“Whether you can make a comeback depends entirely on this reality show.”
“Hurry up and talk to the person you have at home.”
As soon as Sister Hong’s voice message finished playing, a file of over 200 megabytes popped up right below in the chat box.
It contained the basic information and general recording process for the upcoming reality show.
In fact, even without opening it, Chu Minghe already knew the details the book described them in thorough detail, not to mention that this was a novel he had analyzed three times over.
He had transmigrated.
In the real world, Chu Minghe had also once shone brilliantly in the entertainment industry, hitting superstardom after landing the third male lead role in a massive, trending IP.
Later on, however, because he refused a certain investor’s “drinking accompaniment” demands, he was flooded with malicious rumors that left him with no way to clear his name, ultimately forcing him to bow out of the industry in obscurity under the weight of astronomical breach-of-contract penalties.
Chu Minghe hadn’t wallowed in despair for long after his retirement. Instead, he returned to his hometown, set up a street stall breakfast shop, and started frying youtiao (fried dough sticks).
Waking up every morning at four to knead dough and heat up the wok of oil was exhausting work, but in his spare time, he enjoyed feeding stray cats. Making three hundred yuan a day while slowly paying off his debts, he felt quite content.
As long as there were no street thugs harassing him, he considered the day’s work successfully completed. Then he would lock the doors, turn off the lights, and immerse himself in novels of all genres and peculiar tastes.
During that period, he was utterly obsessed with a wealthy-family revenge-themed web novel featuring nothing but mutual slaughter and zero romance.
Aside from the fact that the target of revenge shared the exact same name as him, it fit his demanding and picky tastes to a T.
In the book, Chu Minghe hailed from a prestigious, wealthy background, boasting an arrogant and willful personality.
After stirring up a chaotic mess in the entertainment industry, a chance encounter led him to force Zhao Xingjian into signing a ten-year marriage contract.
Yet, over the course of those ten years, countless uncontrollable events unfolded.
The Zhao family thrived and prospered, rising steadily higher, while the Chu family gradually declined and plummeted, leaving Chu Minghe with only one foot barely dangling over the threshold of high society.
Seeing that his good days were coming to an end as the ten-year mark approached, Chu Minghe attempted to squeeze one last drop of benefit out of Zhao Xingjian. Using his life as a threat, he demanded that Zhao Xingjian accompany him on a couple’s reality show in a desperate bid to relaunch his entertainment career.
This was precisely the show, Two’s Company, that Sister Hong had just sent him.
He had originally thought everything was going smoothly; on the final night of recording, he was still basking in the joy of his impending comeback.
Only to be dragged off to get a divorce the very next morning before noon, followed closely by a landslide of malicious smear pieces cobbled together from the bad deeds he had committed back in the day that crushed him mercilessly back into the mud.
With his comeback opportunity shattered and his wealthy-family status stripped away, the Chu Minghe in the novel cracked under the pressure and went insane, getting locked up in a psychiatric hospital by Zhao Xingjian before being written off the plot in haste.
Chu Minghe had combed through this novel three times, discovering something new with every read.
Coincidentally, during that period, the hoodlums who frequently harassed him had been disciplined by an older neighborhood acquaintance and hadn’t shown up for a long time. Enjoying a rare moment of peace and letting down his guard, he planned to pick up the novel and start his fourth read.
Then, the accident crept up quietly.
At the crack of dawn that day, just as he woke up to knead the dough and heat the oil, he failed to notice someone picking the lock on his shop door.
That same intermittent street thug, returning dead drunk and completely out of his mind, barged right into his shop.
When Chu Minghe realized what was happening and put up a fierce resistance, it only provoked the ruffian into a drunken rage. The thug casually overturned a vat of boiling oil nearby.
Before he could even feel the pain spreading across his body, Chu Minghe had already transmigrated into the novel he had read three times.
He rubbed his brow, finding it still utterly absurd whenever he recalled the scene of his transmigration.
When he first transmigrated, he landed in Chu Minghe’s eighteenth year which was also Zhao Xingjian’s twenty-second year. However, the timing node of his arrival was unusually tricky; had he arrived even eight hours earlier, he could have torn up that marriage contract.
Still, the fact that he could transmigrate into this book and be granted a second lease on life was already an overwhelmingly miraculous stroke of luck, so he couldn’t afford to be picky about how smooth the road ahead would be.
The moment he opened his eyes back then, the original owner’s fair-weather friends had shoved him helter-skelter into the wedding car sent by the Zhao family. The look of disgust and hatred Zhao Xingjian shot his way felt like a knife cutting into his flesh, a memory that remained crystal clear to this day.
Since the reality of the marriage alliance couldn’t be altered, Chu Minghe could only alter himself.
Throughout those ten years, unless Zhao Xingjian explicitly spoke up, he obediently stayed put inside the empty, luxurious mega-villa, biding his time and keeping a low profile instead of acting out wildly like the original owner.
It wasn’t until today, when his manager Sister Hong contacted him, that Chu Minghe secretly rubbed the sweat from his palms, thinking to himself: Whether I can survive and live a good life depends entirely on how I handle these next few days.
Yes, the opportunity the original owner coveted was one he coveted, too.
Only, he had to play his cards carefully. He couldn’t resort to desperate threats on his life like the original owner to force Zhao Xingjian into recording the reality show, nor could he spout wild nonsense on the program and squander a golden opportunity handed to him on a silver platter.
Today happened to be Zhao Xingjian’s birthday. The banquet was hosted at the old Zhao family residence, starting at eight in the evening and wrapping up around ten.
In the book, the original owner took advantage of this exact banquet, throwing a public, life-threatening tantrum under the gaze of everyone present to coerce Zhao Xingjian into joining the show.
No matter how foolish he might be, Chu Minghe wouldn’t choose this exact node to stir up trouble; repeating similar circumstances and actions would only magnify Zhao Xingjian’s animosity toward him.
Even so, he had to get the man back first if he wanted any chance at a negotiation.
The intricately carved wall clock showed 10:35 PM, half an hour past the end of the banquet.
According to the description in the original book, Zhao Xingjian had already relocated to a private box at the Chenghuang Entertainment Club, gathering a tight-knit circle of close friends.
Relying on his memories, Chu Minghe changed out of his pajamas around midnight and had his driver take him to the Chenghuang entertainment venue in the southern suburbs.
Though he had spent years frying youtiao in the real world, back when he was peaking in the entertainment industry, he had visited places like this a few times, handling the social dynamics with effortless ease.
The moment he stated his identity, he was escorted straight to the door of Zhao Xingjian’s private room.
His timing was impeccably precise, colliding right as their gathering was breaking up.
Chu Minghe stood by the side of the doorway, watching as several heavily intoxicated men were hauled out and supported away. A dense wave of heavy liquor and strong perfume washed over his face.
The few who emerged afterward were relatively sober, and one of them recognized him instantly.
However, the memory of Chu Minghe creating a massive scene at the birthday banquet years ago and distributing explicit photos was still deeply etched in their minds, leaving them momentarily too stunned to speak.
Chu Minghe offered a smile to someone who looked relatively good-natured.
Cheng Zhou was instantly captivated by that strikingly bright and expressive face.
“You… looking for Xingjian?”
Chu Minghe lowered his gaze. “I happened to be nearby, so I thought I’d drop by and check on him.”
Compared to his attitude back then, his current demeanor carried an almost well-trained, obedient docility.
Dazed, Cheng Zhou pointed tremblingly toward the interior of the private room. “Inside… he drank too much.”
“Thanks.” However, Chu Minghe merely peeked past the doorframe. “Can I help?”
Cheng Zhou was struck as if by a thunderbolt, clearly never expecting Zhao Xingjian to possess such terrifying capabilities, being able to tame a wild mustang like Chu Minghe.
