Ming Weiting listened to him slowly play the song.

Luo Chi’s stamina couldn’t keep up. He was running a low fever, and the strength he could exert was already weak. He was relying entirely on the rehabilitation exercises from the past few days, and by the last line, his hand could barely lift.

Luo Chi tried his best to keep his right hand from trembling. Just as he was about to collapse from exhaustion, Ming Weiting suddenly took his hand.

Ming Weiting’s strength steadily continued, following the guidance of his force, and accompanied him in playing the last few notes.

Ming Weiting lowered his gaze and saw Luo Chi’s focused, downcast eyes.

Rainy days were indeed very comfortable.

Very suitable for staying home, for sleeping at home.

Ming Weiting accompanied him until he finished the entire piece. He was about to withdraw his hand but was held back by the force in Luo Chi’s hand.

Having taken care of Luo Chi all these days, it had long become a habit. The force Ming Weiting was about to withdraw solidified, and he held Luo Chi’s trembling right hand. “Is it uncomfortable?”

Luo Chi shook his head and wiped away the sweat that was trickling down.

He used his right hand to weigh down Mr. Shadow’s hand, looking at Ming Weiting with bright eyes.

The light outside was dim, and the lights in the room weren’t specifically turned on, but this dimness didn’t feel oppressive or dull at all.

Ming Weiting pondered the reason for a moment, then realized it was because of Luo Chi.

Because of Luo Chi, nothing was dull.

Luo Chi didn’t know that at the bonfire party ten years ago, he was far from the only spectator on the cruise ship.

The weather had been gloomy all day, and the guests were not in high spirits. There were no activities planned for the evening; it was just a temporary change of course due to weather unsuitable for sailing, a perfectly ordinary temporary docking.

The guitar Mrs. Ren had given Luo Chi was equipped with a pickup, connected to an effects processor and an amplifier, so the sound could travel very far.

In places Luo Chi couldn’t see, people opened their windows and curiously walked out onto the deck to look into the distance.

The sky was still very gloomy. Even at night, you could still see large patches of thick, dark clouds.

The ship slowly became livelier.

Not everyone went to listen to the guitar, but people began to move around, to chat, to laugh and talk lightheartedly.

Suddenly someone said, the sea breeze tonight is actually so comfortable.

…

Pulled by the force in his palm again, Ming Weiting returned to his senses.

Luo Chi had a layer of sweat on his forehead, and his chest was heaving, yet he still held the guitar and looked at him with anticipation.

Seeing him so happy, Ming Weiting himself couldn’t help but show a smile and reached out to touch Luo Chi’s ear. “How can you be so cool.”

Luo Chi’s earlobe instantly heated up. The corners of his mouth couldn’t be suppressed and lifted upwards. He propped himself up with one hand and moved closer.

He was full of excitement and was about to speak when he heard Mr. Shadow pause for two seconds and continue his serious self-reflection, “How can a fan be so bad at giving compliments.”

Luo Chi couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The words he was about to say were swallowed back. He held the guitar with a straight face and slowly moved back to his original position.

Ming Weiting picked up the laptop placed aside, opened the organized document, and read it from beginning to end.

It wasn’t difficult to memorize those words, but looking at Luo Chi, he felt that just saying them didn’t seem quite fitting either.

“Just now,” Ming Weiting put down the laptop and looked at Luo Chi, “I just discovered that I don’t like rainy days.”

Luo Chi nodded, took his arm, and patted it a couple of times.

He knew Mr. Shadow was listless because of the rain.

If he were in good health, he would invite Mr. Shadow to the seaside with an umbrella and teach him many very interesting things he had learned to do on rainy days. They could even go to the beach in the rain; the beach on a rainy day would have lots of little crabs running around.

But he hadn’t recovered yet, so he could only sit here and have Mr. Shadow accompany him—

“You were here, playing a song.”

Ming Weiting said, “I think rainy days are really nice.”

Luo Chi was slightly taken aback and blinked.

Ming Weiting touched his still-puffed-out cheek with the back of his hand. A hint of a smile appeared in his eyes, and he suddenly produced another piece of candy from somewhere.

Luo Chi was about to reach for it, but seeing Mr. Shadow use the same old trick of pulling the candy back, he instantly felt it was intolerable and propped himself up with all his might to reach for it.

