There were 19 rows of seats between the podium in the lecture hall and Xia Liyang’s position, with over 200 people in between.

However, when the man on stage swept his sharp gaze across the room, Xia Liyang inexplicably felt a twinge of guilt. She instinctively shrank back and pressed her mask down on her face.

Fortunately, he soon averted his gaze, lowered his head, and opened his laptop, his long fingers lightly tapping a few times before projecting the lecture’s PowerPoint onto the large screen behind him.

Upon reflection, it was clear that as a guest professor who came to class only two or three times a semester, he could hardly remember every student’s face and name, so she had no reason to feel guilty.

Thus, Xia Liyang straightened her back again, swapped her novel for a notebook, and boldly looked toward the handsome man at the podium.

On this chilly April day, he wore only a thin white shirt, and the high-quality, crisp fabric bore no excess wrinkles.

His perfectly tailored black suit pants hugged his long, straight legs, and they were free of any lint or dust.

Even the leather shoes beneath the trousers were spotless.

He gracefully raised his well-defined hand to adjust the microphone hanging from his shirt.

As his cuff slipped down, it revealed a cold pale wrist adorned with a silver metal watch.

Though she couldn’t see the brand, the watch face was so clean and shiny that it reflected light, momentarily dazzling her eyes.

Xia Liyang narrowed her pupils slightly and quickly flipped to the last page of her notebook, hastily writing down:

Target has obsessive cleanliness and is not afraid of the cold?

She hesitated, adding a question mark, just as she heard him begin his brief self-introduction.

His voice was elegant, with a clean tone that resembled melting glacial water—pleasant to the ears yet somewhat distant.

His name was Lu Huaicheng.

It fit the common surnames for dominant CEOs in novels.

Xia Liyang paused her pen, choosing not to jot down this information.

Better safe than sorry.

She had no intention of leaving any clear evidence pointing to him.

In just a minute, Lu Huaicheng had already moved on to the main topic of the lecture, without a single unnecessary word.

Xia Liyang put down her pen and looked up again at the handsome, dignified man at the podium.

At first, she had worried that this financial lecture would be a bore.

To her surprise, he explained many complex concepts in a very simple and understandable manner, so much so that even she, an outsider, could grasp the ideas clearly.

She couldn’t help but feel a bit of admiration for him and jotted down another note:

Target has a clear thought process and excels at simplifying complexities.

Since she understood these concepts, perhaps she could come up with a couple of relevant questions to ask him later; observing him up close would definitely help her gather more useful information.

After thinking this through, Xia Liyang flipped her notebook back to the first page and began taking notes seriously.

However, she wasn’t the only one in the classroom with the thought of trying to get closer to him by asking questions.

Even when Lu Huaicheng announced the end of the lecture, she grabbed her notebook with prepared questions and hurried toward the podium.

But just as she reached the center of the classroom, he was already surrounded by a crowd of girls in the front row.

Seeing this, Xia Liyang adjusted her strategy and slowed her pace, discreetly observing Lu Huaicheng’s reactions through the gaps between people.

His dark, profound eyes radiated an aura of aloofness, yet his handsome face bore a cultured, gentle smile.

He responded to the barrage of questions with composure, showing no sign of impatience between his refined brows.

Perhaps his easygoing demeanor made the girls bold, as one of them confidently asked whether he was single and if she could add him on WeChat.

In response, Lu Huaicheng smiled lightly, declining, saying that even if he were single, he wouldn’t add students on WeChat as it wasn’t appropriate.

“Then, as a senior, you could add me,” the girl insisted, pulling out her phone and deliberately tossing her hair, letting the ends brush against Lu Huaicheng’s shoulder.

He subtly furrowed his brow.

In that moment, Xia Liyang caught a fleeting glimpse of disgust in his deep, pool-like eyes.

“If it’s as a senior, I’m not interested in adding you.”

Lu Huaicheng quietly shifted his shoulder away, his voice still gentle.

Yet his words fell like cold water over the girl’s head.

The atmosphere briefly froze, and the crowd of opportunists gradually dispersed.

Lu Huaicheng calmly lowered his dark eyes and disconnected his laptop from the large screen behind him.

Seizing the opportunity, Xia Liyang took a deep breath and quickened her pace to reach the podium.

Then she deliberately cleared her throat, her voice slightly hoarse as she tentatively asked, “Mr. Lu, sorry to interrupt, but may I still ask you a question?”

Lu Huaicheng paused slightly in his movements, raising his eyes to meet the gaze of her mask-clad face.

She noticed his brow twitch, with a hint of frowning.

