Later, I Laughed Episode 1 Recap
> Later, I Laughed Recap
The chairman of Zhonghe Group fell and fractured two ribs and the ulna in his right arm. During his hospitalization, the company’s performance declined. Enraged, the chairman scolded the executives for over two hours in his hospital room. Immediately, the entire group sprang into action from top to bottom, strengthening their work ethic and aiming to recover the losses within a quarter.
This happened to coincide with the annual employee performance evaluation period, and everyone was highly motivated, competing fiercely with one another. The manager of the internal communications department informed his team that they would join forces with the planning and advertising departments for a mock internal bidding competition to design a promotional campaign for the company’s upcoming new tea beverage.
As a regular officer in the internal communications department of this large conglomerate, Wu Xiuya was assigned to lead the promotional campaign. Wu Xiuya had a lively and intelligent face, which often made people wary of her. However, no one would have guessed that she actually had a people-pleasing personality. She longed for approval from others and worked hard to earn it, but the more she tried to please others, the more she lost her sense of self.
This created a vicious cycle, and many tasks that weren’t originally hers ended up being handed to her. For instance, once she was busy covering a story about President Qin’s inspection of a logistics branch, but her colleague Ma Chao called and insisted that she order takeout for Manager Hu and the chief editor of the Evening News. Despite her refusals, she had no choice but to take time to place the order.
Unfortunately, during the interview, she missed the delivery person’s call, which indirectly caused Manager Hu and the chief editor to go hungry for several hours. This led to Wu Xiuya being harshly reprimanded by Manager Hu. Wu Xiuya’s boyfriend, Zheng Hao, was a standout in the marketing department and had been the company’s sales champion for three consecutive years. Zheng Hao left a deep impression on the chairman and became the youngest deputy director in the marketing department.
Within the group, many believed he was poised for rapid promotion and could become the youngest vice president. One day, her colleague He Xiaoli asked Wu Xiuya to complete a complicated form on her behalf and casually invited her to a newly opened hotpot restaurant. Wu Xiuya reluctantly agreed, but after completing the form and heading to the restaurant after work, she discovered that Xiaoli and the others had already eaten and hadn’t even called her to join.
Behind her back, they gossiped that Zheng Hao’s mother and Manager Hu were close friends, subtly reducing Wu Xiuya’s hard work to mere nepotism. The more this happened, the more Wu Xiuya wanted to prove herself. She wasn’t always so accommodating. In 2005, when she moved with her mother from Shenzhen to Ningxi City, she had a very different personality.
Her mother, a woman who sacrificed her career for the family, gave up her role as a deputy manager in a shopping mall to follow her husband’s relocation. While Wu Xiuya’s father’s career continued to climb, her mother never found a suitable job again. After moving to Ningxi City, Wu Xiuya transferred to Seventh Middle School, where the homeroom teacher seated her next to the class monitor, Shi Ye.
On her first day, unable to find pants to wear, she wore a red dress to school. However, this led her classmates to think she was attention-seeking, and one even outright told her not to wear a dress or sit next to Shi Ye again. Back then, Wu Xiuya wasn’t one to back down. She flatly refused, intending to wear a dress to school again the next day.
However, since her dress was already in the washing machine, she wore pants instead. Another girl, Fang Lu, wore a red dress to steal the spotlight but ended up looking foolish when Wu Xiuya didn’t wear hers. Wu Xiuya was also skilled at basketball, often joining the boys’ games, which strengthened her bond with Shi Ye and made Fang Lu even more jealous.
This group of girls began spreading rumors that Wu Xiuya had transferred schools because of misbehavior at her previous school. Fang Lu even deliberately excluded her from notifications about a change in meeting locations, leading to the school troublemaker Mao Biao ambushing Wu Xiuya. Shi Ye arrived and ended up fighting with Mao Biao and his gang. The fight caused serious injuries, and an ambulance took some students away. This incident had a major impact at school.
Wu Xiuya’s father furiously scolded her and even slapped her. Though she believed she had done nothing wrong, her father, in a fit of rage, smashed all her basketball-related items. The director of studies ordered Wu Xiuya to write a self-criticism letter and required Shi Ye to change seats, claiming that their current seating arrangement was affecting his studies. Shi Ye complied, but this made Wu Xiuya feel humiliated.
During the morning exercise, Wu Xiuya was forced to read her self-criticism over the school’s broadcast system. Seizing the moment when the teacher left the broadcast room, she locked the door and used the microphone to reveal the entire truth. While speaking out made her feel momentarily relieved, she didn’t anticipate that her honesty would indirectly cause harm to Shi Ye and her homeroom teacher, Ms. Mu.
At sixteen, Wu Xiuya decided to hide her true self to prevent anyone, including herself, from being hurt by her sincerity. She told herself to consider others’ feelings when she was angry. Over the years, she continued down this path of suppressing her emotions, losing her sense of self more and more, until she became the person she is today.
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