He couldn’t balance well on the bed, and he was holding a guitar. The moment he straightened up, he swayed and fell forward, only to be steadily caught by the arm that had been guarding his side all along.

Luo Chi recovered from the dizzying whiteness before his eyes, and the candy was touched to his lips.

Just as Luo Chi was about to open his mouth with pleasure, the candy was taken away again.

…Oh no.

Ming Weiting couldn’t help but start playing with him, only then remembering that he was currently being a lucky fan. He had checked online; there was no evidence to suggest that this behavior was suitable for a fan.

But Luo Chi clearly didn’t care about this. Luo Chi’s fighting spirit was ignited, and instead, he forbade him from moving the candy back, rubbing his fists together, wanting to get it himself.

Ming Weiting protected him and the guitar, using his arm as a support for Luo Chi to leverage, allowing Luo Chi to deftly snatch the candy with a flick of his wrist.

This time, both of Luo Chi’s cheeks were puffed out. He was too tired to move at all, but he still looked spirited, lying on his arm and looking up at him.

Ming Weiting looked down at him, a clear smile in his eyes.

“Rainy days are really nice.”

Ming Weiting stroked his hair and asked softly, “Can the lucky fan lean on the window with you?”

Rainy days were gloomy, the weather was bad, it made people think of old things, and they couldn’t go to the beach as planned.

The Luo Chi of rainy days would hold a peach-flavored candy, sit on the bed in his room, and play the guitar for his lucky fan to the sound of the rain.

Ming Weiting discovered that he too had come to like the rain.

…

The clouds were gradually pushed away by the wind. By the time the sky began to clear, the afternoon was almost over.

Although it was evening, the sun had not yet set.

The clouds that hadn’t had time to disperse were dyed crimson. Those rolling, fiery red clouds spread across the horizon, like an untouchable fire.

Fang Hang sat in a coffee shop and handed all the master tapes of the shows Luo Chi had participated in that they had collected these past few days to Ming Lu.

Ming Lu asked him the price, but Fang Hang just shook his head. “…We wanted to buy them ourselves too.”

“Thank you for your help,” Fang Hang said. “If it were just us, it wouldn’t have been so smooth.”

Huaisheng Entertainment had reapplied for an official Weibo account. The first thing they did was use the official account to release all the materials from the shows Luo Chi had participated in back then.

Fang Hang had taken people to buy the master tapes, but the program’s production team was initially completely uncooperative. The two sides were at a standstill when the producer went out to answer a call. When he returned, his attitude suddenly changed, and he tremblingly had his people find all the original materials.

…

Ming Lu didn’t say much about this matter. He put the things away and pressed his shoulder.

This batch of master tapes was more complete than the ones Luo Chi had collected himself. These young people were truly saddened by this matter. They were doing something that might no longer have any meaning, simply because they cared.

They couldn’t not care. Even if Luo Chi might not need it anymore, they would overthrow the maliciously twisted and smeared false image and let the real Luo Chi be seen.

Now was undoubtedly not the right time; Luo Chi needed an absolutely stable environment to recuperate. But perhaps after everything was over, many years later when things were calm, the Ming family could invite these people as guests onto a rather special ship.

Fang Hang held the cold cup of coffee and sat with his head down.

The sky cleared after the rain. The setting sun was hidden in the fiery clouds, turning them a rich, dazzling crimson.

Those clouds rolled and burned more and more intensely on the horizon. Even the sky’s light seemed to be dyed red, refracted by the floor-to-ceiling glass windows onto the tabletop.

Fang Hang stared at the light and shadow on the table for a while, then spoke to Ming Lu in a low voice about the official Weibo account’s situation.

Fang Hang actually didn’t know why he was suddenly explaining all this in detail to Ming Lu—perhaps it was because the other person seemed to care a lot about Luo Chi’s affairs, or perhaps he himself really wanted to talk to someone.

Or perhaps it was because… they knew this road was too painful. They knew Young President Luo was very tired and wanted to stop and rest.

But if Young President Luo woke up one day and suddenly wanted to go on a cruise, while sitting on the ship’s rail feeling the breeze, he might overhear these things.

“He told us he wanted to go on a cruise… We asked him if he had any destinations in mind, and he said he didn’t know.”

Fang Hang said, “He said walking was too tiring, he couldn’t walk anymore, and being on a ship would be easier. The water flows by itself and can take him anywhere.”

