Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Pei Xingyao’s accident happened at 3:17 AM.

I was still sitting in the conference room on the twenty-second floor, revising the Seventh Code Proposal. The time in the bottom-right corner of my computer screen felt like a dull blade, slowly scraping against my nerves. Our team’s lights were the only ones still on across the entire floor. The air conditioning had long since shut off, and the glass doors reflected a row of pale, ashen figures, looking like a funeral parlor reserved for the living.

Pei Xingyao sat across from me, her eyes red and swollen, clutching a cup of instant coffee that had gone cold. She was an intern who had joined two months ago. Twenty-four years old, a graduate of an advertising program, she was quick-witted and had a solid aesthetic sense. The first time she showed me a proposal, I knew that if this girl had any luck, she’d be sitting in my position within three years.

But she didn’t have any luck.

She had joined Chengyuan Integrated Marketing.

This company’s greatest strength wasn’t building brands or communication; it was packaging “exploitation” as a form of corporate culture. Not paying a salary during the probation period was called “building a young person’s resume.” Not paying for pitch fees was called “getting an opportunity first.” When a client demanded a sixth or seventh revision before a contract was even signed, the boss would smile and slap the table: “Who didn’t pull a few all-nighters when they were young? Being noticed by a big client is your Blessing.”

We had all heard that phrase. We’d heard it so much that we even used it to comfort new colleagues when they reached their breaking point.

I had said it too.

That’s why, after Pei Xingyao’s accident, I felt I didn’t even have the right to cry.

I was the one who was supposed to deliver the final draft that night. The client had suddenly changed the meeting location from the office to a hotel across the river, saying their representative was flying abroad immediately and had to sign off on the direction tonight. The boss, Lu Chengyan, was downstairs drinking with another client. When he called, his voice was thick with the scent of alcohol: “Yingzhen, get the Seventh Code ready and have Xingyao deliver it. The girl has a fresh face; the client will be in a better mood when they see her.”

I told him she had already pulled three consecutive all-nighters and that it was a long way to go, which wasn’t safe.

Lu Chengyan chuckled on the other end of the line. “You creative types shouldn’t always act like princesses. For young people, running a few more errands and seeing clients more often is a Blessing.”

Pei Xingyao heard him. She looked up and smiled at me, saying it was fine and that she’d go home to sleep after she delivered it.

When she left, she was still carrying her laptop bag, wearing an off-white sweatshirt with a small coffee stain on the cuff. Before the elevator doors closed, she waved at me, her lips moving as if to say, “Sister Yingzhen, wait for me to come back.”

She didn’t come back.

At 4:12 AM, a traffic officer called my phone. He said a traffic accident had occurred under the Binjiang Elevated Highway, and the last person the victim had called was me.

By the time I rushed to the hospital, Pei Xingyao had already been covered by a white sheet.

Her laptop bag was found, but the laptop was gone.

At 9:00 AM the next morning, Lu Chengyan sent three messages in the work group chat.

The first message expressed deep regret over the employee’s accidental passing.

The second message stated that since Pei Xingyao had not yet officially joined the company, the firm would provide her family with twenty thousand yuan as a condolence payment “out of humanitarian concern.”

The third message said the proposal meeting would proceed at 2:00 PM today, and everyone should pull themselves together so as not to let the deceased’s hard work go to waste.

The group chat was silent.

I stared at the phrase “not let the deceased’s hard work go to waste,” my hands shaking so hard I could barely hold my phone.

At 1:30 PM, Lu Chengyan changed into a dark gray suit. His eyes weren’t even slightly red. Standing at the front of the conference room, he called me and two other colleagues inside. His first words were: “I’ve reviewed the Seventh Code Proposal. The core content is usable, but you need to delete Pei Xingyao’s name and change it to ‘Produced by Project Team.’ There’s no point in keeping a dead person’s name; clients only recognize the company.”

I asked him, what about besides the condolence money? She had worked overtime for three consecutive months, pulling all-nighters. We had the internship agreement, reimbursement records, clock-in data, and chat logs. Was the company just going to cut ties like this?

Lu Chengyan looked up at me as if he were looking at a tool that had suddenly learned how to talk back.

“Qiu Yingzhen, don’t get emotional at a time like this.”

He tapped his fountain pen on the table. The sound wasn’t loud, yet it felt like it was stabbing into one’s heart.

“It’s a fact that she didn’t sign a formal contract. The company gave her an opportunity, gave her a platform, and let her work on a project for such a major client. That in itself is a Blessing. What you should be doing right now is winning this proposal. Don’t let her die in vain.”

