No one believed Jiang Li and Duan Zhihan would get married, someone even bet they’d livestream a handstand hair wash, another bet they’d wear women’s clothing.
With the appearance of a drama-savvy commenter, the topic quickly shifted to whether Duan Zhihan had hit Jiang Li.
“No evidence at all and you’re saying Teacher Duan hit someone, the state of things these days makes me laugh, wake up, little sister!”
“Does Jiang Li even deserve to have Teacher Duan lift a hand against him? A born-but-not-raised piece of trash[1]an insult meaning someone whose mother bore him but never properly raised or civilized him (yǒu mā shēng méi mā yǎng, 有媽生沒媽養), Idiom/Slang, used to call someone feral or ill-bred, … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3145826_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3145826_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });”
“Watch your language, or they’ll say we’re bullying their ‘big brother’ again. I just want to ask one question, does surfing the internet these days require zero brain cells?”
Not until someone posted the two photos from the hospital, the tall man in the trench coat easily grabbing the boy’s cap, did Duan Zhihan’s fans fall silent. No one believed the two had gone to the hospital because of a fight, and the argument quickly shifted to who had started it.
By the time Reporter Zhou got up to fetch a glass of water and returned to his seat, he found the two fanbases already fighting fiercely, in a scene remarkable enough to have coined new Chinese vocabulary.
“Your education level must be from prenatal classes, calling it ‘kindergarten’ would insult actual kindergartens”
“I don’t know if Baidu can find you, but Sogou definitely can”
“Pick whatever style you like, I’ll go crowdfund you a dad on Pinduoduo, your household register only has one page, how pitiful”
He’d been about to post the photo, but he quietly put his phone back down.
After getting in the car, Jiang Li activated power-saving mode, sitting with his eyes closed to rest, which reduced the drain on his visual sensors.
Suddenly, his phone vibrated twice.
He answered the call with his eyes still shut. His manager Ye Cheng gently reminded him, “Did you forget about this afternoon’s event? If you tell me the address, I can drive over and pick you up.”
The little robot cracked his eyes open slightly, having completely forgotten about any event today, and pulled up his stored memory.
He recalled there was a mall promotional event, hosted by a famous international jewelry brand. He gave an obedient “oh.”
“I’m not going.”
He’d gone to the hospital that morning and just gotten divorced, his battery was about to run out, and he felt exhausted all over.
If he’d been one of those old robots with a liquid crystal display panel, a red exclamation mark would have popped up on it right about now.
Attending the event carried the risk of shutting down in front of everyone, so he flatly rejected Ye Cheng’s suggestion.
The event organizer’s person in charge kept pressing. On the other end of the phone, Ye Cheng was nearly losing his mind waiting at the venue, only to hear a breezy “I’m not going.”
If he had a chance to start over, he would rather manage a hundred nobodies than one Jiang Li, after all, he still wanted to live a couple more years.
“The organizers know you like lemon juice, they specially airlifted all kinds of lemons from Menton, France.” Ye Cheng coaxed, not holding out much hope.
But at the mention of lemons, Jiang Li, who’d just coldly refused, immediately changed his tune: “I’ll be there right away.”
Because lemon juice was his energy source, drinking lemon water gave him energy, and the better the lemon, the more energy it contained.
Ye Cheng waited anxiously at the venue. The person in charge said, displeased, “The event starts in ten minutes and he still hasn’t arrived. If he couldn’t make it, he shouldn’t have signed the contract in the first place.”
Ye Cheng had plenty to complain about but nowhere to say it, was that little tyrant someone he could actually control? All he could do was apologize on behalf of the brand.
Fortunately, right as they were talking, Jiang Li’s car pulled up at the entrance.
Ye Cheng rushed over in a few strides. “My little treasure, you’re finally here! You’ve got the organizers worked up into a state.”
The boy turned and glanced at the person in charge.
The brand’s representative smiled broadly. “No rush, no rush at all. You must be exhausted from the trip. We’ve prepared lemon juice for you, we have Eureka, Villafranca, and Feminello varieties.”
