The first thing Yang Ruoqian did after reading the file was check whether it contained a direct profit figure. It did not. That should have comforted him. Unfortunately, the file explained that the box office was still small enough to comfort Yang Ruoqian, which was the kind of sentence that looked harmless until the system started counting it.
Yang Ruoqian's private calculation was still very professional. The plan around the A Very Small Box Office matter had receipts, workflow, and enough normal business logic to pass the system's eyes. Better yet, the costs were concrete: small-hall rental, scattered operations, awkward audience sampling, slow feedback sorting, and uselessly detailed viewer notes. A normal boss would ask how to convert those costs into growth. Yang only cared whether the limited exposure could keep swallowing money without producing a number large enough to punish him.
