By noon, the music redo had already travelled through three internal chats. The matter itself was simple: Yang ordered Sparkle to prioritize internal work over outside revenue. The dangerous part was that everyone at Xplendi had begun discussing it with bright eyes.
Yang Ruoqian's first concern was not whether the internal-priority order sounded embarrassing. Embarrassment was acceptable. What mattered was that this still looked like a wasteful music redo, the kind of normal business trouble that could swallow money without asking for applause.
The expenses were especially comforting because they looked ordinary: revision hours, mixing fees, unused takes, and the sort of professional patience that burned cash quietly. A normal boss would ask whether those costs could be recovered. Yang Ruoqian only cared that the receipts were real.