Xia Liyang immediately added, “I’m sorry, I have a bit of a cold, but it’s not viral—just a regular chill.”

As her words fell, Lu Huaicheng’s brow relaxed from its previous tension.

He looked her over again and smiled gently: “It’s indeed easy to catch a cold during the changing seasons, so be careful with your clothing.”

“Thank you for the reminder, Mr. Lu,” Xia Liyang obediently nodded.

That day, she was wearing a new spring shirt dress from Miu Miu, topped with a small cardigan from Chanel.

Although she was dressed warmer than he was, it still felt a bit thin for the April weather.

No wonder he reminded her to dress appropriately.

“What do you want to ask?” Lu Huaicheng raised an eyebrow slightly, his dark gaze returning to her only exposed, clear eyes.

“It’s about what you mentioned in your lecture earlier, the practical application of holding a large group’s shares through small stakes…” Xia Liyang lowered her long eyelashes and respectfully handed her notebook to him.

However, Lu Huaicheng didn’t take her notebook. He merely glanced down briefly and began to explain.

Xia Liyang leaned forward, pretending to listen intently.

Her eyes, however, discreetly stole a glance at the laptop screen that he hadn’t closed yet.

Though there were many folders on his desktop, they were all neatly arranged in alphabetical order.

The placement of his laptop was also perfectly aligned with the center of the podium, not a bit askew.

It seemed he not only had a cleanliness obsession but also a touch of OCD.

Xia Liyang thought to herself, and when Lu Huaicheng lifted his gaze to ask her, “Did you understand?” she snapped back to reality and nodded, “I understood, thank you, Mr. Lu.”

Afterward, she took back the notebook she had handed him and politely looked into his warm, calm eyes, saying, “Goodbye, Mr. Lu.”

“Hmm.” Lu Huaicheng nodded slightly, a faint smile appearing on his handsome face.

However, since the dean was a longtime friend of his father’s, he still had to play the part of a dutiful son and agreed to return to his alma mater for this lecture.

He wouldn’t be coming back to waste time in the future, so there really was no “goodbye.”

Lu Huaicheng’s dark eyes lingered on her slender figure as she left for a few seconds.

His lips flattened, and his expression grew indifferent.

Moments later, Lin Shen, dressed in a business suit, hurried into the classroom and respectfully reminded him, “Mr. Lu, President Chen from Liyuan Group is already waiting for you in the nearby club.”

“Hmm.” Lu Huaicheng replied in a flat tone, his well-proportioned hands still leisurely organizing the items on the podium. “The contract terms won’t change, so let him wait.”

He had just taken over the business of the Junlan Group’s Jiangcheng branch before the new year, and being young, some people tended to underestimate him.

For example, this President Chen, who wanted to cling to the big tree of Junlan but didn’t want to pay too much.

He secretly set up a shell company to hold the controlling interest, thinking Lu Huaicheng wouldn’t notice.

What a joke.

“Understood.” Lin Shen nodded and was about to go notify President Chen when Lu Huaicheng’s deep voice called him back, “Have you found the replacement hourly housekeeper yet?”

“Not yet…” Lin Shen hesitated for a moment, trying to explain, “Mr. Lu, if you could loosen the requirements a bit, most of the cleaners are middle-aged women in their forties or fifties, so it’s inevitable they won’t remember all your requests.”

“I wrote down all the specific requirements; is it that difficult to follow them one by one? I’m not asking them to memorize everything,” Lu Huaicheng frowned slightly.

“That’s true, but the quantity you require…” Lin Shen opened his mouth to say more about the difficulties in recruitment but was cut off by Lu Huaicheng’s dismissive tone.

“Just increase the pay a bit more, and there will be suitable candidates. Go handle it quickly.” Lu Huaicheng casually pulled out a pair of black leather gloves from his suit pocket and elegantly put them on his long fingers.

The dark gloves made his wrist appear even paler, exuding a cold and detached aura.

“I understand,” Lin Shen nodded helplessly.

…

As Xia Liyang exited the teaching building, she noticed the sky had darkened. Instead of going to the library, she drove straight home.

Outside the living room’s floor-to-ceiling window, the lights began to illuminate, and the warm yellow lights of the cruise ships on the river came on.

However, the garden villa by the river was still shrouded in darkness, seemingly uninhabited.

Xia Liyang’s gaze lingered on the vaguely outlined villa in the shadows for a moment before she thoughtfully drew the curtains. She flipped through her notebook and added a few notes:

The target is single, seems to live alone, what time does he come home?

