“Heh, Manager Liu, do you know how he called in sick yesterday?”
The chief editor immediately turned to the capable, short haired woman standing beside him.
This was Liu Yun, the boss of their scenario planning company.
However, before the chief editor could finish speaking, he was cut off because Liu Yun recognized Gu Jinzhi.
“President Gu! What a coincidence, what brings you over here?”
Her eyebrows arched in surprise. Completely ignoring the editor, she stepped straight out of the elevator and proactively reached out to shake Gu Jinzhi’s hand.
Gu Jinzhi’s expression didn’t change much, but he politely shook her hand nonetheless.
On the other side, the chief editor stepped out of the elevator as well, a distinctly unpleasant look in his eyes.
Mo Yu could tell at a single glance that the chief editor was suffocating from failing to lecture him! He was definitely looking to cause him trouble.
Taking advantage of Liu Yun and Gu Jinzhi exchanging corporate pleasantries, Mo Yu hurriedly slipped away first.
“Chief Editor, Sister Liu, I’ll take my leave first.”
“Alright.”
After replying, Liu Yun noticed that President Gu kept watching Mo Yu as he walked away. Surprised and delighted, she asked, “Do you know our Xiao Yu?”
Gu Jinzhi froze, hesitating for a moment.
How could Mo Yu know President Gu? The chief editor felt a surge of uncertainty, but then he clearly caught Gu Jinzhi’s hesitant expression.
They don’t know each other well at all.
Heh. The chief editor readied himself once again, planning to use Mo Yu’s leave of absence to complain to Manager Liu and conveniently demonstrate what a reliable, sensible employee he was. Unlike a wet behind the ears kid like Mo Yu, who ran his mouth off with complete fabrications.
Without a grounded chief editor like him, this company would surely collapse.
At this thought, the smile on the chief editor’s face grew increasingly pronounced. He cleared his throat.
“Speaking of Mo Yu… Manager Liu, do you know what he did yesterday…”
President Gu suddenly glanced at him.
Though young, this President Gu possessed a unique, intense aura in his eyes, as if he could see through everything.
It made the chief editor stiffen involuntarily.
Just as he was about to continue, he heard Gu Jinzhi speak.
“Mo Yu was with me yesterday.”
He only stated that single sentence. No further explanation was needed.
Liu Yun instantly broke into a wide smile. “So that’s how it is!”
Chief Editor: “?”
“But he said…”
The moment the chief editor repeated a few of Mo Yu’s words, Liu Yun cut him off.
“What of it? As long as the request for leave was communicated, that’s enough. Our company isn’t that rigid! What matters most is encouraging our employees to create their best work. Every employee has their own unique personality.”
Liu Yun gave the chief editor a warning look, then turned back to smile warmly at President Gu.
“I’ve always particularly loved Mo Yu’s imagination. I still remember the portfolio he submitted, his writing has a special charm that caught my eye immediately!”
Mo Yu had been fairly invisible since joining the company. He probably never would have imagined Sister Liu praising him like this.
Meanwhile, the chief editor was choking back his frustration until his neck turned red, looking like someone who had been cut off mid-sentence and left speechless.
Mo Yu quickly returned to his workstation. He covered his phone screen with his hand first, taking a good while to summon the courage to steal a glance.
Hiss… Those two Michelin meals had indeed been charged.
Just as he was nursing his heartache, misfortunes never coming singly, his phone rang again.
“Xiao Yu. The feedback from Qiming is back. The revision was rejected again. President Gu turned it down personally.”
Mo Yu: ?
Having failed to criticize Mo Yu in front of the boss today, the chief editor was already looking at him with annoyance.
At first, he had been somewhat worried about whether Mo Yu had a powerful background, considering his connection with President Gu.
Now, seeing that the revision had failed to pass, he felt he had overthought things. He regained his smug, condescending attitude and urged Mo Yu to quickly hand in a new detailed outline.
Mo Yu couldn’t slack off even a bit. The very next day, he stayed up late to submit a brand new detailed outline.
Surprisingly, the chief editor gave it a painstaking review and altered it beyond recognition. It was short of reversing every single line. Then, in the name of giving him guidance, he claimed he was passing down all his knowledge and told Mo Yu to learn well from it.
Sun Ya, sitting in the next cubicle, took a look and felt deeply pained.
“I thought your original train of thought was pretty good. What is this mess?”
Mo Yu held a straw in his mouth, sipping the free Cola from the breakroom to keep himself alive.
“It’s fine.”
Anyway, whenever the chief editor got an itch to micromanage, he would boss people around. However the chief editor wanted it changed, Mo Yu would just write it accordingly.
Finishing the draft and punching out of work was what mattered most.
Sun Ya hesitated, wanting to speak. Honestly, she had always felt Mo Yu’s stories were much more engaging than the chief editor’s.
The occasional bits of inspiration he gave her were far better than the chief editor’s “guidance.”
However, the chief editor was the decision maker, so saying this didn’t seem to help much…
Sighing, she could only pat Mo Yu on the shoulder in comfort.
