Chapter 38: The Stick and the Sweet Date

Chapter 38: The Stick and the Sweet Date

“Manager, are we just letting him leave like this?”

Chen Feng had been downstairs for almost five minutes. Seeing Lin De still inactive, one of the people upstairs came over and asked this.

Lin De turned around and asked back, “Otherwise? Just now, when I asked you all to help me hit him, none of you moved. Now what are you urging here?”

Lin De was so angry inside, he simply couldn’t put it into words.

However, after this incident, even though his face was still burning with pain, Lin De felt a long-held wish had finally been fulfilled.

He could finally drive Chen Feng away with a valid reason.

After all, he was a mid-level manager. Being publicly hit by a junior employee like that, if he wanted to fire someone, the big shots at headquarters shouldn’t be able to say anything, right?

“What are you all looking at! Get back to your work!”

Once he made up his mind, Lin De glared fiercely around the room.

But the red mark on half of his face greatly damaged his authority, making him look somewhat ridiculous.

Tang Shuang, who had argued with him most fiercely earlier, was already packing up her things and heading out.

Lin De stopped her, “Tang Shuang, where are you going!”

Tang Shuang turned back, looking confused, “It’s time to get off work.”

Lin De: “…”

“Go! Just go!”

Unlike Chen Feng, who didn’t have many friends in the company, Tang Shuang, although she often stood on Chen Feng’s side, got along very well with everyone in the company.

Lin De was quite regretful that he couldn’t easily fire her.

Back in his own office, Lin De immediately called his direct supervisor at headquarters, saying he wanted to forcibly fire a junior employee.

At first, he didn’t want to explain everything, but his boss was no pushover. He insisted on clarifying the entire story and even asked about every single thing Lin De had said.

“If the company violates regulations on compensation and forcibly fires Chen Feng, how can you guarantee he won’t post every word you said today online afterwards?”

His boss asked this way.

Lin De was stunned. “Uh.”

“Our company is an internet company. The market competition is so fierce now, public opinion and reputation are very important to the company. As one of the company’s leaders, you spoke carelessly without thinking. Do you even realize that? Celebrity fans these days are so intense. Can you afford to offend them? Did that female celebrity do anything to you?”

Lin De got scolded instead, so he could only repeatedly admit his mistake.

“This time, three thousand of your bonus will be deducted. I hope you won’t make this mistake again.”

Not only did his complaint fail, but he also got three thousand deducted. Lin De almost felt like spitting blood.

“However, Chen Feng hitting someone in public has a very bad impact. Let’s just arrange for him to resign. But we should give him a full three months’ salary as compensation. Also, regarding the employee benefit apartment he’s currently living in at Kelai Apartment, if he still wants to live there, he can renew the lease at a preferential price. Understood?”

This was the boss’s method: hit with a stick, then give a sweet date.

Deduct Lin De’s bonus, directly fire Chen Feng, but at the same time give Chen Feng enough compensation.

In this way, it maintained Lin De’s authority as a mid-level manager while not offending Chen Feng too deeply.

…

Upstairs from Chen Feng, faint singing could be heard from time to time. Probably Zhong Lei was practicing singing “Monotony” a cappella.

Different from last time, even though both parties had signed the contract, this time Zhong Lei was not in a hurry to immediately produce the accompaniment for “Monotony”.

She was still waiting for the funds from “Dullness” to come back.

Zhong Lei hadn’t told Chen Feng one thing.

Actually, she had always been very unsatisfied with the quality of “Dullness”, even feeling deep self-blame.

At first, she thought the final product of the song “Dullness” was simply flawless.

It wasn’t really narcissism; she genuinely couldn’t find any faults in her own work.

But as time went on, she listened to the song over and over again and slowly began to sense a very subtle sense of discord.

Zhong Lei gradually found the reason.

The problem was with the accompaniment.

The accompaniment made purely from electronic composition, although stable in quality, lacked soul.

Art is something very subjective and hard to quantify, focusing on sensory understanding.

So for producing “Monotony” this time, Zhong Lei decided she would absolutely not rush. She aimed to strive for perfection in every detail of the instrumental accompaniment.

Pursuing perfection would definitely require spending a lot of money.

Since Zhong Lei hadn’t signed with a talent agency yet, and “Monotony” was also a personal contract between the two of them, the production cost for “Monotony” would again have to come out of their own pockets this time.

