I let go of the glass drink bottle and asked, "What happened?"
"..." Ruan Han let out a breath and took a while to compose himself before speaking. "I took a job to earn some extra money... I'm a designer, an interior decorator. I saw a job online that paid really well. They wanted someone to design an indoor setting, a home interior, but it wasn't like ordinary interior design..."
He paused. "It was for an online company that runs livestreams. They wanted to make some special-effects settings for streamers to use, some free and some paid... It was supposed to be a feature of their software."
As I listened, it all sounded familiar. I suddenly grew tense.
"So I sent in my résumé and showed them a few of my designs. They accepted me and asked me to make some design plans." Ruan Han held his forehead. "Everything was normal up to that point. They were pretty decent clients and didn't make any unreasonable demands. They paid promptly, too. They only wanted the plans; I didn't have to go and set anything up. They handled everything themselves and even sent me photos. It looked just like my designs. Up to that point... everything was normal. The payments all came from a dedicated account, a company account."
I pressed my lips together, holding back the urge to ask to see the job posting and payment records for now, and let Ruan Han continue.
"They were hiring quite a lot of people. It was a new company with a lot of open positions. I did some temporary design work. It was contract work, not an employment contract. They were hiring IT people, too. My cousin studied that, though it wasn't an exact match. What he studied was more specialized, and I