WAM CH12

If there was anything about the drama The Demon Prince’s Runaway Sweetheart that left Shao Si relatively satisfied, it was probably just one thing.

And that was seeing Lu Jiahui at the opening ceremony.

After Yang Yinyin’s death, Lu Jiahui began to heavily cultivate another artist under his management, Liu Qi. He was also the one who fought for the female lead role for Liu Qi this time.

Shao Si watched them from a distance, observing how Lu Jiahui busied himself around Liu Qi, both fetching her script and carrying her things.

Liu Qi was a newcomer and hadn’t been a trainee at the company for very long. Suddenly encountering such a great opportunity, one could see she was entirely in a state of floating on air. Even when the makeup artist was doing her makeup, she couldn’t help but curve her lips into a smile, her brows and eyes filled with smugness.

[System, will Liu Qi become the second Yang Yinyin?]

When Shao Si asked this, he was sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the production team to set up the opening ceremony venue.

The system was silent for a long moment.

[Yes.]

The sun climbed higher, and the temperature slowly rose, yet Shao Si felt a bit cold. [There’s a line in ‘Anti-Narcotics’: Once a person breaks their own bottom line, there is no turning back.]

The profits of drug trafficking were simply too high. Furthermore, once one waded into these muddy waters, they could never wash themselves clean in this lifetime.

[I’m not quite used to you being this serious all of a sudden,] the system said. [However, I think it’s necessary for you to use this opportunity to cultivate some feelings with Lu Jiahui.]

[Cultivate what? Pretend to do drugs and establish a friendship between a drug dealer and a drug buddy with him?]

[…That’s also, not impossible?]

“Alright, alright, we can go offer incense now.” Li Guangzong and the assistant director had chatted about something, hiding in a corner to smoke together. When he returned, the smell of smoke drifted straight into Shao Si’s nose. “After offering the incense, we’ll take a group photo.”

This was an unwritten rule in the circle. Before every drama started shooting, everyone had to gather around and offer a few sticks of incense, hoping everything would go smoothly. Honestly, it was quite superstitious.

Shao Si noticed that while offering the incense, Lu Jiahui’s hand had continuously rested on Liu Qi’s waist.

All morning, Shao Si accompanied this Liu Qi in a series of NGs (No Good takes). A single scene was shot over and over, dragging out straight until noon.

Those lines were already disgusting to begin with, and now they had to be repeated incessantly.

Shao Si originally intended to build a good relationship with Liu Qi, ideally to coax some information out of her. But now, just looking at this woman made him want to vomit.

The director’s expression wasn’t very good either. If it weren’t for the sake of the investors’ face, he would have loved to yell out loud in front of everyone: Do you even know how to act?! It’s okay if your acting is a little poor, but this Liu Qi has absolutely no acting skills to speak of! Especially when acting opposite Shao Si, her terrible acting was highlighted even more.

Yet, when the words reached his lips, all he could say was: “Let’s take a break for a bit. Liu Qi, go adjust your state of mind. We will continue in twenty minutes.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lu Jiahui put on a smiling face, walked over, and stuffed a cigarette into the director’s hand. “I’ll have a good talk with her in a bit. Please give her another chance.”

When Shao Si stepped off the set and walked over, Lu Jiahui also stuffed a cigarette into his hand. Before he even had time to refuse, the other party quickly used a lighter to light it for him.

Shao Si looked up to see Lu Jiahui’s friendly smile, looking somewhat simple and honest: “I’ve held up a lot of your time. I hope you can guide Qiqi a bit more later. We all started out as newcomers and came up the same way…”

These words were spoken beautifully, even playing the emotional card.

Shao Si waved his hand, rejecting the cigarette: “Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

Li Guangzong stepped forward to smooth things over: “Brother Hui, Xiao Si’s throat hasn’t been very good, so he can’t smoke. If he smokes anymore, he’ll lose his voice.”

“Is that so… It’s my fault, look at me,” Lu Jiahui’s hand paused, and he smoothly stuffed the cigarette into his own mouth instead. Tapping his head, he said, “I was inconsiderate. Sorry, sorry.”

It was only when Lu Jiahui smoked that his face revealed expressions different from his usual demeanor. Inhaling a lungful of smoke, he couldn’t help but squint those small eyes, his brow tinted with the air of a street-smart thug.

Shao Si only took one glance before excusing himself to rest in the nanny van.

Shao Si hadn’t even started criticizing Liu Qi yet, but Li Guangzong was already complaining non-stop: “What does he mean ‘we all started out as newcomers’? Is he sick in the head… Who’s ‘all’ with him? As an actor, she doesn’t even have the most basic foundation. Newcomers all learn from small roles, okay? You can’t become fat with one bite. If she had talent, that would be one thing, but looking at her, she just isn’t actor material.”

“She doesn’t even know how to find the camera angle, she messes up her blocking, and the fixed-point camera can’t even catch her… I’m not talking about this anymore, I’m so pissed.” Li Guangzong turned his head, saw Shao Si fiddling with his phone, and leaned closer: “Playing your Honor of Kings again?”

“Kings my foot.” Shao Si casually swiped a lollipop from Li Guangzong’s jacket pocket. This candy was Li Guangzong’s self-proclaimed sharp weapon to quit smoking, though he hadn’t been seen eating one in months.

