Yang Ruoqian had learned one rule from repeated defeat: the smaller a matter looked, the more likely his employees were to turn it into a strategic monument. This time, overtime had been banned to slow the response. He decided to treat it with proper suspicion.
He reviewed the logic once more with the caution of a man who had been betrayed by success too many times. If the overtime ban could still be explained as ordinary process, this could remain a quiet pre-release mess rather than another Xplendi miracle.
He liked the shape of the spending. Argument, uncertainty, delayed conversion, and staff time spent on something that should have stayed cold sounded like exactly the kind of heavy, slow burden that could drag a project below the settlement line.
