KA | Chapter 8

“Be joyful to your heart’s content when performance is good, and when assessment makes oxen and horses grind the mill, drink!”

KA celebration banquet, a group of men raised their wine glasses, swaying as they leaned against their chairs.

I filled my glass, then put the 10th empty beer bottle under the chair. This was the first time I had drunk this much.

Now I finally understood why some people liked using alcohol to drown their sorrows.

After crawling out from under the desk yesterday, today I even had a psychological shadow over my own desk.

Pingsheng signed the contract, the assessment was passed, the stone in my heart had just fallen to the ground when that fox spirit set a fire in my crotch.

When I was sober, I couldn’t figure out why I would react to a man, and the more I thought about it, the more irritated I got. When I drank too much, I didn’t need to think anymore.

Forget it, anyway I had gotten the money, and I definitely would not have any more interaction with Shen Yuesheng in the future.

Every time I signed a big order, I would buy myself some little thing as a reward. Winter had just passed, and this was the cheapest time to buy a down jacket.

So, I placed an order for a mid-length down jacket.

My legs were long, so short styles looked better on me, but wearing a down jacket was for warmth, not for looking good.

Even 10 bottles of beer could not numb the loser soul carved deep into my blood and bones. When it came to things involving money, I was definitely alert. It looked like I was destined to be a poor bastard for life.

Zhang Yuanji raised his glass and licked the leader’s boot, “One toast to performance, one toast to assessment, one toast to ourselves, one toast to Brother Lin, bottoms up!”

I downed the freshly filled draft beer in one gulp.

To myself, for passing the assessment and surviving the disaster; to Brother Lin, for signing a million-yuan big order at quarter’s end and leading Yucheng KA to get the three-province incentive; to the colleagues present, who had passed the assessment and could still move forward side by side next month.

Roughly 20% of middle and small sales staff would fail the quarterly assessment. The more proper ones would not tell others when they got married, while the less proper ones would make a big fuss about asking for bride price money, and not long after they got the money, they would fail the assessment. Middle and small sales staff often snatched orders from each other, and there was not much deep friendship. Even if they got along when chatting, they would not become close. In front of the assessment, everyone was equal, and who knew whose turn would come someday.

This quarter, only one person in KA had failed to meet the assessment, and that person had opened a company outside on their own and no longer wanted to stay in Lanhai.

If KA wanted to sign contracts, it had to frequently come into contact with key clients. Bosses of big companies all valued talent, and if they appreciated KA, they would have thoughts of poaching people. So most of the KA employees who resigned were poached away by the clients, and a small number started their own businesses. There were almost none who were forced out by the assessment.

“We agreed I’d be an old KA for 10 years with you, but in the end Li Hua ran first,” Zhang Yuanji slurred, “What’s so great about a few property big shots? In a few days, once I’ve established myself with those health supplement ladies, I’ll also jump…”

Brother Lin turned his head toward this side, and Zhang Yuanji immediately fell silent.

Li Hua had worked in Lanhai for 6 years. Brother Lin cherished talent, so he definitely did not want him to leave, but there was no way around it, because he had a better way out.

Lanhai was the whetstone for middle and small sales, the watershed for KA, and the transfer station for negotiation experts.

At different stages of life, everyone would make different choices.

I was very glad I had not been washed downstream by filthy water and become a special case in KA.

After three rounds of drinks, the group of men began singing.

The private room music was deafening, and there were wine bottles on the table, on the floor, and on the chairs. Zhang Yuanji held the microphone and wailed like a ghost or a wolf, his singing hysterical and so piercing it made people want to pee.

I could not take the urging anymore, so I got up to go to the bathroom. Halfway through peeing, I heard vomiting sounds from the stall.

With a “splash, splash,” Chen Xi flushed the toilet, then staggered out of the stall in a daze, his legs circling around.

I was afraid he would fall, so I wanted to go help him, but then my own legs went soft, and it turned into him helping me.

“Fuck, why are you so heavy, like a pig?!”

Chen Xi was usually refined and polite, but now he had cursed, so it looked like he was really drunk.

“At 180 cm tall, this doesn’t count as heavy. I’m not even 160.” I grabbed the sink and tried hard to steady myself.

“160 jin is almost like half a pig. I thought you were just over 140 jin.”

I often relieved stress by running, not 3 or 5 km, and not for 1 or 2 hours either, but half-marathons, full marathons, running for half a day, running for an entire day, running until I was exhausted. Over these years, whenever I ran into something annoying, I would go run. After running, I would sleep and then everything would be fine.

It was also because of running that my body fat rate had stayed around 15% year-round, and my figure looked slimmer than other people of the same height and weight.

To put it plainly, I looked slim in clothes and had meat when I took them off.

I was too drunk to want to talk, so I turned on the tap and washed my face.

Chen Xi leaned against the sink and lit a cigarette, then asked, “Want one?”

Smoking hurt the lungs and cost money. I cared about health and had no money, so I had never smoked.

When I was in school, classmates gave me lit cigarettes and I did not smoke; after I started working, clients handed me cigarettes and I did not smoke; now, Chen Xi asked me if I wanted one, and I said, “Yes.”

