Chapter 174: Backstab

"I went over to Deely this morning, but I didn't see you there."

"I was at the hotel all morning. When I heard you had arrived, I came right over." The man winked at her, flashing a charming smile.

Lin Xi took the peach he handed her and introduced him to the onlookers behind her, "This is my senior from university. He joined Deely right after graduation and is currently a pillar of Deely's R&D department—Levi."

Levi exchanged greetings with everyone, then leaned in to whisper to Lin Xi, "Did Abby invite you tonight?"

The Abby he mentioned was the manager Lin Xi had met that morning.

"Yes." Lin Xi collected herself. "Did she invite you too?"

"Of course. She caught me as I was passing by earlier. It was hard to refuse."

Coincidentally, both of them had been recruited by Abby. The only difference was that Levi had worked there for a year before jumping ship to Deely domestically, while Lin Xi had switched tracks before even officially starting.

Abby could be considered a mentor to both of them.

"I hate gatherings like this," Levi sighed, then suddenly smiled as he looked at her a second time. "Though if you're going to be there, my mood improves just a little bit."

"I just wonder what time it'll wrap up tonight. I still have a mountain of work waiting back at the room."

"You have no idea. Back when I worked under her, she used to drag me out drinking all the time. We'd drink right through until dawn."

Standing beside him and dodging the passing crowd, Lin Xi shook her head helplessly with a bitter smile. "It's fine, it'll be fine. Abby just loves parties. We can just find an excuse to slip away early."

Levi asked her, "Which hotel are you staying at? Let me check if it's on the way so we can head back together."

"Right across the street. We're staying pretty close."

"Ah, then it's not on the way." Levi mused, "Still, I should show some gentlemanly courtesy and make a detour to walk you back. I can't just let a young woman walk home alone in the middle of the night."

"We'll see." Lin Xi patted his arm with a half-smile. "Chances are you'll be too hammered to find north by tonight, and I'll end up having to carry you back instead."

She knew all too well how poor her senior's alcohol tolerance was.

Back in their university days, whenever their club held an event, this senior of hers was invariably carried back unconscious at the end of the night.

When it came to holding his liquor, he couldn't even match her.

Hearing her words, Levi choked on his breath, seemingly recalling those past episodes, and awkwardly rubbed his nose.

That evening, the two of them traveled together from the exhibition center to the restaurant.

Abby had left early due to matters in the afternoon, leaving them with nothing but the restaurant's address.

"Back then, I asked you if you wanted to come back and join us at Deely. You said you didn't want to return home, and instead took my recommendation to work under Abby. How did you end up stabbing me in the back later on?"

This foreigner was something else; he had even mastered the phrase "stab in the back."

The two had been in touch once before, but Levi had politely avoided bringing it up, given how long they had been out of contact.

Now that they were close again, Levi naturally wanted to indulge in a bit of gossip.

"I heard you're very close with the CEO of Feiyun?"

"He's my older brother, the kind I grew up with since childhood." Facing the same question yet again, Lin Xi patiently answered it one more time.

Upon hearing her explanation, Levi's expression cleared up entirely.

"I thought he was your boyfriend."

"Why's that?" Lin Xi raised an eyebrow.

"Wasn't there someone talking about you on the forum a while back? They said you had some sort of connection with the CEO of Feiyun, so I assumed you two were an item."

Lin Xi shook her head gently. "We're not. We're just like siblings."

Fearing that Levi might misunderstand, Lin Xi made sure to clarify, "I have someone I like."

"Ah, I heard about that too!"

Lin Xi froze. "…That too?"

"Yeah. That's why I assumed the person you liked was the CEO of Feiyun."

"..." Lin Xi was genuinely startled.

The restaurant wasn't too far from the exhibition center. A taxi ride took barely a dozen minutes.

Before stepping inside, Lin Xi had braced herself mentally, but upon seeing the room packed with people, she still couldn't stop the corners of her mouth from twitching fiercely.

"Whoa." Levi was taken aback as well. "I expected a crowd, but not this many. True to form, Abby the social butterfly."

Nearly all the faces were familiar, as they were the team representatives of the companies participating in today's exhibition. Lin Xi had already greeted all of them that morning.

Lin Xi and her senior sat down next to each other.

Since the two of them were just there to make an appearance and go through the motions, they deliberately chose seats near the back to facilitate a quick escape whenever necessary.

Levi dug into his backpack and handed her a box of hangover remedy pills.

Lin Xi felt it was entirely unnecessary.

"You should just take them yourself."

Levi put on a deeply aggrieved expression, as if wounded by her disbelief. "You've never dined with Abby, so you don't understand. Just swallow a couple beforehand, and you won't suffer nearly as much when you throw up later."

With that, he pushed the box of pills closer to her.

"Trust me on this, you won't regret it!"

"Abby is an absolute monster! Out of all the people in our department when I worked there, not a single soul could outdrink her!"

Lin Xi: "..."

Prudent enough to take good advice, Lin Xi ended up swallowing a few pills after all.

Back home in her own country, she truly wasn't afraid of getting drunk. Occasions that could actually get her plastered were rare, and with a hundred-percent guarantee of familiar faces around, she never had to worry about being left unattended.

Abroad, however, was a completely different story.

The only familiar face she deemed remotely reliable was Levi, but he would undoubtedly go down long before she did...

Whether they would end up looking after each other was anyone's guess.

She would rather pin her hopes on these hangover pills than rely on this ill-fated senior of hers.

Abby arrived ten minutes late, apologized to everyone the moment she stepped through the door, and then penalized herself with three consecutive drinks of wine.

It was enough to give Levi a headache just watching her. He muttered complaints to Lin Xi under his breath, "Typical overseas Chinese—do you all drink this viciously?"

"I suppose I might be the exception."

"Pardon me, your alcohol tolerance isn't half bad either."

"Back in college, I'd pass out after three glasses. You had to practically finish a whole bottle before going down."

Levi chimed in again, "If I pass out later, remember to step in and block some for me."

Lin Xi stared at him in utter astonishment. "…Are you sure you mean me?"

Levi thought about it for a moment and wisely abandoned the idea. "Well... just remember to call a cab for me, then."

Abby was simply too fierce. Before even a single round was fully through, Levi was already showing signs of cracking.

"I hate drinking with you people the most. I always just take a tiny sip, and you lot immediately down the whole glass. It makes me—oh dear."

Noticing his flushed face and the creeping signs of intoxication, Lin Xi offered him a tactical suggestion. "Actually, you can sneakily pour it out."

"!" Levi's eyes lit up. "You can do that?"

"Yes." Lin Xi nodded, and casually passed along a couple more tricks of the trade.

These were all techniques she had learned from Engineer Chen and the others.

Yet no trick could defend against Abby; in the face of absolute strength, every single tactic appeared utterly pathetic and vulnerable.

Levi fell in battle first, and predictably, Lin Xi was not far behind.

Clinging to the very last shred of sobriety, Lin Xi managed to bundle Levi back to his hotel before heading to her own. Early that morning, she had instructed her uncle's driver to wait outside. With her own driver at the wheel, Lin Xi finally relaxed the moment she got into the car and drifted soundly off to sleep.

Just as a heavy, hazy drowsiness settled over her, the phone beside her suddenly rang out.