Who Needs a CEO? I Choose Stardom

”President Wang, look at this student! Isn’t this Ni Bingyan, the one who just won the Golden Horse for Best Actress?”

These days, with the strict crackdown on telecom fraud, almost all websites require real-name registration.

The man in the round glasses carefully checked the student’s information several times. The phone number was hard to confirm, and the name could be a coincidence, but the information revealed by the ID number was a different story.

As we all know, in our country, the ID number a person receives when they are registered at birth never changes, no matter where they move.

It records the first place we set foot in when we came into this world.

This place is where we come from. It’s often where our parents, relatives, and closest childhood friends live, holding indelible traces of our lives.

It also contains a lot of information.

The first and second digits are the province code; the third and fourth digits represent the city; the fifth and sixth digits indicate the district or county; digits seven through fourteen represent the year, month, and day of birth; the fifteenth and sixteenth digits represent the local police station code; the seventeenth digit indicates gender—odd for male, even for female; and the eighteenth digit is a checksum, which can be a number from 0 to 9, or sometimes an X.

These codes are all public information, easily found with a quick online search.

This programmer just did a simple search and found that this Ms. Ni Bingyan’s household registration address was in Dujiangyan City, Rongcheng City, Sichuan Province. If her name were something common like Li Mei or Wang Hong, there might be many people with that name in the area, but her name just had to be Ni Bingyan.

Besides, a celebrity’s date of birth is never a secret. He checked it and—hey! Another match!

Then he looked at her phone number. Hey! A Beijing number!

What else was there to say?

It had to be her!

Because the awards ceremony was broadcast live, the whole world knew that Ni Bingyan had just won.

The crowning of a ’Triple-Gold’ Best Actress is always a huge deal in the country. As soon as the news broke, the entire internet was buzzing with articles about it. A code monkey who spent all day online couldn’t possibly not know.

For him, it was just another ordinary day of working overtime. He never expected that while debugging the system, he’d suddenly discover such a major celebrity among their students!

’Didn’t the company just recently plan on hiring a spokesperson?’

’Isn’t this a ready-made one right here?’

”Oh? Let me see...”

President Wang was the mid-level manager in charge of the department. He was also working overtime because a project was going live tonight.

Seeing the man in round glasses holding up a laptop for him to see, he quickly pushed up his own glasses and leaned in.

He hadn’t thought about the spokesperson angle yet. After all, what were their company’s annual profits? How could they possibly afford to hire Ni Bingyan as a spokesperson?

He just assumed his subordinate was tired from working overtime and wanted to share some gossip.

”It really is her! Ha! It’s so rare to see a celebrity who loves studying this much!”

As the two of them spoke, others nearby overheard and gathered around.

”Whoa! Doesn’t everyone say celebrities are super busy? How does she have so much time to study? And she’s learned so many languages! What kind of monster is she?!”

This was the R&D department, located in Rongcheng City, for a long-established online school specializing in less common languages.

The online school offered various paid services for learners of less common languages, including a vocabulary memorization system designed with various scientific methods, question banks from renowned teachers, the latest international news, and analyses of fine literature.

The best part was that it provided a variety of qualified, professional teachers for true one-on-one instruction.

Ni Bingyan didn’t mind its high fees. She particularly liked its clean interface, its rich and professional collection of timely articles, its well-organized study plans, and its responsible and reliable teachers.

For over a year, she had been reading articles every single day without fail, taking self-assessment quizzes at least twice a week, and using every spare moment to memorize vocabulary.

Pulling up her learning history, it was enough to put eighty percent of the other students to shame.

”Badass! Seriously badass!”

”I saw online before that she supposedly loves to study and just thought it was for her public image. I can’t believe it’s actually true!”

...

The R&D team chattered excitedly, the gossip making the long overtime hours feel more cheerful.

President Wang pushed up his glasses and gave everyone present a stern warning.

”Don’t any of you dare leak her private information. If it causes serious consequences, you could face a lawsuit. It could even prevent your children from passing background checks for civil service or public sector jobs. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Someone immediately stopped typing a message.

This was no small matter.

