Yang Ruoqian refused to call it a channel.
The word channel had motion.
Motion meant direction.
Direction meant some employee would eventually draw an arrow, and arrows were how disasters learned to explain themselves in meetings.
The correct phrase remained:
Miscellaneous filing burden.
It was ugly.
It was heavy.
It had no ambition.
Unfortunately, everyone else kept using shorter words.
The assistant said intake.
Finance said external records.
Operations said venue materials.
Chang Zhiqing said the thing Yang feared most:
"The channel is stabilizing."
Yang looked up slowly.
"There is no channel."
"Then the non-channel is stabilizing."
"Do not become funny at my expense."
"I was being precise."
Precision was also at his expense.
She placed one page on the desk. Not a folder. Not a proposal. One page, because she had learned that thick stacks made Yang defensive and thin stacks made him afraid. This one managed both.
The page title:
