Li Feng sat across from the other applicant and said nothing.
The chair was slightly too small, the table between them slightly too close. Everything in the café was like that — built for intimacy, for customers lingering over coffee, not for whatever this was. He adjusted his posture and kept his face still.
*In his previous life, people had waited for his attention. Waited for it, competed for it, considered a single observation from him worth more than an hour with anyone else in the room. Associates had sat outside his office for meetings he hadn't confirmed yet, hoping. Junior analysts had stayed until midnight on the chance he might walk past and notice their work.*
*And now he was sitting in a café, competing for a 1,200 RMB contract.*
He let out a slow, quiet breath through his nose.
*Insulting* didn't begin to cover it.
He looked directly at the woman sitting across from him.
"This is Liu Hui," Chen Wei said, gesturing between them with a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Liu Hui — Li Feng."
Liu Hui gave a short nod. Composed. Confident in the particular way of someone who had already decided how this was going to go.
Li Feng nodded back and said nothing.
*A snake*, he thought, looking at Chen Wei. Not Liu Hui — Chen Wei. Sitting the two of them across from each other like this, letting them see each other, letting the pressure of the other's presence do its work. Ten years running a small business and she hadn't lost the instinct for leverage. He almost respected it.
*But I need this job.*
Chen Wei clasped her hands in front of her and began.
"I've been running this café for ten years," she said. Her voice was measured, unhurried, the voice of someone who had said important things often enough to know how to let them land. "I know the numbers. I know the staff. I know the customers — their names, their orders, which ones come in when it rains and which ones only come on Sundays." She paused. "But numbers alone aren't enough. The person I choose today needs to see what I see. To understand what I understand. Not just read data — but interpret it. Make sense of it. Act on it."
Li Feng nodded once, slowly. His eyes moved — just slightly, just enough — across the table. The scattered receipts near the edge. The way Chen Wei's hands were clasped, not folded. The small stack of papers face-down to her left that she hadn't introduced yet.
Across from him, Liu Hui leaned forward a fraction. Subtle. The body language of someone settling into a lead.
Chen Wei began to pace, slowly, between the two tables.
"I want to see who truly understands this business," she continued. "Who can think not just about what the numbers say — but what they mean. I'll give each of you the same set of sales and inventory data. You will review it. Then you will tell me what actions you would take. What changes. What improvements. What I should be paying attention to that I might not already see."
She stopped pacing. She looked at Liu Hui. Then at Li Feng.
"The one who shows me understanding beyond the obvious will get the opportunity." A beat. "The other will walk away with nothing."
She let the silence sit for a moment.
"Understood?"
Liu Hui nodded, her expression composed, her confidence entirely undisturbed. She was already reaching for her pen.
Li Feng said nothing. He didn't need to. The stakes were clear. The room was clear. Chen Wei's tone had told him more than her words — the slight weight she had put on *beyond the obvious*, the way her eyes had moved to him a half-second longer than to Liu Hui when she said *walk away with nothing*. She was watching to see who rattled.
He wasn't going to rattle.
*Let Liu Hui go first*, he thought. *Watch. Listen. Find the gap she leaves. Then step into it.*
Chen Wei reached for the stack of papers to her left. She turned them over, divided them into two equal sets, and placed one in front of Liu Hui and one in front of Li Feng.
Then she stepped back, folded her hands, and waited.