Chapter One: A Film in One Second

Gu Yan was thrown off the set with a cracked director's monitor still in his arms. Through the rain, the producer shouted, “You risked everything for one washed-up stage actress? Director Gu, how much is your precious integrity worth?” Three hours earlier, Gu Yan had been the executive director of *Midnight Courier*. Now he had been removed from the work chat, his final payment frozen, and his bank balance reduced to 327 yuan. His crime was refusing to rewrite Lin Xia's rescue scene so she would kneel before an investor's niece. He did not look back. He returned to the abandoned boiler room he rented in an urban village and set the broken monitor on a table. At midnight, an iconless application appeared on his phone.