Seeing that everyone was taking it seriously, President Wang used his administrative privileges to restrict access to Ni Bingyan’s personal information.

”I’ll report this to the boss. From now on, none of you will be able to view her information. This is to protect all of you as well.”

With the sudden shift to such a serious topic, the previously excited crowd found the mood had soured.

Just as they were about to disperse, the boss came in, smiling cheerfully while pushing a large food cart.

Under the transparent lid was a neatly arranged, massive seafood platter.

”You’ve all worked hard! A little something extra for you tonight!”

The boss, Song Wei, was an amiable middle-aged man. Ever since the Rongcheng City branch was established, he would spend two months working here every year.

Overtime was common in the R&D department. Besides ensuring salaries were paid on time, he often paid out of his own pocket to treat them to food.

You can’t expect the horse to run if you don’t feed it, after all.

Seeing the delicious food, the team’s mood finally lifted a little.

Song Wei had also been working overtime and was hungry himself, so he simply joined them to eat.

He had just eaten a baby abalone, not much bigger than his thumb, when he heard his employees talking about Ni Bingyan.

The topic was just too interesting. Although their enthusiasm had been dampened by the little interruption just now, the delicious food had revived their spirits, and they couldn’t help but bring it up again.

”What are you guys talking about? What happened with Ni Bingyan?”

Song Wei was busy with work and hadn’t had time to keep up with entertainment gossip.

These days, even though bosses earn a lot, they work incredibly hard. In many ways, their lives aren’t even as good as their junior employees’.

Junior employees can slack off during work hours, and after work, they can take their paychecks and go out eating and shopping, spending their money happily.

But it’s different for the boss.

When you’re working for yourself, you can’t help but pour your heart into it.

So what if you have money?

You have no time to spend it.

Their quality of life is higher and they have more social status, but when it comes purely to happiness, they might not necessarily win out.

Take now, for example. The junior employees could happily discuss Ni Bingyan winning the Golden Horse Best Actress award, excitedly chat about amazing scenes from *Demon Suppression Tower*, and even show off a bit in front of their boss by filling him in on all of it.

”Boss, what do you think? How about we ask her to be our spokesperson?”

The man in the round glasses asked, his eyes shining, as he sucked on a spicy sea snail with a loud SLURP, SLURP.

Song Wei considered it for a moment. He placed the lobster shell in his hand onto the discard plate, then shook his head, sucking in a sharp breath from the spiciness. ”I’m afraid not. The budget isn’t big enough. We can’t afford her.”

Ni Bingyan’s market value was already approaching that of an A-list actress. Now that she’s won this Golden Horse, she’s firmly in the A-list. There’s no way the company could spend that much money to hire her.

”*Hsss... hsss...* Boss, where did you buy this seafood platter? It’s so perfectly spicy! And the seafood is so fresh! We should come back here for our next team dinner!”

The only woman on the R&D team spoke up, and Song Wei nodded with a chuckle.

A department dinner was a department dinner, no matter where they went. The company only reimbursed up to a certain amount. If it wasn’t enough, they could either save up for two months’ worth of budget or chip in their own money. As the boss, that part wasn’t his concern.

”It’s from Rongxin Garden, just downstairs from the office. They serve new-style Sichuan cuisine. I figured since it was so late, everyone should have something hot to eat, so I ordered from the boss in advance. Otherwise, they would have closed for the night long ago.”

He was very down-to-earth, eating with his employees without putting on any airs. He opened a box of flat noodles, ladled some of the broth over them, and began slurping them down.

He was from another province, so naturally, he didn’t know all the local details.

But then he heard a young local guy say hesitantly,

”I think my dad mentioned that Boss Jiang from Rongxin Garden is the third apprentice of the current Master Ni! Once, for my grandpa’s 80th birthday, my mom had to go through this same Boss Jiang just to book a table at the Ni family’s private kitchen. You guys have no idea how popular that place is...”

The young man was just sharing gossip, but it was also a humblebrag about his family’s connections and his status as a long-time Rongcheng City local.

The speaker may not have meant anything by it, but the listener read between the lines. Song Wei put down his chopsticks and looked at him.

”Oh? Is that so? Tell me more about it.”