Yang Ruoqian had learned one rule from repeated defeat: the smaller a matter looked, the more likely his employees were to turn it into a strategic monument. This time, Yang told Sparkle to slow down and polish. He decided to treat it with proper suspicion.
He reviewed the logic once more with the caution of a man who had been betrayed by success too many times. If the slow-polish order could still be explained as ordinary process, this could remain a wasteful music redo rather than another Xplendi miracle.
He liked the shape of the spending. Revision hours, mixing fees, unused takes, and the sort of professional patience that burned cash quietly sounded like exactly the kind of heavy, slow burden that could drag a project below the settlement line.
