Shen Manyu’s manager was a man in his early thirties, dressed in a sharp, well-tailored suit with his hair slicked back into a mature pompadour, exuding the air of an elite upper-class gentleman.
If only… he wasn’t wearing a pair of slippers on his feet.
It must be said that from the very first glance, Shen Manyu was stunned by this bizarre fashion choice. She stood rooted to the spot, momentarily unsure of how to even initiate a greeting.
Hearing movement, the man turned around. When he saw it was her, his tightly furrowed brows relaxed for a split second before tightening even harder.
He glanced at the room Shen Manyu had just exited and questioned her furiously, “Did you go to find trouble with Hua Yanqiu again?”
The moment he spoke in such an accusatory tone, the smile on Shen Manyu’s face faded slightly. “Why is your temper so flared up?”
She wasn’t in the habit of arguing with people under surveillance; every move she made could be posted online at any time, inviting the scrutiny and judgment of the public.
Shen Manyu opened her door and was the first to walk inside.
This move clearly caught her manager, Mo Cheng, off guard, interrupting the momentum of his rising anger. His chest was full of fury that felt stuck—neither able to rise nor dissipate.
He followed Shen Manyu into the room and slammed the door shut behind him.
Shen Manyu pulled out a chair and sat down. He followed suit, wiping the sweat from his face as the legs of his chair scraped against the floor with a piercing screech.
His movements were rough, creating a series of clatters and bangs that put his naked rage on full display.
Shen Manyu remained unaffected by his mood and was in no rush to ask him questions. Her expression was unnervingly calm—so calm that Mo Cheng felt she was acting a bit strange today.
He had witnessed Shen Manyu’s hatred and hostility toward Hua Yanqiu from start to finish.
She had ignored the vast difference in status between herself and Hua Yanqiu, insisting on causing trouble for her.
Mo Cheng had tried to persuade her countless times, talking until his throat was dry, yet he could never convince her to change her mind and focus her energy on her career.
For a man—just for one man—she had completely lost her head.
Such a foolish, arrogant woman had personally sabotaged her own career just as it was starting to take off because of her own stubborn death-wish.
With a few trivial actions, she had casually overturned all the plans Mo Cheng had made for her career, playing a winning hand of cards into a total disaster.
Mo Cheng loathed her to the extreme, yet he was forced to patiently clean up the mess left behind by her reckless behavior.
His voice was somewhat raspy and filled with impatience, his brow lowered heavily like a gathering storm. “When will you finally realize your place?”
“There is absolutely no need for you to keep getting entangled with a man like Jing Yanqing, and even less need to constantly seek trouble with Hua Yanqiu because of him.”
“How has Hua Yanqiu wronged you? She hasn’t responded to Jing Yanqing’s feelings, and she even directly rejected his wishful thinking. Hasn’t she done enough?”
His words were laced with a clear defense of Hua Yanqiu. Shen Manyu’s lips curled into a faint smile as her eyes settled on Mo Cheng’s face. She asked slowly, with an unreadable gaze, “Do you like Hua Yanqiu?”
Mo Cheng’s heart skipped a heavy beat, as if she had suddenly struck a nerve.
He stood up abruptly, fuming like an enraged lion. “Whether I like her or not, what does that have to do with this? Is there a single flaw in the logic I just gave you? When are you finally going to listen to my advice!”
His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like an ant on a hot pan—anxious and powerless. Perhaps he truly did harbor feelings for Hua Yanqiu, but knowing there was no possibility between them, he could only desperately suppress his hopeless emotions before they could sprout further.
Shen Manyu’s expression remained cool, her eyes as calm as still water. When Mo Cheng stood up so suddenly that he knocked over his chair, the loud crash didn’t even make her blink.
She calmly observed his every move, her scrutinizing gaze like a sharp blade trying to peel back Mo Cheng’s skin to see the hidden thoughts beneath.
There seemed to be a heavy weight behind that gaze; even in his rage, Mo Cheng could feel the sting of being sliced open.
Everything about the original owner’s manager felt deeply inconsistent.
He seemed to harbor a deep loathing and contempt for Shen Manyu.
Shen Manyu couldn’t find his number in her phone, she had her own separate luggage, and even her plane ticket was booked solo—all signs of their discord.
Yet, the fact that he arrived so quickly meant that even if he didn’t travel with her, he had followed her to this city anyway.
He loathed her enough to refuse to travel together, yet he rushed over the moment he received a call from Hua Yanqiu’s manager.
He had hurried all the way, running until he was drenched in sweat; his shirt was visibly soaked.
He had even forgotten to change his shoes before leaving. One could only imagine how panicked he must have been when he arrived.
If his frantic attitude was due to the fear of her bothering Hua Yanqiu, he should have checked on Hua Yanqiu first. Instead, upon arriving at the hotel, he came directly to her room to find her.
Even if he subjectively assumed she was there to cause trouble, he didn’t ignore her to go see how Hua Yanqiu was doing.
His urgent actions weren’t for Hua Yanqiu, but truly for Shen Manyu, the artist under his wing.
