The Last Free Proposal - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

At eight in the evening, I took my laptop to Changning Road.

The heating in the cafe was ample, while outside the glass windows, the night wind carried the lingering chill of early spring. Xu Xizhe was sitting in the innermost seat, several printed materials spread across the table and a recording pen resting beside them. Seeing me arrive, he first pushed a cup of hot Americano toward my hand.

“You look terrible.”

“Pei Xingyao left something for me.” I didn’t beat around the bush, turning my laptop screen directly toward him. “What was the name of that defunct studio you mentioned?”

“Yanqiu Design.”

I froze.

“Wang Yanqiu?”

“You know her?”

“I do.” I stared at those words on the screen, my throat tightening. “She used to be the creative director at Chengyuan. She was my mentor during my first year. Later, she resigned suddenly. I heard it was for taking on private projects and violating her non-compete agreement.”

Xu Xizhe gave a cold laugh.

“It wasn’t private projects. Lu Chengyan took an entire year’s worth of her proposal library. When she tried to defend her rights, the company used the non-compete and confidentiality agreements to crush her. After the studio went under, she disappeared for nearly a year.”

As he spoke, he pulled a printed sheet from a folder and handed it to me.

It was a draft for a copyright registration application.

The author column read: Wang Yanqiu.

The title of the work: *Keep Love Until the Last Frame*.

The application date was a full eight months before Pei Xingyao had made her proposal.

My head began to throb with a dull roar.

“So this wasn’t a coincidence. He dug up Wang Yanqiu’s old discarded drafts and pinned them on Pei Xingyao, making her finish the work?”

“More than that.” Xu Xizhe opened another file on his computer, his voice flat. “Of the six major clients your company landed in the past two years, four of those projects have sourcing issues. Unpaid test assignments, interns whose names were scrubbed from credits, and old cases from former employees that were repackaged. The most outrageous part is that they always pick the youngest, most desperate for money, and those with the least bargaining power, coaxing and deceiving them into signing away their authorizations.”

I suddenly remembered something Pei Xingyao used to say.

“Sister Yingzhen, am I just too eager to stay? Is that why I’m willing to trade my life for even the smallest piece of the pie?”

How had I replied to her back then?

I told her everyone was like that when they first entered the industry, and that she just had to endure it until things got better.

At that thought, my stomach churned with nausea.

As if sensing my emotions, Xu Xizhe didn’t press further. He simply pushed the recording pen over.

“I’m not on the client’s side, nor am I here to save the company. I’m here because my sister once did three months of illustration tests for Lu Chengyan.”

He paused, his fingertip pressing unconsciously against the rim of his cup.

“She later developed severe depression and took a year’s leave from school. She wasn’t the only one; I just don’t want to see a next one.”

I remained silent for a long time before finally asking, “What do you want to do?”

“First, we reopen the investigation into the cause of Pei Xingyao’s death.”

Xu Xizhe pulled up a screenshot from a surveillance feed.

The image showed the elevator entrance of the Chengyuan office building.

At 2:54 AM, Pei Xingyao, carrying her laptop bag, walked out of the conference room and pressed the button for the elevator going up.

Not down.

Three minutes later, Lu Chengyan entered the same elevator.

Later, at 3:09 AM, Lu Chengyan went downstairs alone, now carrying an additional silver laptop.

Pei Xingyao never appeared on any downward-facing surveillance footage.

I stared at the image, my fingertips growing cold.

“Why didn’t the police see this?”

“Because the company only gave them the surveillance from the first floor and the underground parking garage,” Xu Xizhe said. “The section between the twenty-second floor and the rooftop was claimed by security to have had an equipment failure. But I found out that on the morning after the incident, Chengyuan’s administration reported a repair for the guardrail on the east side of the rooftop.”

My heart constricted violently.

Pei Xingyao wasn’t on her way to a hotel.

She was going to see Lu Chengyan.

“She must have discovered something,” I whispered.

Xu Xizhe nodded. “Most likely it was that unpaid authorization and risk-transfer agreement. She refused to sign it, or perhaps she wanted to copy the original files and leave, and Lu Chengyan chased her to snatch them back. As for whether he directly pushed her, there isn’t enough evidence yet. But hiding surveillance, taking the laptop, and fabricating a narrative after the fact, those acts alone are filthy enough.”

I gripped my cup tightly and asked him, “This alone isn’t enough to bury him.”

“That’s why I need you to help me with the final step.”

He pushed a flowchart in front of me.

The final review presentation for the Guanlan case is in three days. The brand head, legal department, and procurement will all be there. Lu Chengyan will definitely bring the ‘final proposal’ to snatch the contract. As long as he confirms ownership of the proposal in that setting, the company is publicly admitting responsibility for all materials and the entire creative chain.

And what I had to do was complete that chain in its entirety.
I was responsible for going back to the company to keep Lu Chengyan occupied, continuing to pretend I knew nothing while finishing the Eighth Code proposal.

