The Secret of the Yoga Club: The Women's Identity is Not Simple

After the interview, Ma Qingqing walked out of the Shuke Group's office building and took a long breath by the flower bed at the entrance.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes, only to find that her fingers were still trembling slightly. She hadn't felt particularly nervous while chatting with Lin Feng in the conference room, but now that she was outside the building, the anxiety that had been weighing on her heart suddenly surged up.

Instead of going straight home, she went to her parents' workplace. Her father, Ma Ming, had worked at a machinery factory in Hehai City for over twenty years, rising from a workshop worker to the head of the quality inspection team; the calluses on his hands were rougher than sandpaper.

Her mother, Chen Shufen, works as a cashier at a supermarket. She stands from morning till night every day, and the varicose veins on her legs are getting worse and worse, but she can never bear to take a day off.

The family of three lives in a two-bedroom apartment in the north of the city. They still have more than ten years to pay off their mortgage, and they have to stretch their monthly salary into several portions.

With a mortgage to pay and living expenses to cover, there was hardly anything left. Ma Qingqing had watched her parents live frugally since she was a child, so she worked hard to get scholarships from university onwards and worked harder than anyone else during her internships, all in the hope that she could find a good job after graduation and make her parents less burdened by their hardships.

When she arrived at the factory gate, her father was just getting off work. Ma Ming was wearing a faded dark blue work uniform with several oil stains on the cuffs.

Seeing his daughter standing at the door, he paused for a moment, then quickly propped up his bicycle by the roadside, took off his oil-stained gloves, and several wrinkles appeared on his rough forehead.

"How did the interview go? Did you pass?" He asked in a flat voice, but the way he was taking off his gloves betrayed his nervousness.

"It's approved. They told me to come in the day after tomorrow to complete the onboarding process." Ma Qingqing took out her phone and showed him the onboarding notice that the HR department had just sent.

The email included the registration time, required documents, and a medical examination notice.

The checkup was arranged at the best health center in Hehai City, the Four Seasons Health Center, with all expenses covered by the company. She was also asked to fill out a work uniform customization information form in advance, including detailed data such as height, weight, shoulder width, and waist circumference.

Ma Ming took the phone and squinted at it for a long time. Although he only had a junior high school education, he could still recognize the words.

After watching, he returned the phone to his daughter, put his gloves back on, and pushed the electric scooter forward.

"Come on, let's go pick up your mom. We're not cooking at home today, let's eat out. Your mom said she wanted to eat the tripe at that hot pot restaurant last time, but she's been hesitant to go. Since she's in a good mood today, let's go there."

When they arrived at the supermarket, Chen Shufen was arranging goods in front of the shelves.

She was wearing a red supermarket work vest, her hair was pulled back with a hairnet, and she was wearing medical compression stockings, but the varicose veins on her calves were still faintly visible.

Hearing her daughter say she passed the interview, she put the row of soy sauce she was holding on the shelf, wiped her hands on her apron, grabbed Ma Qingqing's arm and looked her up and down for a while, her eyes reddening.

He said he knew the girl could definitely do it, but his voice was a little choked up.

The family of three went to that time-honored hot pot restaurant. The restaurant wasn't big; the menus were posted on the walls with red backgrounds and yellow lettering, and each table had a range hood hanging above it.

Ma Ming was unusually generous this time, ordering a huge table of dishes. Tripe, fatty beef, shrimp paste, lotus root slices, enoki mushrooms—the table was overflowing with food.

The hot pot was bubbling and steaming, with chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns swirling in the red oil broth, and the air was filled with the aroma of beef tallow.

Chen Shufen picked up a piece of tripe, dipped it in the pot for a few seconds, dipped it in sesame oil, put it in her mouth, chewed it, and narrowed her eyes into slits.

Ma Ming poured himself a beer, raised his glass to clink with his daughter's, and beer foam overflowed from the rim of the glass. He quickly bent down and took a sip.

"Girl, how's the pay at your company?" Ma Ming put down his cup and picked up a slice of fatty beef.

"The social insurance and housing fund are all mid-to-high level, and the housing fund alone is over a thousand yuan a month. With the housing fund and salary, our mortgage will be much less of a burden in the future." As she spoke, she cooked a few slices of fatty beef for her mother, her tone filled with undisguised satisfaction.

