Ficorpio
Chapter 1
At three in the morning, your fingers were shaking from lack of sleep as you saved the final versions of all three wedding proposal decks and sent them into the extended-family planning chat.
For your older cousin Emily Carter’s wedding, you had stayed up late for a solid week. You had narrowed down venues, designed the schedule, contacted vendor after vendor, and negotiated prices until every last detail was finally settled.
In the chat, you clearly listed the cost breakdown and included items for each package. Then you let out a long breath and waited for Emily’s final decision.
At seven that morning, your phone buzzed.
Emily had made her choice right in the group chat: “Let’s go with the heritage style. Classic and elegant. I love the feel of it.”
She added a happy reaction sticker at the end.
You smiled and replied, “Got it. I’ll start coordinating the next steps now.”
You thought all that exhausting planning was finally about to move forward.
You had no idea that, beneath the calm surface of the family chat, a storm was already gathering around you.
The chat stayed quiet for less than ten minutes before an avatar that almost never spoke suddenly lit up.
It was Nina Mercer, your younger cousin.
Two messages popped up one after another, stabbing into your eyes like ice.
“Wait, Emmy, seriously? Did you read that price right? One hundred fifty thousand yuan for a wedding? That’s insane!”
Then she tagged you directly, her accusation completely undisguised.
“Claire, we’re all family. Helping with the wedding is one thing, but even if you couldn’t get us a discount, you can’t just bleed your own relatives dry!”
The drowsiness that had just begun creeping over you vanished in an instant.
You stared at the screen for a full half minute as anger surged up from your chest.
The proposal deck explained everything in black and white. A heritage-style wedding required custom-built timber-frame structures and artisan decorations. The cost was naturally higher than a standard Western package or a garden-style setup.
And that wasn’t even counting the fact that, by using your employee status at the wedding planning company, you had already talked the original fifty-thousand-yuan planning fee down to twenty thousand. That was the biggest favor your boss was willing to give.
The reception needed a ballroom large enough for thirty tables. Ten rooms at a luxury hotel had to be reserved for out-of-town guests. Imported red roses, the foam-and-dry-ice ceremony effect, the appearance fee for a professional heritage wedding host—every single line item had been calculated down to the bone.
One hundred fifty thousand yuan was the cost price after you had squeezed the profit from every step down to zero.
How had that turned into “bleeding relatives dry”?
You forced down your anger and explained in the group chat, line by line.
Chapter 2
“Nina, look carefully at the breakdown in the deck. Imported flowers, foam and dry-ice effects, guest accommodations, luxury venue rental—those are all included. One hundred fifty thousand is already the lowest possible price. Ask any legitimate wedding planning company. For a heritage-style wedding at the same level, you won’t find anything under two hundred thousand.”
Your message had barely gone through before Nina replied.
This time, she attached a chat screenshot and tagged Emily again.
“Emmy, don’t let her fool you! My boyfriend’s family has been in the wedding business for ten years. I sent him her proposal a while ago and asked him to look it over. He said for a heritage-style wedding like this, their family could handle the whole thing from start to finish for ten thousand at most. Even if you went all out, fifty thousand yuan would be more than enough to make it look amazing!”
Then came another message.
“If I hadn’t thought to ask my boyfriend, who knows how badly you’d have been scammed by now?”
You tapped open the screenshot.
The guy in it was Ethan Brooks, Nina’s boyfriend. He said, very clearly, that a full heritage-style wedding package would only cost fifty thousand yuan. He also implied that your company was a “greedy business that specialized in ripping off clients who didn’t know the industry,” and insisted you had inflated the quote so you could make a fortune off your cousin’s wedding.
You were stunned.
Fifty thousand yuan for everything?
And at a mid-to-high-end standard?
That was pure fantasy.
Emily herself had specifically said she wanted imported roses on-site, foam and dry ice during the ceremony, and hotel rooms booked so guests traveling from out of town would have somewhere comfortable to rest. Any one of those items was expensive on its own. Even one hundred fifty thousand was tight.
How could fifty thousand possibly cover everything?
You gripped your phone, ready to send every vendor quote sheet into the chat and go through them one by one.
Before you could move, Emily called.
Her first sentence made your heart sink halfway.
“Claire, don’t you have anything to explain to me?”
“We’ve been close for so many years. I really don’t want to doubt you. But Nina’s side sounds reasonable, and her boyfriend can back it up.”
“Did you really overquote me and take a kickback?”
You and Emily had grown up together. You had always had a good relationship.
That was exactly why she had trusted you with her wedding in the first place.
You truly had not expected her to believe such ridiculous accusations. You had not expected her to suspect you.
You had just opened your mouth to explain when Emily cut you off, her voice full of disappointment.
“Forget it, Claire. For the sake of our relationship, I won’t pursue this. But I’m not letting you handle my wedding anymore.”
Chapter 3
“Nina’s boyfriend is offering a much more honest price. I’ve decided to let them take care of it.”
She didn’t give you the chance to say another word.
She hung up.
You stood there with your phone in your hand, at a complete loss.
In just a few minutes, everything had flipped upside down. You hadn’t even managed to give one full explanation.
You opened the planning chat again and found that Nina’s boyfriend, Ethan Brooks, had already been added to the group.
Nina had moved fast.
Suddenly, you remembered how, back when Emily first asked you to plan the wedding, Nina had kept insisting she should be allowed into the chat to join the discussion.
Had she been planning to snatch the job away from you from the very beginning?
You didn’t leave the group.
You didn’t say anything else either.
You took a deep breath, pulled yourself together, and pushed the whole thing to the back of your mind for the time being.
It wasn’t until you were on your way home from work and opened WhatsApp again that you realized the larger family group chat had suddenly exploded.
You tapped in and saw Julia Bennett tagging your mother, Linda Bennett, while tearing into her.
“Linda, I don’t usually say things like this, but your Claire has really made something of herself now, hasn’t she? Earning big money and all that. Still, a person’s heart can’t be that black.”
“She was helping her own cousin plan a wedding, and she still wanted to skim a hundred thousand yuan of hard-earned money off the top? That’s just wrong. And you’re her mother. How exactly did you raise her?”
In your memory, you had always done well in school. The relatives used to praise your mother for raising such a good daughter. Only your younger aunt, Julia Bennett, had never once meant a compliment she gave you.
When you were little and ranked first in your grade, she said in that syrupy, needling way of hers, “What’s the point of a girl studying so much? She’ll just get married in the end anyway.”
When you landed a good job at a wedding planning company, she said, “Office jobs look glamorous, sure, but they’re not as practical as running your own business.”
Every time she left your mother too choked up to answer, she would tack on a bright little laugh and say, “Oh, come on, Linda. I’m only joking. You didn’t actually take that seriously, did you?”
You didn’t have to think hard to know what had happened. Nina Mercer must have taken what happened earlier that day, dressed it up with a few extra layers of drama, and fed it to Julia. Julia had finally found her chance to step on your family in front of your mother.
Your mother immediately tagged Julia and defended you.
“Julia, that’s a horrible thing to say! My Claire would never do something like that. She’s been working overtime every day for Emmy’s wedding. She’s worn herself thin over it. How could she possibly be taking a kickback?”
Your uncle, Derek Mercer, cut in right after her.