WAM CH25

“Can you not look at me like you want to say something but can’t?” Shao Si sat in the back seat with his legs crossed. He couldn’t withstand Li Guangzong’s persistent, frequent appraisals through the rearview mirror. “If you keep looking, I’m afraid we’ll get into a car crash today. Red light ahead, slow down.”

Li Guangzong slammed on the brakes. Taking advantage of the red light, he turned his head and asked, “Are you and Best Actor Gu on pretty harmonious terms now?”

Shao Si remained noncommittal: “Are you jealous?”

Li Guangzong choked. “…Jealous my ass!”

“Oh,” Shao Si added. “Since you don’t have an opinion, stop nagging. Be a good boy and focus on driving.”

“…”

Li Guangzong was quiet for a while, but still couldn’t hold it in: “No, I just think…”

“Think what? We aren’t that harmonious. My relationship with him is average, and this time was purely a coincidence.” Shao Si was getting sleepy. He tilted his head to look out the glass window. The flashing red and yellow lights in the night were exceptionally glaring, so he narrowed his eyes and interrupted, “Green light. Can you please keep your eyes on the road?”

Li Guangzong drove very steadily, and Shao Si sat in the car, swaying and on the verge of sleep.

Swaying gently, just as Shao Si was about to be rocked to sleep, he groggily remembered there was still one thing he hadn’t figured out.

Li Guangzong was looking at the GPS while driving when he was caught off guard by a lazy voice from the back: “Little Son, do you know about the TV Drama Awards?”

“The TV Drama Awards?” Li Guangzong unhurriedly turned the steering wheel a half-circle to the left. “Of course I know it. Don’t you attend every year? Though last year you were busy shooting a movie and didn’t seem to go.”

After speaking, he thought about it carefully and asserted: “Right, we didn’t go last year. That guy Qi Ming manages won Best Actor and even came over holding his trophy to show off to us. I wouldn’t remember that wrong. And then this year we won Best Actor, and Qi Ming’s face turned completely black.”

Shao Si rubbed his temples: “No impression.”

“…Do you mean you have no impression of the TV Drama Awards, or no impression of Qi Ming holding the trophy?”

“No impression of either.”

Li Guangzong thought to himself, I guessed that would be the answer.

However, he still really wanted to complain: “You have four or five trophies sitting in your house, and you’re telling me you have no impression?”

Shao Si defended himself without changing his expression: “You said it yourself, I didn’t attend last year. Those are all things from the year before last. It’s completely normal not to remember things from the year before last.”

“Very well,” Li Guangzong said. “As expected of my Daddy.”

The TV Drama Awards from five years ago.

Shao Si kept this question bottled up inside. After arriving home and taking a shower, he lay in bed for a long time unable to sleep.

Thinking it over and over, he ultimately got out of bed in frustration, scratched his hair, turned on the light, and grabbed his phone to search on Baidu.

2012, TV Drama Awards. Shao Si wins Best Newcomer award for ‘Son of the Sea’.

Best Actor Gu invited to participate in the judging! This TV Drama Awards judging panel is star-studded!

…

Son of the Sea.

This was a swimming-themed campus drama the company took on for him right when Shao Si debuted.

Because he had a history of heart disease, when Shao Si played the male lead, he was basically just acting as himself, having a relapse every now and then.

There was a classic brain-dead scene in it. To shape this character, the screenwriter actually managed to come up with a plotline where ‘during the World Men’s 400m Swimming Championship, he swims to the end and suffers a heart attack in the water’.

Shao Si curled his lips and stopped reminiscing. He casually clicked to enlarge the photo and began looking at it carefully.

The Gu Yanzhou from five years ago was a bit different from now.

If the current Gu Yanzhou was a great Best Actor whose edges had been completely smoothed out and who had slowly settled down, then the Gu Yanzhou in this photo still had a somewhat irresistible sharpness.

His style of dress actually wasn’t much different. Gu Yanzhou had always walked at the forefront of the fashion world with a minimalist style.

The only difference was that the Gu Yanzhou in this photo was… too…

Too dazzling.

He hadn’t completely concealed his sharpness yet.

From his demeanor to his mannerisms, everything felt a cut above the rest.

Swiping through the photos one by one, Gu Yanzhou only appeared in a few. The rest were red carpet photos of other invited celebrities.

When Shao Si swiped to the end, he saw himself.

Because his nominated work was Son of the Sea, he wore a dark blue suit that day. He was dressed up by Qi Ming and the makeup artist to look like a Korean young idol, complete with eyeliner and smoky eyeshadow, and a string of metal accessories on his wrist.

This aesthetic from five years ago looked as idiotic as it could possibly be when viewed today.

Especially since Qi Ming was following right beside him.

The scene was out of control that day, with a small riot breaking out. Qi Ming and several assistants rushed out to block a few crazy fans on the outside.

Looking at Qi Ming’s face, a thought faintly surfaced in Shao Si’s mind, and his heart instantly skipped a beat.

…Five years ago. Wasn’t that right when he entered the industry and was forced to play some ‘ice and snow youth’ persona under Qi Ming?

During that time, the few of them from the same cohort suffered deeply from being forced into personas.

To build a ‘magnet for haters’ persona, Chi Zijun listened to his manager and bought water armies to smear himself on Weibo all day long.

Whatever drama he acted in, they would hire people to flame him for terrible acting, claiming he definitely had some shady inside connections to get the role. In the end, he would get flamed even just for drinking water.

