The landlords began improving.
Yang Ruoqian considered this a personal attack.
Bad venues were supposed to stay bad until after Xplendi paid for them. That was the whole beauty of bad venues.
They waited quietly.
They hid fees.
They became expensive at the worst possible moment.
They ruined budgets like honest little disasters.
Now they were learning.
The morning report contained three new venue-owner replies.
One landlord attached fixed access hours without being asked.
One landlord separated repair responsibility into owner-side and renter-side columns.
One landlord wrote:
No cooperation implied. This is only a cost clarification.
Yang read that line twice.
"They are stealing our no."
Lu Shuyuan said, "It means they understood the boundary."
"They should not understand it that well."
"Would misunderstanding be better?"
Yang nearly said yes.
Then he imagined the consequences.
Misunderstanding created calls.
Calls created meetings.
