The time rewinds to the day before the full moon night.
At the Dawang Road intersection, in front of a jianbing stall, a middle-aged man stopped of his own accord.
"Old Hu, what'll it be today?" Auntie Mae asked with her warm, motherly smile, though her hands never stopped working the jianbing.
She knew Victor Hu's order by heart. Asking was just polite chitchat—because Old Hu was a creature of robotic precision.
Every morning at 7:40 sharp, he emerged from the Dawang Road subway station, wearing a suit without a single wrinkle, his hair in a flawless slicked-back part, his shoes so clean you'd never guess they'd just survived Beijing's hellish subway commute. In his left hand, he carried an equally immaculate long-handled lunar umbrella, looking every bit like a courtroom gladiator about to enter legal combat.
Old Hu always ordered the plainest jianbing—no extras. Being from the south, he'd also get a cup of tofu pudding, extra sugar.
"Jianbing and tofu pudding, to go." With a meticulous half-smile, Victor Hu stood perfectly still.
The jianbing was quickly prepared and handed over. He nodded in thanks, then walked toward the advertising agency's office building.
Auntie Mae watched Old Hu's ramrod-straight back and murmured under her breath.
"General manager of an advertising firm, minimum five hundred thousand a year—and this frugal. Must have had some kind of family crisis."
Not only that, Old Hu's polished exterior and penny-pinching interior were legendary throughout the company.
Never ordered delivery—insisted on the ten-yuan lunchboxes from the construction site nearby. Collected leftover snacks and fruit from the office pantry and instant coffee, packing them into pre-sorted disposable containers. He'd even gather excess cardboard boxes and scrap paper to sell to the recycling old man regularly...
The most extreme: someone caught him sleeping at the office after working too late, just to save the commute money. He had his own toothbrush set permanently installed in the company bathroom.
But nobody said much—after all, he was the manager, a pragmatic mid-career stalwart who'd clawed his way up from intern to general manager in three years on pure competence.
When presenting proposals, he didn't say much, but his words carried a mesmerizing gravity that made those potbellied CEOs put down their phones, listen through several segments, and sign six- and seven-figure contracts without hesitation.
Beyond that, advertising was an industry built on grinding overtime and all-nighters, with hemorrhaging turnover. To maintain his stamina, Old Hu had stuck with bodybuilding for years. His chiseled physique and handsome looks had private gyms practically begging him to moonlight as a personal trainer—offers he turned down flat.
About his past, Old Hu was always tight-lipped. Everyone knew his family ran a hospital back home and that they'd once been wealthy. Why he'd abandoned the family business to struggle in Beijing was something he never wanted to discuss.
The only thing that made everyone miserable was Old Hu's extraordinary strictness at work. Sometimes it bordered on unbearable. If a proposal or design didn't meet his standards, he'd pull everyone into all-night sessions, revising until he was satisfied. Over the past three years, more than a dozen young hires had quit within three months. Recently the design director threw in the towel after three consecutive all-nighters and moved back to the northeast.
By Marcus's count, he was the copywriter who'd lasted the longest.
The moment Marcus arrived at the office, he walked over to Old Hu with a rueful grin, scratching his head.
"So... Boss Hu, I messed up the proposal deadline. I thought it was next week, but the client just emailed—it's actually due today. What do you think..."
Old Hu didn't say a word. He stared at Marcus motionlessly. After a long silence, he spoke slowly.
"Send it over."
"You got it!"
Almost instantly—Marcus might have already had it timed—a message landed in Hu's inbox. It was a proposal Marcus had barely touched, and the client's materials for tomorrow required at least a hundred pages of slides.
Old Hu took a deep breath. He pulled six or seven old proposal decks from his folder, lined them up, and opened three monitors simultaneously. A torrent of text and visuals flowed into his eyes as he murmured numbers to himself.
"Deck One, pages 3, 20, 24, 56, 77..."
"Deck Two, pages 11, 22, 44, 76, 102..."
"Deck Three, pages 55, 67, 68, 92..."
