By the time Wen Yin arrived, the studio was in chaos.
Without her, everyone seemed to have lost their anchor. People clustered together, asking the same frantic questions — what happened, how to fix it, who was to blame. Surprisingly, Jiujiu was the calmest among them. She spoke slowly and clearly, “Everyone, stay calm. This can be solved. We just need Wen Yin to come in.”
“Go back to work for now. I’ll handle it.”
As soon as those words left her mouth, the team steadied. Murmurs died down, people dispersed and got back to their tasks.
Wen Yin walked back to her office with her assistant. “What did they say?”
It took at least twenty minutes from home to the studio; Wen Yin trusted her assistant had gathered everyone’s accounts. Sure enough, the young assistant — small and unassuming — was efficient to a fault. She set a neat stack of papers on the desk.
“The reasons are all different, but there’s a pattern,” she said. “When I called, some of them sounded like they were rushing through answers and hung up. Like they were only there to placate me.”
Wen Yin’s sharp eyes scanned the list: five suppliers, all tied to the same batch of materials. The batch that had suddenly disappeared — the exact material used for this jewelry line.
She dialed the contact at one familiar materials factory.
“Hello?” The line picked up after a few rings.
“Mr. Li…” The voice on the other end started with impatience, but softened the instant they realized who was calling. Probably they’d expected the assistant’s call.
“What’s the real reason you won’t supply us with that batch?” Wen Yin didn’t mince words.
“There’s a clause in the contract about breach of agreement and penalties,” she said lightly, “Mr. Li, you know that.”
The man’s tone hardened. “If we’re in breach, we’ll transfer the penalty straight to your company account. This time it’s our fault — maybe we can cooperate again next time.”
Wen Yin could feel his resolve. She let the silence stretch a beat too long. “Let me guess who’s behind this.”
Mr. Li was about to hang up when she named the two suspects flatly. “The Shao family or the Qi family?”
He stiffened. Whoever Wen Yin had across the line, they’d pegged them instantly. But he couldn’t say that aloud. “Ms. Wen, don’t make wild guesses. This is our mistake. It has nothing to do with what you suggested. I’m sorry—” He rushed the apology and cut the call, as if he’d been chased by ghosts.
Wen Yin kept calling others, then stopped. A new push notification on her phone caught her eye: Shaohua’s new product teaser — a hint at next season’s trend.
She tapped it open without a flicker. “Shaohua.” She spoke the name like a probe, fingers drumming the desk.
She watched the teaser once, twice, her eyes narrowing. “Shao Yuanjia. I underestimated you.”
The clip was brief — a single second of a small detail — but Wen Yin noticed. The jewelry used the exact materials their supply had been cut off from. The competitor had used their batch. Her original suspicion had been the Qi family; they had reasons to feud. But this time the hand moving in the dark belonged to Shao Yuanjia.
“Of course,” she said to herself. “When something happens out of nowhere, there’s always a puppet master. Shao Yuanjia has been quiet for so long — any move from him makes sense.”
By mid-afternoon, the messy sheets on Wen Yin’s desk were gone, replaced by a fresh, stripped-down design brief. She called the team in. “Fifteen minutes. Meeting room.”
Her assistant notified the designers, and Wen Yin walked in with a folder. The designers were anxious, mouths full of questions the moment she appeared.
“So what’s the final decision?”
“Can we still use that material?”
“All our stock’s gone. What do we do?”
Wen Yin rapped the table for silence. “The shortage is a fact. If we want to solve this, we change the problem instead of fighting it.”
She turned on the screen and placed the new design up. The room fell silent, eyes glued to the display.
“This is the new piece I designed to replace the old one,” she said. “The materials are different. The platinum setting made the necklace feel off with the original concept — but if we adjust that, it will suit this collection’s theme far better.”
Her voice was soft, almost soothing. The team’s frayed nerves smoothed out under it. With Wen Yin there, nothing seemed insurmountable.
They raced through the hours. Changing a product line on the fly wasn’t easy; every designer pulled overtime. Wen Yin worked as relentlessly as the rest.
After the show, social media lit up. Several hashtags trended, but it was Caiyi that pulled applause. Netizens gushed:
“Caiyi’s new pieces are something else.”
“That necklace is irresistible!”
“Did anyone see the designer credited? Wen Yin!”
“I knew it — who else could create something so perfect besides Wen Yin?”
Praise after praise bolstered Wen Yin’s reputation. Meanwhile, Shaohua’s turnout was the opposite: a flood of negative reviews.
“I get the theme was ‘sexy,’ but what are those outfits?”
“The whole runway had this skirting-the-line vibe. I can’t believe what I just watched.”
“This is shocking.”
“Are they seriously bringing back that tacky, punk look? Those studs from head to toe?”
The backlash felt like a wave. Shao Yuanjia slammed his phone against the wall. “A bunch of idiots!”
His design director stood in front of him, trembling. “I told you to be bold with the concept, but I didn’t mean for it to cross into—”
“Cross into?” Shao Yuanjia swallowed the rest of his words. If Old Shao Qi found out, he’d be stripped bare of favor and flayed for it. Shao Yuanjia imagined the old man’s condemnation: Shaohua’s fortunes had fallen into the wrong hands.
He waved the director away, pacing in the room, irritation written all over him. How could he possibly salvage this?