Chapter 42: Public Statement
By noon, the statement had traveled farther than I expected. Not viral. Viral was a word people used when they wanted luck to sound like a strategy. This was different. Slower. Stickier. It moved through business groups, supplier chats, local owner circles, and the kind of private messages where reputations were made or buried. At first, people only watched. Then Mr. Gao from the furniture workshop called back. He sounded embarrassed. "Mr. Zhou, I saw your statement." "Thank you for reading it." "My partners saw it too." "Good." He cleared his throat. "We may have reacted too quickly." May have. People loved softening their retreat. "Confidentiality concerns are reasonable," I said. Nora looked at me and nodded once. Do not humiliate nervous clients. She had written th
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