Despite his terrible attitude, Shen Manyu could sense the underlying frustration and the “disappointment that she failed to live up to expectations”—that classic feeling of hating that someone won’t strive for better.
Because of this, she didn’t condemn him for his harshness. Instead, she mentally filed him into the category of someone whose stance leaned toward her own side.
“I didn’t go to find trouble with Hua Yanqiu. The two of us have reached a temporary truce.” For someone like this, Shen Manyu was willing to spare some patience to soothe his nerves.
However, after saying it, she couldn’t help but let her own lips curl into a slight smile.
If the dazed look on Hua Yanqiu’s face before she left was any signal of a reconciliation, then in the future, they likely wouldn’t be at each other’s throats as they were before.
Though perhaps… the conflict would just shift to a different kind of “intense encounter.”
Her attitude caught Mo Cheng off guard, and the meaning behind her words startled him even more.
His reason slowly returned, his anger momentarily suppressed. He asked with a dark expression, “Are you telling the truth?”
“Why would I lie to you? Besides, isn’t this the kind of thing you can see for yourself at a glance? Why would I set myself up to be slapped in the face later?”
Shen Manyu’s expression remained calm from start to finish, and her tone was unhurried. Now that Mo Cheng had calmed down, he finally realized that she really did seem different today.
He couldn’t help but test the waters: “Didn’t you always loathe Hua Yanqiu?”
“Just now, Hua Yanqiu’s manager called and told me to come pick you up. I thought—I thought you had really gone too far today, that even someone with Hua Yanqiu’s temperament had been driven to genuine rage and was preparing to deal with you ruthlessly.”
Shen Manyu smiled nonchalantly, leaning her back against the chair in a lazy, casual posture. “I’ve had a change of heart. He’s just a man; he’s simply not worth it.”
“Besides, both Hua Yanqiu and I are women. Why should women make things difficult for other women? Looking for trouble with her was simply getting my priorities backward.”
Mo Cheng was silent for a long time before he finally let out a weary sigh and slowly sat down. “If you’ve truly come to your senses, that’s for the best. Your career has only just begun; I hope you can maintain this level of rationality.”
Speaking of her career, Shen Manyu suddenly remembered that disastrous script. She couldn’t help but ask, “I only just found out that this drama is a ‘Girls’ Love’ (GL) series. I’m homophobic, so I probably can’t act in it. Is it still possible to recast?”
Filming was about to start. Proposing a recast at this critical juncture would completely destroy her reputation in the industry. What production crew would want an artist with zero professional integrity?
Mo Cheng had just started to think she was becoming more sensible, only for this bombshell to blow his heart to pieces.
He shook with rage, pointing a trembling finger at her nose as he shouted, “I sent you the script ages ago! Every time I asked, you said you were reading it, reading it, reading it! And now, after all this time, you’re telling me you just realized it’s a queer drama?!”
“Furthermore, you were the one who insisted on snatching this script! I disagreed from the start, but you relentlessly pestered Jing Yanqing, working him from his side to find a way to seize this role!”
“Fine! He’s the investor, so changing the lead is just a matter of a few words for him, but do you have any idea how many people you offended in the process?!”
“I’ve run myself ragged lately, apologizing to this person and that person, begging everyone and their grandmother, owing countless favors and saying so many sweet words just to settle this mess for you!”
“My little princess, look at you! Offending people once wasn’t enough; now that the script is in your hands, you look down on it? You don’t want to act? Are you trying to offend everyone a second time?!”
“You insisted on this script. Fine. You used your connections and exhausted every scheme to snatch it away—I couldn’t say much about that.”
“But this is the script you fought for, and filming is about to start, and you’re telling me you want to quit?”
“This is a job! There is no room for error in professional work! Did you think this was some little kid’s game of house?”
“The crew is about to start filming, and you want to drop out now. If you really don’t want to survive in this industry and want to be completely disgraced and ruined in the entertainment world, then go ahead and quit!”
Mo Cheng was driven absolutely mad by her. His emotions exploded all at once, and Shen Manyu couldn’t get a single word in the entire time.
A grown man, screaming at the top of his lungs until his voice broke at the end. By the time he finished, tears were actually streaming down his face.
He looked… honestly quite pitiful.
Even though this was all the original owner’s fault, and Shen Manyu was forced to take the fall for countless mistakes, seeing Mo Cheng’s miserable state stirred some pity in her heart.
Since there was no other way—she could only blame herself for transmigrating too late—she had to accept reality. She sighed and tried to soothe him: “Alright, alright, I get it. I won’t quit.”
Mo Cheng was panting heavily. Hearing this, his anger hadn’t fully dissipated. He was genuinely terrified by Shen Manyu’s erratic and unreliable behavior, so he didn’t believe her yet. He asked suspiciously, “Are you really going to do it? Aren’t you ‘homophobic’?”
In the next second, he snapped back and questioned her furiously, “What kind of homophobe are you anyway?! Before, whenever you saw a beautiful actress, didn’t you excitedly ‘lick the screen,’ screaming about how pretty ‘Sister’ is, saying ‘Sister’s gender shouldn’t be so restricted,’ and that you wanted to be with ‘Sister’ and cuddle with her?!”
Shen Manyu: “???”