“Really?”
The other two business partners were instantly overjoyed, slapping their hands on the desk before even opening their mouths.
Gu Zhaodong sighed again and added, “But he wants to buy a stake in Hongmeng, and since he does not have the money right now, he wants to give us fifty percent of his revenue from the first half of the year as his investment share.”
The office was relatively small. The three of them raised their heads and looked at each other in dismay. After a long silence, all three spoke in unison: “Fifty percent, that much? What on earth does he see in a broken-down company like ours?”
After a brief moment of awkwardness, what came through was their tacit, shared lack of confidence. The three of them even discussed whether they should ask Qin Zhen to reconsider.
After all, investing in a company with as little potential as theirs would probably bring him plenty of trouble down the road. If they just signed a one-year contract instead, they could still help Qin Zhen out a lot, and he would be able to keep more of what he earned.
After discussing it back and forth, Gu Zhaodong sent Qin Zhen a very long message filled with advice analyzing the pros and cons.
Meanwhile.
When Qin Zhen received the message, he was out buying clothes for Shen Jin’an.
He wandered around the shopping mall twice, and after spending almost all the money he had on him, he decided to use the last two hundred bucks to buy Shen Jin’an a few pairs of spare, personal briefs.
The sales clerk took one look at the extra-large size Qin Zhen picked out. When Qin Zhen rejected it, explaining that he was buying them for someone else, the clerk asked for the other person’s measurements. Qin Zhen pondered for a few seconds, admitting that he honestly had no idea and had not even seen them.
Not long after, he sent a message to Shen Jin’an asking for his size.
It took a long time for the other side to reply: “You do not need to buy them.”
Without missing a beat, Qin Zhen typed back: “Then you just keep wearing mine. Do you not feel like they are too big?”
This time, the silence from the other end lasted even longer. Figuring that the old-school basic phone made typing inconvenient, Qin Zhen called him instead.
The call connected immediately. Shen Jin’an’s voice sounded small and gritted through teeth, “I already said you do not need to buy any.”
“My new ones were worn by you, so I need to buy more anyway. It is better to just get ones that actually fit your size.”
“You…” After a moment of hesitation, Shen Jin’an finally mumbled out a size and abruptly hung up the phone.
Qin Zhen: “?”
They are not even that small. What is he shy about?
The mall was not crowded on a workday. After finishing his shopping, Qin Zhen sat in the rest area for a while. Taking out his phone and seeing the message, he told the other person that no further consideration was necessary and to just go ahead and send over the newly drafted contract.
He still clearly remembered that a major reason Hongmeng took off in his past life was the mutual trust between the company and its streamers.
Back then, due to a massive regulatory crackdown, other agencies got caught up in various major and minor illegal activities. Streamers and management hurled dirty water at each other, both sides desperate to push the blame onto the other. False whistleblowing, tearing each other down, and inciting cyberbullying were everywhere.
Only Hongmeng survived with the company and streamers coexisting. After that storm blew over, Hongmeng was the only one standing tall at the absolute top.
Back in the small office.
Gu Zhaodong and the others did not dwell on it any longer either.
After all, they were middle-aged men. While they lacked confidence in their own company, they still harbored grand ambitions in their hearts and were not the type to be overly indecisive.
The few of them completed the electronic contract signing right on their phones and agreed to send their work plan to Qin Zhen within two days so they could build up Qin Zhen’s account together.
After signing with Hongmeng, Qin Zhen did not rest for even a single second.
Two days later, Qin Zhen did a test broadcast on his computer. Wearing a headset, his fingers flew across the keyboard with a rapid clatter. During this time, the phone he left on the couch rang repeatedly, the caller ID displaying four characters: Trouble Number One.
Shen Jin’an glanced over a few times, then looked away, tapping away at whatever he was tinkering with on his old basic phone.
Perhaps the ringing nearby finally started to grate on his nerves too much, because he frowned, walked over, and tossed the phone right onto the desk where Qin Zhen was broadcasting.
Qin Zhen picked up the call and casually threw out, “Mom, I am busy.” Without waiting for the other side to speak, he hung up and tossed the phone back to the side.
Yet within a couple of minutes, the ringing started up again with stubborn persistence, as if it had no intention of giving up easily.
Shen Jin’an handed the phone over. “Answer it.”
Qin Zhen walked over, gave Shen Jin’an an exasperated look, and finally answered the call.
“Hello, Mom. What is wrong?”
The voice on the other end was very small and faint, likely muffled as if she were covering her mouth to whisper.
“Hello? Is that Zhenzhen? Zhenzhen, you must not make a sound. There are bad people on your side, if you make a sound, you are done for! But do not be scared, Zhenzhen, just stay right there. Mom is coming to save you right now.”
“I know. I will not make a sound. I will just stay quietly right here and not make a sound,” Qin Zhen sighed, holding the phone as he walked over to the window.
Counting his past life, it had been quite a long time since he last called his mother. He always used being too busy as an excuse to escape things he could not handle.
When he was around ten years old, his mother suffered a severe psychological trigger and developed a serious mental illness.
She only had a few lucid hours each day. The rest of the time, she would either call him to stir up trouble or call his father to do the same, and any relatives had long since grown tired of dealing with it.
Which family would willingly let themselves be dragged down by a mentally unstable relative like that? If something ever actually went wrong one day, the blame might end up pinned on them anyway.
No one could shoulder that kind of responsibility.
Things were alright back when he was homeschooled; at least his mother would still muster up the mental energy to cook for him and stay inside her room even when she could not control herself.
Once he went out into the working world, his mother completely lost her grip on reality, and his father had no choice but to lock her inside the house. During severe episodes, they even had to tie a rope around her to keep her from climbing out the window.
In the early days, they saw doctors many times and tried treatments, but once the money ran out, there was nothing more they could do.
The doctors could only say that it was a mental illness, maybe she would get better with slow, gentle care, maybe she would suddenly snap out of it at a certain point in time, or maybe she would never get better for the rest of her life.
With words as ambiguous as that, no one dared to hold onto much hope anymore.
In his past life, he died too abruptly, and he had no idea what his parents must have been like after learning of his passing.
The two elderly people who had lived their entire lives in a small town relied entirely on the hope that their only son in the big city would send back some good news. Hearing news like that out of nowhere must have felt like the sky was falling.
Qin Zhen stared fixedly at the people coming and going downstairs from the apartment building, lost in thought. When he raised his head again, his voice carried a bit more patience.
“Mom, have you eaten? Has Dad finished work and come home yet?”
The other side fell silent for a few seconds, and her voice suddenly turned hesitant and plaintive, the slightly husky nasal tone of a middle-aged woman clearly audible.
She said, “Zhenzhen, are you doing okay out there? Will you still come home?”
Will I still come home?
In his past life, he did not.
All his time had been spent trying to make money. It was a pity that, in the end, he never managed to send enough money back home for his mother to get proper medical treatment.
Nobody ever believes what mentally ill people say, yet at certain moments, they seem to see things much more clearly than anyone else.
Shen Jin’an had been listening to him make the phone call the entire time. He seemed particularly sensitive to a certain word, gripping his old basic phone tighter and tighter, pressing the buttons with increasing force.
When the call ended, Qin Zhen walked closer, pried the basic phone out of Shen Jin’an’s hand, and tossed it aside. “You can manage to get yourself this worked up playing Snake?”
Shen Jin’an’s facial expression while playing games was entirely innocent, looking completely absorbed. He shifted his dark, glass-bead-like pupils to look at Qin Zhen, suddenly biting his lip and asking, “Do you think I am mentally retarded?”