitting beside her.
After going through the log for more than half an hour, Jiang Bo set it down and took a sip of tea.
Xiaoyuan immediately widened her eyes, putting on a cute, innocent look, thinking, “It’s one thing to scold me in private, but please not in front of a handsome guy—where would my heroic image go?”
Whether he understood her look or not, Teacher Jiang simply nodded and said, “Hmm.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “Huh?”
After waiting for a while and hearing nothing more, she cautiously asked: “That’s it?”
“What else do you want?” Jiang Bo gave her a confused glance. “Were you hoping to be scolded?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
She heard Qi Lian’s muffled laughter beside her and wanted to cover her heart, realizing she had become someone who couldn’t go a day without being reprimanded.
Jiang Bo: “I’m starving. Let’s find a place to eat—how about that place at the entrance of our neighborhood?”
Qi Lian readily agreed: “Sure, I’ll make a reservation.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan objected with a stern look: “No way!”
The two almost said it in unison.
There’s a French restaurant at the entrance of their neighborhood. The ambiance is decent—mainly because no one goes there—but the food is far from authentic. After being tested by Jiang Xiaoyuan’s “princess palate,” she deemed it the epitome of “expensive and awful.” Nowadays, it seems that as long as a restaurant has “French” in the name, it magically becomes royalty, with an average cost of at least 500 or 600 yuan per person.
Jiang Bo raised his willow-like eyebrows, and this time it was Jiang Xiaoyuan’s turn to wear the “blank face.”
Under her unwavering frugality, the three of them ended up queuing at McDonald’s.
“You’ll die of obesity sooner or later,” Jiang Bo snapped, breaking a fry in half like he was exacting revenge. Then he quietly started eating to soothe his hunger. After eating about 70% full, the Empress Dowager Jiang, displaying remarkable willpower, wiped her mouth and refused to touch any more junk food. “I’ve had some brochures made, and the first batch of ads is already out. The response over the past few days has been pretty good—we get calls almost daily, and we’ve even started receiving some orders. Once the competition kicks off, it should get even better. By then, you’ll need to focus on the competition, so you won’t be able to handle everything. We need to hire staff.”
Qi Lian: “Do we have enough funds?”
Jiang Bo: “We’re good for now, don’t worry. Future profits are guaranteed. But once the studio expands, we need to get everything on track. We can’t operate like a small workshop anymore. We’ll need professional customer service, financial staff, and a tech team. Hiring is urgent. That old set of rules you copied off the internet won’t work anymore—we need to draft a new one. Issues like authority and personnel management have to be re-discussed. I came back for this.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan, nibbling on a fry, pondered his words for a few seconds: “So, you’re saying you want to hold the first shareholder meeting here?”
Jiang Bo: “…”
“Okay,” Jiang Xiaoyuan pulled out a lipstick from her pocket and carefully wrote on a napkin, “Shareholder meeting in progress, no table-sharing allowed.”
Qi Lian reminded her: “President Jiang, what about the meeting minutes?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan pulled out her phone, added Qi Lian and Jiang Bo to a chat group, and spoke into the mic: “Nirvana Studio’s first shareholder meeting is now in session. Attendees, please remember to save the recording—don’t worry about data usage, they have Wi-Fi here. They’re just stingy and don’t tell customers, but I got the password.”
She hit send, and both President Qi Lian and President Jiang received a voice message.
President Jiang sneered: “Are you brainless?”
President Qi, on the other hand, praised her enthusiastically: “You’re so creative!”
The two conflicting opinions were almost spoken in unison. Afterward, they exchanged a glance, with Qi Lian smiling silently, while Jiang Bo suddenly felt a bit disheartened. After playing the bad cop for so long, he started to feel like he wasn’t able to speak like a normal person anymore.
In the end, following the principle of majority rule, Jiang Bo’s opinion was overruled.
And so, on a chilly early winter night, the three future executives sat around a plastic table at McDonald’s, shamelessly leeching off the free Wi-Fi while, despite sitting face-to-face, they communicated via voice messages in a WeChat group. In this lighthearted way, they held the inaugural shareholders’ meeting of the “Number One Styling Studio in Asia.”
The journey toward the stars and seas, it turns out, began like primitive humans chopping wood to make boats.
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