Chapter 1570 - 628: Jisoo
"Ah~"
Jin Zhixiu’s exclamation had only made it halfway out of her mouth when, by the moonlight refracted in from outside the window, she clearly saw the man’s face—and at the same time saw the finger he had raised to his lips.
"Shh."
Jin Zhixiu immediately, instinctively clamped her mouth shut, then couldn’t hide her shock:
"Zhou... Chairman Zhou?"
Jin Zhixiu’s brain froze for a split second; she had no idea how Zhou Wang could suddenly appear here, to the point that she didn’t notice right away that their current posture was a bit improper—
Her back was against the wall by the room’s doorway; Zhou Wang had one hand gripping her arm, while the other hand had slid past her waist and was braced on the wall. The straight-line distance between the two of them at this moment couldn’t be more than ten centimeters.
She was practically being wall-pinned by Zhou Wang.
"That was Rose, right?"
Just as Jin Zhixiu sensed something was off and wanted to push Zhou Wang away, a single sentence from him yanked her mind right back, and she didn’t even register when his hand that had been on the wall ended up on her waist.
"I remember during the day, the reason you gave me was that Rose wasn’t feeling well, to the point where she needed to go to the hospital to get checked. She was forced to be absent... I truly didn’t know that in your Korea, drinking counts as medical treatment now?"
Zhou Wang’s sentence sounded a bit odd, because the first half was in English and the latter half was in Korean.
With the support of [Yumi’s Magic Dictionary], even starting from zero, Zhou Wang’s speed in learning minor languages had shot through the roof. And Korean, for Huaxia people, wasn’t all that difficult to begin with: both have subject-verb-object, both are phonetic scripts, there are similar-sounding words, and plenty of Korean loanwords are directly from English...
In other words, a Huaxia person with normal IQ would find the beginner stage of Korean very easy. Let alone a total cheat like Zhou Wang.
So even though it was a spur-of-the-moment idea and only a day or two had passed, Zhou Wang could already carry out basic oral communication. Just now on the way over, he’d been practicing speaking with Sura. Now that the scene had changed, Zhou Wang wasn’t about to waste the chance to practice.
His tone carried a kind of playful amusement, but it instantly made Jin Zhixiu tense up.
Back then, only two of the four BlackPink girls had shown up. Even though Jenny and Rose had made no demands, upon noticing Zhou Wang’s cold gaze, Jisoo still couldn’t help finding an excuse for them.
On its own this wasn’t a big deal, since anyone could hear how clumsy Jin Zhixiu’s excuse was. But getting caught by Zhou Wang with his own eyes in a bar at this moment—that was a whole different story.
"I’m sorry, Chairman, I didn’t mean to cover for Rose... I-I just felt that maybe Jenny and Rose had some kind of misunderstanding with you..."
Jin Zhixiu explained, a bit at a loss.
Zhou Wang looked at her evasive gaze and was genuinely a bit surprised. Although the data already clearly stated it, Jin Zhixiu was after all the oldest of the four members of BlackPink. Because of that, even though Jenny was the leader, the default visual of the group was Jin Zhixiu.
She had always played the role of the "older sister," using "gentle" and "considerate" as her personal tags.
But Zhou Wang hadn’t expected the data to be this accurate. Jin Zhixiu’s personality wasn’t just harmless—he could even see a hint of weakness.
Lisa might not be able to act tough in front of Zhou Wang either, but at least at the beginning she had still managed to remain neither servile nor overbearing. It was only after Zhou Wang grabbed her one and only soft spot that she had no choice but to yield.
Yet right now, when Zhou Wang had practically done nothing, just a simple questioning had already thrown Jin Zhixiu into disarray... Clearly, she had very little experience dealing with this sort of situation.
In a flash, Zhou Wang adjusted his strategy in his mind. He had originally planned to probe slowly and break down her defenses bit by bit; but now it seemed he could speed things up.
So without giving her any time to react, Zhou Wang immediately said in a cold voice:
"A misunderstanding? If it’s a misunderstanding, can you tell me what Rose came to you for tonight?"
"She..."
As expected, Jin Zhixiu lowered her head, lips working soundlessly, unable to get a word out.
"Ah!"
She cried out in surprise, because Zhou Wang’s large hand had slid past the waist of her white silk dress and come down heavily on one half of her "moon."
Just as she was about to push his hand away, she heard his indifferent voice: "Actually, I already heard everything."
"Y-you... you heard?"
Jin Zhixiu looked up in shock, her grip on Zhou Wang’s arm suddenly losing strength.
Zhou Wang leaned in even closer, close enough that they could each feel the other’s breath. "She came to you as Park Jeongyun’s representative, didn’t she?"
Zhou Wang’s increasingly forceful hand had her unbearably uncomfortable. She pressed herself to the wall and turned her head to the side, trying to escape his scorching breath. Unable to deny it, she could only give a faint nod.
"So what’s their strategy—trying to win over some of the artists to oppose me?"
This time Zhou Wang eased his hand a bit, and his body pulled back slightly. Although his palm still rested on her "moon," Jin Zhixiu felt a slight sense of relief.
And under this "olive branch" from Zhou Wang, the breathless Jin Zhixiu obediently said:
"Yes, Rose came to win over Senior Jeong-jae, a-and probably to win over So-mi as well. Senior Jiang Dongyuan seems to be representing Chairman Jiang, and might be looking to cooperate with Chairman Park..."
Zhou Wang had known there might be other artists in the private room; he just hadn’t expected that Rose would bring out the company’s current roster of heavyweights all at once.