The rain started at 11:47 PM.
Lin Chen knew the exact time because he'd been staring at his phone for forty minutes, waiting for the delivery app to ping. His electric bike had died three blocks from the studio, battery finally surrendering to the October cold. Now he stood under a plastic awning that leaked, holding a bag of lukewarm pork dumplings, watching water seep into his shoes.
The dumplings were for Star Entertainment, Building C, 4th Floor.
He'd been there before. Forty-seven times, to be exact. Once for every rejection letter.
"We regret to inform you…" "Your portfolio shows promise but…" "We suggest gaining more experience…"
Two years since film school. He had graduated at the top of his class—and now he was delivering food to the same people who had told him no.
The app pinged. ¥8.50 for this order. Minus the bike repair, minus the rain gear he couldn't afford, minus the rent due in six days. The math was simple. The math was brutal.
Lin Chen walked into the building.
The security guard didn't stop him. Delivery boys were invisible here. Ghosts with insulated bags. He'd learned that the first time, when he'd tried to ask for directions to the HR department and the man had looked through him like he was glass.
He found the 4th floor by following the noise. Not the organized chaos of a real production. This was something else. Desperate. Dying.
Through the glass wall of Studio B, he saw the host.
Wang Lei. Former idol, current liability. Thirty-two years old and aging in dog years. The variety show that was supposed to revive his career was instead digging his grave. Lin Chen knew because he'd watched the pilot. Everyone had. It was that bad.
Three million yuan budget. Two hundred thousand viewers. The math, again, was brutal.
"Cut!"
The director's voice carried through the door. Not angry. Worse. Tired. The kind of tired that came from watching your career die in slow motion.
Lin Chen pushed inside.
The heat hit first. Too many lights, too little ventilation. The smell of desperation masked by cheap coffee and expensive hair product. Twenty crew members standing around a kitchen set that looked like it cost less than his monthly rent.
"Running Stars," the show was called.
Currently running on fumes.
"Who ordered the dumplings?" Lin Chen asked.
No one looked up. He was furniture. Background noise. The invisible man in a yellow jacket, holding someone's midnight snack.
Then he saw the numbers.
Floating above the monitors. Translucent. Impossible. Glowing with a faint blue light that shouldn't exist in a room full of tungsten bulbs.
[AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT: 34/100 – BOREDOM CRITICAL]
Lin Chen blinked.
The numbers stayed.
He looked left. Right. No one else reacted. A cameraman walked through the floating text like it wasn't there.
Because it wasn't. Not for them.
Lin Chen felt his heart accelerate. Not panic. Something else. It felt like the back of his skull had been opened, and someone had slipped a second pair of eyes inside.
[PERFECT EDIT SYSTEM ACTIVATING…]
The voice wasn't audible. It was felt. Like memory. Like déjà vu given syntax. Like someone whispering from inside his own skull.
[Host: Lin Chen] [Status: Failed Director] [Mission: Save "Running Stars" from cancellation] [Reward: Basic Editing Interface]
"You. Delivery boy."
Lin Chen startled. The floor manager, a harried woman with a clipboard and the hollow eyes of someone who hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, pointed at him. "Put those down and get out. We're live in—" she checked her watch "—eleven minutes."
He set the dumplings on a folding table. Should have left.
Didn't.
The system showed him something new. A timeline. The show's broadcast, visualized as a graph that stretched across the studio like a bridge. Peaks and valleys. The peaks were moments that had worked. The valleys were death.
The valley was winning.
"Wang Lei can't cook," someone muttered near him. A production assistant, maybe nineteen, eyes glazed with overtime and broken dreams. "Why are we doing a cooking segment?"
"Because he insisted." The cameraman adjusted his lens, not bothering to look up. "Because his contract says creative input. Because if we don't let him feel important, he walks and takes his three million followers with him."
"Three million who aren't watching," the assistant said.
"Exactly."
"We're going to die."
The graph agreed. [PROJECTED CANCELLATION: 72 HOURS]
Wang Lei walked onto the set. Perfect hair. Perfect smile. Perfect desperation in his eyes. Lin Chen had seen that look before. In mirrors. In bathroom reflections at 3 AM. In the moment before checking a bank balance, knowing the numbers would be red.
"Rolling in five!"
The host picked up a pan. The cameraman adjusted focus. The director—Zhang, according to his chair—slumped in his seat like a man waiting for a funeral to end. His own, probably.
Wang Lei turned on the heat.
The oil smoked.
He dropped in the dumplings. Frozen ones. The wrong temperature. The wrong technique. Everything wrong. Lin Chen had worked a summer in a kitchen once, back when he thought film school loans were manageable. He knew what was coming.
The pan caught fire.
Not a small fire. A real one. Orange and hungry, licking toward the sprinkler system. Wang Lei yelped, actually yelped, and stumbled backward into the prep table.
