"Two hundred flowers, two gold in all."
In the back courtyard of the Gold Pattern Workshop, the assistant Zhou Fu looked at the phone and couldn't resist doing the math for his young master.
Ye Heng didn't look up.
"I know how to count."
He was twenty-six, and his family had spent two generations making metal ornaments and fittings for protective gear. The wrist clasps and belt hooks sold in many of Heaven Dou City's shops came from the Gold Pattern Workshop; once they landed on a counter with a different price tag, they became worth something else entirely.
Ye Heng was sick of looking at those bits of copper and iron hooks, but he never tired of the young woman on the phone.
Most importantly, Liu Ruyan had just said his name.
The Gold Pattern Workshop's young master.
She hadn't asked which batch of goods he had come to collect, or told him to go back and fetch his father. She had thanked him loud and clear, and even the strangers in the comments had followed up by asking which workshop the Gold Pattern Workshop was.
Ye Heng reached out and dragged his chair closer.
At last, someone was willing to remember him first and ask what his father did afterward.
"Zhou Fu, go close the door."
"What if the master comes?"
"You couldn't stop him if he did, so what difference would closing the door make?"
Zhou Fu thought about it. Fair enough.
He went and shut the door, but when he came back, he found that the smile on his young master's face had faded.
The name on the screen had changed.
Stove Old Han.
Five hundred flowers rose one after another.
At the Cloud Sound Workshop, Liu Ruyan saw them too and said with a smile, "Thank you, Master Han. I'm using the pair of little clips you sent over last time today. They're very sturdy."
She didn't take the phone down to show anyone, only pointing to something off camera.
Han Chi had been sitting by the workshop door. When he heard that, he was delighted.
The clips were for holding curtains, not hair. He had gone to the Cloud Sound Workshop a few days ago to repair a lamp stand and had casually brought two pairs along. He hadn't expected the young woman to remember.
Shao Ping leaned over beside him.
"Master Han, does this count as advertising?"
"I sent some flowers. Can't I even let someone say something nice about me?"
With that, Han Chi turned the phone toward Shi Wanjun, his eyebrows raised high.
"Did you hear that? Sturdy!"
Shi Wanjun glanced at him.
"Your clips being sturdy and whether those shoes of yours can stop moving are two different things."
The smile froze on Han Chi's face.
Shao Ping hurriedly lowered his head, not daring to let the two masters see his expression.
While those two argued over clips and shoes, Ye Heng had already opened the gift menu again.
Five hundred flowers. He knew that number.
Five gold.
It wasn't as though he couldn't come up with five gold. He usually spent more than that on a new trinket that caught his eye.
"Young master, the dance hasn't even started yet," Zhou Fu reminded him.
"I know."
Ye Heng said he knew, but his hand didn't stop.
He sent six hundred flowers, and sure enough, the name bearing the Gold Pattern Workshop rose back up.
Watching from the side, Zhou Fu suddenly felt uneasy.
At this rate, it no longer looked much like listening to music.
Liu Ruyan didn't keep her eyes on the gifts and read them out nonstop.
After thanking him this time, she got up to fetch her round fan. The zither behind her was moved aside, and the accompanying musician plucked the strings, but she raised a hand first, signaling for everyone to wait.
"I saw someone ask whether that turn in the preview was edited together."
Holding the fan by its handle, she turned it halfway around in her palm.
"The part where I changed clothes was edited, of course. But this fan turn wasn't."
As soon as she finished speaking, the edge of the fan slid over the back of her hand. With a light flip, it landed between her fingers again.
With that single move, Gu Zheng deleted the half-typed message, "I, Gu, am also willing to..."
He stopped talking and watched first.
Liu Ruyan stepped back to the spot marked out earlier, and the music resumed. Her movements were restrained, each step followed by a pause, but the round fan rose and fell with her wrist, tracing different arcs before her face, beside her shoulder, and at her waist.
The camera didn't change.
Even the lamp by the window stayed in the same place throughout.
Gu Zheng watched the hem of her skirt lift gently as she turned, and suddenly understood that the few moments in the short videos that had made him watch them over and over had been taken from a complete dance like this one.
Only, the person in the videos never got tired, and she wouldn't briefly purse her lips after spotting an amusing comment.
The Liu Ruyan before him did.
She took half a step forward and saw someone saying the fan might as well have been glued to her hand. The smile in her eyes deepened. With a turn of her wrist, the fan left her hand, spun through a short arc, and landed steadily back in her palm.
