There was a new sound in the Xuhuang office that week.
Laughter.
Not the awkward, polite kind reserved for corporate icebreakers. Actual, wheeze-inducing, "my coworker just got a carrot emoji with a crown on it" kind of laughter. The breakroom group chat was exploding. So was the performance metrics dashboard.
The Carrot Awards—my experimental incentive system of personalized, sparkly red envelopes sent through WeChat—had gone viral inside the company.
"Did you see mine?" one engineer whispered, showing a digital envelope that read:
'Thanks for debugging that 4AM crash, King 👑🥕 We see you.'
And the best part?
The employees didn't just love it. They were sharing it. Screenshots of the funniest ones were getting passed around like gossip. Even the most cynical departments were in on it.
Someone made a meme of the finance director riding a carrot like a horse. I didn't ask questions. I just saved it.
Meanwhile, Xuhuang's stock had started climbing faster than usual. The YSHT serum was still performing well internationally, but now the company had something rarer than virality: Gen Z approval.
SCMP Headline: "Xuhuang's cultural charm meets digital-era empathy — The Luxury Brand Winning Gen Z's Trust." — South China Morning Post
I may or may not have read that article out loud during lunch. Twice. With dramatic flair.
Even Jinyu, calm and unreadable as ever, started reading my weekly reports without his usual neutral nods. Once, he actually looked up and said, "Nice work." I almost passed out.
But somewhere under all the sparkles and serotonin, something felt… off.
Like that one weird silence before a rainstorm.
I didn't know it yet, but people were watching.
Not just employees. Not just customers.
Rivals. Foreign executives. Competitors with money and a grudge.
And while I was out here tossing virtual carrot confetti and accidentally making corporate culture kind of fun… Somebody out there had decided they didn't like that.
It started with one post. Just one.
A small-time lifestyle influencer named @dearglowdiary uploaded a teary close-up video with the caption:
"I used YSHT's new serum for 3 days and my skin burned. Literally. I had to go to urgent care. I can't believe this happened from a Chinese brand trying to 'go luxury.' Please be careful, babes. #SkinDamage #YSHTExposed #NotSponsored"
It blew up.
Douyin and Instagram repost pages had it in hours. It got clipped, stitched, re-captioned, added to YouTube "scandal roundup" playlists. People flooded the comments with gasps and panic and three types of "I knew it."
The article came soon after. Paid, polished, and placed just right:
BEAUTY BUZZ WEEKLY
"Too Good To Be True? The Hidden Risks Behind China's Viral Skincare Brand YSHT"
by Savannah Monroe
YSHT, the upstart Chinese luxury skincare brand that skyrocketed to international fame with its rabbit-derived anti-aging serum, is now facing growing scrutiny after multiple users reported severe allergic reactions to its products.
Influencers in the West have begun questioning the brand's transparency, claiming that YSHT has failed to properly label potentially reactive ingredients—some of which are banned or highly regulated in Europe.
"It's suspicious," says one anonymous industry insider. "No real brand scales that fast and gets a clean reputation without cutting corners."
While no formal investigation has been announced, dermatologists interviewed by Beauty Buzz Weekly recommend caution. "Even if the reactions are rare," Dr. Melissa Parr of New York Dermatology Group says, "consumers deserve full disclosure."
Meanwhile, YSHT's team has yet to release an official statement.
It was all so polished. So "concerned." So carefully framed around "we're just asking questions."
But Jinyu knew it. I knew it. Even some of our more cynical investors probably knew it too:
This was war.
And someone out there—someone rich, powerful, and Western—was paying people to make it look like we were poisoning faces with moon juice and bunny curses.
And worse? These influencers weren't even lying… not completely.
A microscopic percentage of people could react badly to one of the serum's more obscure fermentation-based ingredients.
Which meant the articles couldn't be flagged.
And the influencers couldn't be sued.
And we couldn't just shout, "It's fake!" without looking like the guilty ones.
It was genius.
Diabolical, but genius.
And the worst part?
It was just the beginning.
We didn't have to wait long to find out who was behind it.
Three days after the Beauty Buzz Weekly article dropped, a polished op-ed appeared in Le Regard Beauté, a respected French industry journal known for "upholding European skincare values."
The title?
"Tradition Over Trends: Why We Should Be Wary of Unregulated Eastern 'Wellness' Serums."
A not-so-subtle dig, laced with just enough euphemism to sound academic. A paragraph on "unclear sourcing practices." A chart comparing European regulation versus "fast-tracked" Chinese testing procedures. Even a quote from an anonymous French CEO who warned of "the risk of opening global luxury markets to brands without a heritage of safety."
It didn't take a genius—or even a bunny with a spreadsheet addiction—to figure out where this was going.
Yanchun.
Jinyu had warned me about them once in passing. Old rivals of Xuhuang who'd once fought for the same royal fragrance contracts centuries ago, before falling into obscurity.
But in the post-sanction age of brand reinvention, Yanchun had resurfaced—refined, Westernized, backed by silent French partners and buried equity. They weren't just any competitor.
They were the chosen one.
Chosen to replace us.
If we were the awkward, miraculous comeback kid from the East, they were the polished, "respectable" alternative for the Western luxury gatekeepers—an heir with the right accent and the right allies.
And now?
They had influencers.
Meanwhile, inside our own company, a slower betrayal was blooming.
Yixuan had always seemed… competent. Maybe a little too polished, too eager to please, but harmless enough. He handled strategy reports and cross-department forecasts like he was born in a boardroom.
But lately, I'd noticed something odd. Timelines shifting subtly. Rumors about our next campaign leaking before the brief was finalized. A delay in our internal server updates—one only Jinyu and a handful of execs knew was being monitored.
It was a thread.
And once Jinyu started tugging at it, things unraveled faster than my confidence after he complimented my spreadsheet formatting that one time.
What made it worse was that everything Yanchun was doing looked smart. Legal. Clean. Whispers instead of lawsuits. Carefully selected influencers who were actually allergic—one in a thousand, sure, but that was all it took.
They didn't even need to fake symptoms.
All they had to do was frame the truth as proof of a lie.
And when they did?
People believed them.
Especially the ones who never liked the idea of a Chinese company beating them at their own game.
We were officially in it now.
No more carrot memes. No more sparkling dashboards. Just late-night meetings, PR fire drills, and the sudden silence of investors waiting to see if we could survive.
But deep down, I think I knew something they didn't.
They'd underestimated us.
They thought we were just a cute little comeback story with bunny branding and glittery morale boosts.
They didn't realize we'd already survived worse.
That we had something they couldn't fake.
History. Loyalty. And a girl who once ran an underground revolution out of WeChat virtual red envelopes.
Me.