A few days later, when Gu Jinzhi received the script that had been drastically revamped by the chief editor, his brows instantly knit together.
He called the screenwriter responsible for liaising with the outsourced company into his office.
The screenwriter appeared a bit nervous. “W-what’s wrong, President Gu?”
“What is going on with this storyline?”
“If their writers only have this level of ability, we should consider switching to a different company.”
The screenwriter immediately stated he would go communicate with them. By the afternoon, he knocked on the door and entered again.
“President Gu, their chief editor mentioned that this was because the draft wasn’t up to par, it was written by a newcomer whom you held in high regard. He apologized deeply for disappointing you, and assured that he will personally write it from now on so this won’t happen again.”
“As the chief editor, did he really submit it without even checking it first?”
“And what ‘newcomer held in high regard’?”
Gu Jinzhi was even more dissatisfied with this excuse. How would he even know a writer from that company?
The screenwriter frowned and thought for a moment. “He said the name was… Mo Yu.”
Gu Jinzhi froze.
“Oh.” He had forgotten.
Although Mo Yu had mentioned writing scripts for him a few times in the dungeon instance, Gu Jinzhi hadn’t been entirely lucid at those times.
He had only realized Mo Yu worked at that company the day he bumped into Manager Liu.
Yet he hadn’t expected Mo Yu to be the very writer responsible for his game’s storyline.
And the writing was so… detached from his age group? It read almost like tropes from a decade ago.
Screenwriter: “Their chief editor said you can rest assured, President Gu. He will personally handle all Qiming content from now on.”
Gu Jinzhi looked down at the draft again, his brow furrowing even tighter.
“No. Have Mo Yu continue writing.”
“Huh?”
Gu Jinzhi shook his head as he looked at the manuscript.
Although they urgently needed this storyline, he decided to give Mo Yu a hand. The writing was simply too poor. If he didn’t give him more opportunities to train, what if the guy lost his job?
“Do it this way, have the two of them each write a version, and bring both to me.”
President Gu was acting out of good intentions, but sitting at his workstation, Mo Yu inexplicably sneezed.
Who’s badmouthing me?
Buzz. The phone on his desk lit up.
Mo Yu saw a text message, it was from President Gu.
Mo Yu watched as he typed for a while, paused, and then seemed to change the topic.
[Do you know when the next dungeon instance opens?]
Mo Yu replied truthfully, he didn’t know yet. Thinking that President Gu was probably worried about it interfering with work and that his answer was a bit too useless, he added another line.
[It shouldn’t be within these next few days.]
Who could have known that very evening, a giant disc-shaped cloud would hover over the city once again, draped directly right above No. 1 High School.
“Mom?” Mo Yu received a phone call just as he clocked off work.
“Xiao Yu, if you’re free right now, could you go pick up your younger brother from his tutoring class at No. 1 High School?” His mother’s voice sounded a bit embarrassed.
Mo Yu was even more surprised. “Right now?”
“I don’t know what happened, but a pipe suddenly burst at home and flooded the floor. Your Uncle Wang really can’t get away.”
Mo Yu’s parents had divorced very early on, and both had later formed new families.
Mo Yu had boarded at school since high school and attended university far away. After graduating, he felt like a nuisance whenever he visited, so even though they weren’t far apart, he only dropped by occasionally.
Naturally, he wasn’t very familiar with his half-brother either.
However, since his mother put it that way, Mo Yu had no choice but to drive over to the vicinity of his brother’s school.
The younger brother born after his mother remarried was named Wang Minghui. He was eleven years younger than Mo Yu and was in middle school this year. However, kids nowadays were facing ever-increasing pressure, attending all kinds of interest classes even after school hours.
The thirteen-year-old boy was quite tall already. Upon seeing Mo Yu, he sighed with a world-weary air. “Why is living so exhausting?”
Mo Yu patted him on the shoulder.
“It’ll get even more exhausting in the future.”
Little Hui: ?
“Huh, Bro, what’s up with the cloud today?”
Hearing him say that, Mo Yu looked up as well and his eyes widened in shock. He finally realized something was wrong.
Mo Yu pulled out his phone. The countdown timer had reappeared, and the question mark had changed to zero at some unknown point.
Couldn’t it pop up a notification in advance?? He had literally just guaranteed it to President Gu!
Besides, wasn’t it practically 8:00 PM right now?
Mo Yu hurriedly hailed a taxi for Little Hui.
“You’ll be fine going back by yourself, right?”
The young boy gave an OK sign. “Don’t worry!”
Mo Yu closed the car door, turned around, and walked toward a deserted corner.
Sure enough, in the next second, that familiar wave of drowsiness washed over him again, and he passed out.
When he regained consciousness, Mo Yu realized he wasn’t in the previous laboratory, but inside a school instead. However, the perspective seemed a bit off?
He was currently lying on the ground, while Gu Jinzhi stood over him with his hands in his pockets, looking down on him and swung a foot right down toward him.
Mo Yu: Wait, what?