At 9 a.m., Li Qiao sat at her personal workstation, propping her chin up in boredom as she stared blankly at the chairman's office across from her.
She had already read the employee manual three times over, but Shang Yu still hadn't shown up.
Drowsily covering her eyes with her hand, she debated whether to send him a WeChat message.
Just then, her phone rang.
Seeing the caller ID, she stood and walked toward the pantry.
"Hello, Big Brother."
It was rare for Li Jun to call her.
Unless… something had happened.
Li Qiao strolled slowly into the pantry, leaning against the glass countertop. As she heard his question over the phone, she responded with a soft smile,
"I'm interning out of town recently. I only come home at night."
Li Jun sounded surprised and rubbed his temples.
"Why are you suddenly off doing an internship? Was it arranged by the research institute?"
"No," Li Qiao's gaze flickered briefly. Unwilling to explain further, she changed the subject.
"Why are you calling me? Something up?"
Li Jun sighed, dropping the topic. His tone turned serious.
"Nothing major… It's just—I remember you own a Leica 0-series camera, right?"
Li Qiao thought for a moment and answered nonchalantly,
"Yeah, I have one. It's in the collection room. Why?"
As soon as she said it, Li Jun's breathing grew noticeably faster.
"Qiaoqiao, can you take that camera out for me to use?"
"Sure," she replied casually. "But what for?"
She picked up the teacup on the counter and rolled it lightly between her fingers.
"That camera was made in the last century. Its image quality won't match modern DSLRs."
At best, it had some collectible value—there were only 25 units in the world.
She had anonymously bought it last year at the Venus Auction for under ten million.
Li Jun hesitated, then awkwardly explained,
"It's not for taking pictures. A few days ago, Nanyang Machinery Holdings lost an important batch of development components—specifically, precision bearings for a line of retro cameras."
"And…" he added grimly,
"All the design blueprints were stolen too. They're hoping to use your 0-series camera as a reference to reverse-engineer and redesign the parts."
At this, Li Qiao arched a brow.
"You mean Qiu Huan's factory?"
"Exactly. You know how Machinery Holdings has always been one of Nanyang's top taxpayers. He happened to stop by my office for tea earlier and mentioned it."
"The parts they lost took over a year to develop—the whole design was inspired by the 0-series retro camera. But this theft has gone unsolved for days now, and it's starting to affect their production."
"And if production is delayed," he implied, "it'll affect our tax revenue."
Li Jun rambled on with detailed explanations, but Li Qiao only asked one pointed question:
"Why don't they just use the 0-series camera that inspired their design in the first place?"
It wasn't that she was particularly attached to her rare, collectible camera.
She just didn't feel like doing Qiu Huan any favors so easily.
After all, he was the main instigator behind her getting hassled at the police station—not something she'd forget.
Over in his office, Li Jun leaned back in his executive chair and frowned.
"According to him, the engineering team borrowed that camera from someone else. But unfortunately, it ended up at an auction and was sold last year."
"They heard it was bought anonymously. And as you know, auction houses are extremely protective of their clients' privacy—now they can't even figure out who bought it."
The anonymous buyer, Li Qiao: "…"