They each received a pre-tax signing fee of fifty thousand, but that definitely wasn’t enough.

Zhong Lei wanted to produce “Monotony” according to the effect she desired. The total investment would probably not be less than three hundred thousand.

She hadn’t discussed this with her partner, Chen Feng, yet.

After all, before this, she couldn’t be sure how popular “Dullness” would become.

If they didn’t earn much money, they would continue with electronic composition. If it became a hit and they made money, then she would truly consider a major production.

Chen Feng was also being inconsiderate at this time. After returning home, he just busied himself going online to look at projects, thinking about what he should do after leaving. Should he continue working a job? Or start his own business right now?

What kind of business? Focus all efforts on writing songs?

Should he open a culture company then?

Or just focus on being an individual songwriter?

But if he became an individual songwriter, should he hire a dedicated singer to record demos for him?

Chen Feng couldn’t keep using Zhong Lei, the original singer herself, to sing demos for him.

Now that Zhong Lei had become popular, her status and position would be different in the future. Her time would also be very busy. It wouldn’t be appropriate to bother her to sing demos for selling songs anymore.

Besides, Chen Feng was also researching how employees should reasonably and legally protect their rights after being laid off.

He didn’t want to leave any evidence for Kelai Apartment that could send him to jail.

While he was thinking about this, someone knocked on his door. It was Zhong Lei.

“What’s up?”

Chen Feng asked, opening the door.

Zhong Lei took out a guitar from behind her back. “I made some slight changes to your score, temporarily changing it to a full guitar accompaniment. Do you want to listen to me sing it once to get a feel?”

Chen Feng looked down at his watch. “It’s already past nine. Won’t the neighbors have a problem?”

Zhong Lei thought for a moment, then pointed to the small bathroom, a characteristic feature of the apartment, separated by a glass wall.

“Let’s go inside.”

“Huh?”

“What ‘huh’? Come on!”

And so, two people squeezed into the narrow bathroom, which was less than three square meters.

One of them was also holding a guitar, making the space even more cramped.

Zhong Lei closed the door behind her. Chen Feng felt a little nervous. He had just taken a shower earlier, so the air in the bathroom was still damp and stuffy.

However, Zhong Lei was completely oblivious to this so-called romantic atmosphere. Her fingertips slid across the guitar strings.

Crisp and rhythmic guitar sounds suddenly rang out in the cramped bathroom, accompanied by her very distinctive voice—magnetic when low, and like a nightingale singing after fresh rain in empty mountains when high-pitched—creating an extremely powerful impact.

Combined with the wonderful resonant sound chamber formed by the bathroom’s small space, it added an astonishing acoustic effect to Zhong Lei’s seemingly simple a cappella singing.

Chen Feng soon immersed himself in this classic song that he “himself” had written.

Listening to a live performance and listening to a CD are always different experiences.

Many people think that singers perform most perfectly on CDs, that even the best live performance can’t match the effects recorded in a studio.

But that is actually wrong.

If these people really had a friend who sang so well it was almost criminal, and they just listened to that person sing a cappella with a microphone in a KTV, they would immediately understand everything.

After about ten minutes, Chen Feng finally regained his senses after saying “good” countless times in a row.

Seeing him like this, Zhong Lei felt confident about the results of her hard practice.

“Then it’s settled! I’m going back upstairs first.”

After saying that, she left.

Chen Feng scratched his head.

Settled what?

Why don’t I remember at all?

Wait!

Damn it!

I think I just agreed to use all the income from the first two months of “Dullness” to invest in the production of “Monotony”!

Also, she seemed to say she planned to start her own company and not join any talent agency.

She believed only this way could she remain free.

And I think I also agreed to invest in her talent agency?

Damn it! How many times did I say “good” just now? How many things did I agree to?

Chen Feng immediately felt his head was spinning.

This really exceeded his expectations.

Although it seemed like this way he could tightly hold onto Zhong Lei’s rising star, he had absolutely no experience in artist management and didn’t think he could do it well.

The key was he wasn’t interested in this at all.

Being a manager or something, how bothersome. He just wanted to quietly copy songs and write songs peacefully.

Let Zhong Lei grow on her own over there. Wouldn’t a comfortable little life like that be nice?