In that moment, I really wanted to smash my laptop into his face.

But I didn’t.

My mother had a kidney transplant last year, and the recovery costs were a bottomless pit. I was still burdened by rent, medical bills, and credit card debt. As disgusting as a place like Chengyuan was, the salary they paid was an amount I couldn’t afford to walk away from yet. Once reality grabs you by the throat, even anger has to learn how to wait in line.
I dug my nails into my palms, forcing myself to swallow the lump in my throat.

The proposal meeting went ahead as scheduled after all.

Lu Chengyan stood before the large screen, looking like the picture of success as he spun a grand, flowery narrative around the creative concept Pei Xingyao had built. It was an integrated marketing proposal for wedding commemorative videos, titled “Keep Love Until the Last Frame.” From the emotional insights to the communication channels, from the short film scripts to the offline installations, almost every single page was the result of Pei Xingyao’s grueling all-nighters.

I sat at the very edge of the room. Watching the client representatives nod repeatedly made my stomach turn cold.

When the meeting ended and the clients began to leave, one man in a black shirt remained.

He closed his notebook and looked at me.

“Qiu Yingzhen?”

I nodded.

“Xu Xizhe, Guanlan Brand Legal.”

He placed a business card in front of me, his voice as cold and precise as a scalpel.

“I want the original files and version history for this proposal. Specifically, the versions from around three o’clock yesterday morning.”

I immediately became guarded.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” he paused, “that several pages of illustration assets in this proposal are identical to the pitch drafts from another studio that went bankrupt six months ago. That studio never received a cent.”

Lu Chengyan’s expression darkened, and he spoke up before I could. “Mr. Xu, overlapping inspiration is common in the creative industry. You legal types shouldn’t use copyright talk to intimidate people.”

Xu Xizhe ignored him, keeping his eyes on me. “If you really want to know how Pei Xingyao died, meet me at the twenty-four-hour cafe on Changning Road at eight tonight. Bring every backup you have.”

He left as soon as he finished speaking.

Before I could chase after him, my phone vibrated.

It was a scheduled email.

The sender was Pei Xingyao.

The delivery time: 3:46 AM.

The subject line was a single sentence.

“Sister Yingzhen, if I don’t come back, don’t let them trade my life for another proposal.”

My palms went ice-cold in an instant.

There were no pleasantries in the email, only an encrypted zip file named “Blessing.”

I returned to my workstation, locked the door, plugged in my headphones, and opened the files.

The first was a record of her overtime for the past three months, detailed down to the minute she entered the building, the minute she left, and which version she was working on.

The second was a collection of screenshots from the project group chat. Dozens of commands like “keep revising for now,” “the client hasn’t signed yet,” and “don’t set up the project budget yet” had been neatly organized by date.

The third was an audio recording.

In the recording, Lu Chengyan’s voice sounded muffled and irritable.

“We’ll talk about the contract later. You’re just an intern; don’t always focus on the money. Being able to participate in a ten-million-dollar project like this is a Blessing the company is giving you.”

Pei Xingyao asked, “Then why does the copyright transfer agreement say I am voluntarily authorizing it for free as an individual?”

Lu Chengyan paused for two seconds, then chuckled.

“Because someone has to take the fall under that name. If something goes wrong, the company can protect you. Don’t be ungrateful.”

As I listened, a wave of numbness washed over my back.

At the very bottom of the zip file, there was a spreadsheet.

The file was named “Blessing Statistics 2025.”

I clicked it open, and my entire body froze.

It wasn’t a standard ledger.

Inside, every pitch, every round of free revisions, and every suppressed labor cost had been converted into numbers. Column A was the client, Column B was the proposal round, Column C was the original author, Column D was “Actual Payment,” Column E was “Amount Saved,” and Column F contained two glaring words.

Blessing.

Next to Pei Xingyao’s name, the “Amount Saved” column read thirty-six thousand.

The remarks read: *Usage can continue; risk has been transferred to the individual.*

I stared at that line, gritting my teeth so hard they nearly shattered.

She didn’t die in an accident.

She had been assigned a price and exploited until there was nothing left.

That night, I understood for the first time what the “Blessing” Lu Chengyan kept talking about actually was.

It wasn’t an opportunity, and it wasn’t growth.

It was the profit he tore from the lives and futures of others to paste into his own ledger.

And I had been the one calculating it for him for four whole years.