"It's not glued."
Those were the only words she said before falling back in time with the music.
Gu Zheng heard his friend beside him draw a soft breath.
When he turned, he found that the fellow had taken out his phone at some point and was adding money to it.
"Weren't you here to drink?"
"Listening to music and drinking don't get in the way."
His friend answered so naturally that he threw everything Gu Zheng had said earlier right back at him.
Lu Ye finished the last mouthful of rice in his bowl and finally had time to see how the gifts were changing.
He recognized Han Chi first, then spotted an unfamiliar face.
The Gold Pattern Workshop's young master.
Only this much time had passed that evening, and the man had already sent eight gold.
The figures in the backend were nowhere near as frightening as those in the major livestream rooms of his previous life, but how many users were there in total right now? In a tiny music workshop, a young woman had only just begun to sing, and someone on the other end of the screen was already willing to put down real gold and silver.
Lu Ye was naturally pleased.
He opened his own page and sent ten flowers as well.
When the little flowers floated up, his own name appeared below them.
Liu Ruyan saw Lu Ye's name just as she finished a turn.
"Young Master Lu is here too."
She said it much more naturally than before, as though greeting an acquaintance across a courtyard.
Lu Ye wrote, "I'm here. Just finished eating."
Someone immediately replied below, "We've all been waiting for the show to start, and you still had time to eat?"
Someone else asked, "Did you design that outfit?"
Before Lu Ye had time to answer, Liu Ruyan had already picked up the question.
"Young Master Lu drew the design, and Master He made the outfit. If we'd left everything to him, you'd probably have to wait for him to thread the needle first tonight."
Reading her words, Lu Ye laughed so hard he nearly choked.
Good.
Once she relaxed, she even dared tease the man who had taught her to livestream for the audience's amusement.
Shen Qilan laughed beside her too. The program in her hand shook twice before she steadied it again. After that, Liu Ruyan followed the comments and shared a couple of amusing stories about the tailor altering clothes, rather than keeping the conversation on Lu Ye.
But Ye Heng had already seen the name.
Even when Young Master Lu arrived, Liu Ruyan had a word for him right away.
He had sent eight gold. Was that worth less than ten flowers?
Just as he was about to tap again, Zhou Fu reached out and held down the money pouch at the corner of the table.
"Young master, you've already added all the coins you had yourself."
Ye Heng glanced at the pouch.
Its mouth was tied with a red cord. It held the money due to a group of suppliers the next day. He had only meant to bring it over and count it at the same time, but the livestream had started so suddenly that he hadn't yet taken it to his father's room.
Now the knot was right by his fingers.
Ye Heng hesitated for a moment.
But just then, someone on the screen mentioned Han Chi again, saying that he really was capable to have sold shields with a single video, and wondering what that young master sold.
Heat rose in his chest, and he untied the red cord.
"Put it on the account for now. I'll replace it tomorrow."
"With what?"
"I have a way."
Even as he said it, he hadn't figured out what that way was.
But the flowers had already been sent.
This time, it was another thousand.
His name reclaimed a prominent spot, and sure enough, the comments below grew livelier. Some praised his generosity, some asked whether the Gold Pattern Workshop needed an assistant, and others only shouted for the flowers not to block the fan.
Ye Heng watched those words, and his earlier hesitation gradually faded.
Gu Zheng, meanwhile, opened his money pouch again. He was halfway through counting when he suddenly stopped.
His friend asked beside him, "Sending more?"
"I..."
Before he could finish, Liu Ruyan had stepped back in front of the camera and gently folded her fan against her chest.
"Thank you for the flowers, young master of the Gold Pattern Workshop, and thanks as well to every friend who supported me just now. I've seen the list. Once this dance is over, I'll read your names out at my leisure, all right?"
She bowed slightly, as though she had finally found everyone amid the flowers filling the screen.
"You've all come to listen to music and watch a dance. I can't very well have you spending the whole evening listening to me read out names."
Gu Zheng looked at the screen, then at his hand resting on the money pouch.
His friend didn't laugh at him, only pushed the tea over.
"Are you here to watch her, or to watch that young master?"
Gu Zheng's ears slowly turned red.
He put the money pouch away and deleted every trace of the half-finished line he had typed to compete, leaving only one sentence.
"Please continue, miss. We're listening."