Ye Cheng: …
Ye Cheng stared deeply at the person whose expression had flipped in an instant, why hadn’t they dared say any of that to Jiang Li’s face just now? This little tyrant’s temper had been spoiled by exactly this kind of treatment.
Ever since entering the entertainment industry, Jiang Li had never learned to read the room, which was why everyone firmly believed he was some rich second-generation heir who’d only be pushed into inheriting the family business if he didn’t make it as a star.
In reality, three out of four walls in the Jiang family home were practically falling apart.
There was no helping it.
Fans kept trying to fit Jiang Li into the mold of a male lead from a Jinjiang romance novel, but no one that glamorous existed, underneath it all, he was essentially a cold, indifferent kid.
Jiang Li went to the dressing room for makeup, sipping tart lemon juice while the makeup artist styled him.
The boy’s skin was already extraordinarily pale, his ice-blue hair striking, his gorgeous cat eyes curving into a captivating arc. Once done up, he had an almost soul-stealing beauty.
Especially when the shimmering jewelry rested against his fair collarbone, even the light seemed to favor the boy especially, casting a translucent glow on that small patch of skin.
Everyone’s breath caught involuntarily, even Ye Cheng, who was used to seeing Jiang Li, couldn’t help but marvel at what it meant for heaven to bless someone with good looks. This was exactly it.
Someone had once asked Ye Cheng how he’d managed to raise a top star, and privately he’d honestly answered that with looks like Jiang Li’s, becoming famous was inevitable, not becoming famous would have been the strange outcome.
Sure enough, when Jiang Li walked onto the stage, despite his expressionless face, the media below went wild with their cameras, and the organizers beamed with delight.
Meanwhile, another celebrity who’d been fully “on” the entire event went completely ignored, the smile that had been on their face earlier eventually faded away.
After the event ended, Jiang Li returned to the dressing room to remove his makeup, surrounded by an entourage, the boy still cradling his lemon water in the chair as the person in charge carefully handed him a tissue.
Just then, he heard another celebrity speak up. “Wow, being good-looking really is enough, starring in a terrible movie and still getting famous, showing up whenever he wants and having everyone crowd around him.”
Ye Cheng, who was wiping down his little treasure’s hands, thought: that’s exactly right. There are so few people brave enough to speak the truth these days. He shot an approving glance at Yuan Qing.
Jiang Li recalled who this person was, someone named Yuan Qing who’d filmed with him before.
He remembered so clearly because he’d personally seen this person’s nose collapse on set, which had made him suspect the man might also be a robot.
So the little robot greeted his suspected fellow kind in a friendly manner: “So did you go get another nose job?”
The moment he said this, the entire room nearly burst out laughing, what Yuan Qing had said wasn’t wrong, but he’d had cosmetic surgery himself, so saying something like that was a bit of a double standard.
Everyone couldn’t help but compare the two. Yuan Qing’s face had a slightly plastic quality, decent-looking in a crowd.
But next to Jiang Li’s flawless face, it looked genuinely a bit shabby.
Yuan Qing, feeling everyone’s scrutinizing gazes, blushed hot in waves and ran out of the dressing room, unable to bear it.
The little robot let out a disappointed “eh”, looked like this guy wasn’t one of his kind after all.
Ye Cheng was also somewhat disappointed, one honest, non-flattering person had walked out, but his disappointment quickly turned into anger.
Because not long after they got into the nanny van, Yuan Qing posted a set of tearful, pitiful-looking photos on Weibo.
In the photos, Yuan Qing had a bruise on his right cheek, tears glimmering in his eyes, even without any caption, the comments below were furious.
“Wasn’t he at an event today? What happened to his face? He was fine before he left”
“Isn’t it obvious? There were only two guests at the event, it must’ve been Jiang Li bullying him”
“My heart aches for Brother Qing, silently swallowing his grievances”
Ye Cheng, reading the comments, felt words weren’t enough, he felt the definition of “silently” needed to be redefined.
