FLME Ch14: Shareholders

On the weekend, Yu Wen had no schedules. He rode his little electric scooter to the company, preparing to clean up Starlight Media’s appearance.

In short, cleaning.

He was truly free. The charity live stream contract was temporarily shelved by Xie Jiamao because Chu Han wouldn’t relent, waiting for the main star’s willingness. The variety show they discussed last time was a hugely popular show with extremely high national recognition; Yu Wen was only a guest for one episode, and even that was forcefully secured by Xie Jiamao using his industry connections. For Yu Wen, a rookie actor with no debut works, being stuffed into it was purely heaven’s blessing.

The boss was running around everywhere, fetching resources for him all over the place. Yu Wen truly felt a guilty conscience and couldn’t just lie paralyzed at home doing nothing. Since the company headquarters was still under renovation, he took the keys and came over to clean up.

As soon as he pushed the door open, a familiar tall figure was sitting on a folding ladder, sleeves rolled up, revealing a lean forearm, currently painting the wall.

Hearing the noise, Xie Heyu turned his head to look over, his face showing surprise.

Yu Wen stood at the door in silence for a minute, closed the door, took a deep breath, sank his qi to his dantian, and bravely sent a complaining message to his boss: [Boss, you’ve gone too far.]

After sending it, he muted his phone, pretending he had never done such a rebellious and unfilial thing.

Far away on the Fenghua set, Xie Jiamao sneezed. The phone in his pocket vibrated. He took it out and took a look, a bit puzzled, “What…”

Gao Kaiyu was staring at the monitor watching the playback, fully concentrated. With Xie Jiamao muttering beside him, he subconsciously frowned, a bit displeased at being disturbed, “What’s wrong?”

Xie Jiamao said aggrievedly, “Xiao Yu scolded me.”

“Serves you right.” Gao Kaiyu gloated. “That little guy really knows how to choke people with words. Just wait until he gives you high blood pressure.”

“That shouldn’t be, Xiao Yu has always been very friendly to me… Could it be that the company’s hygiene environment is too poor and tired him out?”

Thinking of this, Xie Jiamao hurriedly bombarded Xie Heyu with messages, telling him to take good care of the company’s golden egg and not let him get tired out.

Completely forgetting that he hadn’t given a heads-up to the two people who were bound to run into each other at all.

Seeing Yu Wen at the company at this time, Xie Heyu was very surprised.

“Why are you here?” Xie Heyu climbed down from the folding ladder. Seeing a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, he grabbed a bottle of mineral water for him, conveniently unscrewing the cap.

Yu Wen sipped the water to moisten his lips, his dark, lustrous eyes darting around as he sized up this reception room currently under renovation, like a hamster poking its head around.

“Boss said the company is under renovation. I don’t have any schedules lately, so I came over to help.”

This building had twenty-one floors and was located in a bustling area. Starlight Media only occupied five of them. For a nameless new company, this was already very prestigious.

Yu Wen had thought about it before. For the boss to be able to do as he pleased for so many years, his family must be well-off, not needing him to exert himself, and able to provide him with backing while he mingled in three hundred and sixty trades. Having these five floors of assets was considered reasonable.

But you already have five floors, can’t you hire a renovation worker?

The moment he pushed the door open and saw Xie Heyu, he felt the boss shouldn’t be surnamed Xie; he should be surnamed Zhou, called Zhou Bapi (Zhou the Skinner).

What kind of good person orders their nephew around like a robot?

Yu Wen bit the mouth of the mineral water bottle, raising his eyes to look at him with pity, “Today is the weekend, why aren’t you resting at school?”

Xie Heyu tilted his head. His intuition told him that Yu Wen had misunderstood something, but he couldn’t pinpoint it for the moment. He could only lower his eyelashes and say softly, “Came to renovate.”

Yu Wen: …

Of course I know you’re renovating, anyone can see you’re renovating.

“Hahaha, Teacher Xie even knows how to do this, truly dabbling in a wide range of fields.” Yu Wen thought for a moment and asked solemnly, “Are you in charge of renovating all five floors?”

“…No.” Xie Heyu pulled out a few design blueprints from the messy desk and said, “The hard furnishings are mostly finished, only the paint is left. The renovation workers couldn’t mix the color I wanted. I tried for a long time, finalized the ratio, and plan to paint one reception room today as a sample.”

After saying that, he looked at the cleaning tools that couldn’t be hidden by Yu Wen’s backpack zipper. Falling silent for two seconds, he asked, “You came to… sweep the floor?”

Yu Wen breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the boss at least hadn’t exploited his relative to that extent. He took out a folding broom from his backpack and said seriously, “Boss said the company is very dirty. I was afraid there wouldn’t be a broom, so I brought my own.”

