Vaguely hearing sounds coming from inside the office, the cleaning lady peered inside with a branch broom in hand, curiously asking, “Is that Mr. Xu?” The sunlight streamed in through the window, casting a backlight on the person standing at the desk. Dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and jeans, with white sneakers and smooth hair, he looked like a college student.
“Ling Jie, sorry to bother you. I’m here to pick up the textbooks. School starts next week, so I need to prepare in advance.” Turning to look at the door in the sunlight, Xu Yang wore a gentle smile, making Ling Jie feel a bit embarrassed. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with a colorful sleeve and said to him, “If you dress like this when school starts, the female teachers might go crazy over you.” ”
Ling Jie was usually straightforward and spoke her mind. Hearing such a direct compliment, Xu Yang blushed slightly and politely replied, “Not at all,” but didn’t know how to respond further. The jeans were his usual jeans, and the shoes were still the same pair, but the shirt he was wearing was made of fine fabric, not something he usually wore. It was so wide and long, and there was a faint scent of perfume on it.
Ling waited outside the office while Xu Yang packed his things. Suddenly, she thought of something and said, “Hey, Mr. Xu, how is your younger sister doing now?”
“She’s already been discharged from the hospital,” Xu Yang felt a warm glow in his heart when Ling mentioned Xu Yue’s illness. In this cold and indifferent society, there aren’t many people who remember your hardships. “She still needs to rest at home for a year and can only return to school once she’s fully recovered,” Xu Yang joked, “By then, she’ll have fallen behind in her studies, and by the time she finishes university, she’ll be an old maid!”
“What’s the big deal? Girls shouldn’t enter society so early; they’ll learn bad habits!” After saying that, Ling enthusiastically placed the broom against the wall, took her phone out of her pocket, squinted her eyes, and swiped the screen with her index finger to find the news article she had seen today that she found scandalous.
“Mr. Xu, look at this! Girls these days are so…”
The phone screen displayed a sensational news article with the headline “Teenage Girl Caught Having Sex in Luxury Car, Explicit Photos Leaked by Private Drone” in bold letters on the homepage. The content mostly criticized the prevalent trend of showing off wealth in contemporary society, which had led to many immoral behaviors. Ling flipped through the photos, which had been blurred out, and said to Xu Yang, “It happened last night at Qing Shan Bridge. Someone took the photos secretly and posted them online.”
“So you think it’s good for girls to enter society so early? If they learn bad things from others, it’s ugly!” She shook her head in disgust, “Look at these photos, everything was photographed and posted online for everyone to see. This girl doesn’t even know how ugly it is…”
Ling continued flipping through her phone, muttering under her breath about how today’s girls are immoral and don’t know how to take care of themselves. Xu Yang stood beside her, leaning in to look, but the photos were flipped too quickly, and some were already gone before he could get a good look. Perhaps Ling was worried that the photos were too explicit, but Xu Yang still managed to catch a few glimpses.
The explicit photos were blurred out, leaving only a patch of flesh-colored blurriness on the screen. Xu Yang felt uneasy looking at these photos, a sense of panic, his heart racing, feeling anxious, but he didn’t dwell on it. He simply felt guilty for peering at the naked body of a stranger through the screen.
Xu Yang wanted to leave, but perhaps because they hadn’t seen each other in a long time, Ling Jie was quite enthusiastic, persistently holding Xu Yang and chatting about the news until Xu Yang’s phone rang. Ling Jie then realized, “Mr. Xu, do you have something else to do? I completely lost track of time. I apologize. Please go ahead with your plans, and I will lock the door for you later.”
The call was from Bi Yuan. “Are you going to the studio this afternoon?” Bi Yuan asked him over the phone. After receiving Xu Yang’s affirmative response, Bi Yuan offered to drive him there.
“I’ll just take a taxi there. You don’t need to come pick me up.”
“I’m not leaving yet. I’m heading to the studio too, so we can go together. Why take a taxi?” Xu Yang couldn’t detect any emotion in Bi Yuan’s voice over the phone, but he was sensitive and felt that Bi Yuan seemed a bit impatient. He quickly gathered his things, bid farewell to Ling Jie, and hurried out of the office building.
As he walked out of the school, Xu Yang was still thinking about the news report from earlier, feeling a mix of emotions he couldn’t quite put into words. The news report didn’t have many photos. Besides a few blurry, indiscreet photos taken surreptitiously, there were only a few clear images of vehicles driving across Qing Shan Bridge.
