The extreme heat had persisted for several days, turning the entire city of N into a giant sauna. While umbrellas could block the assault of UV rays, they did nothing to alleviate the sweltering opressiveness.
After spending only a few moments outdoors, one’s exposed skin would begin to flush and burn.
The streets were nearly devoid of pedestrians, and the few vehicles present were in a desperate hurry. The sweltering heat agitated people’s spirits, making their irritability almost impossible to suppress.
Shen Manyu and her team climbed into the car, greeted by a rush of cool air from the air conditioning. The young assistant handed tissues to Shen Manyu and her manager, Sister Su, before grabbing one for herself and haphazardly wiping away her sweat.
Being young, she eventually reached her breaking point and grumbled in a low voice, “Sister Su, it’s not that I’m being impatient, but the company is going too far! Lately, they’ve been lining up drama after drama for Manyu, and the public appearances haven’t stopped once—they’re literally working us like mules!”
“And even though these are company arrangements, they don’t bother to coordinate with the production crews beforehand. The director has been making snide remarks about Manyu because of her overlapping schedules. This is the company’s administrative failure, yet Manyu is the one bearing all the consequences. What good does it do the company to ruin Manyu’s reputation like this?”
“Manyu was already exhausted enough as it is, with pitifully little rest, yet the company keeps adding commercial events, forcing her to work non-stop for a whole month. And now they’ve given us a new script! Is the company trying to kill us?”
Shen Manyu remained silent. She took the tissue from the assistant and began wiping the perspiration from her forehead with slow, deliberate movements.
Unlike the assistant’s aggressive, heat-fueled motions, every one of her actions was meticulous and refined, exuding an air of complete elegance and composure.
Sister Su, the manager, also pulled back her smile. She stole a quiet glance at Shen Manyu; seeing her face calm and devoid of any sign of anger, she felt a slight sense of relief.
She spoke up to comfort them: “I’ll ask in the company group chat first to see who left this script here. No one gave me an explanation, so it’s not certain yet if this script is actually meant for Manyu.”
The assistant was a mixture of grief and resentment. Recent events had suppressed a mountain of fire in the hearts of those surrounding Shen Manyu. Everyone’s emotions were like a volcano on the verge of eruption, teetering on a precarious edge.
Shen Manyu tucked the tissue away and glanced softly at the assistant.
It wasn’t a sharp look; rather, it carried a gentle sense of reassurance. Like a light spring breeze brushing against one’s heart, or a budding flower swaying shyly on a branch, it instantly extinguished the frustration and grievance in the assistant’s heart.
Sister Manyu is so gentle and considerate, yet the company bullies her to this extent.
The assistant’s eyes stung with tears. She hurriedly wiped them with her sleeve and finally managed a tearful smile.
While sending messages, Sister Su absentmindedly flipped through the script. Suddenly, her gaze froze, and her hand stopped moving.
She flipped through a few more pages to confirm the facts before deleting the inquiry she had just typed. Pointing at the script in her hand, she gave a helpless, bitter smile: “I’m afraid this script really is for Manyu. The female lead’s name in here… is ‘Manyu’.”
The anger that the assistant had just suppressed surged back even more violently. She was practically exploding with rage: “What is wrong with this company? One after another, without a single moment of rest—do they really want to work Sister Manyu to death?”
The car started slowly, the atmosphere inside suffocatingly tense. The driver remained as quiet as a cicada in winter, sensibly keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead and focusing on driving, refusing to get involved in their conversation.
The slight vibration of the vehicle induced a sense of drowsiness in Shen Manyu. Although the end result was a disappointment, she didn’t feel any resentment.
Leaning against the backrest with her eyes half-closed, she said faintly, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be terminating my contract at the end of the year anyway. To maximize my utility value while they can still order me around, the company will naturally use every means possible to work me to the bone.”
Sister Su tapped her knuckles against the script, lost in thought for a moment before asking softly, “Manyu, are you really just going to leave like this?”
The meaning behind her words was profound. Her light brown eyes gazed deeply at Shen Manyu, both observing and scrutinizing her.