Blindsided by this shock with no room to think otherwise, he led Chu Minghe right into the private room.
“Xingjian hit up two rounds and drank too much. This… let me help you carry him to the car.”
With someone helping out, things were much easier. Chu Minghe scooped up Zhao Xingjian’s phone from the sofa and followed them out of the box.
His car wasn’t parked far away, and before long, the tall and long-legged Zhao Xingjian was dumped into the back seat.
Cheng Zhou watched in astonishment as Chu Minghe bent over to tidy Zhao Xingjian’s clothes, straightened up to thank him, and then drove off into the night.
At 10:00 AM the next morning, when Zhao Xingjian woke up, his eyes were greeted by completely unfamiliar surroundings.
Realizing he had been hauled out of the private room after getting drunk last night, he bolted straight up from the bed.
Who set a trap for him this time?
The last time, right around his birthday, Chu Minghe had trapped him in a ten-year marriage with a stack of explicit photos. Just as he was about to regain his freedom and count down the days, another accident popped up.
With a dark expression, Zhao Xingjian prepared to call Cheng Zhou and get to the bottom of it.
Before the call could even connect, however, the door to his bedroom was pushed open.
Chu Minghe walked in carrying a bowl of stomach-soothing rice porridge, widening his eyes slightly as he looked at the scowling man sitting up in bed his husband.
A momentary blank expression crossed Zhao Xingjian’s features before turning even colder than before.
He felt not a shred of relief upon realizing it wasn’t a stranger who had carted him off.
“You brought me here?”
It was entirely reasonable that Zhao Xingjian didn’t recognize the place; back when they held their wedding ceremony, it indeed took place in this villa. But it was nothing more than a ceremony—they hadn’t even stayed a single night here, and over the past decade, Zhao Xingjian hadn’t set a single foot inside, simply waiting out the expiration date to file for divorce.
Startled by that gaze, Chu Minghe’s hand trembled, causing a bit of the rice porridge to slop over the rim of the bowl.
His current reaction was a far cry from the arrogance and bossiness of the past. Unsure what play Chu Minghe was putting on, Zhao Xingjian remained intensely guarded.
Yet, seeing droplets of porridge slide down toward his fingers, he couldn’t stand the sight of a mess.
Chu Minghe quickly snapped back to reality, stepped over to place the bowl on the bedside table, and pulled out a tissue to wipe his hands clean.
“I happened to be over there last night, saw you… and brought you back along the way.”
Zhao Xingjian tried to glean something from his averted gaze, but found nothing there was only a faint trace of timidity.
The man in bed was shirtless. Hesitating for a moment, Chu Minghe walked over to the wardrobe, pulling out a shirt and a pair of shorts from his own oversized collection.
During this entire process, the gaze fixed on his back never wavered.
“There are only my clothes here. Put these on for now.”
Zhao Xingjian’s eyes swept over them. “You changed me?”
“Yeah, your clothes got dirty.”
As if struck by a thought, Zhao Xingjian’s expression shifted through several shades: “How did they get dirty?”
Chu Minghe blinked back blankly: “You threw up from drinking.”
Zhao Xingjian choked on his breath, then recalled something else: “Where did you sleep last night?”
Chu Minghe answered obediently: “The guest room next door.”
“…”
There was zero issue. Processing this round of questioning, did he end up overthinking it all by himself?
Chu Minghe didn’t even linger in the room, reminding him to drink the porridge before closing the door behind him and heading out.
Standing behind the closed door, Chu Minghe let out a long sigh of relief and headed downstairs for breakfast.
He could sense that although Zhao Xingjian’s complexion looked less than stellar, because he hadn’t pulled any outrageous stunts over the past ten years, coupled with his obedient behavior just now, Zhao Xingjian’s disgust hadn’t reached the point of a falling-out.
…
At least not to the point where he refused to listen to a word he said.
There was a very high possibility that they could go record this reality show.