“…Cleaners have been hired, you don’t need to do these trivial matters.” Xie Heyu hesitated, “Xie Jiamao… forget it.”

Yu Wen guessed that the sentence he had just held back was a condemnation of his unreliable elder.

Truly well-mannered, actually able to hold it back.

“Oh.” Yu Wen regretfully stuffed the broom back into his backpack. In fact, he had also brought a portable mop, rags, cleaning agents, air fresheners… ready to show off his skills. Not being able to use them made him feel a bit disappointed.

“Do you know interior design?” Xie Heyu asked out of nowhere.

Yu Wen shook his head honestly. He glanced at the complex blueprints in his hands and added, “I know how to read blueprints.”

He was a straight-to-Ph.D. engineering student after all.

Xie Heyu held the blueprints, pursing his lips in deep thought for a moment.

“The feel of painting is roughly similar to sweeping the floor.”

Yu Wen froze for a moment, understanding his underlying meaning.

“Even though there’s no floor for me to sweep, there’s a wall for me to paint?” Yu Wen felt a mix of emotions. “Do I look like I really want to sweep the floor?”

Xie Heyu silently gazed at him, his calm eyes revealing tolerance and certainty.

Contrary to his appearance, Xie Heyu was undoubtedly meticulous and gentle. Although he was occasionally so serious it made people laugh, Yu Wen found this kind of “clumsiness” extremely cute.

He accepted Xie Heyu’s good intentions and happily went to fetch the tools to paint the wall.

Xie Heyu had arrived early and had already mixed the ratio. The blended color was between gray and silver-gray, with a slight, inconspicuous metallic feel.

Yu Wen folded a small paper hat for himself. Holding a small brush in one hand and a small bucket in the other, he asked livelily, “Which wall do I paint?!”

“You only need to paint this one side to make it stand out with a different color. This wall will hang the company logo, the rest will all be white.” Xie Heyu showed him the design blueprint.

Yu Wen hooked the small bucket in the crook of his elbow, flipped through two pages, and noticed that these design blueprints did not come from the hands of the same person.

“Were the blueprints made by two people?” he asked curiously.

“Mn.” Xie Heyu approached, flipped two pages, and brought out a 3D rendering. “This was provided by Xie Jiamao. Under my insistence, he gave up the goose-yellow color scheme, but still demanded to retain some ingenious details in the picture.”

Yu Wen looked at the bright and clean large floor-to-ceiling windows in the picture, paired with warm goose-yellow walls, paired with a highly saturated rendered logo…

“Does the boss know this is a reception room, not his bedroom?”

Xie Heyu: “I think he knows, but he simply won’t change it.”

Yu Wen was amused by his cold and sharp roasting. His eyes curving into crescents, he said, “It’s not ugly, it’s just not grand enough as a company reception room. Was the boss an interior designer before?”

Xie Heyu: “Mn, a brief stint.”

Yu Wen: “Why? He didn’t like it?”

Xie Heyu: “Because he wouldn’t change his designs, he was fired.”

“…”

After a brief few seconds of silence, Yu Wen burst into goose laughter.

“Hahahahaha—”

After finishing the first coat of paint, Xie Heyu sat down to rest and saw Xie Jiamao’s bombardment of messages from half an hour ago.

Too many words, too lazy to read them. He replied briefly: [Mn.]

At the Fenghua set, Xie Jiamao stared at this “Mn”, looking at it left and right, and finally read the word between the lines: Perfunctory!

He sighed sorrowfully, “Xiao Xie no longer has any feelings for me, his uncle. Now he only replies to messages with one word.”

“Hasn’t Xiao Xie been like this since he was a kid?” Gao Kaiyu had decades of friendship with him and had watched the little nephew grow up alongside him. He knew it wasn’t as serious as he made it out to be; Xiao Xie had always been like this. “Come over and help me check the composition.”

Xie Jiamao graduated from the top photography university in the country. In addition, he had a foundation in painting since childhood. Although he hadn’t achieved much in various industries over the years, his professional abilities in all aspects were unquestionable.

One of Gao Kaiyu’s additional conditions for signing with Starlight Media was to have Xie Jiamao work for him until Fenghua finished filming.

“Do you have any sympathy at all?!” Xie Jiamao scolded angrily. “A weakening uncle-nephew bond is the precursor to severing the uncle-nephew relationship! If Xiao Xie refuses to acknowledge me, you won’t have a nephew anymore either!”

Gao Kaiyu had only been deflated by two people in his life: one was Yu Wen, and the other was this longtime friend beside him.

He licked his back molars, somewhat helpless and somewhat irritable, “Whose fault is it if Xiao Xie refuses to acknowledge you? Blame yourself for exploiting Xiao Xie all day long, even making him go do renovations on the weekend.”

