When Cheng Lele received the email and saw the budget had been cut in half, her face went wooden.

The situation was even worse than she’d imagined.

That day after Chen An left, she went to knock on the accounting office door and asked the accountant about the cinema’s financial security situation. Accounting was very sensitive and didn’t have an answer-every-question attitude.

In many places, accounting was independent of the manager’s leadership and reported directly to the boss. Especially in a situation like hers, where her salary wasn’t even paid by the cinema and her employment relationship was still registered with the external company, it wasn’t surprising that accounting had this attitude.

But accounting still revealed a little. Currently, the cinema’s expenses exceeded its income. The shortfall that appeared was being covered out of Chen An’s personal pocket. After Dahai Cinema opened, revenue had sharply declined, and the gap was expected to grow even larger. Accounting expressed to her the urgent desire to increase revenue as soon as possible. Cheng Lele agreed with feigned ease, but after leaving the office, she felt very heavy.

To reorganize and increase revenue, some expenses were unavoidable. She would even need no small amount of financial support.

This was a chicken-and-egg problem.

She’d already saved as much as she could. If she could avoid hiring external contractors, she wouldn’t outsource. Some tasks she’d even done herself. But that was only a very small part.

She’d listed urgent and necessary expenses and sent them to Chen An. Unexpectedly, Chen An had cut half of it in one stroke.

Cheng Lele was about to shut down. Even in war, supplies had to come before troops. The things on that spreadsheet were expenses that absolutely had to be paid after she’d already deleted a pile of items. Cutting it in half like this—how could she carry out her work?

But she had no way to negotiate with her older brother. Her older brother wasn’t a stingy person. If he was keeping such a tight grip on the money, the landlord’s family must have no surplus grain either. Moreover, with the cinema’s future uncertain, it was reasonable and justified that he didn’t want to keep pouring money into a bottomless pit.

She asked accounting more about the cinema’s past and present life. These past few days, she’d been thinking over and over—no matter how degenerate or blind her older brother had become, he didn’t seem like someone who’d be the last person holding the parcel in a game of hot potato, especially with the pandemic situation still unclear, the rival cinema about to open, and the surrounding commercial area nearly withered. Anyone with even a bit of business acumen wouldn’t come to be this sucker. Unless Xingchen’s selling price was far below market value, practically half-sold, half-given away.

As it turned out, accounting told her that Mr. Chen had bought it for six million.

Six million!!!

Six million was enough to open a brand new high-end cinema! Had her older brother’s brain been kicked by a donkey? Given the cinema’s current situation, box office revenue after splits and operational costs couldn’t even break even, let alone recover the investment.

“Why?” Cheng Lele posed a soul-searching question.

The accounting sister propped up her head and thought about it. “I also asked him this question. He said this cinema is a very meaningful commemorative place that should be priceless. He was willing to pay this money.”

Cheng Lele blinked and slowly, word by word, took apart and crushed the phrase “very meaningful commemoration” to ponder it.

If she hadn’t understood wrong, her older brother had spent a fortune to buy this cinema that even a miracle doctor couldn’t save because of her?! Just because the two of them had watched countless movies here back then?! Just to keep it as a souvenir?! Just, just that?? Six million?!

She was going crazy. No, it was her older brother who was crazy. When he’d dared to give up Tsinghua and Peking University for her back then, there were already signs of madness. Now he was even crazier—he was going to go bankrupt for love!

What was the point? Did he have no place to burn money? He might as well have just given the six million directly to her!

Cheng Lele looked back at that budget sheet that had been cut in half, clutching her chest and gasping for breath—she’d been angered by Chen An to the point where blood was flowing backward and she needed to call 120.

But as she looked at it, she became sad and heartbroken again. She’d wishfully thought that as time passed, her older brother would fall for someone else and start a new relationship. But in reality, her older brother hadn’t been doing well at all. She’d ruthlessly hurt him. She’d fled, leaving that person behind to heal his wounds alone, trapped in place alone, guarding these places that carried memories alone. All these years, how much suffering must he have endured?