Chapter 224: When the Wind Rises from a Gentle Breeze
Everything could now be left to him. She didn’t have to do everything herself anymore, feeling lost and running around like a headless chicken. Someone would now stand up and speak out for her.
The September sunshine was bright and beautiful.
Lin Yibai finally had some free time to relax. She was hiding under the shade, watching the freshmen practice for the end of their military training. Soon, they would be marching past this area.
She sighed and said to herself, “Time really flies! In the blink of an eye, I’m already a senior in my last year… sigh sigh… Guess I’m an old lady now, huh?”
She gave a bitter smile, then turned and walked away.
As for Xia Changyu’s side of things, she wasn’t worried about how things would go.
Because if you looked past the surface and focused on the truth. That HR person in charge of the campus recruitment had made a huge mistake.
His job was just part of the HR department, only responsible for hiring people. But he wrongly believed he could act all high and mighty in front of students.
Maybe he was just used to being arrogant.
There are many HR people who believe in things like "luck is also a kind of skill." Some of them even throw away half the resumes without looking at them, which tells you what kind of people they are.
And this particular person, who was rude and in charge of recruitment this time. He was just totally in the wrong.
Lin Yibai checked the school’s online forum. She noticed signs that Xia Changyu had been doing things behind the scenes. He was slowly shifting people’s attention from the hot freshman topic… to the campus recruitment incident.
The scene from that day was still clear in everyone’s minds. In a classroom with 120 students, of course, some people had recorded what happened on their phones.
In the video, the girl had simply stood up and left in the middle of the session, but the HR person gave her a hard time for it.
Someone who rewatched the video said, “She was being really polite, just said she needed to use the bathroom. But the guy in charge spoke to her like he was a king! He even demanded an explanation from her. Seriously? People have needs, can’t she just go? And then he tried to blame her for making the whole school lose face? What a joke!”
Other comments followed:
[Zhishan Watching the Moon]: “Well said! I don’t get it either. Job hunting should be a fair deal. If the student isn’t happy, she has the right to walk away. So why did that brain-dead HR guy keep going after her?”
[One Bell, Thousand Hills of Snow]: “And they’re hiring a lot of salespeople?”
[Quluo Cat]: “As an older student who’s been through this. I’m telling you, when they make sales sound exciting and great, RUN! 🏃”
[Steamed Bun Without Support]: “They want us to sell our lives for just 1,800 yuan a month? This company must think we're fools!”
[Hajimi]: “Work for three years and your salary still doesn’t reach 5,000? And they dare come to a university to recruit? It’s not just the company, maybe the school is hiding something too?”
Slowly, things started getting strange.
People began loudly wondering if the school and the company had made some secret deal.
Were they working together to sell students out, just to make them cheap labor?
Online public opinion is never reasonable. As long as the school didn’t come out and explain things, the rumors would keep growing.
And with internship season for seniors coming soon, this mess was affecting everyone’s mood.
At the office building at the edge of the city center, Xia Changyu was typing away on a keyboard with his team beside him. They were “greeting” that company’s HR guy in a not-so-nice way.
Most of the online posts were actually created by their team.
He said fiercely, “Come on, guys. We all know what kind of person Baiyi is. You’re the core of our company’s ‘PR team.’ If you can’t even handle a little online gossip, don’t blame me for being tough on you. Let's show them who we are!”
Honestly, the company wasn’t big enough to have a real PR (public relations) department. He just pulled people from operations and marketing temporarily to create online posts, most of them were still students at the school!
And let’s be real, who on the school forum doesn’t have at least one account with a warning or “yellow-flag”? After four years in college, that’s pretty normal.
And once those seasoned "yellow-flag" forum users joined in, the online discussion became even more intense.
Even Lin Yibai’s former assistant, Xiao Wei, was now angrily typing on her keyboard. She logged into her half-banned forum account and angrily wrote.
“This stupid school must’ve taken benefits from that company! I bet they’ll cover this whole thing up later. Don’t tell me… they’re actually going to make the girl apologize in the end? No way, no way!”
Xia Changyu was overjoyed when he saw this. He praised her right away.
“Good, good, just post it like that! If this all goes well… I mean, if Baiyi is happy and satisfied, I’ll double your bonuses this month.”
Hearing that, everyone worked even harder to post more.
Say no more, even if it was just for the bonus, they all had two words in mind, Start typing.
Don’t know how to teach or explain?
Fine, but they do know how to roast people online.
Less than a day later, while the counselor was still thinking about how to calm things down, the department leader suddenly rushed into the office.
The counselor thought the leader had come to support the company, so she quickly said,
“Sir, I know why you’re here. I know this is urgent, but please don’t worry! I swear, just give me one more day. No, half a day! I’ll go find Lin Baiyi right now and ask her to admit she was wrong.”
The school leader said, “You want Lin Baiyi to admit she was wrong?”
The counselor said, “I promise to complete the task.”
The school leader was furious. He shouted, “Are you kidding me? You still want her to apologize? Don’t you know our school’s reputation is already terrible?!”
The counselor was stunned. “What reputation?”
The leader opened the school forum on his phone and showed her. “Take a look yourself! I don’t even know how you’re still a student counselor! A student was treated unfairly like this, and you didn’t even tell us earlier?!”
The counselor felt like jumping out the window. She hated that the leader had dumped all the blame on her. So now she was the only one responsible, huh?
Being a student counselor was already a tough job. Just like high school homeroom teachers, senior staff wouldn’t touch it, only young or new teachers had to suffer through it.
But this was too much! This kind of reputation disaster was something she couldn’t handle.
Because a university doesn’t just have one department. It has many, with thousands of students. One person alone was just too small to matter.
The counselor felt miserable, but still forced a smile and said, “Director… sir, please don’t do this. You have to help me this time! I’m begging you.”
The director glared at her coldly and said, “Xiao Yang, stop talking nonsense. This was your mistake. You didn’t pay attention to your student’s condition. Anyway, you deal with it yourself. You’d better come up with a solution now.”
Oh, so this is how it is, huh?
You’re all going to dump the whole thing on me and pretend you had nothing to do with it?
Usually, when these things happened, there were only two “solutions”.
If no one talked about it, just make the student write a letter of apology.
If it blew up, issue a public statement and cut ties with the company.
But this time, because Xia Changyu had planned and organized the public opinion online, the school’s reputation had collapsed way too fast.
It got ruined overnight. There was no time to react.
The counselor gave a cold laugh. She wasn’t planning to throw herself under the bus.
After taking a deep breath, the counselor said quietly, “Director… things have come this far… I think we should just give her a guaranteed graduate school spot. What do you think?”
The school leader froze. “A… a guaranteed spot for graduate school? That’s… well, just talk to her again first. Only mention that if there’s no other option. This is a serious matter.”
The counselor laughed even more coldly. “Serious matter,” huh?
As if those graduate school spots are so precious. But when certain people cry, make a scene, and even threaten to jump off buildings, they still get the spot anyway, don’t they?
Now that the higher-ups wanted to dump all the blame on her, why should she care about their so-called "serious" graduate school spots?
They said not to bring it up unless absolutely necessary?
The counselor rushed to find Lin Yibai, and straight-up offered, “Baiyi, do you want a guaranteed spot for grad school? I can get you one.”
Lin Yibai was in the middle of drinking a bubble tea and instantly spat all the pearls out.
“Cough! Cough cough!”
“Cough cough~!”
She swore she never cried, never begged, and never threatened to jump off any buildings!
Why were they offering her a graduate school spot?
Take it away! That thing’s filthy!