He hooked the candy between two fingers, held it up, and looked at it a couple of times. “This candy isn’t expired, is it? What flavor is it?”

Li Guangzong took a look. How could he remember such a thing? “I bought it less than half a year ago, how could it be expired… It’s pink, probably strawberry?”

“Strawberry, huh.” Shao Si repeated, then said expressionlessly, “You’re so flirty.”

Li Guangzong jumped up in anger and tried to hit him: “If you think it’s flirty, then have the guts not to eat it! So much nonsense!”

“Stop messing around,” Shao Si lightly kicked him away. “I’m looking at fan comments.”

Upon hearing this, Li Guangzong reigned in his anger and leaned over to look again. He discovered that his Shao Si was actually scrolling through Weibo!

This was simply a miracle in his career as a manager!

“What comments?” Li Guangzong was in a great mood. “You’ve finally learned to interact with your fans. Dad, Little Son is very gratified… Let Little Son have a look.”

Shao Si quickly unwrapped the candy and generously showed him the screen.

On it was a single line of text prominently displayed:

“Let me say something: stop calling me ‘Young Master’, ‘Young Master’. Today I recited idiotic lines all morning. Eight out of ten sentences were ‘This Young Master’, ‘This Young Master’. It makes me want to vomit.”

Li Guangzong: “…” He didn’t know what to say. Looking on the bright side, did this count as generating hype and promoting the new drama?

After holding it in for a long time, he still couldn’t help but nag: “Saying ‘idiotic lines’ is a bit too much, don’t you think? Also, your word choice… could we not be so completely unrestrained?”

Shao Si completely ignored him.

However, after scrolling through the comments for ten minutes, it was a unified sea of people begging for a selfie.

— Just post a selfie and all is forgiven, ahhhhh!

— As long as you post a selfie, I’ll even call you Dad! I’ll call you whatever you want!

Shao Si gave a like to the comment offering to call him ‘Dad’.

Then Li Guangzong watched dumbfounded as he actually opened his camera and started taking a selfie.

Shao Si took selfies incredibly casually. With a quick click, he just snapped whatever. He was even too lazy to strike a pose, and he was about to post it right after.

Li Guangzong hurriedly stopped him: “Let me see, let me take a look.”

He was originally worried that Shao Si’s photo would look bad, but upon seeing the selfie on the screen that took no more than three seconds to take, he had nothing left to say. He was even a little jealous—why did highly attractive people look so good even when they just took completely random, garbage photos!

In the photo, a soft sweater coat was draped over Shao Si’s shoulders. Underneath, he wore the clothes prepared by the production team—a high school uniform with extremely exquisite tailoring. He had a lollipop in his mouth, and his eyes looked like an arrogant lord’s.

Not long after the photo was posted, Li Guangzong’s sharp eyes caught something flashing across the notification bar, but Shao Si quickly pulled the phone back.

“Hey, no, I think I just saw the three words ‘Gu Yanzhou’,” Li Guangzong chattered on. “Your WeChat?”

Shao Si leaned back, opened WeChat, and lied without changing his expression: “You saw wrong.”

Li Guangzong touched his nose, turned back around, and continued working on the report he had to submit to the company this week.

Meanwhile, Shao Si was staring blankly at the two words and one punctuation mark Gu Yanzhou had replied with on the screen.

[Gu Yanzhou]: Something the matter?

Shao Si thought for a moment and decided to enter the conversation from a different angle.

[Your Son Shao]: Senior Brother Gu, I’m filming ‘The Demon Prince’s Runaway Sweetheart’.[Your Son Shao]: That brain-dead drama.

This time, Gu Yanzhou replied very quickly. He was probably resting as well.

[Gu Yanzhou]: That’s pretty good.

Shao Si curled his lip in disgust. Good my ass.

[Your Son Shao]: I saw Lu Jiahui.[Your Son Shao]: He’s managing a new artist now, named Liu Qi.

After sending this, Shao Si waited and waited, but no reply came.

It couldn’t be; he had intentionally mentioned Lu Jiahui.

No matter how you looked at it, Lu Jiahui was currently the common bridge between the two of them.

Oh wait, no, there was also Officer Wang.

“What’s wrong?” Chen Yang returned from fetching something on set, only to see Gu Yanzhou holding his phone, chatting with someone unknown. He watched him type out a line of text, only to delete the whole thing.

After a moment, Gu Yanzhou looked up and asked him, “Where’s that text message you sent Shao Si previously? Did you delete it?”

Chen Yang couldn’t recall what he was talking about for a second: “What text message?”

“Ah, that text message.” He finally remembered after asking. It was the one from the day Director Wang introduced the two. Gu Yanzhou had given the kid a business card, and Shao Si had been very sensible, sending a greeting text. Though for some reason, his Yanzhou had thrown the phone to him to reply. “I didn’t delete that message. Let me look for it.”

Speaking of which, Chen Yang truly had sighed with emotion back then about how sensible Shao Si was. If he knew that text message was actually sent by Li Guangzong on his behalf, who knows what he would think.

Thus, Gu Yanzhou searched a couple of times and finally found the unfamiliar number buried among various spam messages.

He stepped out of the nanny van and gave Chen Yang a heads-up: “I’m going to make a phone call, I’ll be right back.”

As a result, rather than a WeChat reply, Shao Si ended up waiting for a phone call.