The target has OCD.

The target dislikes girls/strangers/people (to be determined) getting too close.

The target is well-mannered, patient, and compassionate, with a gentle personality.

Xia Liyang paused for a moment, her mind flashing back to the scene where Lu Huaicheng coldly rejected a girl’s request to add him on WeChat, ultimately putting a question mark after “gentle personality.”

After organizing the collected information, Xia Liyang tiredly closed her notebook, reopened her computer document, and attempted to write a scene interaction between the male and female leads assigned to her by Song Jinhe a few days ago.

She wrote about a thousand words, feeling that it was fairly good.

However, after sending it to Song Jinhe, she received Song Jinhe’s very brief feedback: “Too dry.”

“How dry is it?” Xia Liyang, unwilling to give up, asked.

Song Jinhe replied: “Like salted fish dried in the desert, it can’t squeeze out a drop of water.”

Xia Liyang’s mouth twitched, and after staring at the sharp feedback for a long time, she slowly opened her contacts and dialed Xu Songnian’s number.

“Did you find a suitable person for the housekeeping job you mentioned to Song Jinhe last week?”

Seemingly surprised that she would specifically call to ask him about this, Xu Songnian paused for a moment before replying, “Not yet, what’s up?”

“I’m just checking in on you,” Xia Liyang said, biting her lip slightly.

“Ha ha.” Xu Songnian scoffed. “Get serious.”

Xia Liyang hesitated for a few seconds before saying, “I want to try applying for the job.”

“… I told you to be serious.” Xu Songnian replied somewhat speechlessly.

“I am being serious.” Xia Liyang paused and slowly continued, “I want to be a housekeeper.”

Hearing her tone didn’t sound like she was joking, Xu Songnian was taken aback for a moment before incredulously asking, “Have you been living too comfortably, so you want to go find some hardship?”

“I’m not that crazy.” Xia Liyang tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I’m just looking for material for my next book.”

“Are you going to write a murder case with an hourly housekeeper as the main character?”

“Sort of,” Xia Liyang said vaguely.

Although she had a deep friendship with Xu Songnian from growing up together in diaper pants, she wasn’t willing to share too much about her writing with him, always feeling an inexplicable embarrassment.

Moreover, this time she was going to write a romance novel.

Xu Songnian had laughed at her before for being clueless about relationships, saying she was 24 and had never been in a relationship.

If he knew she was planning to draw on real-life experience to write a love story between a wealthy CEO and a Cinderella, he would probably laugh his head off.

“Then I advise you to find a cleaning agency to hire an hourly worker; my situation won’t work, the employer is too abnormal.” Xu Songnian replied.

“It’s just some obsessive-compulsive disorder and cleanliness issues; it’s not that abnormal.”

“You don’t know how severe his cleanliness and obsessive-compulsive disorder is; I didn’t explain it in detail to Song Jinhua that day.”

“I know; I’ve seen him,” Xia Liyang replied flatly, her fingers subconsciously brushing over the smooth cover of her notebook.

Hearing this, Xu Songnian was taken aback. “I’ve only seen his assistant; how did you see him?”

“He’s a guest professor at my university; I happened to attend one of his lectures,” Xia Liyang answered truthfully.

The line fell silent for a moment.

“In any case, I know the kind of abnormal requests he might make,” Xia Liyang paused and continued persuading him, “And if I get the job, won’t it help you solve a difficult commission?”

“For me, it’s not really a difficult task. He raised the pay, and there are already a few resumes approved, waiting for the interview and cleaning phase.”

“Then just help me out and give me a chance for the interview.”

“You’re not short on money; why does it have to be him? You could collect writing material from someone else, right?” Xu Songnian asked pointedly.

“…His place is closer to mine; it’s more convenient,” Xia Liyang hesitated for a moment and casually made up a reason.

But Xu Songnian clearly wasn’t buying it, pressing her with a series of questions until she had to lay out her true intentions.

“Don’t laugh at me; I’m at my wit’s end,” Xia Liyang said a bit embarrassed.

Strangely, Xu Songnian didn’t laugh but instead became more serious: “Actually, if you dated another guy, you could also gain the inspiration you need for a romance novel.”

“Then I would have to find a suitable target again.”

“No need; I’m a guy, right? I can guide you step by step to experience the feeling of being in love, immersively gaining inspiration for your romance novel,” Xu Songnian said, half-seriously.

“Are you just bored out of your mind?” Xia Liyang’s mouth twitched.

“…”

There was a moment of silence on the other end before a light, ambiguous laugh sounded. “I might just be bored out of my mind.”

