“You didn’t even review the outsourced work?” Jiang Xingzhou closed the draft folder. “You get material back from an outside vendor and put it straight into the proposal without changing a thing. Are you a designer or a courier?”
Fang Qing’s face flushed red.
“The first direction works,” Jiang Xingzhou said, pushing the draft folder back. “The second one, the color-block segmentation, is too rigid. Redo it. The third one, the typeface, Little Chen redraws. I’ll give you two days. If it’s not good, I’ll replace you.”
“The fourth, the motifs, either redraw them or change direction. Don’t try to fob me off with this kind of thing.”
Fang Qing nodded quickly, her hands shaking as she gathered the draft folder back.
Team Three’s lead was He Yuan, the least senior of the three team leads, promoted less than half a year ago.
He was visibly nervous when he stood up. After watching the first two teams get torn apart, he knew there was no escaping it today.
He Yuan pulled up the first image.
His team was handling a visual upgrade for a sports brand, the main visual a composition of geometric shapes, the palette orange-red against deep blue, the overall style very youthful.
“Jiang-ge, the client’s brief for this project asked for youthfulness and impact, so we used contrasting colors. For the graphics we went with a geometric-collage route, and for the copy we picked a bold sans-serif typeface. Overall…”
“Come here.”
He Yuan froze.
Jiang Xingzhou beckoned to him.
“Enlarge that geometric graphic. As big as it goes.”
He Yuan did as told.
On the screen, once the edges of the geometric shapes were enlarged, the jagged outlines became clearly visible.
“See that?” Jiang Xingzhou pointed at the screen.
He Yuan leaned in, stared for a few seconds, and the color drained from his face.
“The edges…”
“Not cut out cleanly.” Jiang Xingzhou said, “You put an image up there without even cutting it out cleanly, and then you blow it up for the whole team to see? For the client to see? Do you think the client has bad eyes, or is it your eyes that are bad?”
He Yuan went completely rigid.
Jiang Xingzhou leaned back in his chair.
“He Yuan, you’re a team lead. Do you understand what that means? Being a team lead doesn’t mean bundling up whatever your people hand you and shipping it straight to me.”
“You’re supposed to review it, look at the details, fix things. What you’re doing right now, how is it any different from a message relay? Why would I need you at all? I could just have your team members submit to me directly.”
“Jiang-ge, I…”
“This project of yours is a mess from start to finish. The palette’s fine, the direction’s fine, but the execution is a disaster. The shapes weren’t cut out cleanly, the letter spacing was never adjusted.”
“Look at that bold sans-serif of yours yourself. The characters are packed together like a rush-hour subway car. Can they breathe?”
He Yuan went silent.
Jiang Xingzhou tossed his pen onto the table, irritated.
“Three teams, and every single one turned in work with problems. Team One has a taste problem, Team Two has a quality-control problem, Team Three has an execution problem.”
“Do you all figure that since I’m the final gatekeeper at the end, you don’t have to check anything yourselves?”
Nobody in the conference room dared answer.
“I’ll say this once more.” Jiang Xingzhou’s voice wasn’t loud, but every person in the room heard it clearly. “Work that reaches me should be at the level you’d be comfortable showing the client directly. Not something I have to play teacher with, fixing character by character, adjusting line by line.”
“I’m paid a director’s salary, not a tutor’s.”
The conference room stayed quiet for a long moment.
Fang Qing spoke first.
“Jiang-ge, we understand. We’ll go back over everything.”
Zhou Lei nodded along.
Jiang Xingzhou nodded and stood up.
“By three tomorrow afternoon, I want to see revised versions. All three teams. No one drags their feet.”
He picked up his phone and cup, pulled the conference room door open, and left.
Only after the door shut did everyone in the room let out a collective breath.
Little Chen muttered under his breath.
“Holy hell, Jiang-ge was firing on all cylinders today.”
Fang Qing shot him a glare.
“Enough. Get back to work.”
Back in his own office, Jiang Xingzhou set the cup down, sat, and rubbed his temples.
His head ached a little.
Not from the scolding at the meeting; that alone wouldn’t give him a headache.
Mostly it was the dream. He hadn’t shaken it off since waking that morning, and during the meeting he’d nearly zoned out several times, held together by sheer habit.
He rummaged through his drawer, found a blister pack of ibuprofen, popped out a tablet, and swallowed it with cold water.
His phone lit up: a message from Fang Qing.
“Jiang-ge, we’ve decided to redraw the botanical motifs for the third proposal. New version within three days.”
He sent back a “Mm” and set the phone face-down.
Then he thought of the dream again.
Jiang Xingzhou closed his eyes for a moment.
By the time Jiang Xingzhou pushed open his front door, it was already completely dark outside.
He tossed his keys onto the entryway cabinet, changed shoes, walked into the living room, and collapsed straight into the sofa.
He sank into it, head tipped back against the cushion, staring blankly at the ceiling for a good two minutes.
That afternoon he’d been revising proposals until past seven.
Fang Qing’s team’s botanical motifs still weren’t right after the redraw, so he’d adjusted them himself, and by the time he looked up at the clock, he was the only one left in the office.
“Keep this up and I’ll drop dead sooner or later.”
He said it to himself and reached for the water glass on the coffee table.
The water had been poured that morning before he left and had sat all day; going down, it carried a flat, tepid coolness.
He set the glass down and picked up his phone to scroll.
There were thirty-some unread messages in the work group. He tapped in and skimmed: all progress updates from the teams.
Fang Qing had sent three images, Zhou Lei two color schemes, He Yuan a dense block of explanatory text.
Jiang Xingzhou read through them, typed back a few words, and set the phone face-down on the sofa.
“Might as well save up some money and retire early.”
He leaned back into the sofa, an arm draped over his forehead.
“Work till forty, save enough, go live somewhere cheap. Sleep till I wake up naturally every day, and whoever wants to be director can have the job.”
He laughed at himself as he said it.
Then the humor faded, because he knew it was impossible.
The mortgage still had years left on it. Every month, before his paycheck even had time to warm up, more than half of it got transferred away.
Retire at forty? Only in his dreams.
He closed his eyes, planning to just lie there for a while.
Then he heard a voice.
At first he thought his phone had gone off, but the phone was face-down on the sofa, screen black.
He thought it came from upstairs, but the voice wasn’t above him, and it wasn’t outside either.
It was in the room.
“Jiang Xingzhou.”
The voice was flat, impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman, like many voices layered into one, and yet very soft.
Soft as if someone were speaking right against his ear, but there was no one in the room except him.
Jiang Xingzhou shot bolt upright from the sofa.
“Who’s there?”
No answer.
The TV was dark, the curtains drawn, the water glass and phone on the coffee table. Everything perfectly normal.
“The time has come.”
The voice sounded again.
Closer this time, so close it seemed to be standing right behind him.
Jiang Xingzhou whirled around.
Nothing there.
His heart rate began to climb.
He gripped the phone, thumb already on the lock button, ready to dial at any second.
His mind raced through the possibilities.
A burglar? No, the doors and windows were locked. A prank? Who had nothing better to do than pull a prank like this?
Had he offended someone lately? He offended people every day, but not to the point where anyone would try to scare him with ghost tricks.