“After all, the company invested a lot of capital in me in the early years. Those years of being ‘blackballed’ meant they lost their investment entirely; they’re probably sick to their stomachs with regret.”
Exhausted, Shen Manyu finished her sentence nonchalantly and added, “If we can part on good terms, I can endure these difficult days until they pass. I just feel bad that you all have to suffer along with me.”
The assistant was completely bewildered by the vague exchange between the two, but she was a smart girl and didn’t ask a single question she wasn’t supposed to.
Shen Manyu didn’t take this small interlude to heart. They were currently rushing to the next filming location; once this moment passed, there would be new work to occupy her.
Her exhaustion deepened, and her spirit felt as though it were detaching from her physical body. Due to the extreme fatigue, her soul drifted lightly in mid-air. Her body felt hollow, as if she might slip into a deep sleep at any moment.
At that point, Sister Su asked slowly, “What if… the company doesn’t want to part on good terms?”
Shen Manyu forced herself to resist the drowsiness, straining to open her eyes. There wasn’t much emotion on her face—not even anger. She simply gave a faint smile. “Is it really up to them to choose?”
Sister Su said nothing more.
The car moved forward at a steady speed. It felt as though only a few minutes had passed, yet also as if an eternity had gone by. Sister Su leaned over from the front seat and carefully draped a blanket over her.
The vehicle’s rhythmic motion acted like a soothing cradle, allowing Shen Manyu to quickly sink into a dreamland.
However, her sleep was restless. In the space between dreams and wakefulness, she could still hear the two of them discussing the script in hushed tones.
“In this script, the female lead gets into a car accident right at the beginning and travels to another world. If it were anything else, it wouldn’t matter, but the protagonist’s name is exactly the same as Sister Manyu’s. Does this screenwriter have a grudge against her? It’s such bad luck!”
“And this male lead, Jing Yanqing—his name really has that ‘Mary Sue’ novel vibe. But for a powerful CEO, his methods don’t fit the persona at all; his scenes and dialogue are just so cringey and greasy.”
“Huh?? Why is there another female lead? Is this drama actually a ‘double female lead’ story?”
“The other protagonist is called Hua Yanqiu. That name is also quite romantic. If it’s a double female lead drama, where does that leave the male lead? Is he just background noise?”
“Let me see… Hua Yanqiu is the male lead’s ‘White Moonlight’ (unrequited love), and our Manyu is actually the body double for the White Moonlight? And she falls in love with such a greasy dog of a man at first sight, insisting it has to be him? What kind of melodramatic plot is this?”
“…Sister Su, don’t you think the storyline between the White Moonlight and our Sister Manyu feels a bit off? This… it couldn’t be a yuri (lesbian) line, could it?”
“Whatever you do, don’t mention the word ‘homosexual’ in front of Manyu. She can’t stand hearing it.”
The manager spoke with such gravity that the assistant instinctively asked, “Why? Is Sister Manyu homophobic?”
Homophobic?
That voice echoed back and forth in Shen Manyu’s mind, but the assistant’s face and voice were gradually replaced by the image of another person. Hua Yanqiu stood tall, blocking her path, until it felt as though the entire world was hidden behind her.
Her palm rested against the wall beside Shen Manyu. Her fingers ghosted over Manyu’s skin—never once actually touching it—as she unhurriedly helped pull up Manyu’s collar.
She hadn’t done anything impolite, and even her gaze was suppressed and restrained, yet an inexplicable sense of pressure made Shen Manyu’s breathing quicken and her heart drum heavily in her chest.
Hua Yanqiu slowly leaned toward Shen Manyu’s ear. Her usual icy detachment had vanished, replaced by a rare, faint smile.
When such a smile appeared on the face of someone so cold and distant, it was like a gentle spring drizzle—exceptionally precious and startlingly beautiful.
She enunciated every word with absolute clarity, her tone slow and deliberate—sounding like a cross-examination, yet not quite reaching the point of aggression:
“Homo… phobic?”