"Deck Four, pages 106 through 120, plus all PR sections—everything..."
Marcus didn't dare dawdle. He scrambled to record the page numbers on a sticky note.
He knew these were the slides Old Hu was about to deploy—his miraculous, last-minute rescue routine.
Old Hu had a medical school background and possessed an extraordinary dynamic memory. He could recall from a single visual element exactly which deck and which page it had appeared in before.
How many times had Marcus botched a project, only to have Old Hu pull back from the brink with this near-superhuman ability?
Once all the pages were selected, Old Hu scribbled on his notepad for a while, outlining the content framework, then began assembling the slides at a jaw-dropping speed. Meanwhile, Marcus slipped away to a corner, cracked open his own laptop, and started quietly writing his novel.
Unlike the glamorous exterior of the advertising industry, a junior copywriter's salary wasn't much. After rent, you'd be lucky to have four thousand a month left—barely enough for one person, let alone two.
So Marcus had a second, secret identity beyond his 996 day job: he was a web novelist.
Unlike the daily verbal abuse he took as a copywriter, Marcus actually had talent for writing fiction. His serialized novel had made the homepage recommendation several times, and before he'd even published officially, several major supporters were already tipping him.
This month, with the full-attendance bonus, he was pulling in nearly seven thousand in extra income—pretty impressive for a newcomer.
When it rained in the east, the sun shone in the west. Something like that.
"Once this novel gets published and takes off, I'll be making hundreds of thousands a month. I'll walk out of here in a heartbeat. Then Chloe will stop nagging me about having no ambition. Heh."
Marcus ran his little calculations, happily planning his future, completely unaware that behind the cover of three monitors, a pair of silent eyes was watching him.
Old Hu shook his head but said nothing.
Marcus was a promising talent—good instincts, solid proposal skills—though his head wasn't always in the game. Even so, Old Hu couldn't deny that many of Marcus's natural gifts were the strongest among any recent hire.
He knew he was a harsh, demanding person. That much was clear to him. So he didn't plan to befriend Marcus. As long as the kid channeled his defiance into doing good work, that was enough.
The pitch the day after tomorrow was crucial. He planned to have Marcus lead it—which was why he'd always turned a blind eye to the side gig.
But the day-after-tomorrow pitch was truly important. It was an Olympic-related landscape project, with a client who was a billionaire. The agency was tasked with leveraging the Olympic buzz to create a national-scale landscape and culture summit—all of it, from the pre-event hype to the mid-campaign promotions to the annual cultural festival. If they closed this deal, the commission alone would be over three hundred thousand.
Old Hu wanted to give Marcus at least a hundred and fifty thousand. After all, the kid had a birthday coming up in a couple months—could count as a surprise.
At the thought of money, Old Hu sighed involuntarily. He knew tonight would probably be another sleepless night of arguments.
The shadows outside the window stretched longer beneath the summer sun. The midday heat was stifling, and the cicadas screamed loud enough to make you lose your focus. Old Hu sat motionless, working. By the time he finished the deck, packed up, and headed home, the sky was already full of stars.
"Beijing News: Tonight a meteor will streak across the sky. According to the latest forecast from the meteorological bureau, the moon will be bright and stars sparse, with excellent visibility. Most residents of Beijing's urban districts will have a close-up view of this celestial visitor. The next such event might not come for another decade. If you have a wish to make, don't forget to look up and make it."
Old Hu swayed on the bus listening to the radio. A meteor? He gave a bitter smile. Going home tonight, he had no idea what kind of storm awaited.
Sure enough, the moment he pushed open the door, he saw his wife's expressionless face—and a half-eaten dinner laid out on the table.
Old Hu didn't speak. He set down his briefcase, took off his suit and hung it up, washed his hands, and maintained his exquisite smile as he pulled out a thin red envelope, placed it on the table, and slid it toward his wife.
Her eyes lit up briefly, then she pinched the thin envelope and her gaze went dark again.
"There's only 1,500 here. Where's your project commission?"