Xu Xizhe was in charge of contacting Wang Yanqiu and other former colleagues who were owed royalties, gathering original sketches, emails, cloud drive records, and registered drafts.

Once all the evidence was linked together, we would wait for the moment Lu Chengyan was surrounded by the most people to let him step into the pit himself.

I looked at the flowchart on the page and suddenly let out a small laugh.

“You legal folks are quite methodical when it comes to revenge. It’s almost like managing a project.”

Xu Xizhe smiled as well, though his eyes remained cold.

“When dealing with someone who’s always calculating, you have to break down the ledger and show it to him piece by piece.”

The next day, I went to work as usual.

Lu Chengyan acted as if nothing had happened, critiquing everyone’s performance during the morning meeting. He even made a point of walking over to my workstation, leaning down and lowering his voice. “Yingzhen, I know you and Pei Xingyao were close. But she’s gone, and the living have to look forward. If you secure this case, the company won’t treat you poorly.”

I looked up at him and suddenly asked, “What do you mean by ‘won’t treat me poorly’?”

He froze for a moment, likely not expecting me to be so direct.

I continued, “The Seventh Code was Pei Xingyao’s work. That royalty-free authorization you made her sign before her accident-is it even legal?”

Lu Chengyan’s expression flickered for only a second before quickly returning to its usual gentle mask.

“Don’t listen to the kids’ wild imaginations,” he said. “She had just graduated and didn’t understand the industry rules. If the company didn’t have her sign those things, how could we protect her?”

“Then what about the surveillance footage?”

“What surveillance?”

I stared into his eyes and said nothing.

Two seconds later, he actually laughed.

“Qiu Yingzhen, you’re smarter than I thought. But the one thing a smart person should understand most is not to ruin their own future for the sake of a dead person. Who else do you expect to pay for your mother’s medical bills?”

At that moment, I finally confirmed that this man wasn’t just shameless.

He was someone who had made a habit of living by stepping on other people’s weaknesses.

I quietly flipped the switch on my recording pen, keeping my voice as level as possible.

“So in your eyes, an intern’s life, their creativity, and their overtime are all just things that can be calculated into a ‘Blessing’ spreadsheet, right?”

Lu Chengyan smiled and patted the back of my chair.

“Don’t make it sound so ugly. The company carries the clients for you, carries the resources, and carries the favors. Isn’t it only right that you suffer a little? So what if we’re ‘freeloading’ off your work? If a client is willing to use it for free, it proves you’re worth that price. For young people to have this kind of opportunity-that is a Blessing.”

He turned and walked away after speaking.

I sat there until the feeling returned to my fingertips, only then slowly letting out a breath.

Inside the recording pen, every single word had been captured clearly.

That afternoon, Wang Yanqiu took the initiative to contact me.

She was silent on the phone for a long time before her first words were: “Was Pei Xingyao also tricked by him into signing a personal authorization?”

I said yes.

There was a sudden silence on the other end, followed only by a faint, shaky intake of breath.

After a few seconds, she whispered, “I signed one back then, too. The day after I signed it, while I was having an abortion, he copied every single case file off my computer. Later, he used a non-compete agreement to force me to stay quiet, saying if I made a scene, he’d make sure I never found work in this industry again.”

I asked her why she was willing to stand up now.

Wang Yanqiu said, “Because if I don’t stand up now, the next person to die will still be the one who is the poorest, the youngest, and has the least background.”

She sent me everything she had kept: her old cloud drive files, scans of her sketchbooks, and all her chat logs with Lu Chengyan.

Things were moving faster on Xu Xizhe’s end as well.

He found the login history for Pei Xingyao’s missing laptop. The last remote synchronization happened at 3:05 AM on the night of the accident, and the location was the public network on the company’s top floor.

He also discovered that Lu Chengyan had instructed the administrative department to delete an email early the next morning.

The subject of the email: *The railing on the east side of the rooftop is loose, please seal it off as soon as possible.*

The timestamp was one week before Pei Xingyao’s accident.

The evidence was being pieced together bit by bit, like bones lighting up in the dark.

What truly made me reach a final, absolute decision was the last file in Pei Xingyao’s compressed folder.

It was an auto-trigger page hidden within the Seventh Code template.

Only when the presenter used the “Final Presentation Version” and entered full-screen mode would that page automatically pop up at the very end.

There was only one sentence on the page.

“If you are seeing this, it means you are stealing someone else’s work again.”

Below it was a list of the original authors.

Pei Xingyao.

Wang Yanqiu.

And five other names that I either recognized or had only seen on the resignation lists.

I looked at that page, and tears suddenly fell.

It turned out she hadn’t left herself without a way out.

She just understood sooner than any of us that there was no use trying to reason with someone like Lu Chengyan.

You had to make him expose his true form in public, right at the moment of his greatest triumph.