Chapter One Hundred and Eleven: New Year’s Worries (1/2)

After the Lunar New Year celebration, students went back to school and adults went back to work, resuming their typical busy lifestyles.

For the design industry, the grandest thing after the Lunar New Year was no doubt the annual Star Designers Cup Competition.

Design competitions happened throughout the year. The large-scale ones were like the Autumn Release Conference, whereas the smaller-scaled ones were like the Year-End Designers’ Party. However, many of those competitions were not as meaningful as the Star Designers Cup. In this era where most of the official competitions were related to some companies behind the scenes, the Star Designers Cup Competition was one that focused on individual competitions with no award categories for team designs.

So long as the designer had been in the industry for more than a year, even a nameless nobody or a famous designer could sign up for the competition. The Star Designers Cup was recognized for having world-class standards. A designer who received an award from this competition had high chances of becoming the target to fight for within the industry. There were many designers who became well-known through this competition.

According to the original plan, Xiao Yu should be using his identity as the mystery designer to surprise the audience. However, this time, the situation was a little different.

The main reason was the fear that Xiao Yu felt as his memory started to worsen.

When a person was facing death, they would never waste any attention to money or fame.

In simpler terms, Xiao Yu had been worrying about dying every day. He simply had no energy to care about the Star Designers Cup.

At the start of the Lunar New Year, Nannan had messaged him to look at his drawings. But Xiao Yu had rejected him, saying that he was going to be busy with the Star Designers Cup and asked him to look for him after the event.

Naturally, Nannan did not make things difficult for Xiao Yu and even wished him the best of luck.

In a way, Xiao Yu was not lying. Human Xiao Yu was indeed busy with the Star Designers Cup during this period.

And that was the second reason – in his previous life, he had won the grand award at the competition.

It was him, Xiao Yu, FISH, and not that mystery designer.

During his previous life, the mystery designer did not participate in the competition and that left everyone puzzled.

Back then, Xiao Yu felt curious as well. However, compared to his curiosity, the feeling of a new lease of life was greater.

Xiao Yu had no fears about having fair competitions, but the strategy that the mystery designer rendered him speechless and helpless. It was as disgusting as swallowing a mosquito.

After being oppressed by the mystery designer for more than half a year, he finally felt like he had room to breathe. The joyous emotion overrode his thoughts on why the mystery designer had not participated in the Star Designers Cup as his mind was focused on holding onto this rare opportunity to raise his head high again.

Fortunately, he succeeded.

After being in a slump for more than half a year, Xiao Yu’s sudden achievement was like a slap to many people.

At this point, Xiao Yu was no longer as naïve as he was previously. Even without the mystery designer stealing his drafts, he obviously did not think that he would smoothly win the awards.

Of course, the mystery designer was one of the reasons. However, the biggest problem was still Lin Zhou.

The reason why Lin Zhou had not interfered with this event was worth investigating.

It was impossible for him to have found his conscience again. The most logical reason was that Lin Zhou had realized that all his efforts were wasted and simply decided that he need not waste his time.

During this time, Xiao Yu observed and felt that Lin Zhou’s motive of job-hopping to YL was perhaps because he wanted to put pressure on Xiao Yu. But Xiao Yu couldn’t figure out why. He felt that he had never done anything worth apologizing to Lin Zhou. If he still had a chance, he would surely look for his senior for an answer.

In his previous life, Xiao Yu definitely consulted Lin Zhou about how his work had been stolen after the Heart Lock incident. Regardless of whether the latter believed him or not, at least Xiao Yu knew that it was impossible to win this “argument” over his stolen work.

Under those circumstances, if Lin Zhou’s main motive was to join YL, then he should have given up on his plan to continue stealing Xiao Yu’s work for other alternatives since he knew for sure that he could not have outdone the mystery designer. However, if Lin Zhou’s motive was to simply hold him down, then he would surely give up on that idea as without even doing anything, it would be hard for Xiao Yu to turn his circumstances around.

If it was really what Xiao Yu thought it was, then with the mystery designer not participating in the Star Designers Cup, it would end up as the best way to refute Lin Zhou’s idea.

The submission period had started before the Lunar New Year. The fact that the mystery designer would not be entering the competition was not announced officially either. People would have to wait till the submission period was over before someone would point it out. Even if Lin Zhou figured out that something was amiss by then, it would be too late.

Lin Zhou probably never imagined that a design competition without the mystery designer would be the grand stage for Xiao Yu.

……

Yan Jin had noticed Xiao Yu’s recent listless appearance for a long time.

During the start of the new year, Yan Jin realized that although Xiao Yu claimed that he was playing his game, his mind was not completely on it. It was obvious just by seeing those tragic victory scores.

Lately, Yan Jin had been objectively considering the probable causes, such as how animals would hibernate when it was winter. However, he later discovered that if the hamster was a house pet, they would not hibernate in normal circumstances. Pseudo-hibernation would be triggered only when the surrounding temperature got too low.

To prevent that, Chairman Yan purposely bought an electric blanket for his villa so that it was like spring all year round because of the constantly operating central heating system. That electric blanket was placed underneath Xiao Yu’s cage.

Then, that night, the little fellow woke up in the middle of the night due to the heat. Yan Jin was reprimanded with a finger pointing in his face. He also spent the later half of the night constantly apologizing and did not sleep a wink.

Almost cooked alive by the electric blanket, Xiao Yu ended up biting Yan Jin to vent his anger.

He bit his lips.

When Chairman Yan arrived at his office the next day with a mask, he received countless greetings filled with concern. They had all asked him to take care of his health and not overwork. If it was necessary, he could take more days off just like last year.

In the afternoon, Yan Jin took off the mask and Secretary Fang accidentally saw him. The mature and earnest secretary whom Yan Jin thought always handled all matters appropriately shrieked on the spot as she ran out of the office with her seven-inch heels.