The office didn't have a nameplate, a receptionist, or even proper windows.
It was on the second floor of a crumbling building above an electronics repair shop. The stairs creaked, the paint peeled, and the lock jammed half the time. But to Yu, it felt like a throne room.
He walked in, flipped the old light switch, and smiled at the blinking fluorescent tube that buzzed above like an annoyed mosquito.
"Perfect," he muttered.
There were two desks, both salvaged from a nearby school auction. One wobbled slightly. The other had "Math Rules" scratched into the surface. There was an old Dell PC humming in the corner, and a fold-out couch that doubled as a guest bed and brainstorming platform.
Yu dropped his backpack onto the couch, rolled up his sleeves, and opened his notebook.
StarRise Media Group — Day One.
Three hours later, the front door creaked open, and a lanky teenager with wire-rimmed glasses and a hoodie poked his head inside.
"You're really going through with this?" he asked.
Yu grinned. "Glad you came, Lin."
Lin Zheyuan had been a coding prodigy since junior high. He was awkward, sarcastic, and allergic to deadlines—but Yu remembered how, in his past life, Lin went on to become CTO of a billion-dollar company. This time, Yu was bringing him in early.
"I told you I'm not quitting school for this," Lin warned, stepping over a loose floorboard.
"You won't have to," Yu said. "Yet."
They bumped fists.
And just like that, the founding team had doubled.
Yu handled branding, design, strategy.
Lin worked on the first version of the site: a video upload platform inspired by future giants—but much simpler. They named it SkyVoice, and it would spotlight unknown talent.
While they coded and planned, Jiang Meixuan trained every afternoon in a borrowed dance studio. Yu paid the hourly fee by offering to fix the owner's website and sweep floors.
Meixuan never complained. She arrived early, stayed late, and practiced until her voice cracked and her legs trembled.
"Do I look stupid doing this?" she once asked, drenched in sweat, mid-dance rehearsal.
Yu looked up from his laptop.
"No," he said seriously. "You look unstoppable."
She blinked, then smiled, brushing her bangs from her forehead.
"Okay then," she said. "I'll keep going."
By the end of the week, their "office" had three posters on the wall, a whiteboard with wild scribbles, and a handwritten mission taped to the door:
"We Find the Unseen. We Lift the Unheard."
Yu looked around at his team—one singer, one developer, one dreamer—and nodded to himself.
It wasn't much.
But it was a start.