Macarons and Secrets

As soon as Feng Jiao left the room, the boss and Kong Xiulan started a very frantic, tense conversation. They were rushing and slurring their words as they discussed the topic with great concern.

And the topic of this was, of course, Feng Jiao.

They spoke in hushed tones and looked around to make sure that there was no one eavesdropping. Kong Xiulan quickly took a seat on one of the cream colored sofas and then leaned back into it.

"Do you think we need to renew her identification any time soon?" Kong Xiulan whispered.

The boss stopped for a second and then pulled open his drawer. Just when Kong Xiulan thought that it would be some sort of official document, she realized that it was a cigarette.

"You promised you would quit- old man!" Kong Xiulan yelled at the boss aggressively and reached out to snatch the lighter from him. He had more cigarettes but only one lighter.

And there wasn't much of a chance that the boss would do anything with an unlit cigarette.

It wasn't like he could chew on it and hope to extract some taste from it. Could he?

He sighed and gently placed the cigarettes back into the drawer.

"Am I really that old? You're talking like Jiao Jiao…" he looked slightly sad but Kong Xiulan didn't care. She would rather have him momentarily depressed than permanently damaged.

"You're acting like an old man." a brief laugh escaped Kong Xiulan's lips before she turned somber again and the mood in the room fell, "Is it going to be hard? We can always have her skip the physical exam, can't we?"

The boss shook his head in despair, "She's already missed three. It's on her record. It's simply a miracle that we've gotten away with it for this long…"

Kong Xiulan knew what the boss was talking about.

She also knew that it was practically hopeless, but she wasn't willing to give up just yet.

"Can't we claim she retired and give her a new identity?" she paused and then answered her question by herself with a sigh, "No, that would mess with her school records."

The boss silently nodded in agreement. He had already thought of this solution and then ruled it out too. It simply wasn't viable.

"What about getting one of our men to hold the exam? We can fudge the results then!" Kong Xiulan rubbed her hands together as she thought of a solution to their dilemma. It wasn't an easy solution, but so far it sounded doable.

"No, they'll send in an inspector again this time. We can't tip the inspector off." the boss sighed the three hundredth sigh he had sighed today and then looked at Kong Xiulan with pity in his eyes. He had never wanted to press this burden on a young researcher, but it was inevitable.

Kong Xiulan wasn't exactly young, but compared to the boss she definitely was. Kong Xiulan was at the age where she was already considered an old unmarried lady, but she didn't mind.

The truth was that Kong Xiulan was too busy doing work to care about anything else, and all her time was already being spent worrying about Feng Jiao. On a couple of random occasions she would worry about the boss too.

The boss was like a father to her. He had brought her into the agency and then helped her grow through her career. Kng Xiulan couldn't have been more thankful.

But now, the only way to thank the boss was to get this troublesome hot potato off his hands.

She was still young, but the boss wasn't. The stress would eventually get to him, and Kong Xiulan wasn't ready for that.

"I'll figure out a way to deal with this problem, don't worry yourself, boss." Kong Xiulan sighed and then threw the remaining half of her macaron in her mouth, "We just can't let Jiao Jiao know."

Feng Jiao would've loved to hear what they were talking about, since it concerned her, but she was so busy stuffing banana macarons into her mouth that she never looked back after leaving the office.

At least in the future she would receive some joy in knowing that the taste of those macarons was worth it. Because those simply were heavenly macarons that she wouldn't be able to forget.

She wasn't exactly a foodie, but she couldn't help herself. The macarons had just been made so perfectly. Feng Jiao kept eating and eating and eating. There was no way that she was going to be able to eat dinner today.

"This stuff is like drugs-" Feng Jiao muttered to herself as she ate macaron after macaron without a pause. She was eating through the bag at an unprecedented rate. One never seen before to the other researchers on the floor.

"Jiao Jiao what are you eating?" they asked one by one as she passed their labs. She didn't even bother looking at them on the off chance that she would have to surrender a macaron.

She wasn't the kind to surrender, let alone surrender her macarons.

'Wait, could there really be drugs in these?' Feng Jiao wondered for a split second as the thought crept back into her mind. It wasn't exactly worrisome, but Feng Jiao wanted to make sure.

She had watched so many anti drug addiction videos in school that she was now positively terrified of consuming them. It didn't help that she was used to killing dominant alpha's with drugs as well.

She looked in front of her and into the endless white, sterile halls, and then looked back at the labs she had just crossed, and the researchers, all of whom she was very close to, looking at her.

She had made up her mind.

She spun on her heel to turn back to the laboratory she had just crossed.

Drugs or not, she was going to find out what exactly made these macarons so special.