Chapter 129: Chapter 120: When the Heart's Fire Blazes, Illness Strikes Like a Collapsing Mountain
"What?" Pei Muchan glanced at it, the paragraph was too long, so she stretched out her finger and skimmed to the last sentence.
It wasn't "like me 50 times," but a regular ending.
"In my countless hesitations, my youth never turned back to look at me once. I'm already an uncle, I really like this song, and now, catching a glimpse of that girl in my dreams just evens things out."
"Just this one comment?" she asked, looking up anxiously.
"On our drive here, about a thousand more comments popped up," he said with a laugh as he put away his phone. "The numbers should be exploding. Just go online and see."
"Okay." Pei Muchan's expression actually flashed with a moment of excitement.
Without another word, the two of them quickly made their way upstairs, afraid to miss a single step.
"Can you see it?"
"It's still loading, what's the rush?"
"What do you mean, 'what's the rush?' I have a share in the profits, how can I not be anxious?" Xu Qingyan leaned over, directly seizing the mouse under Pei Muchan's hand, "Huh? Are you dumb? It's stuck, nothing's loaded."
Click, refresh.
"See, there it is now. Honestly..."
Bending his head, he noticed Pei Muchan staring intently at a spot on the desk. Xu Qingyan turned his head to look and found his hand covering Pei Muchan's, their differing skin tones contrasting against each other.
"Sorry!" he exclaimed, as if he had touched a red-hot iron pot, and quickly let go.
"It's okay," Pei Muchan pulled her hand back, tilting her head slightly, "the numbers... how are the numbers? I'm afraid to look. You check and tell me."
"Seventy thousand in sales."
"What?" Her head whipped around to stare at the screen. "Seventy thousand?"
"Is that a lot or a little?" Xu Qingyan looked puzzled; this should count as the first day's sales.
The price for a single song is two yuan. Generally speaking, after deducting the channel fee from the website, in simple terms, it's about splitting the revenue with the website, usually a 60-40 or 70-30 split.
Famous singers can even negotiate up to a 90-10 split, where the singer takes the lion's share.
Xu Qingyan didn't know what sort of revenue share Pei Muchan had with the website. Although she bore the title of "Little Queen," her influence had indeed waned a bit over the years. Also, since she hadn't signed an exclusive contract, most likely it was a 60-40 split.
If a singer is signed to an agency, there's usually a separate split for the copyright. In other words, part of the song's copyright belongs to the agency, and there's another round of revenue sharing.
But Pei Muchan had her own studio, so copyrights only involved her and Xu Qingyan. The profit-sharing ratio had long been written into the contract, an 80-20 split of the net profits.
Seventy thousand on the first day, a day's sales of 140,000... it's genuinely hard to believe. However, considering it was a cold start without any exposure on the website, and without the ability to target the precise user base, relying solely on the exposure from Weibo, it's also hard to gauge its potential>.
In short, Xu Qingyan also wasn't sure if these first-day sales were good or bad.
"Hmm..." Pei Muchan looked up, calculating for a while, her loose hair cascading like a waterfall, "It should count as a good start, selling seventy thousand copies, and breaking 140,000 in sales in fifteen hours."
"Back when I was with Starlight Entertainment, the highest single-song sales I saw was about two million in one day, although a large part of that was fabricated."
"The actual sales were probably around 500,000 per day. Even with all kinds of promotions and press releases filling the sky, it was only about four times what we've achieved today. This time without any endorsements, this result, it's considered good right?"
Upon hearing this, Xu Qingyan paused for a moment, then hesitantly said.
"So, it's a complete success?"
"Yes," she nodded.
"Huh??? Then why do you look like you can't get happy?" Xu Qingyan scratched his head.
She just sat in the chair, hands propped on the desk looking at the computer screen, not making a sound. Her hair was spread out, a light makeup on her face, from the side she looked as if smeared in a pile of snow.
"No," Xu Qingyan pulled Pei Muchan inside, then turned and pointed to the people behind, saying, "If they agree, I still won't."
"What?" The man's CPU seemed unable to process, he grabbed Xu Qingyan, "Brother, come on, don't you have any sympathy?"
"Sympathy your mom."
The door slammed shut.
In reality, Xu Qingyan didn't need to refuse, as it was almost impossible to cut in line at the hospital. The only exceptions were if you knew the doctor personally or had a doctor bring you in.
Who isn't anxious in a hospital? Cut in and cut in until someone's bothered enough to start a fight. Honestly, who has an emergency and doesn't go to the ER but comes to a regular ward to try to jump the queue? Can't they get a number at the King of Hell's palace?
The veteran doctor sat in his chair watching the whole time, not saying a word.
As the patients could handle it themselves, there was no need for him to mediate. After all, they were all patients; it's better to have fewer worries than more. People nowadays had a lot of pent-up anger.
When Pei Muchan entered, she took off her mask and her temperature was taken. Taking advantage of the moment, the doctor examined her tongue and asked some more specific questions about her condition, speaking kindly.
"Did you catch a cold a few days ago? Do you remember exactly how many days it's been?"
"Yes, six days ago. It got better after I took some cold medicine."
"How has your sleep been in the past half month? How's your appetite?"
"I sleep around three to four hours a day, off and on. I don't eat much, just some bread when I'm hungry... My meals are irregular."
"Busy with work?"
"Yes, it's been very busy recently."
"You're not getting enough rest, and when under a lot of stress, your body's resistance weakens. You had a cold before, and these past few days you've been pushing through it, causing a build-up of tension."
"I didn't expect it to be so serious this time; it usually gets better on its own."
"Once this blockage of energy in your chest disperses, you're going to feel out of energy," the old doctor said with drooping eyebrows and a slow tone, "No worries, some IV drips will do the trick."
Xu Qingyan stood by listening and glanced at Pei Muchan on the examining chair, thinking she was working so hard—sleeping only three to four hours a day, it would be odd if she weren't ill.
He hadn't noticed yesterday, but it turned out she had been anxiously keeping to herself about "Qing Tian's" performance. Today, having seen the results, her mind was more at ease.
"Can I just take medication?" Pei Muchan hesitated to ask.
"Do you have a habitual sleep problem?"
"Yes."
"Since you have a fever now, it's better to be safe and get an IV. Who knows if you might fall asleep and then get another fever, that would be trouble," the doctor said unhurriedly.
"I..." Pei Muchan stopped mid-sentence.
"Are you afraid of needles?" the doctor asked, glancing down at her.
"...Yes."
"Thank you, Doctor," Xu Qingyan said, taking the prescription, barely able to contain his laughter. He struggled to keep a straight face as he led her out of the examination room and spontaneously turned back to ask, "You're afraid of needles?"
Pei Muchan: "...."
Just as they stepped out, that damnable queue-cutter gave Xu Qingyan a cold stare, seemingly wanting to come forward and say something.
Xu Qingyan, who had seen all sorts of people outside, immediately darkened his formerly smiling face. He pulled Pei Muchan to his side, protectively shielding her behind him.
His other hand stretched forward to maintain distance from the guy, saying fiercely.
"My wife is pregnant. If you come any closer, believe it or not, I'll take you down right now."
The guy instantly backed off, not approaching, but left a remark, "You young punk, what do you think you're pretending to be."
Xu Qingyan ignored him and left with Pei Muchan.