Chen Shufen put down her chopsticks and wiped the grease from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. "You should thank them properly. Go buy some fruit tomorrow and share it with your colleagues on your first day back at work, so they don't think you're impolite."

She picked up another piece of shrimp paste, put it in her mouth, chewed it a couple of times, and added, "Don't buy the cheapest ones, pick the good ones. Our family may not be rich, but we can't let you lose face in front of your colleagues."

"Okay, Mom."

Ma Ming picked up his beer and took another sip, then suddenly put down the glass, looked at his daughter, and his expression became somewhat serious.

He ran his fingers back and forth along the rim of the wine glass, remaining silent for a long while before finally speaking: "Girl, you must protect yourself out there. I still feel uneasy thinking about what happened at your previous company. If anyone dares to bully you again, come back and tell me. I'll risk my old bones to get justice for you."

"Dad, this time is different. The CEO Lin who interviewed me today is a graduate of Hohai University, so he's my junior. He speaks very gently and has no airs at all. He built the entire company from scratch, and he's only one year younger than me, yet he already manages several hundred people. When did our school produce such an amazing person? I had no idea before."

When she said this, her tone carried an admiration that she herself was unaware of, a stark contrast to her usual reserved and taciturn demeanor.

Chen Shufen listened from the side, stirred the pot with her chopsticks, and suddenly looked up at her daughter.

I noticed that when my daughter mentioned Raymond Lam, her tone and expression were different from usual. Usually, my daughter always speaks softly and cautiously, but she spoke very naturally just now, and there was a light in her eyes that I hadn't seen in a long time.

Chen Shufen's lips twitched, as if she wanted to say something but then swallowed it back. She simply picked up a piece of tripe and put it in her daughter's bowl, saying, "Eat more. You've been working hard on interviews these past few days and you've lost weight."

Ma Qingqing lowered her head and ate the food in her bowl. After a while, she spoke again, her tone much more casual than before. "By the way, today in the waiting room, a guy came up to me and asked for my WeChat, saying we'd be colleagues and I should get to know him beforehand. That guy didn't seem like a good person; the way he looked me up and down was really uncomfortable. After I refused, he threw a chair, making a huge fuss. How did someone like that even make it to the final interview? I don't know how he passed the initial screening."

"You didn't give it to him, did you?" Ma Ming's face immediately hardened.

"Of course I didn't give it to him. I don't even remember his name."

"Daughter, you did the right thing. You can't give those shady people a friendly look from the start. Remember, just focus on your work. Even though our family is poor, you don't need to put up with anyone's attitude." Ma Ming slammed his glass on the table, his tone resolute.

Ma Qingqing nodded.

After the family finished their meal, they slowly walked back along the street, the streetlights casting long shadows of the three of them.

Chen Shufen walked behind her daughter, arm in arm, and asked her if the new company was far from home, if lunch was provided, and if her colleagues were easy to get along with.

Ma Qingqing answered each question one by one, saying that the company is about half an hour away from home by bus, there is a cafeteria at noon, and she hasn't met her colleagues yet, but the junior boss she met during the interview was really nice.

When Ma Qingqing got home in the evening, she took a shower, changed into her pajamas, sat at her small desk, opened her laptop, and read through the onboarding materials sent by the HR department one by one. Then she carefully filled out the uniform customization information form.

She measured her shoulder width several times in front of the mirror, afraid of filling in the wrong measurement. After she finished, she leaned back in her chair, and the moonlight from outside shone through the gauze curtains onto the potted green plant on her table.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I can finally help with the mortgage payments for my family, buy my mom a nice pair of compression stockings, and buy my dad a new electric scooter.

Everything is moving in a positive direction.

Meanwhile, inside Shuke Company.

Lin Feng had Wang Yue sitting in his lap, his arm around her waist, and he clicked on Ma Qingqing's information with the mouse, which contained many photos.

"What? You've got your eye on someone?" Wang Yue not only wasn't jealous, but teased him instead.

She knows whose everything she has now belongs to, so a wise person knows when to yield.

Lin Feng stroked Wang Yue's long, slender thighs, gently pinching her smooth skin. "When you're assigned to your department, I'll train you properly and try to get you through a month..."