Truth be told, this move by Yuan Qing was clever, clearly framing Jiang Li for assault, yet he hadn’t said anything explicit, so no lawyer’s letter could be sent.
Even pulling the dressing room security footage wouldn’t help, because Jiang Li’s reputation among the public was so poor that even if they released it, people would call it faked.
Now there were only two paths ahead of them, one, negotiate directly with Yuan Qing, two, try to minimize the buzz as much as possible. Ye Cheng leaned toward the latter.
Except things were spiraling too fast. Netizens were piling on to curse Jiang Li, and one brand after another was signaling intent to terminate contracts.
Jiang Li’s Weibo was flooded with all kinds of abuse, even his assistant, Xiao Su, couldn’t bear to look. Ye Cheng glanced worriedly at Jiang Li sitting in the back.
But the boy just glanced at it once and moved on, his face showing no reaction at all, thinking about when he could go home.
Ye Cheng suddenly felt that Jiang Li’s lack of concern wasn’t a bad thing, at least he wouldn’t be hurt by the comments, and besides, Jiang Li never got tangled up in dating scandals with actresses.
As long as an idol didn’t crash and burn, they were a good idol, though Jiang Li was currently teetering right on the edge of doing exactly that.
To prevent a total collapse, Ye Cheng tried to inoculate him against it in advance: “Let’s see if this can be suppressed by tomorrow. Speaking of, you remember Tang Ning, right? Debuted from the same talent show as you, after debut, instead of focusing on her career, she went and dated someone, and all her fans left. Now she can only do livestream sales.”
“There’s also Bian Jie, same age as you, thought his fame was purely from talent, went and publicly announced a relationship while on the rise. Last month I checked, he’d already become a complete nobody.”
A subtle expression crossed the boy’s face.
Ye Cheng’s heart jumped. “You’re not… dating someone, are you?”
In his view, being falsely accused of assault was already damaging enough, but an idol dating was basically career suicide, unless the other party was someone like Duan Zhihan.
Jiang Li denied it with a blank expression.
“No.” Just got married, that’s all.
Ye Cheng’s raised heart settled back down. The little robot quietly destroyed all evidence of Duan Zhihan’s note.
Meanwhile, Yuan Qing smiled at the overwhelmingly supportive comments online, he’d worried Jiang Li’s fans would control the narrative, but it turned out fans didn’t count for much in front of the general public.
He and Jiang Li had filmed the same drama before, both playing supporting roles—Jiang Li had blown up from that drama, while he was still stuck playing side characters.
Not only that, at the same event, he’d been the ignored one, treated coldly by the brand, while Jiang Li was treated like a treasure.
The exact same starting point, and Jiang Li had ended up worse than him in some ways, so why could people’s fates diverge so much?
Everyone online said Jiang Li, like Duan Zhihan, came from a powerful background, but he knew Jiang Li had no background at all, back when they were filming, Jiang Li hadn’t even been willing to spend five yuan eighty on a boxed lunch. Even his family’s dog probably ate better than he did.
Someone with no backing like that, he wasn’t afraid of at all. He’d originally just acted on a whim, never expecting it to spark this much discussion, enough that even the great manager Ye couldn’t suppress it.
To keep the buzz going, Yuan Qing planned to do a livestream that night, seeing all the supportive comments underneath.
“Support Brother Qing”
“I’ll be right there in the stream on time”
“Going to camp out in the stream room right now”
He put in eye drops and did his makeup carefully before turning on the camera.
But once his livestream officially began, the stream room was dead silent, not a single comment.
Yuan Qing initially assumed he hadn’t turned on comments, but checking the settings, he found comments were on, there just weren’t any viewers. The people who’d promised to show up on time were nowhere to be seen.
Confused, he logged onto Weibo, and the next second, Weibo crashed.
Yuan Qing suddenly realized someone had leaked something, drowning out all his buzz, but of all days for someone to leak news, why did it have to be today?!
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