Yang Yi tossed and turned in bed until four in the morning before finally drifting off.
When the alarm went off at 7:30 AM, he kept his eyes squeezed shut and counted slowly from one to a hundred.
This ritual made the agony of waking up slightly more bearable for a chronic late-riser, though it came with the occasional risk of oversleeping.
Mao Lin had specifically urged Yang Yi to dress formally for the interview. Beitong Advertising enforced a strict dress code because the agency frequently hosted major international clients. Employees were required to wear collared shirts; T-shirts were strictly forbidden. Button-downs and polos were the standard uniform, while pants had to be dress slacks—no extra pockets and definitely no cropped trousers. Leather shoes were also mandatory.
"Dress sharp, don't be late." Looking at Mao Lin's text, Yang Yi felt a flicker of warmth in his heart.
Fortunately, there was a black suit in his wardrobe, even if the style leaned a bit casual.
It had been handmade for him by a young couple living in the master bedroom. There were four households sharing the rental apartment: the couple, who studied fashion design, in the master bedroom; Yang Yi in the second bedroom; and two other individuals in the partitioned cubicles. The only perk of communal living was making friends; usually, everyone looked out for one another.
The guy in the couple was nicknamed "Old-Timer" because he looked much older than his actual age, and the girl was Xiao Zhu. Old-Timer worked as a designer for a garment company in Nanjin City, while Xiao Zhu stayed home every day taking on freelance gigs.
When Xiao Zhu had taken out her measuring tape to size Yang Yi up, he honestly struggled to keep his composure. Xiao Zhu, who dressed avant-garde even on a normal day, often wore shorts so short they were practically non-existent at home. Her long, pale legs swayed defiantly in front of him. As she measured his chest, her slender hands rubbed back and forth across his torso.
The suit turned out well and fit perfectly. Its only flaw was that while she had promised it would be genuine leather, it felt suspiciously like faux leather to the touch once Yang Yi got his hands on it.
Back then, she had charged him 450 yuan—enough to cover half a month's groceries.
For a company, punctuality is a direct reflection of an employee's work ethic. Another reason Yang Yi didn't dare be late was the financial penalty. On average, he earned a little over 100 yuan a day; a late arrival meant a 50-yuan deduction—half a day's wages gone.
Before leaving his previous job, Yang Yi had been promoted from intern to a full-time Account Executive, or AE. The title sounded impressive, but in an ad agency, it was only one rung above an intern. Ad agencies operated under a rigid hierarchy, and the difficulty of promotion increased the higher one climbed. Anyone who could rise from an AE to a Director within five years was considered a heavyweight in Nanjin City.
Once you reached the Director level, perhaps you could afford to ignore some of the company's petty rules.
Because he frequently slept in, Yang Yi rarely ate breakfast.
His obsession with joining Beitong Advertising could actually be traced back to a dream he had in college.
He had majored in Commercial Photography. Once, his professor assigned a project to shoot a series of commercial ads in the studio. To put it simply, it involved arranging bottles and jars under studio lights to capture texture and luminosity, then polishing them in post-production.
However, after the assignment was given, Yang Yi had a strange dream that night. He dreamed of a young man performing magic in a studio. In a half-awake state, he saw the man clearly, dressed in a formal magician's tuxedo.
When he finally woke up, it was nearly noon. Yang Yi bolted upright from his top bunk and shouted at his roommate:
"I'm going to turn in a version of this assignment that's like nothing else!"
His roommate was long accustomed to Yang Yi's sudden outbursts. In his roommate's eyes, Yang Yi was a man of extremes: he either scored a zero or a hundred.
Yang Yi's inspiration came from the silhouette of the tuxedoed magician, which resembled a high-necked wine bottle. The top hat was the cap, the smooth shoulders were the bottle's neck, and the long, flowing tuxedo was the body. He realized that if he could find a costume and someone to wear it, he could shoot the source material in the studio and edit it into the shape of a wine bottle later.
As luck would have it, the place where Yang Yi finally found the tuxedo was a theater, which happened to have a real magician on staff, complete with all the props.
At market rates, renting the costume and hiring the magician to pose would have cost at least a thousand yuan. Yang Yi's entire monthly allowance was probably only 500. When he pulled out his meager cash, the magician didn't take it. Instead, his only condition was that Yang Yi help him take some production stills of his performances.
After profuse thanks, Yang Yi invited the magician to the campus studio.
The magician posed with his arms crossed over his chest, and Yang Yi shot several sets of material. Later, he edited out the face, leaving the top hat suspended in mid-air. He replaced the lower body with various shots of the crossed arms, and a humanoid wine bottle was born.
In post-production, he added a black-and-white-grey gradient glow to the background and interspersed a few flying pigeons. The black tuxedo and hat, contrasted with the white collar and cuffs, created an aura that was both elegant and mystical. Thus, "The Magician Edition" was born.
Yang Yi was thrilled that he had pursued a reckless impulse with such abandon. Upon later reflection, it wasn't strictly a commercial ad—at best, it was a poster design. But it was this very impulsive project that later won an award. One of the judges at the time was the Creative Director of Beitong Advertising.
From the judge's introduction, Yang Yi remembered the name Beitong Advertising. However, after graduation, Mao Lin successfully interviewed there while Yang Yi was rejected.
After washing up, Yang Yi put on the most expensive suit in his closet and headed for the subway.
During the morning rush at Tianbei Subway Station, the queue to enter stretched nearly a hundred meters. It took twenty minutes just to get through the gates every day. All Yang Yi could see were the numb backs of the people in front of him, shuffling forward at a snail's pace.
In the past, as long as he left by 8:00 AM and managed to squeeze onto the first subway train, he could usually clock in at the office around 8:50 AM.
Once at the office building, it also came down to luck. If he could successfully board the first elevator, he wouldn't be late. Elevators in the big city could be terrifying; if you caught a large crowd, you could stand at the elevator bank for over ten minutes without ever making it inside.
With so many people, one would occasionally run into acquaintances. Despite the internal urgency, people were too embarrassed to shove as they did on the subway. Most men acted more like gentlemen and women more like ladies; a small number of people simply gave up on the elevator and started climbing the stairs for exercise.
Today, Yang Yi was lucky. A seat opened up halfway through his commute. Sitting down, he seized the chance to close his eyes for a few more minutes, trying to keep himself in peak condition for Beitong.
The timing and the setting were aligned; all that remained was the human factor.