Xu Yang felt a vague unease in his heart, causing him to unconsciously touch his chest. Feeling the strong vibrations, he relaxed slightly, but his entire body seemed weighed down by worries, and his originally light footsteps grew slower as he approached the school gate. Seeing Bi Yuan’s black Mercedes-Benz with its hazard lights flashing parked by the roadside, Xu Yang thought dazedly, “Mr. Bi’s car really does resemble the one in the news.”
The car was locked, and Xu Yang tried to open it twice but couldn’t. He had no choice but to knock on the window. As soon as he got in, he saw that Bi Yuan didn’t look too good. Xu Yang couldn’t figure out why Bi Yuan’s expression had suddenly changed, and he felt uneasy. He fastened his seatbelt and sat in the passenger seat without saying a word.
Xu Yang had seen Mr. Bi like this before. The first time he had a serious face-to-face conversation with Mr. Bi, Mr. Bi had looked at him with the same expression and look, his eyes filled with impatience and contempt, and Xu Yang had instinctively wanted to hide.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bi, I didn’t know you were waiting outside. If…” The panic of a rabbit encountering a hound inadvertently slipped into Xu Yang’s voice. Fortunately, Bi Yuan immediately sensed the tremor in his voice, glanced at him, and said, “Sorry, I startled you.”
It wasn’t because he had waited too long for Xu Yang; after dropping him off at school, he hadn’t intended to leave. It was just that during his free time in the car, he had been reading the over a hundred messages on his work WeChat that he hadn’t had time to check last night, and it had left him with a pent-up frustration.
Last night, after his work phone had died and shut off, the PR team leader in the work WeChat group had sent a link to a local BBS.
【Management Communication Group】
Shi Nian: [Link]
Shi Nian: This is a post that just came out on the local forum, and it already has over 200,000 views. Take a look.
Li Mu: I already saw the Weibo pop-up. I browsed the post on my phone, and the pictures were blurred out. Shi Nian, can you download the attachment? We need to immediately investigate whether it’s related to any of the young actors in our studio and handle the PR promptly.
Shi Nian: It looks like Mr. Bi’s car, but his phone is turned off, and I can’t reach him to confirm.
…
Among the more than 100 unread messages on Bi Yuan’s phone, at least two-thirds were discussions about the “sexy photo news” in the management communication group. The rest were various promotions from the official account and messages sent to him by Li Mu.
Bi Yuan roughly guessed what Li Mu wanted to send him privately, so he called Li Mu before Xu Yang came out. As soon as the call connected, Li Mu’s urgent voice came through: “Did you see the news?”
“I didn’t have time to read the news, but I saw the group messages. There was too much content to finish, so tell me what happened later.” Bi Yuan’s voice sounded a bit irritated. For this kind of misinformation and sensationalism, the PR team usually handled it well, so he didn’t understand why Li Mu was so nervous this time.
“We know the main vehicle isn’t yours, but this matter is related to the studio. Where are you now? Come back immediately for a meeting.” Li Mu’s voice sounded serious. “The original image files from the post have already been downloaded by A Shi. They include not only photos but also a video. The protagonist… we all know him.”
It was hard to explain everything over the phone, so Li Mu briefly outlined the situation and urged Bi Yuan to come to the studio immediately.
As the car drove off, Bi Yuan glanced sideways at Xu Yang’s expression. Earlier, Xu Yang had been in a bad mood, and his face looked grim. Bi Yuan could tell that Xu Yang was a bit intimidated by his earlier behavior, so he hurriedly explained, “There’s a rather tricky matter that needs to be handled. It happened suddenly, otherwise I wouldn’t have rushed you out like this.”
Closing nodded, and his explanation eased Xu Yang’s tension slightly. Just as he took a deep breath and turned to look at the traffic outside, he heard Closing say, “A video leaked last night. The content is too explicit. We need to handle the PR immediately.”
In that moment, the air Xu Yang had just inhaled into his lungs felt like sharp blades piercing his body, piercing his lungs, making it hard for him to breathe.
Xu Yang finally understood the uneasy feeling he’d had since seeing the news on Ling Jie’s phone. Ling Jie’s voice still echoed in his ears, “Everything was filmed and posted online for everyone to see…”
Everything was filmed and posted online for everyone to see…
He had filmed such videos too.
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