Luo Chi didn’t know where he wanted to go. But Luo Chi told them that perhaps he would get off the ship on a whim at any port and stay there to busk.

They thought Luo Chi was joking at the time, but even as a joke, they were very reluctant. They clamored that it was not okay, that the company had so many things relying on him, that Young President Luo was brilliant and mighty and absolutely could not bail at a time like this.

This wasn’t flattery. The operation of Huaisheng Entertainment certainly depended on them, the departments, but if just being able to operate normally could keep a company afloat, then there would probably be no companies going bankrupt in the business world.

They were used to relying on Luo Chi to make decisions. Who to pick, which script to buy, which script was suitable for which key artist, which resource was safer to cooperate with.

…

Of course, there were dedicated departments for these things, but they had also tried to do it themselves, and the results seemed to be not as good as Luo Chi’s choices based on intuition.

Luo Chi had a natural sensitivity to these things. They had once seen a type of synesthesia and had even joked about whether Young President Luo could also see the color of every emotion.

“After that, he really didn’t mention it again.”

Fang Hang said in a low voice, “The next time he brought it up was more than half a year later… He asked us for help, to help him grab tickets for a cruise.”

Fang Hang paused at this sentence. He couldn’t think about this anymore, so he pulled the topic back and continued talking about the official Weibo account.

The official account didn’t post any text content, nor did it do any editing to the videos.

The unedited master tapes were actually quite long, filled with a large amount of invalid footage, but the view count was surprisingly not low.

The Luo Chi of the past, captured by those videos, could finally be pieced together into a slightly more real and complete shadow.

The twenty-year-old, or perhaps not even twenty-year-old Luo Chi.

Luo Chi sat on the edge of the stage playing the guitar. He liked sitting there very much—this actually brought some difficulty to the spotlight and recording, causing most of the footage to appear dim.

But even the most arrogant and self-righteous director had to admit that the effect of Luo Chi sitting there was indeed the best.

Whenever there was a competition segment with Luo Chi, the audience’s emotions never needed to be stirred up. This level of not needing to be stirred up actually increased with each round of the competition.

At first, when Luo Chi was unfamiliar with the stage, he would just get the audience to clap along to the beat. Later, as he became more and more open, the heatwave on and off the stage threatened to blow the roof off, and the director had to control it to prevent the situation from really getting out of hand.

…

At that time, Luo Chi had not yet formally taken over Huaisheng Entertainment, nor did he understand the various unwritten rules of the industry. If someone had told him, he probably wouldn’t have participated in this kind of competition-style show at all.

When these complete videos were released, the number of people who had the patience to watch was far more than they had expected.

“I was about to burst, finally I can vent.”

Fang Hang opened the comment section, slowly scrolling through the content, reading it out loud for Ming Lu to see. “…This is an audience member who was there live.”

In the comment section, besides those who didn’t know Luo Chi at all and were just getting into him for the first time, there were also those who had been there to listen live back then.

“I was dragged there to be part of the live audience back then, he just played well and sang well! I passionately argued with the haters for a while, but I really couldn’t win, so I just quit the internet in a fit of anger.”

“I was also temporarily pulled to be an audience member. I don’t know much about this circle, but the song was very good, and the person was very nice too.”

“I didn’t go to the live show but watched the live stream, I really liked him back then. Later, some messy things suddenly blew up, and I stopped paying attention… I shouldn’t have believed those people.”

“So has Huaisheng Entertainment changed hands now? Did they invite Young President Luo back? Let Young President Luo debut again.”

“They finally invited President Luo back. The shady methods used before were so toxic. The new leadership had problems, now it’s much better.”

“Will Young President Luo sing again?”

“Is Young President Luo’s health any better? I saw the replay of the live stream at the hotel entrance, it looks like he’s really sick. His sister is a real wolf in sheep’s clothing too.”

“Don’t call her sister, her brother stopped caring about her long ago. Her name is Luo Cheng.”

“I went to that Luo Cheng’s live stream room, the one where she was apologizing. I always feel like she’s hiding something. Why does she always panic and say she doesn’t know whenever someone asks how President Luo is doing?”

“She probably doesn’t dare to say. There’s a post on her school’s forum. She admitted it herself. Her brother was so sick he couldn’t wake up, and she hid him in a storage room, and gave him food with dirt on it or something… anyway, her image is completely shattered.”

