"I'm terribly sorry… Madam Shen. I didn't mean to intrude…"
Su Rui froze at the doorway the moment Shen Yichen said, "Do you not know how to knock before entering?"
Her entire body stiffened like a board, back straight, like someone had slapped the breath out of her.
Her brain went blank—
Identity? Plan? The big confrontation she had rehearsed in her head?
All gone.
The only thing she knew in that moment was—
She was screwed.
She bowed—deeply—nearly ninety degrees, voice trembling and flustered:
"I really apologize… I thought… I thought no one was in the office…"
Even as the words left her lips, she could hardly believe how pathetic her excuse sounded.
She wanted nothing more than to dig a hole and disappear into it.
Before Shen Yichen could respond, she was already pushing her cleaning cart in a panicked retreat,
nearly crashing into a potted plant at the corner, knocking leaves all over the floor.
Madam Shen gave her a cold, sideways glance—eyebrow raised, expression unreadable.
Shen Yichen, without so much as a twitch in his face, looked away and said mildly:
"Just a nobody employee."
—
But how could something like this be "not important"?
The very next morning, the whole company was abuzz.
"Did you hear? Auntie Lin barged into the president's office yesterday!"
"No way! Wasn't she trying to take sick leave? Why would she storm in like that?"
"And I heard the president himself denied her leave. She still had the guts to charge in? That's wild."
"Honestly, maybe there's some history between her and the president…?"
"Come on, she's just a janitor! You've watched too many dramas—"
"Hey, these days, reality is more outrageous than fiction."
—
Su Rui sat in the janitors' break room, face stiff with embarrassment.
She could hear the whispers from the pantry just outside—gossip floating in like poisoned air.
She clenched the mop handle, fingers whitening, then relaxed again.
She tried to smile, but it faded as fast as it formed.
She kept repeating to herself:
"You are Su Rui. A top-tier celebrity."
"You've been on countless front pages. These silly rumors are nothing."
"Crisis management is your forte. Why are you shaken by this?"
But the truth was—
No one knew she was Su Rui anymore.
Right now, she was just a tired-looking woman in a gray uniform,
face pale, hands rough, probably past fifty, still mopping floors and scrubbing windows.
Everything she said?
No one cared.
No one believed her.
She was invisible.
Somehow, her thoughts drifted to a long time ago—
back when she was still a fledgling actress, struggling for attention.
Her manager, Sister Li, once patted her shoulder and said:
"If a star has no gossip or rumors, they're not a star—they're just a background prop."
Su Rui had laughed at the time, saying, "I'd rather be a quiet actor than gossip bait."
Sister Li had rolled her eyes:
"Then you'll spend your life playing corpses in crime dramas."
It sounded dramatic then.
But now… it hit differently.
These days, she had gossip. Plenty of it.
The only problem was—no one even remembered who she was.
She laughed bitterly to herself.
Being a corpse on screen didn't sound so bad now. At least back then, someone called her by name.