Chapter 1

The day our game won the big prize, my wife, in order to make her first love’s name more famous, secretly let him go onstage to accept the award in my place.

I stormed into the company’s celebration banquet, and everyone was waiting to see me explode in silence.

But I only smiled and walked up to my wife, stuffing the main planner’s badge in my hand into her arms.

“Don’t just take awards for him anymore. Let him be the lead planner too. I quit.”

The star producer in their eyes, her first love, Li Yunzhou, and every detail in the proposal in his hands had all come from me.

Without me, he couldn’t even make a basic gacha skin game!

……

“Today is the day we won our first big prize!”

“To celebrate this historic breakthrough for our company, let’s raise a glass to our star designer, Li Yunzhou!”

My wife, Guan Yan, lifted her glass and looked at Li Yunzhou with a happy smile on her face.

Li Yunzhou drained the wine in his glass, his cheeks red, and looked back at Guan Yan.

“Besides everyone’s hard work, the reason this game succeeded is of course also because of Ms. Guan’s strong support!”

“Come on, let’s toast Ms. Guan!”

The room was full of excitement, and as a rising game company, we had won a world-class award of this level.

With the fame from that one award, our small company instantly entered the eyes of players all over the world.

Everyone was cheering, wanting the two of them to drink a crossed-cup toast together.

Guan Yan’s face was flushed red, but she still didn’t refuse.

Li Yunzhou even directly picked up a drink and shoved it into Guan Yan’s hand, then shouted at the crowd below.

“You all absolutely can’t tell Mr. Gu about the crossed-cup toast with Ms. Guan!”

The employees started booing:

“He’s nothing but Ms. Guan’s pretty boy toy!”

“Exactly. In our eyes, you’re the one who’s really Ms. Guan’s husband!”

“Ms. Guan, get divorced and marry Li Yunzhou!”

And my wife, Guan Yan, couldn’t even bring herself to scold them, and shyly buried herself straight into Li Yunzhou’s arms.

A late-night rain mixed with cold wind blew into the banquet hall.

After listening from outside for a long time, I pushed the door open and walked into the banquet room.

When I received the stage invitation from the competition committee at the company, I had only then learned that my game had actually won an award.

I was overjoyed and, without even taking off my badge, boarded a plane to the U.S. that very night.

Ignoring my exhaustion from the flight, I braved the rain to go looking for them.

But when I arrived at the hotel where the company was staying, I found that no one was there.

I made countless phone calls, but still couldn’t get through to my wife, Guan Yan.

In the end, it was an old employee who had been with me since the company’s founding and who had secretly told me that they were holding a celebration banquet.

I came rushing over through the rain, holding flowers in my hand.

Hidden in the flowers was the ring I had prepared long ago. I was planning to propose to her on this day.

But I never expected that, after coming all this way through the rain in the middle of the night, what would greet me was actually this scene.

My wife finally lifted her head from Li Yunzhou’s arms and looked at me.

That face, red from both drinking and shyness, had her brows tightly furrowed, as if she were looking at a disaster.

“Gu Qiancheng, what are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to stay at the company and work on the proposal?”

She seemed to still be reluctant to leave the warmth of Li Yunzhou’s arms, unwilling to come out.

She only looked at me and said:

“Since you’re here, I might as well tell you something.”

“We won the award, and tomorrow is the award ceremony, so let Yunzhou go up and accept it.”

“You just came to America. Go take a good look around on your own.”

Those few words were even colder than the rain that had just lashed down on me.

A week ago, we had received an invitation to the World Game Competition, the holy land of games I had been chasing after all this time.

But Guan Yan refused my application to go to America, telling me to honestly stay in the company and work on the proposal, and that when they came back, they wanted to see the full plan for the next game.

Even though I knelt down and begged her, Guan Yan still didn’t care, turned around, and walked into Li Yunzhou’s office.

She placed the game proposal I had poured my heart and soul into in front of Li Yunzhou and said to him gently:

“This is the proposal. Only you, as the star producer, can bring in investment, so I’m leaving it to you.”

She clearly knew this was a work I had put everything into, the sum of everything I had learned in my life.

But she didn’t even look at it before throwing it into Li Yunzhou’s hands, just so Li Yunzhou’s status as a star producer could be pushed to the next level.

I had checked countless materials and stayed up countless nights to write that proposal, only for it to end up becoming something Li Yunzhou “produced.”

And this had happened countless times already.

Guan Yan ignored my hard work, my dreams, and my love.

My passion cooled bit by bit.

Then Li Yunzhou spoke up, pretending to be sincere as he said:

“That doesn’t seem very appropriate. After all, this proposal was written by Mr. Gu.”

“I’ve taken so many proposals from Mr. Gu. Even though I changed a lot of them, the ideas all came from Mr. Gu.”

“Mr. Gu is also our company’s lead planner, so let Mr. Gu go accept the award. I’m really not qualified.”

Guan Yan spoke to Li Yunzhou gently:

“It’s fine, Yunzhou. You’re our company’s director. Who doesn’t know that all those proposals only become good after passing through your hands?”

“You’re the one who truly has great talent, so don’t refuse!”

Then she turned to look at me, her tone icy:

“Gu Qiancheng, besides hanging onto the title of lead planner, what use are you?”

“Those ideas of yours could be coming from any few random employees. If you want something, you have to fight for it yourself.”

“Didn’t our company become this big because of Yunzhou’s proposals?”

“You don’t have ability, so go learn and train. Don’t just sit there every day thinking you deserve to enjoy the results!”

The way Guan Yan spoke to me was nothing like the way she spoke to her own husband, as if I really were some pretty boy living off her.

Maybe she had already forgotten that I wasn’t really the pretty boy she kept.

The company only grew to its current scale because I built it one game at a time.

Not a single game ever caused the company to lose money, and both its reputation and sales were far ahead of the competition.

Just when the company’s size was finally able to support a big AAA game, Guan Yan brought Li Yunzhou in.

Using my proposal, using the team I had put together, but in the end, the game director’s name was Li Yunzhou’s.

He had no real ability to begin with and was specially hired in by Guan Yan.

He knew nothing about game planning at all, and besides having seen a few of my proposals, he knew nothing else.

And she still wanted him to go to the World Game Competition in my place to accept the award?

Everyone knew this demand was ridiculous, and there was no way I would agree.

But apart from the few employees I had personally hired, who all kept their heads down and said nothing, everyone else looked like they were waiting for a show.

I looked at the two people in front of me, leaning into each other, and strode forward.

They seemed to have already decided that I would definitely explode, maybe even hit them, and several of their loyal dogs had already raised their phones, ready to record.

I strode toward the two of them, and Li Yunzhou hurriedly pulled Guan Yan into his arms.

“Don’t be afraid, Guan Yan. I’ll protect you. I won’t let you get hurt!”

He said it so naturally.

I only took the badge I had been carrying in my arms and hadn’t had time to leave at the company, and shoved it straight into Li Yunzhou’s arms.

“What’s the point of only taking my award for me? From now on, he’s the company’s lead planner. I quit.”