“It seems that because her brother was being slandered all over the internet, she wouldn’t let him go to school. If it weren’t for that live stream at the hotel entrance, none of her classmates would have known that Young President Luo was her brother. They all thought it was that guy with the surname Jian.”

“Just hide in the film crew for the rest of your life, don’t come out and be an eyesore.”

“Hiding in the film crew? Haven’t you seen the teaser released by ‘Huo Miao’? She can have a mental breakdown just from acting. If she hadn’t signed a liability waiver, the film crew would probably have been dragged down by her.”

“Okay, why are we mentioning her in Young President Luo’s video comment section? What does Young President Luo have to do with her?”

“Let irrelevant people do whatever they want. I’ve sorted the order of the materials on the official Weibo. Is it for us newcomers to follow the timeline and become a fan? To be honest, I really regret not coming sooner. I’ve already started.”

“So it’s in chronological order! That’s great. Does this mean that when we get to the last episode, Young President Luo will have recovered and come back?”

…

Fang Hang slowly clenched the phone, was silent for a long time, then placed it back on the table.

They were indeed organizing Luo Chi’s life in chronological order.

Luo Chi had left a card and specifically instructed Fang Hang to help him send red envelopes to all the comments that had spoken up for him… This was probably the most unwise and least forward-thinking decision Young President Luo had made in his years at Huaisheng Entertainment.

“How can President Luo be so stingy.” Fang Hang tugged at the corner of his mouth and said in a low voice, “There’s only 888 yuan in the card.”

That night they were drinking in the office. Someone reminded them, and Fang Hang checked the balance on that card.

When Fang Hang’s balance inquiry text came back, everyone burst out laughing like crazy. Already half-drunk, they were laughing so hard they couldn’t stand straight, sliding off the sofa and still laughing.

…

After laughing for who knows how long, the office finally quieted down.

The corner of the sofa was empty. No one would sit there. That was the spot Luo Chi would definitely sit in when he held meetings with them.

When Luo Chi decided to build up Huaisheng Entertainment, he made drastic cuts and reorganizations. The people who stayed were not at all like a formal corporate leadership team; their average age was just over thirty.

At first, they would sit properly in the meeting room, but later they just stopped pretending and all crowded into Luo Chi’s office.

Luo Chi had suffered severe injuries in his early years and hadn’t had a chance to recuperate properly, which left him with many problems. Luo Chi himself was very health-conscious, but when work got busy, he couldn’t always take care of himself. Sometimes when he felt unwell, he couldn’t even stand up.

So Luo Chi would always curl up in that corner of the sofa. There was an armrest there for support, and it happened to be the farthest from the light.

The first time they discovered this was when Luo Chi was feeling dizzy, hugging a cushion and leaning in the corner of the sofa, watching them argue heatedly over some plan.

Someone got angry and recklessly went to pull Luo Chi to judge, and unexpectedly got a handful of cold sweat.

…

Later, several large cushions of different firmness appeared in that corner, along with a portable massager, and candies and chocolates that were within easy reach.

“President Luo isn’t stingy.” Fang Hang was silent for a long moment, then corrected himself in a low voice. “He left us… a lot of things.”

Luo Chi left them a lot of things, so much that they even wanted to dig Luo Chi out of that corner of the sofa and ask him when exactly he had started planning their escape routes.

They were drunk, and no one knew what they were doing. They relentlessly searched.

They didn’t find Young President Luo, but they did find something else.

Luo Chi was planning to open another, completely independent film and television company.

The planning had been going on for almost two years, right around the time when Jian Huaiyi and Ren Chenbai were being clever and sending young starlets to his room.

The progress wasn’t fast at all—Luo Chi’s desk held no secrets from them. The drawer that held those preparatory materials was the one Luo Chi used to pass the time and amuse himself.

Luo Chi never thought he could take them with him.

Of course, Luo Chi knew that Fang Hang’s son was born premature and had poor health, requiring a lot of money to be poured in. He also knew that the manager of the film production department had been screwed over so badly in his previous job that he had almost no way out in this circle. He also knew that the other few were either newly married or had a large family to support… If things were going smoothly, if they had the confidence to easily switch jobs and pick their next employer, who would come to such a broken company?

Luo Chi never thought he could take them with him. Luo Chi had already made arrangements for the distribution of his inheritance.

