“Useless!”
Guo Shijie trembled from head to toe.
He moved on to Zhao Teng:
“Incompetent!”
Zhao Teng bowed his head and played dead.
When he reached Zhang Fang, Dong Siyang dispensed with words altogether. He grabbed Zhang Fang by the chin and hoisted him up a good five centimetres.
“Director Dong — Director Dong, I was wrong!” Zhang Fang rose onto his toes, pleading desperately. “I really was wrong, please, Director Dong, let me go!”
As Zhang Fang’s face turned an increasingly deeper shade of red, Zhu Yun began to debate with herself whether she ought to step in. Then she recalled how Zhang Fang had behaved at the interview, how he’d spent the past two days at work, and the performance he’d just put on to try to pull the wool over Dong Siyang’s eyes.
On second thought — let him get choked.
But Dong Siyang released him in the end. Zhu Yun snuck a look and noticed that only Zhang Fang’s chin had gone red where it had been gripped — not a mark on his neck. Dong Siyang had only been squeezing the bone. Just the bone.
“Tell me,” Dong Siyang said, stepping back to where he’d stood at the start of the meeting. “Are these two games actually fun?”
No one answered.
Finally, Zhang Fang mumbled something and broke the silence.
“I think they’re still kind of—” He started to answer, but one look at Dong Siyang’s expression and he immediately reversed course. “I think they’re not very fun…”
Dong Siyang erupted: “You don’t even find it fun yourself, and you think anyone else is going to play it?!”
Zhang Fang flinched.
Dong Siyang pointed at him. “When you were pitching the project, you could have made a rock sound like a work of art. Now look — you’re only halfway done and this thing is already unwatchable. What happened?!”
“The execution was too weak.”
The voice that cut in drew every eye in the room.
Five men stared at one woman as Zhu Yun spoke her piece steadily to the end.
“Both games had sound enough starting concepts, but the execution phase went badly wrong — delayed again and again.”
Silence fell.
Dong Siyang leaned back against his desk, reached into his jacket, and produced a cigarette. He lit it, then said to Zhang Fang: “I’ve said it before — don’t hire women for this company.”
Zhu Yun: “?”
Dong Siyang: “Business is a battlefield! What we’re holding right now is a war council! What general ever won a campaign with a woman sitting in his command tent?”
Zhu Yun: “……”
“Yes, yes,” Zhang Fang said, face grave. “That was an oversight on my part.”
Dong Siyang continued: “On top of that, you went ahead and brought in competition for yourself — one that does nothing but talk.”
Zhu Yun was left momentarily speechless by those few words. Before she had a chance to respond, Dong Siyang took a long drag and addressed everyone: “I know exactly what you lot are capable of. I don’t need any of you to come to me with proposals or presentations. All I need is for someone to step up and tell me — ‘This project? I can do it right on my own.'”
He pointed his cigarette at them.
“Is there anyone like that? Just tell me — is there anyone like that or not?!”
Not a sound.
Dong Siyang ground the cigarette out on the floor and spun around to rummage through his desk drawer.
“Where’s my knife?”
Everyone: “……”
While the others stood there in varying degrees of dread, Li Xun turned and walked back toward his desk.
Dong Siyang seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He looked up instantly and called out to stop him.
“Stand still! Who told you to move? Did I say this meeting was over?”
Li Xun turned around and said, mildly: “Can this meeting actually produce any outcome?”
Dong Siyang paused. His eyes went cold.
Zhu Yun didn’t know what Dong Siyang’s background was, but she could tell that when he turned dark, it was a different kind of frightening. It wasn’t the ordinary intimidation of a superior over a subordinate — there was something else in it, something that went deeper.
Everyone around her had been cowed by Dong Siyang, everyone except Li Xun, who seemed already accustomed to this kind of feeling.
“If there’s no outcome, then stop wasting time,” he said, pouring oil on the fire.
Dong Siyang’s eyes darkened further.
If moments ago he had still been at the stage of simply losing his temper, that was over now. The flame had gone out, and what was rising in its place was something more like a killing intent. Zhu Yun heard Zhang Fang beside her whispering in the tiniest possible voice, over and over: “We’re done, we’re done, we’re done…”
Li Xun still showed no sign of backing down.
Dong Siyang began moving toward him. He had taken only one step when a voice broke through the tension like a blade:
“I can!”
Five men looked again at the only woman in the room.
Zhu Yun’s hand was raised, her dark eyes fixed on Dong Siyang. She made her promise in a clear, steady voice:
“I can make this project succeed on my own.”
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