Mo Cheng stammered, “Who did you say? Hua… Hua Yanqiu??”
He was a successful man who looked every bit the part of an elite member of high society, yet here he was, nagging and launching into long-winded speeches. Was this really a manager?
He worried incessantly about Shen Manyu’s social circles, treating her like an ignorant child. He was, quite simply, an all-encompassing “manager-mom.”
Although this type of character was irritable and easily angered, they were kind-hearted and meticulous, with no true malice in their nature.
“Honest advice is hard on the ear but good for conduct.” His many earnest exhortations, though they appeared a bit intimidating in momentum, were made entirely from the perspective of looking out for Shen Manyu.
If such a character appeared in a script, they would be extremely likable and likely very popular with the audience.
While perfunctorily responding to him, Shen Manyu subconsciously thought that managers like Mo Cheng were truly rare in the industry. Maintaining relationships between adults usually involved countless conflicts of interest.
A manager and an artist should ideally complement and fulfill each other. But an obscure, eighteenth-tier star like Shen Manyu with lackluster works and meager popularity naturally couldn’t bring much value to the company.
Since no profit could be gained from her, a manager would usually either try to lead her down a crooked path to monetize her value as quickly as possible, or simply ignore her entirely to spend their energy on other artists with more promising futures.
While checking her records, Shen Manyu had found some information. Previously, Mo Cheng had managed only her; later, he added He Hanqiao and Kong Yingying.
She had thought Mo Cheng chose the latter two, and that this decision was a signal that he was preparing to give up on her.
Looking at it now, Mo Cheng was anything but indifferent toward her. It seemed she had judged him too harshly.
The commotion on Mo Cheng’s end stopped completely. If Shen Manyu had turned her phone volume to the maximum, she suspected she might even have heard his rapid, ragged breathing.
He seemed unable to accept this fact. It took him a long while to recover his composure. Realizing he had wronged Shen Manyu, his voice instinctively dropped an octave: “Hua… Hua Yanqiu? You’re going to dinner with Hua Yanqiu? You only told me yesterday that you two had reconciled, and today you’re already going out to eat together?”
Mo Cheng pounded his head. “…Is your relationship progressing that fast?”
Shen Manyu didn’t know if it was just her own guilty conscience, but hearing Mo Cheng’s words made her feel like she had a skeleton in her closet, even though she knew he didn’t mean anything else by it.
She subconsciously cleared her throat, suppressed the strange emotion in her heart, and said righteously, “We felt like old friends at the first meeting, and fell for each other at the second. She took a fancy to my looks and admired my talent. She fell in love with me at first sight and couldn’t forget me. In this life and this world, it has to be me.”
Mo Cheng: “…I have a feeling you’re playing me. And I have evidence.”
Shen Manyu ignored him and continued, “She was the one who suggested dinner; she proactively invited me.”
Mo Cheng flew into a rage, his voice booming with condemnation: “Shen Manyu, do you have a heart at all! Do you take me for a fool!”
Shen Manyu’s eyebrows shot up. She hummed in thought, then hummed again. “You were the one who asked me to speak, so why don’t you believe me now that I’m telling the truth? Where is the basic trust between human beings?”
Mo Cheng sneered, “Trust? You have zero credibility left with me. You are a big fat liar full of nonsense!”
“Also, did you just wake up? Are you still stuck in a dream plot you can’t get out of? Do you really think I’ll believe your ghost stories!”
Shen Manyu smiled: Excellent, provoked once again.
She found her chat history with Hua Yanqiu, took a screenshot with a click, and sent it to Mo Cheng’s WeChat in one smooth motion. She followed it up with a cat emoji tilting its head back in a cold, proud “hmph.”
Immediately after, she leaned close to the phone and slowly uttered three words to Mo Cheng on the other end: “Check your WeChat.”
Three words. Not one more, not one less. Shen Manyu adopted a high-and-mighty, disdainful posture, waiting for Mo Cheng to slap his own face.
There was another long, suffocating silence on the other end.
Shen Manyu was completely immersed in the joy of her victory in this clash with Mo Cheng.
She leaned against the headboard, casually crossing her legs, and sent a meme to Hua Yanqiu. The image was filled with countless pairs of hands giving frantic “thumbs up” the kind of picture that would give someone with trypophobia an immediate panic attack.
Amidst their usual exchange of “confrontational” memes, this image which leaned toward a kind-hearted compliment seemed particularly jarring.
Hua Yanqiu seemed to realize something and replied instantly: “Are you chatting with someone else? Are you talking about me?”
“Who are you talking to? Which friend?”
“Or do you have another dog on the side?”
“What did you say about me? Did you speak ill of me?”
Shen Manyu gripped her phone and fell into a silence of her own.
“What does it mean when you don’t reply? Is silence a confession? Or do you really have another dog?”
Hua Yanqiu was relentless, her typing speed incredible: “Am I not enough to satisfy you? You can actually be distracted and chat with someone else while we’re in a meme battle?”
“How long have we known each other? Have you lost your sense of freshness with me already? In just a few days, have I already lost my attraction to you?”
Is Hua Yanqiu’s online personality really this different from her real-life persona?
Shen Manyu was completely stunned. Her limbs felt stiff, and she felt a deep sense of suffocation from the inside out.
The call was still connected, but Mo Cheng hadn’t made a sound for a long time.
On this end, Shen Manyu felt a pang of guilt, as if fate were punishing her for tormenting an honest man like Mo Cheng.
And yet, their complex emotions were all revolving around the same person.
That very person, unable to get an answer, issued an angry accusation: “You really don’t like me anymore. When you smiled at me and sweetly called me ‘Sister,’ you were definitely just being perfunctory. None of those things you said to me came from the heart.”
“You fickle turnip! You player! You scumbag!”
Shen Manyu: