Chacha watched Rong Guang’s expression from the side for a while.
After enjoying the show long enough, she thought for a moment and said seriously, “Sister Guangguang, do you need me to give you a live demonstration? Look, this is what you were like—”
Rong Guang turned around dazedly, her gaze vacant as she stared at Chacha.
In just a moment, Chacha managed to well up with tears. Sobbing and whimpering, she hugged the phone and puckered her lips to kiss it.
The video call actually connected.
The corner of Rong Guang’s mouth twitched twice.
Ye Zi’s chirpy voice came from the other end. “Chacha! Chacha, what’s wrong, Chacha—”
“Wuwuwu, my baby…” Chacha cried, starting to try and kiss the phone.
Ye Zi was stunned for two seconds, then started crying along with her. As she cried, she also started shouting, “Chacha, my baby, wuwu…”
“That’s enough.” Rong Guang expressionlessly turned off the phone screen and said through gritted teeth, “Chacha, here’s five yuan. Go back to your room and do your homework—don’t even think about using this method to avoid getting your papers signed by a parent! If you fail your final exams again, I’m hiring you a tutor!”
Chacha instantly shut up, wiped away her tears, and said to Ye Zi on the screen, “Goodbye, baby.”
“Goodbye, call me again if you need me!” Ye Zi waved solemnly, then wiped her nose on a nearby tablecloth.
Clutching the brand-new five-yuan bill, Chacha returned to her room. Rong Guang was left alone in the living room, holding her phone and lost in thought.
When Chu Feiliang said she felt bad teasing her any further, could she… have been referring to this?
If it was really because of this video that Chu Feiliang wanted to tease her, then… what kind of teasing would it be?
Rong Guang’s face turned a little red, and she subconsciously bit her lip.
She thought back to her past life, when she and Chu Feiliang were filming that movie with a same-sex theme. The intimate touches, Chu Feiliang’s painstaking guidance, and her indulgence toward her… just thinking about it made it a little hard to breathe.
That tenderness and affection, so intense it felt like being crushed and kneaded into her very bones, living together day and night, sharing the same room—it was a past that Rong Guang couldn’t help but recall, as if addicted.
However, the six short video call records were a stark reminder of reality—right now, her relationship with Chu Feiliang was only slightly less distant than that of strangers.
It was probably something like a senior’s appreciation for a junior… and this junior had just done something very disrespectful to her senior. Rong Guang grew anxious. She opened the chat window, typing and deleting countless times, but she had no idea what message to send.
In the end, she resorted to something Chacha often did, something she had once scorned—she stuck her head in the refrigerator, trying to use physical cooling to calm herself down quickly.
It turned out this method was indeed very effective.
Rong Guang’s head had been inside for only a few seconds before she was driven out by the smell, her face contorted. Pinching her nose, she yelled, “Chacha—finish all the durian Ye Zi gave you! Don’t leave it in the crisper drawer! Everything is ruined!”
Despite the storm raging in her heart, Rong Guang had to maintain a calm exterior.
When she met Chu Feiliang earlier, her words had implied that she knew Rong Guang was drunk and had accidentally started the video call, which was why she felt like teasing her and having a little fun.
Rong Guang took deep breaths in the car, trying to mentally prepare herself.
The car was very bumpy—the company’s van was reserved for NO.1, and the now-abandoned Rong Guang naturally didn’t have such good treatment. She was using Tang Yuan’s beat-up old car, which was over eight years old.
This time, Rong Guang had planned to grab a little blue bike with Chacha by the roadside. The location was too remote, and there wouldn’t be any return fares, so taxis would lose money and couldn’t be found. They had to settle for the next best thing.
But when they set the destination, the two discovered that the area around the film set was outside the service zone, and the bikes couldn’t be parked there at all.
The two then planned to just pedal their own bicycles over, but Tang Yuan, upon hearing the news, desperately stopped them. After all, she was a major supporting character in a big-budget drama. If you stretched it, you could even call her a minor lead. Arriving on a bicycle with luggage tied to it would be a bit too pathetic.
“Weren’t you supposed to go to the company for a meeting this morning?” The bumpy ride made it impossible for Rong Guang to think, so she could only chat with Tang Yuan.
Tang Yuan nodded, looking straight ahead. “I was. I told them you don’t have any work right now, that you’re pitifully idle, and you finally got an audition opportunity, but the place is too remote to get to… so they let me come.”
Rong Guang raised an eyebrow. “Playing the pity card worked? Was it that easy?”
Tang Yuan didn’t hide it from her and told the truth. “The main topic of this meeting was the bonuses for the successful planning of the recent NO.1 event. It involves the bonuses of many people in the company.”
And as Rong Guang’s primary manager now, if Tang Yuan were to get a bonus from the NO.1 concert, the amount wouldn’t be small—at least six figures to start.
Rong Guang shook her head. “Only caring about petty, immediate gains.”
“And plenty of people are breaking their heads over these petty gains.” Tang Yuan sounded a bit wistful. “When I went to the garage to get the car, I even saw two newly signed young actors from the company get into a fight over a few thousand yuan in pay. Their manager couldn’t pull them apart and ended up joining the brawl. It was quite a spectacle.”
Rong Guang: “…”
Compared to these people, what did her situation even count for!
Whether you stick your neck out or pull it back, you’ll face the knife eventually. What’s the point of dawdling!
With a heart full of resolve, Rong Guang led Tang Yuan and Chacha forward, marching with high spirits…
…only to be stopped outside the film base.
When stopped by a guard, it wasn’t proper for the artist to negotiate personally, so Tang Yuan got out of the car to try and talk to him.
Before long, however, Tang Yuan returned with an angry expression, her lips pressed tightly together. She was clearly furious.
“What’s wrong?” Rong Guang averted her gaze and glanced over.
The area by the gate wasn’t actually large, but the surroundings were so open, and mixed with the roaring sounds of set construction both inside and outside the base, it was hard to hear what they were saying.
“He said we’re unfamiliar faces and won’t let us in.” Tang Yuan was fuming.
Rong Guang had broken precedent this time by landing a major role through a direct audition, completely bypassing the layer-by-layer screening by the production services department. In other words, there was currently no one in the crew specifically assigned to handle her.
The production services department handled everything, but they answered to the director above and managed the extras below. Rong Guang was stuck in the middle, neither here nor there. She was just late, so who would bother with her?
She was called a major supporting character, but the person beside the female lead is a major supporting character, and the person beside the male lead is also a major supporting character.
There were plenty of people playing major supporting roles.
Rong Guang watched as car after car was allowed to pass. She paused, then suddenly said, “Tang Yuan, you can drive away now.”
“What’s wrong?” Tang Yuan frowned. She was trying to figure out who to contact to get a pass or find someone who could bring them in.
If someone was missing on the first day’s roll call, Rong Guang wouldn’t be held responsible, of course, but it would leave a terrible impression.
There wasn’t much time left before the script reading.
“I just thought of something.” A cold glint appeared in Rong Guang’s expression. She narrowed her eyes, looking out at the film base, and muttered to herself with a slight sigh, “It’s been too long since I’ve encountered this kind of situation; I’ve gotten rusty. I actually forgot about this industry’s habit of fawning over the powerful and trampling on the weak.”
