The Female CEO Falls in Love with Me

As he walked toward the lingerie section, Li Yan tried hard to hold his head high, his chest out, and kept his eyes forward. He had to put on the airs of a gentleman; the sneakier his glances, the more sleazy and suspicious he seemed.

Even so, as he got closer and saw that all the saleswomen and customers inside were women, he really didn't have the courage to step in. After strolling around, feeling a bit embarrassed, Li Yan chose a lingerie brand area that, due to its larger storefront, appeared to have fewer customers and sales staff, at least not as densely packed.

Once inside, Li Yan looked around at various racks, hesitating. Perhaps it would be better to just buy those boxed women's underwear from the supermarket shelf and skip the bras. After all, with her shoulder injury, Yue Yao wouldn't want to use anything that would clasp tightly around her back.

But then he secretly blamed himself, thinking Yue Yao had risked her life for him, so what if he felt a bit embarrassed buying her lingerie? When they lived together before, hadn't she bought him underwear and socks?

As he was pondering, a saleslady had already floated over, flashing a courteous yet not overly enthusiastic professional smile at him.

"Sir, are you here to buy lingerie for your girlfriend or your wife?"

Li Yan felt a bit awkward and nodded, "Yes..." Thinking to himself, isn't that obvious? In your lingerie brand area, aren't all the items women's lingerie? If it's not for a girlfriend or wife, would I be buying it for myself to wear?

Of course, the saleslady didn't mean to mock or tease; it was just a habitual question. Seeing Li Yan's awkwardness, she smiled and said, "Don't misunderstand. I just wanted to know if you're buying alone or accompanying your girlfriend. Also, don't feel embarrassed; nowadays, many men buy lingerie for their girlfriends or wives, and no one would find it strange."

"Oh..." Li Yan was dumbfounded, is it really that common now for men to buy women's lingerie alone?

The saleslady quickly guided him through a tour, introducing some lingerie while asking, "What style and color would you like? I mean, what does your girlfriend like?"

Aren't they all the same? If a boyfriend buys the lingerie, naturally the woman would wear it for him, so it should be something he likes.

"Uh... I'm not sure, anything is fine."

In real life shopping, many people have a "whatever" mentality, especially men. The service industry staff can find this annoying. For instance, if you say "whatever" when ordering food, can the waiter really bring you just anything? If you're a vegetarian, and they serve you braised pork knuckle, or if you don't eat spicy food, and they bring you fish head in chopped pepper sauce, would that work? Yet some salespeople love such customers. When selling gold jewelry or real estate, as long as the customer has money, the more indecisive or indifferent they are, the more they can be upsold with the best—of course, also the most expensive—options, which ultimately satisfies everyone.

This particular saleslady was one of the latter type. Seeing Li Yan's awkwardness and lack of specific preferences, she led him to a range of high-end, expensive lingerie collections and introduced them one by one: "These styles are all newly released this season, designed by famous designers, comply with ergonomic design, and use all imported high-grade fabrics, hand-made. Your girlfriend will definitely love them!"

These days, terms like "imported" and "handmade" have become highly pretentious buzzwords. Little do people know that Yun Country is the largest textile and textile product exporting country. Back in the day, machines replaced handwork with their speed, precision, and standardization advantages. Like stitching, when a seam involves a thousand or ten thousand stitches, it's impossible for a hand to sew straighter or more consistently than a machine.

People can excel over machines in areas such as experience and creativity, which can be accumulated and thought upon. Some foreign brands that use "handmade" and "takes this long or that long to make" as selling points indeed still have handcrafted workshops, but they primarily sell the brand's history. The "time-consuming" claims are just psychological play, buying into the idea that rarity equals value. Their core strength is actually the creativity in design and long-term brand marketing. On the contrary, if you only have excellent manufacturing processes and materials but lack an outstanding brand marketing strategy and design, you'll never become a famous brand.

It's understandable for salespeople to use "imported materials" and "handmade" to wow customers. Buyers themselves want to feel these things are very impressive, very unique, very rare, and a cut above others. Such buyers are always a seller's favorite.

Looking at the array of lingerie before him, Li Yan was speechless. What imported high-grade fabric? There was barely any fabric at all!

"Um... I'd like to ask..." Li Yan cleared his throat, "Do you have any bellyband-style lingerie here?"

He said it with a bit of embarrassment, but it was necessary. Bras were out of the question, so a bellyband, which ties at the back rather than using straps over the shoulders, might suit Yue Yao's current situation.

Upon hearing his question, the saleslady was also slightly embarrassed but further concluded that Li Yan was the kind of guy who buys lingerie he likes, wanting his girlfriend to wear it for his pleasure.

"We do! Please follow me."

Following her to some other racks, there were indeed many bellybands. Besides the traditional bright red ones, there were even some new designs that fit modern trends.

Another saleswoman in charge of these items saw the female saleslady bringing a male customer over and immediately came to introduce, "Sir, are you buying the bellyband for your girlfriend to wear outside, as regular underwear, or something more playful?"

"Huh?" Bellybands come in so many varieties? Li Yan was baffled, but then thought, in the middle of summer, there are indeed some avant-garde girls who boldly wear bellybands out on the town, especially when hitting the nightclubs.

"Xiao Xun, don't just go by the book. With the current weather, would anyone really wear a bellyband outside?" The saleslady who brought Li Yan there was evidently more experienced and immediately corrected the newly arrived saleswoman's mistake.

Xiao Xun? The name sounded familiar.

Li Yan originally felt it was a rather awkward situation, so he hadn't paid much attention to the staff. Now hearing this familiar name, he remembered that Xiao Di had a roommate, the one who once caught him and Hai Fu going to a hotel—her name was Xiao Xun. He didn't believe the city was that small, but when he looked over, he saw the saleswoman in uniform was indeed the same Xiao Xun who had worked the night shift at the hotel front desk.

"It's you?" Xiao Xun also recognized Li Yan and didn't even respond to the other saleslady.

"Changed jobs again? Aren't you attending classes?" Li Yan asked with a smile.

Xiao Xun quietly replied, "What's it to you?" Then she turned to the saleslady and said, "Sister Yang, why don't you take over?" And then she quickly left.

"Oh, you're Xiao Xun's friend? We can give you a discount or count this toward Xiao Xun's sales." The saleslady gave him a knowing smile, assuming Li Yan wanted to buy something for Xiao Xun, perhaps even to help her sales numbers, and maybe Xiao Xun felt embarrassed or thought he was wasting money.

As the store manager, it didn't matter to her whose sales it counted as; what mattered was selling more.

(Another ten thousand words written today, please support with a Monthly Pass!)(To be continued, to know what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com for more chapters, support the author, and support legal reading!)