I had already drunk more than 10 bottles of alcohol, so who cared about health or not. There was no principle that could not be broken, and if there was, then the money given must not have been enough.

The first deep drag was a little choking. After that it gradually got better. Under the mixed effect of nicotine and alcohol, I started to think nonsense again.

With such fair skin, and both of them being gay, why was Chen Xi not seductive?

It seemed I did not react to all men. This meant I still had not bent all the way!

I suddenly discovered I could still bend back straight, this was truly great!

To prove my guess, I asked without shame, “Chen Xi, how did you discover that you were bent?”

Chen Xi said, “7 years ago, Brother Lin lit me a cigarette, and I got a reaction.”

This question was too private. If he had not been drunk, he definitely would not have said it.

Hey, wait a second…!!

Terrified, I immediately threw away the cigarette in my hand, “I’m not bent, I don’t have a reaction, don’t look at me.”

The private room was too noisy, and I did not really want to go back. Chen Xi was smoking against the wall, and clearly he thought the same.

I did not dare ask him for another cigarette, so I supported myself against the bathroom door handle and leaned on the door, like a dog that could not stand up.

Who knew how long had passed before a low voice sounded behind me, “What are you doing?”

It should have been that after seeing Chen Xi not return to the private room for too long, his man came to find him.

Brother Lin’s expression was a little cold, and his gaze at me was very unfamiliar.

In my memory, he had always smiled and encouraged me to sign contracts, so why was he looking at me with this kind of ice-cold gaze now?

It was as if he did not want to see me.

The reaction after drinking was the most real. Could it be that his usual kindness was all an act?

A flash of lightning passed through my mind, igniting all the alcohol, and connected all the previous doubts into the correct logic.

Lanhai sales contract signings were determined by system follow-up. Last December, I followed up on the biggest building materials company in the Northeast. I only called their front desk twice, and not even half a month later, the leader told me: this client had been signed by KA General Manager Lin, and the performance would count as yours.

Because I happened to have followed up with the client’s registered company name, I had an extra 200,000 yuan in sales gross profit last year, and also won the 2026 Yucheng middle and small sales champion, gaining both fame and fortune.

The car-buying money at the beginning of the year had been earned from that order.

A pie falling from the sky had smashed into my head. I was afraid of losing my job, so I did not dare claim credit, and proactively told Brother Lin, “I can give up half of the commission.”

I had never expected Brother Lin to be so broad-minded. Not only did he not blame me, he even let me come to KA and work with him.

Middle and small sales all longed for KA. I was overjoyed at the time, and I did not stop to think, with so many people in middle and small sales, why did they choose me to come to KA?

Also, who would there be that got their order snatched away and could still be this generous? This did not make sense at all!

Only now did I know I had been too naive.

Lin Yiran had let me come to KA just to take revenge through public means, so that I would fail to complete the tasks and be assessed!

When I first arrived at KA, Lin Yiran gave me a list and said, “You just got here, and finding key clients will not be easy. On this list are clients who had once cooperated with Lanhai, then stopped cooperating, and have no sales follow-up now. As long as you can sign them again, the performance will all count as yours.”

I stupidly thought he was really nice. Thinking back now, on the surface he was being considerate and letting me handle invalid clients, but in reality he was setting a trap for me!

Signing key clients definitely depended on KA’s existing relationships. Key clients who stopped cooperating were either because the original KA had resigned, or the client-side person in charge had changed, and a very small number were because KA had overpromised and the actual ad placements had not met expectations. Such clients usually would never cooperate again.

The list Lin Yiran gave me had 20 key clients, among which 10 would never cooperate again; 5 had been taken away after the original KA resigned; 4 had changed the person in charge, and no other KA had managed to win them over, so expecting me to make a breakthrough through relationships was simply like talking nonsense; the last one was Pingsheng.

Back then I did not understand, and thought that as long as I had contact information, if I communicated diligently with the client side, I could get a return. Lin Yiran clearly knew that doubling the task would make me fail the assessment, clearly knew that invalid clients were harder to sign than regular key clients, and still smiled as he encouraged me to sign invalid clients.

Without resources at KA, you simply could not make it. Lin Yiran first stabbed me in the back, then smiled on the surface and pretended to be a good person, making me grateful to him.

He had not expected me to pass the assessment, so just now he had made that kind of expression.

The vice president was just a dog, because I had snatched his key client, so he came to ruin me!

With debts outside, and every day tormented by my nagging relatives; in order to sign contracts, I had to kneel and make fucking condoms for the client side; life was already hard enough, and my direct superior was still making things difficult for me…

Sales was a job that could not be done for a lifetime, but my major made it hard to find a job if I changed careers. Right now, without money, I could only grit my teeth and keep doing it.

I also wanted to switch jobs like Li Hua, but the problem was, no key client was willing to take me in.

Cunning clients, shitty leaders, fucked-up work…

There was not a single part of life that was satisfactory.

But what could be done if it was unsatisfactory?

The miserable days still had to go on.