At first, it was water armies. Later on, water armies weren’t even needed; netizens consciously and spontaneously rose up to attack him.

They didn’t even need a reason. Just one line saying ‘he’s always wandering around drumming up hype, he doesn’t look like a good person’ was completely enough.

Regarding this, Qi Ming explained it like this: “You think this is bad? Then tell me, what merits do you have for me to promote? How many presentable works do you currently have? In this circle, having a hundred people like you and grovel at your feet, versus having a hundred people hate you and curse you all day, rounding it out, it’s all the same thing. The most important thing is topicality and popularity. Don’t take fans too seriously. Fans can praise you to the heavens, and in the blink of an eye, trample you underfoot over some false rumors. Moreover, you need to understand one thing. The scariest thing isn’t someone hating on you; it’s people being too lazy to even mention you. Commonly known as being a has-been.”

Chi Zijun was genuinely bluffed by this at first.

Later, during a job where they were recording a variety show together, Shao Si was drinking water during a break. Hearing Chi Zijun’s words, he sneered directly, “Listen to him spout nonsense.”

“Ah? Isn’t it like that?”

“You take the blame, and you’re the one listening to whatever ugly things people say,” Shao Si screwed the cap back on after drinking, adding, “What Qi Ming reaps is an artist who shoots up and gains popularity in a short period of time.”

Or it could be said that Qi Ming didn’t think highly of Chi Zijun.

He had his own key targets for cultivation. For someone like Chi Zijun who was just passable, he didn’t have the patience to seriously promote him.

The reason Shao Si knew this was because he had been Qi Ming’s key cultivation target back then.

Qi Ming told him to play the ‘ice and snow youth’. He scoffed at it in his heart, but on the surface, he couldn’t offend him like that. So Shao Si started pushing this persona to death. Exerting too much force, he abruptly turned himself into an icy, arrogant idiot who liked to look down at people through his nostrils.

He originally wanted to give Qi Ming a show of strength: You want me to play a persona? Then I’ll play one for you to see. I’ll play it so hard you’ll kneel down and call me Daddy.

In the end, this Qi Ming wasn’t an ordinary person. He was actually very satisfied with this arrogant and aloof character. Patting Shao Si’s shoulder like a good buddy, he said, “I really didn’t misjudge you. You have a lot of potential. Given time, I will definitely take you to the peak of the entertainment industry.”

Shao Si: It’s one thing for you alone to be mentally challenged, but do you think the whole world is mentally challenged too?

The more Shao Si thought about it, the less he could sit still. What kind of impression had he left on Gu Yanzhou exactly?

He exited the browser, opened WeChat, and after hesitating repeatedly, still sent a message to Gu Yanzhou.

Your Son Shao: Let me just ask you. Five years ago when you saw me… was I looking at you through my nostrils?

After sending it, Shao Si comforted himself that there couldn’t possibly be such a coincidence in the world.

To be bumped into by him right while he was acting like an idiot.

Impossible.

Yeah, highly unlikely.

However, self-comfort was clearly useless.

Five minutes later, Gu Yanzhou replied with a message:

[Gu Yanzhou]: You did far more than just look at people through your nostrils.

[Your Son Shao]: What else… did I do?

Gu Yanzhou replied with a cold smiley emoji.

Shao Si decisively threw his phone away. He could roughly guess that things were pretty much exactly as he feared.

As for Gu Sheng, there had always been rumors that Gu Yanzhou occasionally brought a young girl with him, but the media had never managed to catch the child’s face. During the awards ceremony that day, Gu Sheng was probably there too.

He had only stayed under Qi Ming for less than half a year. That half-year was truly his dark history, and it was also his first ‘dark secret’ mission after entering the entertainment circle.

The target of the dark secret mission at that time was Qi Ming.

However, that mission was not successful. If he went and exposed him, it meant the fact that Chi Zijun was subjected to the unspoken rules would be thoroughly exposed to the public. Regardless of whether he was innocent or not, if this basin of dirty water was dumped on him, Chi Zijun would never be able to wash himself clean.

Shao Si stopped thinking about these things that happened five years ago. Not long after his head touched the pillow, he fell into a deep sleep.

However, even though it was late at night, some workers hadn’t rested yet. Day and night, they kept their eyes fixed on this circle.

Pairs of hands continuously typed on keyboards, hammering out documents one after another, compiling various pieces of information.

Looking up, one would see their exhausted, red and swollen, or crazed eyes.

Well-known paparazzo Wang So-and-so posted a thought-provoking Weibo at 2:00 AM in the middle of the night: See you tomorrow morning [/Ring] [/Ring].

Netizen A: What scoop is about to be dropped again?

Netizen B: These two rings, I think I might have guessed something…

As a result, early the next morning, just as netizens expected, ‘Wang So-and-so’ published a headline Weibo complete with pictures and text at five o’clock.

It pushed the two names, Shao Si and Gu Yanzhou, to the crest of the storm once again.

“Two Best Actors have a late-night rendezvous, entangled and pulling at each other. Today, Wang So-and-so will take you into the real world of this secretly married couple.”

After posting this content, Wang So-and-so swiftly left a comment under his own Weibo: Those who guessed whether it was underwear or a tattoo last time, today belongs to the victory of the tattoo faction [/yeah].

Volume 2: Yu Tang Chun