Unseen Threads

The fluorescent lights in the intern bullpen hummed with a steady, grating buzz. Lin Yanyan blinked at her screen, but the legal documents she had been reviewing blurred together. Her fingers hovered uselessly over the keyboard. She had rephrased the same clause three times and erased it just as often.

It wasn’t like her to be this distracted. She prided herself on focus—on precision. A top-tier law student from the most prestigious legal university in the country, she had fought tooth and nail through a brutal entrance exam to earn her place. Interning at HuaLing Corporation's legal department during her summer break was meant to be another stepping stone. A challenge, yes. But not something that rattled her.

Yet ever since her trip to the thirty-eighth floor, her brain refused to reset.

That man. The way he had turned. The way he had looked at her—as though she wasn’t just another face in a nameless crowd.

Yanyan shook her head and stood, needing air. The pantry was only a few meters away, tucked between the HR department and the copy room. She poured herself a paper cup of cold green tea and leaned against the counter, letting the silence of the afternoon lull her back into a sense of normalcy.

She sipped slowly. "It was nothing. Just a man in an office. I probably imagined it."

“Talking to yourself again?”

The voice made her jump, sloshing tea over the rim of the cup. She turned to find her fellow intern, Jia Rui, grinning at her from the doorway.

“Don't sneak up like that!” she scolded, blotting her blouse with a napkin.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, still grinning. "You okay? You look like someone just asked you to defend a thesis with ten minutes' notice."

Yanyan hesitated. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it. Rui was nice—friendly, talkative—but also a bit of a gossip. "Just tired," she said finally. "Too much legalese."

He stepped closer, eyeing her shirt. "You’re not lying very well. What happened upstairs? I saw Ms. Wang send you up. To the thirty-eighth floor, right? You actually made it back alive. That place is like a different planet."

She swallowed. "It was quiet. That’s all."

Rui’s grin widened. "Did you see him? The CEO?"

Yanyan blinked. "No. Should I have?"

He leaned in like he was about to share a state secret. "Apparently he almost never shows up in public meetings. But they say when he does, it’s like all the department heads stand straighter. Mo Liwei used to be the name on the door. Now it’s Yu Aotian. Rumor is he bought out most of the shares after some kind of internal power shift. Super mysterious, super loaded. No one really knows what he looks like. He’s like a myth."

The name landed with a dull thud in her chest. She didn’t recognize it. And yet—

She forced a polite laugh. "Sounds like office folklore."

“Hey, it’s better than writing memos,” Rui winked. “Come on. Let’s go finish dying slowly at our desks."

They returned to the bullpen, but Yanyan’s thoughts stayed tethered to Rui’s words. Yu Aotian. A name with weight. She hadn’t known it earlier, but the man she’d seen behind the glass didn’t need a name to leave an impression.

Still, she scolded herself for thinking about it. She was an intern. He was—well, whoever he was, he wasn’t someone who needed to remember her face.

Upstairs, on the thirty-eighth floor, Yu Aotian stood by the same glass wall.

The city below him moved like a simulation—cars gliding in neat patterns, people scurrying between buildings like tiny motes of data. His reflection hovered faintly against the glass. The reflection of a man who rarely appeared in photographs, who rarely gave interviews, who operated behind layers of anonymity and iron discipline.

He wasn’t the kind of man who fixated on details.

But the girl...

The corners of his mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly.

He turned away from the window and walked toward his desk. "Secretary Zhang," he said without raising his voice.

The glass door slid open a moment later. "Sir?"

“The intern who delivered the legal file earlier. What was her name?"

Zhang blinked, caught off guard. He flipped through the delivery log on his tablet. "Lin... Lin Yanyan. Summer intern. Legal department. University placement from Huashi Law School."

Yu Aotian nodded. That would be all.

He opened the folder she had delivered, but didn’t look at it. Not immediately.

Lin Yanyan.

He hadn’t seen fear in her eyes—just surprise. Hesitation. Something honest.

And in this building, honesty was rare.

He tapped a finger once on the edge of the folder. Then he opened it, and let the moment pass.

The next morning, Yanyan arrived ten minutes early. Her desk was still quiet, her inbox untouched. She liked it this way—the calm before the daily chaos.

As she powered on her computer, her phone buzzed.

[New Email]

From: HR Department

Subject: Assignment Adjustment

Message:

Ms. Lin,

You are temporarily assigned to assist the Executive Legal Division on the 38th floor. This adjustment will last until further notice. Please report to Secretary Zhang at 9:00 AM.

Regards,Human Resources

Yanyan stared at the screen.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

The thirty-eighth floor?

Again?

Why?

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