“So, for the sake of our twenty-year revolutionary friendship, help me out! I’ll write your name in the special thanks section of my next book.” Xia Liyang’s voice softened, dragging out the tone as she pleaded with him.

“No need to write my name; I’ll send you the requirements for the hourly housekeeper first. If you’re still determined to do it, then contact me again.” Xu Songnian sighed in compromise and quickly sent the information over.

Although Xia Liyang was mentally prepared, she was still taken aback by the dense requirements on her phone screen.

No wonder he couldn’t find a qualified hourly worker; it was inevitable that ordinary people would miss some details, and achieving perfection on all these points wasn’t easy.

Especially since he even specified the angle of the toothbrush placement and the order of the books.

But for her, who excelled at remembering and capturing various details, it wasn’t that high of a difficulty.

So the next day, Xia Liyang went directly to Xu Songnian’s all-purpose company and asked him to help her get an interview as an hourly housekeeper while also creating a fake identity background check.

He shaped her into an image of a poor graduate student from a remote rural area, needing to work to pay for her tuition and medical expenses for her mother’s illness.

“Isn’t it a bit far fetched to make up a story about your mother being sick?” Xu Songnian asked uncertainly, lifting his eyelids.

“It’s fine; she’s never been friendly to me anyway,” Xia Liyang replied coldly.

She still remembered when she was six years old, her mother promised to take her to the amusement park, but instead, she used her as a decoy to go on a date with a man and even forgot her by the carousel, nearly getting her abducted by a human trafficker.

Fortunately, a kind passerby happened to be nearby, and she quickly threw herself at him, allowing her to escape danger.

She never told anyone about this incident afterward, including her dad and Xu Songnian.

At first, she was worried that mentioning it would expose her mother’s affair and completely ruin her parents’ already precarious marriage.

Later, after her parents divorced, she felt there was no need to bring it up again.

Because some hurts cannot be erased even if spoken about.

“…” Xu Songnian stared at her in silence for a few seconds before he ultimately agreed to help her fabricate a false family background as she requested.

….

On the afternoon of the interview at Lu Huaicheng’s house, Xia Liyang meticulously prepared to enhance her poor image.

Before going out, she glanced at herself in the mirror, wearing an oversized, cheap sweatshirt, worn-out sweatpants, and sun-bleached canvas shoes.

After hesitating for a moment, she tied her long, smooth hair into a simple black ponytail with the most basic hair tie.

Then she picked up a low-end smartphone she bought second-hand and slung over her shoulder a canvas bag given away during a supermarket promotion, before stepping out of the house.

To avoid exposing any flaws, she didn’t walk directly from the villa area to his house.

Instead, she exited through the back door and took a roundabout way, creating the impression that she had walked from the subway station to the villa area’s main entrance.

However, waiting for her in the garden villa wasn’t Lu Huaicheng but his assistant, Lin Shen.

Xia Liyang felt a slight disappointment in her heart, but she quickly revised her original plan. After Lin Shen gave her a brief introduction to the villa, she pretended to ask worriedly, “What time will Mr. Lu be back today? I’m afraid I won’t clean fast enough and disturb him.”

“Around 8 o’clock. You have plenty of time, so don’t worry. Just take your time and follow the requirements,” Lin Shen glanced at the seemingly anxious Xia Liyang and smiled reassuringly.

He had investigated her background and found that, as a young girl working part-time while pursuing her graduate studies, she wasn’t having an easy time, especially while also raising money for her sick mother’s medical bills. So he wanted to help her where he could.

“Thank you, Mr. Lin. I’ll do my best,” Xia Liyang nodded obediently, her long lashes fluttering lightly as she tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear with her delicate hand.

“You’re welcome.” Lin Shen paused, then glanced at her pure and innocent face before giving her his phone number. “If you have any questions during the process, feel free to call me.”

“Mr. Lin, you’re really too kind!” Xia Liyang gratefully noted it down.

“I’ve been struggling to find a suitable worker. If you can join smoothly, you’ll be doing me a big favor,” Lin Shen said with a smile, waving his hand. He then added, “After you finish cleaning the villa, just close the door behind you when you leave. It will lock automatically.”

“Understood!” Xia Liyang lowered her head respectfully.

After Lin Shen left, she straightened up and looked at the number on her phone, a faint smile forming at the corners of her lips.

Now that she had gained the assistant’s trust, she considered this half a success. It seemed the background story she had crafted was working well.

Next, she just needed to finish the cleaning and quietly wait for Lu Huaicheng’s return.