Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Eight: The Person In Control II (1/2)

“That’s all from my side. I’ll be heading out first then. Last question: how goes your internship?” Xiao Yu asked.

“Pretty well,” Nan Wei replied.

Nan Wei saw Xiao Yu off. When he turned, he was met with a crowd of burning stares.

He gave a knowing smile and returned back to the sofa carrying his cup of red tea without so much as a sound.

The past month had been pretty rough for Nan Wei. No one ever invited him for a quick lunch or dinner after work. The other interns had already marked him for failure in terms of converting to full-time after he had been late on his first day. More importantly, he came from a nontraditional academic background.

Nan Wei normally could get along with strangers quite well. This was his first time feeling so helpless in this regard.

Friendships were built on equal relationships. His minor difference in background caused him to be left out from the group of all the other interns.

All of the other interns had come from traditional education tracks in design. Some even had overseas experience. To them, Nan Wei was at least a class lower, if not more.

From this, the other interns had reached an absurd conclusion:

He didn’t come from a traditional background in design. He was also young and didn’t have much experience. He hadn’t completed any other internships either. Therefore, Nan Wei must have gotten this internship at YL through connections.

Some had already suspected this when he was late on the first day. To them, their conclusive proof of this came when they discovered that he didn’t have a standard education in design.

Nan Wei had finally experienced how hard it was in the industry for someone without a traditional design background.

For the past month, Nan Wei had been thinking how much more miserable it must have been for Master Xiao Yu in his days at SI.

With this in mind, Nan Wei directly dropped any notions of trying to get along with the others.

Nan Wei’s talkative personality always ingratiated him very quickly with others. But when he became cold, even Yan Jin could not compete with him.

As a result, Nan Wei essentially became a ghost in the midst of all the other interns. Naturally, it was quite painful, but Nan Wei never regretted it.

If he had really only relied on his relationships with Yan Jin and Xiao Yu, he might have felt that he was in the wrong. However, it wasn’t like that.

Because of YL’s customs, Yan Jin had initially only asked him to simply participate in the initial interview. However, Xiao Yu had opposed Yan Jin’s intention of only putting on an act and had added him to the entire interview process.

Xiao Yu had made up his mind, so what could Yan Jin say? Therefore, Nan Wei hadn’t received any preferential treatment in successfully earning his internship spot.

Over a thousand resumes had been submitted by graduates of famous schools with traditional design backgrounds.

Actually, even Nan Wei hadn’t expected to be able to pass the interview process, but Xiao Yu had had a tremendous amount of faith.

Although Xiao Yu himself wasn’t the interviewer, he was extremely confident that Nan Wei would pass regardless of who the interviewer was.

If it wasn’t because of Nan Wei’s connections, his diploma, or his resume, where did Xiao Yu’s confidence stem from?

It stemmed from the hundreds of designs in Nan Wei’s resume supplement.

It stemmed from Nan Wei’s abilities that had been personally honed by one of the top designers.

Just like how Yan Yixuan hadn’t provided Xiao Yu with any written recommendation before peacefully passing away, Xiao Yu wasn’t worried at all even without Xiao Yu’s own direct participation in the interview process.

Recommendation letters could be forged. Mentor/student relationships could be established through monetary means. Only skill couldn’t be faked.

Around thirty candidates had come for interviews. When it was Nan Wei’s turn, the interviewer had been shocked at how thick Nan Wei’s file was. He had casually flipped through a few pages and had jumped out of his seat in astonishment.

There had been ten questions prepared. The interviewer only asked one, and it wasn’t even one of the prepared ones:

“Were these designs done by you?”

“Yes.”

Nan Wei had passed the interview with just a single word.

……

After the other interns had concluded that Nan Wei was only here because of his connections, they wondered if he would only be cruising through an internship or whether his connections could directly allow him to convert to full-time. Either way, their attitude towards Nan Wei couldn’t possibly be good.

While they were still brainstorming their design drafts that were due in under a week, Nan Wei was relaxing next to the window reading a magazine because he’d already finished. The other interns had independently decided that if Nan Wei converted to full-time, they would expose all of this in online forums.

Indeed, because of Nan Wei’s nontraditional design background, not a single person considered Nan Wei’s skill could be far above theirs.

That’s why when Xiao Yu came down today to pass a message to Nan Wei, the rest of them were stunned.

If it were another of YL’s designers, they really might not have recognized the person. But Xiao Yu was SI’s previous chief designer, the mystery designer, and YL’s current designer. Xiao Yu had these three titles and was considered one of the industry’s legends. If they didn’t recognize him, their internship didn’t really have much meaning.