"CUT!" Zhang yelled. "Cut, cut, cut! Someone get—"
The graph moved.
Lin Chen saw it. [ENGAGEMENT: 34… 52… 67…]
People weren't leaving. They were leaning forward. The disaster was working. The fire, the panic, the perfect idol becoming imperfect in real-time—it was magnetic.
"Keep rolling," Lin Chen said.
No one heard. Or no one cared.
He said it louder. "Keep rolling! Camera two on his face! Now!"
Silence.
Then Zhang turned. Really looked at him for the first time. A delivery boy in wet clothes, pointing at the monitors like he owned them. Like he saw something no one else could see.
"Who the hell—"
"Trust me," Lin Chen said. And he didn't know why. The words came from somewhere else. The system, maybe. Or the part of him that had watched forty-seven rejection letters and learned exactly what failure looked like. The part that knew, with absolute certainty, that this moment—this exact second—was the only chance this show would ever get.
Zhang stared. The fire crackled. Wang Lei was actually panicking now, perfect composure cracking, and the graph loved it. [ENGAGEMENT: 78… 82…]
"Do it," Zhang said.
Camera two swung. Tight shot on Wang Lei's face. The moment his arrogance turned to genuine fear. The moment the idol became human. The moment three years of media training shattered into something real.
Lin Chen saw the frame. Not with his eyes. With the system.
[OPTIMAL CUT: 7:45.2 SECONDS] [CONFIDENCE: 94%]
"Cut at seven forty-five point two," he said.
The editor's finger hovered.
"Now."
The cut happened.
The clip went live. Not to broadcast—they were still taping. To the show's social media. Someone in the corner had been streaming the disaster to buy time, buy attention, buy one more day before the network pulled the plug.
The numbers started moving.
Lin Chen watched the system track it. 200 concurrent viewers. The show's pathetic baseline. The number that had been haunting Zhang's nightmares for three weeks.
Then 1,800.
Then 18,000.
Then 120,000.
In forty minutes.
The fire was out. Wang Lei was shaking, makeup running, dignity in ruins. And the internet was in love.
"Holy shit," someone whispered.
Zhang laughed. A real laugh, startled out of him like a bird from a cage. He stood up, walked over, and clapped Lin Chen's shoulder. Hard enough to leave a mark.
"Good instincts, delivery boy." The smile didn't reach his eyes. "Lucky guess."
He turned to the network rep on the phone, the one who'd been threatening cancellation. "Yes, I saw the viral potential immediately. My vision. I've been saying we need more authentic moments. The audience is tired of polish. They want real."
Lin Chen said nothing.
He was staring at the notification that had appeared.
[ENGAGEMENT: 89/100] [VIRAL TRAJECTORY: CONFIRMED]
And then:
[MISSION UPDATE: Show survival probability increased to 67%]
Sixty-seven percent.
Even the system didn't dare promise him a miracle.
He looked at Wang Lei.
The host was staring back. Not grateful. Not angry.
Something colder.
Recognition.
The crew was celebrating. Someone found beer. Someone else was crying. Zhang was taking credit, weaving a story about "his strategy" and "taking risks" and "trusting his gut." Lin Chen stood in the corner, wet shoes squeaking on the concrete, and felt the system settle into his consciousness like a second heartbeat.
He should have been happy.
He was terrified.
Because he'd just discovered that he could see the invisible. That he knew exactly when to cut, exactly what the audience wanted, exactly how to make them feel.
And because Wang Lei was still staring at him.
In the chaos, no one noticed the woman in the corner. She hadn't celebrated. She'd watched the monitors, the numbers, the cut. She'd taken notes in a leather book that looked expensive.
She snapped a photo of Lin Chen's face with her phone.
Sent it.
The reply came back in three words.
"Find him. Tonight."
Lin Chen walked out of the studio at 2:15 AM. The rain had stopped. The city was quiet. His bike was still stolen. His bank account still showed ¥247. His shoes were still wet.
But the system showed something else.
[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: EMOTIONAL GRAPH VISUALIZATION] [DAILY MISSION: Survive the credit thief]
He looked back at the building. The lights were still on. They were editing the clip now. Zhang's team, using his cut, claiming his luck. Building a narrative where the delivery boy was just a footnote.
Lin Chen smiled.
It was the kind of smile a wolf might give, just before the hunt begins.
He pulled out his phone and searched for the cheapest motel within walking distance. ¥89 per night. He could afford two nights. Maybe three if he skipped meals.
Tomorrow he had to be back here.
Tomorrow the real work started.
The system flickered.
[WARNING: Host Wang Lei detected as negative variable. Threat assessment: Moderate]
Lin Chen kept walking.
He'd spent two years being invisible. Two years of "we regret to inform you." Two years of watching other people take the shots he would have killed for.
Tonight, for eleven minutes, he'd been seen.
And he was already addicted.