The meeting room lights were stark white.
Cold-toned light reflected off the ceiling,
yet never reached the hearts of those seated inside.

The director was seated at the long table,
holding the freshly printed reports in his hands.
He flipped through them in silence for a moment,
then, only then, slowly lifted his gaze.

“Today is already the day after the interactive mode went live.”

“Nearly a day and a half has passed…”

“We haven’t received a single audience vote.”

The air stilled for a moment.

“Although the interaction was designed from the outset
to enhance immersion and not to require voting—”

“since it was also meant to give the audience a low-barrier way
to take part in the creation,
we still need to talk about this phenomenon.”

As he finished speaking, the manager opened a laptop
and added calmly,

“I’ve already gone back over the interaction flow with the tech team.”

“Across the platforms we’ve enabled,
the form links on Penana and Vocus are set in blue,
in line with the common visual expectation for hyperlinks.”

He pulled it up on the screen and displayed it for everyone to see.

“But on CxC, the text is displayed in gray.
The system doesn’t support color changes.”

“For now, all we can do is emphasize it in bold.
That limitation could be why some readers may have missed it.”

The art lead crossed her arms and tilted her head.

“So there’s nothing we can do on the technical side?”

“At the moment, that appears to be the case.”

The director let his gaze fall from the projection back to the table,
a faint furrow forming between his brows.

“Then, looking at the content itself—
did we set the timing of the vote in a way that was too hard to ease into?”

At that, the screenwriter adjusted his glasses
and flipped open a draft of the script.

“In Episode Fifteen of The Hidden Moon and the Sea of Dawn,
Father Liu leads a rescue operation,
and despite being gravely injured, the rabbit insists on coming along.”

“The sequence builds to its final moments,
where the enemy resorts to a do-or-die gambit,
launching a covert strike against Liu Xiyu
just before the rescue succeeds.”

“At the moment the rabbit senses something is wrong,
the line appears in the story—‘Her heartbeat cuts out for a beat.’”

“That’s the trigger point we designed for the interactive option.”

He then shifted his tone,
and read the passage aloud in a lower voice:

     “Xiyu! No—!”

     “Uhh…”

     The wind cuts like a blade.
     Her claws can barely hold,
     yet her eyes remain fixed on the raised cuff—

     Option A: I can’t let her get hurt… I can do this… I’ll make it to her… I can…!
     Option B: My claws… really are almost out of strength… but if I don’t try… I’ll hate myself for the rest of my life.

After hearing the passage, the art lead gave a small nod.

“Shifting into the character’s perspective at the peak of emotional tension,
then using choices to push the story into branching paths of fate…”

“There’s nothing wrong with the story itself.”

The director swept his gaze around the room, his tone easing.

“It seems we had the script, the platform, and the timing all arranged in advance.

The audience may simply not be used to this kind of format yet.”

“But we never really discussed what to do
if no one votes at all.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than
the boss, who had spent the entire meeting tucked into the corner,
radiating low pressure and near-total invisibility—
suddenly looked up, as if a keyword had switched him on,
and sprang to his feet.

“Wait!”

He seized everyone’s attention,
his expression uncharacteristically serious.

“Listen to me, everyone!”

He took a deep breath first,
as if carefully weighing his words,
before speaking cautiously.

“What I mean is…”

“Is there any chance that…”

“—if no audience members vote,
does that mean I could… regain my voting eligibility?”

His words started coming faster,
his emotions rising with them.

“I wasn’t allowed to vote before, for the sake of fairness, right?
But—”

“If nobody’s voting,
what fairness is there to protect?!”

He thumped his chest,
as if rediscovering the meaning of life.

“And to avoid spoilers,
I didn’t take part in the story design at all!
I have no idea what any of the choices actually lead to!”

“I am an audience member!
You can’t take even this chance away from me!”

As he said this,
his voice began to waver,
a clear sheen of moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.

The entire meeting room fell into silence.

The screenwriter was the first to agree.

“Actually… that does make sense.”

The art lead bit down on the end of her pen and muttered under her breath,

“True. At this point, the only person in the entire crew who doesn’t know what happens next
is the boss.”

The director propped his chin on one hand and looked toward the manager.

“We’ll need to check with the marketing team to see if this is feasible.”

“I’ll contact them right away.”

The manager lowered his head and sent a message.

The boss sat tensely,
his hands clasped and pressed tight to his forehead,
as if waiting for a verdict to be read aloud.

Ten minutes later, the manager looked up.

“The marketing team said it was possible—but on one condition:
only if there are truly no audience votes
may the boss cast a vote as a supplement.”

At this, the boss reacted as if he had hit the jackpot.
He bolted toward the conference table in a single bound
and ran three full laps around it.

“I! CAN! VOTE! NOW!”

The director watched his back, a smile in his voice.

“Then tell me which option you want to vote for first.”

“If voting closes and there are still no audience votes,
we’ll go with your choice.”

The boss made his decision without a second’s hesitation.

“B! I choose B!”

His voice trembled, emotion running high.

“Snff… A-Yue is hurt that badly—
how could it not hurt…?”

Emotion surging, he squatted back into the corner mid-rant,
his face flushed, knees hugged to his chest,
plunging into his own CP-fueled imagination,
muttering the characters’ inner monologues to himself.

The others ignored his usual meltdown mode,
lowering their heads to handle the next set of assignments,
as if this interruption were just another part of the routine—

because to them,

it truly was.”