"Miss Chen! What do we do?! We have nothing left!"
The director's final, desperate cry echoed sharply through the receiver, followed by the sound of heavy hyperventilation and a chaotic clatter of dropped clipboards on the other end of the line.
Chen Ying sat perfectly still behind her desk, her phone held loosely against her ear. The news of a multi-million-dollar empire withdrawing its life support from her project failed to cause a single flicker of panic in her dark eyes.
When she finally spoke, her voice cut through the director's hysterical breathing like an unyielding glacier.
"Calm down," she commanded flatly, her tone completely devoid of urgency. "This is not a structural crisis for our project. It is a distressed liquidation sale by an emotional competitor who has run out of viable options."
"B-but Miss Chen, fifty-five percent of our budget is completely gone!" the director stammered, his voice cracking. "And the theater blacklist—"
