E-Ladies: Navigating the Wired World
Chapter 169: Episode 169: Limping But Still Determined to Work

Chapter 169: Episode 169: Limping But Still Determined to Work

Fortunately, Haidian Hospital was just at the street corner opposite the company; Wei Jingzhu had only carried Zhou Xueyin a few steps before they arrived.

Luckily there was still some time before the hospital closed for the day, and they were able to register smoothly at the orthopedics department.

Wei Jingzhu carried Zhou Xueyin to the 3rd-floor consultation room for their appointment and then ran up and down the stairs to pay fees and arrange for an X-ray.

"Young lady, your boyfriend is really responsible. All this running about he’s doing for you..." the doctor said with a smile as she looked at Zhou Xueyin.

"No no, you’ve got it wrong; we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend..." Zhou Xueyin hastily denied in a panic.

"Hey, such a nice young man; if you don’t grab onto him quickly, you’ll regret it later!" the doctor laughed, indulging in a bit of gossip.

"Yinyin, go get the X-ray done, there’s no one there right now..." Wei Jingzhu returned to the consultation room holding the appointment slip and squatted down in front of Zhou Xueyin again.

"Young man, good luck!" the doctor said with a meaningful smile.

"Um, oh... okay..." Wei Jingzhu didn’t quite grasp what the doctor meant and just nodded subconsciously.

Arriving at the radiology department, Zhou Xueyin saw that Wei Jingzhu had started to sweat from his brow: "Sorry for putting you through all this trouble today."

"It’s okay, no problem." Wei Jingzhu politely waved it off.

After the X-ray was taken, the two returned to the orthopedic consultation room, where the doctor frowned at the results: "No wonder it’s swollen like this, a bone fracture... You need to exercise more and try to avoid high heels as much as possible. Also, make sure to get enough calcium! At your young age, you sprain your ankle and it leads to a fracture; what will you do when you get older?"

"Oh... okay..." Zhou Xueyin didn’t feel her diet was imbalanced, but perhaps it was because she was lactose intolerant and couldn’t drink milk, so she wasn’t getting enough calcium.

"Alright, go down to the 1st floor treatment room, get the cast done, and then you can go home. Come back for a follow-up in a month!" the doctor wrote out another prescription.

The two went back to the 1st floor, paid for the cast, and for the sake of convenience, Zhou Xueyin even bought a pair of crutches...

"How about I just take you home? You’re not thinking of going back to the company, are you?" Wei Jingzhu asked worriedly as he watched Zhou Xueyin hobble towards the direction of the company on her crutches.

"I should at least inform them about the situation. Even if I take a sick leave or something tomorrow, work still needs to go on!" Zhou Xueyin hurried towards the company.

She was still not quite adept at using the crutches, nearly falling several times. Wei Jingzhu followed nervously beside her: "Why don’t you just make a phone call and have Jixiang take care of things?"

"But I still need to go back and get my laptop... Even if I’m on leave at home, I’ll still need to work remotely!" If only she had promoted Jixiang to deputy head sooner, then she wouldn’t be feeling so restless about taking a break. "Besides, with that kind of boss who believes ’rank overrules everything,’ will he really listen to Jixiang’s orders obediently? Ha..."

"You really do work hard... So, shall I take you home after this? You might as well take a day off from your Japanese class today." Wei Jingzhu insisted on escorting Zhou Xueyin home, as he truly couldn’t leave her alone in her current state.

"Okay, okay. If I don’t let you take me home, are you going to keep following me around?" Zhou Xueyin felt a warm feeling inside.

Usually, when she was sick with a headache or fever, her parents were the ones most concerned about her. Now, she felt like there was someone else silently caring for her, but she feared she might not be able to return this kindness.

Zhou Xueyin had planned to rest at home for a month, but just after one weekend, she was back at the company, standing by her post with her crutches.

"Xiaozhou, why aren’t you resting at home? Why did you come back to the company?" Zhang Yongzhong was unhappy when he saw Zhou Xueyin’s figure.

"Why shouldn’t I come? There’s always some ignoramus pretending to know everything, gesturing and giving unsolicited advice, disrupting our photographers at work! Three days and not a single decent finished photo has come out? We’re supposed to return the product in a week! How so?" Zhou Xueyin’s sarcasm was obvious as she spoke with derision.

"Who is it? Who’s pretending to know everything and hindering the work? That kind of behavior can’t be tolerated! I’ll go sort them out! You just focus on recovering at home! Don’t end up really... you know?" Not even Zhang Yongzhong was foolish enough not to realize Zhou Xueyin was talking about him, so he retorted.

"Securing the Barbour ad campaign, establishing our footing in the industry—even if my leg really were useless, it’s none of your concern!" Zhou Xueyin glared at Zhang Yongzhong, "Sisi, let’s go! I’ll oversee the photo shoot!"

During the days when Zhou Xueyin was resting, Zhang Yongzhong kept running to the 10th floor for no good reason, directing Wang Simo on how to photograph Barbour products with his outdated perspectives on IT product photography.

As you can imagine, under his directive, products with a high sense of quality were shot to look like cheap market goods, and Zhang Yongzhong actually thought these photos were good. But for a fashion website, these were just trash!

Wang Simo, looking at the pile of trash photos, was fuming yet dared not to speak out. He could only seek Zhou Xueyin’s help, begging for Zhang Yongzhong to stop meddling.

Not only was he causing trouble for Wang Simo, but he also shamelessly asked Li Ji’ang to introduce her clients to him.

He even wanted to unilaterally alter the advertising plan that Zhou Xueyin had prepared for Barbour!

Indeed, it’s like when there’s no tiger on the mountain, the monkey proclaims himself king.

Luckily, the folks at 51buy were united, not wanting the website to be ruined by such rubbish, and were secretly reporting to Zhou Xueyin.

Though they knew it wasn’t great to force her back to work, for the benefit of the website, they could only ask her to step in and resolve the issues.

After Zhou Xueyin returned, Zhang Yongzhong obediently hid back in his office, only coming out to seek Zhang Jingwan for work related to Langri Razor, and otherwise either stayed in his office or was out of sight.

Under the supervision of Zhou Xueyin, the photo shoot of the Barbour products was quickly completed.

To prevent any further complications, and so that no thieves would have designs on them, Zhou Xueyin asked Li Ji’ang to return all the products on the day of the shoot.

The 10th-floor meeting room was supposed to be restored to its original state, but after inspection by Liu Ruidong, he found the arrangement exquisite and saw no need for restoration.

Thus, it was permanently kept as a special product photography studio, available for all the group’s employees for product shoots.

In early December, Zhou Xueyin communicated with Chen Yue from Barbour, and after obtaining permission to go live, 51buy launched its first major ad campaign.

Everyone who opened the homepage or forum was forced to watch a 5-second full-screen waterfall ad.

After the 5 seconds, the ad shrank to the header section, and as the browser page was scrolled, there were also coupled-style ads displaying Barbour products on the left and right sides.

You could say that at that time, the entire 51buy’s advertising space was dominated by this British luxury brand.

[Have they gone mad? A 5-second waterfall ad? Have they stopped doing anything else? Every time you refresh the homepage, you’re forced to watch this ad! The forum has lost all semblance of decency in its commercialism!]

Indeed, it didn’t take a day before users began to protest...