Xie Jiamao cried foul, “I didn’t order him, he wanted to go himself! That’s his building!”

Gao Kaiyu was quiet for two seconds.

“What did you say?”

“Did I not tell you? The company headquarters is a friendly sponsorship from the company’s shareholder.” Xie Jiamao scratched his half-long hair ends, muttering in confusion, “I should have said it…”

Gao Kaiyu made a “cut” gesture with his hands.

“Let me get this straight.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, realizing he had misunderstood the identity of this “shareholder”. Incredulous for a moment, his tightly furrowed brows were almost twisted into a pretzel.

“Didn’t you say the shareholder with fifty percent was someone in your family…”

Xie Jiamao hesitated: “Xiao Xie… isn’t he someone in my family?”

Gao Kaiyu was expressionless, “I thought it was your older brother.”

Xie Jiamao: “Oh, then you misunderstood.”

Gao Kaiyu: “…”

He really wanted to rip open this guy’s skull to see what was inside!

Gao Kaiyu had an endless headache.

In the Xie family’s current generation, there were quite a few capable people.

Xie Jiamao had two older sisters and one older brother above him, all shining brightly in their respective industries. Among them, the one most worth mentioning was undoubtedly Xie Jialin, Xie Heyu’s father, the third child in the family, four years older than Xie Jiamao.

He made his fortune early on with mineral resources. Later, when coal resources were consolidated, he pivoted to real estate. During the years of economic upswing, he made a killing in the tourism industry—succeeding in every trade he touched. In recent years, he retreated behind the scenes, playing cards with his sisters all day or playing chess with the grandpas in the park, living a life completely unbothered by worldly affairs.

But the wealth, connections, and prestige accumulated over the years still existed, and had long become immeasurable.

This generation of the Old Xie family all had some financial luck on them; even taking the dog out for a walk would result in coming back covered in RMB.

—Except for Xie Jiamao. Who told him not to seek wealth.

His three capable blood relatives above had indulged Xie Jiamao in fooling around up until now.

“Xiao Xie, good, okay, but the problem is where did he get so much money? I remember he hasn’t had any investment experience yet.”

“He didn’t before, but now that he’s invested in our Starlight Media, doesn’t he have it?” Xie Jiamao lifted his chin, confident and proud. Xiao Yu had said it himself, Starlight Media was worth it! He was willing to work at Starlight Media until he died!

Reflecting from the side what a promising company their Starlight was.

Gao Kaiyu: …

“Aiya aiya, don’t worry blindly, Xiao Xie is much richer than you and me. That whole building is his. My brother said our Xie family lacks a bit of artistic atmosphere. Thankfully there’s me, an art student, but it was still a bit barren, so the year Xiao Xie graduated from high school, they urged him to go be a star.”

Xie Jiamao said mysteriously, “Do you know what the reward was? A building in the city center.”

Gao Kaiyu: “You mean our Starlight Media…”

Xie Jiamao: “Not just that, the entire twenty-one floors are his.”

Gao Kaiyu shut his mouth. This wasn’t a nephew, this was a wealth-distributing boy deity.

“Sister-in-law passed away early, and my brother was busy in his early years, having no time to look after Xiao Xie. The kid bounced around various aunts’ houses. He had a quiet personality, and the adults always loved to tease him, egging him on to do some ‘outrageous’ things. You know those sisters of mine, they have wild imaginations, but they are generous with their money.”

Xie Heyu was currently at the tender age of twenty, but he could write twenty years of work experience on his resume. He had houses, cars, and abundant savings.

“Once our Starlight Media grows bigger and stronger, Xiao Xie won’t have to worry about the rest of his life,” Xie Jiamao sighed with emotion.

Gao Kaiyu thought for a while.

“Does your brother still lack a son?”

Xie Jiamao: “?”

“I’m willing to be Xiao Xie’s younger brother, even without a formal title,” Director Gao stated solemnly.

Xie Jiamao couldn’t believe it: “I treat you as a brother, and you treat me as an uncle?”

“Or do the older sisters need boyfriends? I’m willing to marry them, even as a concubine.”

Xie Jiamao choked, letting out a sharp screech.

“You still want to be my brother-in-law?!!”

Unable to stay peaceful for even two minutes, the middle-aged men team started arguing again, their voices like booming bells, deafening to the ears.

The crew was used to it and busied themselves with their own affairs, having no time to spare even a single glance for the childish director and the childish director’s friend.

Only a few resting extras were quite surprised to see this scene.

He heard they even formed a company. Listening to their completely incoherent conversation, Zou Ming threw his head back and gulped some water, feeling that this company was doomed to fail sooner or later.

He wondered which big sucker would sign with their company.