It was just that when he had nothing to do, Luo Chi had made such a plan without telling anyone, to amuse himself.

“He didn’t even want us to know about this,” Fang Hang smiled bitterly. “We had to pry open the lock on that drawer to open it. The plans were buried under a pile of comics and game cards.”

“Don’t be crushed by guilt,” Ming Lu suddenly spoke. “It’s not your fault.”

“We won’t. If we were crushed after President Luo did all this, we’d be too much of a coward.”

Fang Hang wiped his face, took a deep breath, and shook his head. “We just feel regret… just regret.”

“If on that day, one of us had been less rational, had been impulsive enough to slam the office door and quit, and rushed to the hospital to demand an explanation from him.”

Fang Hang said in a low voice, “If one of us had been drunk that day, had slammed the table at that damn board of directors, refused to carry out their arrangements, and was fired on the spot and kicked out… making a huge scene, a scene so big you could see it as soon as you scrolled through the news.”

If even one person had done that, Luo Chi might have been persuaded.

If there had been such a scene, he definitely couldn’t have stayed at Huaisheng Entertainment. He might have even been targeted for revenge by the Luo family, and ended up disgraced and unable to make it in the circle.

The others would definitely not be able to resist helping him secretly. If they were discovered, they would also be targeted by the one surnamed Jian. Perhaps after that person established a firm foothold, he would even fire them to make an example of them.

Luo Chi was so soft-hearted. Seeing them end up like this, one by one, he might have accidentally taken out his preparations.

They would definitely go find Luo Chi. Seeing how Ren Chenbai and the Luo family treated Luo Chi, they might have gotten so angry they would have stolen Luo Chi from the hospital overnight and put him on the sofa of the new company to sleep and recuperate.

The new company would definitely be targeted for revenge too. It might be suppressed by the joint forces of the Luo and Ren families, and the road would definitely be harder than with Huaisheng Entertainment.

Those resources were mostly for adding flowers to a brocade. In that situation, they would probably be watching from the sidelines again, and the things Luo Chi left for them might not be useful. They might have to struggle hard for several years… and then they would have a completely independent new company.

They really couldn’t discuss what would happen after that.

The new company might make it, or it might not. Most likely, it wouldn’t. The rules of the game in the adult world were far more complex than just right and wrong, black and white. They might be suppressed so badly they could only afford to eat malatang from street-side stalls.

Young President Luo would become President Luo who could only eat at street-side stalls, eating malatang with them. Less vegetables, more meat, splurge on twenty yuan worth of fatty beef, with sesame oil and chili piled high, a steaming hot bowl that made their foreheads sweat.

By that point, they might really have to rely on President Luo’s busking to support them.

Luo Chi might have to busk by a malatang stall.

But so what? With such a beautiful guitar and such beautiful songs, would he have to worry about not attracting a crowd? Luo Chi could play the guitar alone in that rain. If they were with him, Luo Chi would only play better.

With so many of them supporting him, pushing him, being irrational and impulsive with him just that one time, Luo Chi would only play better.

So good that he could debut on the spot just by being in a live stream. No amount of suppression or smearing would work. Someone would definitely like him, and more and more people would definitely like him.

They were in Luo Chi’s office, drunk and slumped on the floor, surrounding an empty spot, so drunk they could only laugh at the 888 yuan.

It wasn’t funny.

That day, they seemed to have even made the local news. People working overtime in the next office building heard someone wailing in the middle of the night. It was completely undignified. A group of drunks stumbled downstairs, crying, wanting to throw up everything.

All of them were within the rules of the adult world.

No one lost control or acted impulsively, no one acted on a whim. The trajectory of fate was cautiously flawless.

Even after receiving Luo Chi’s death notice and getting the inheritance Luo Chi left for them, everyone was exceptionally calm.

They calmly held meetings, used what they had as bargaining chips to negotiate valuation adjustment mechanism contracts, calmly sat together to analyze the pros and cons, forced out the irrelevant people, leaving only a clean Huaisheng Entertainment.

It was just that on that night, they were suddenly engulfed by an intense, overwhelming regret.

No one was impulsive.

Luo Chi did not become President Luo who could only eat malatang and busk.

Luo Chi sat in his office doing calculations.

Luo Chi thought, even if he sent red envelopes to everyone who was willing to believe in and like him, it probably wouldn’t cost 888 yuan.