Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The real turning point that brought Tang Chen and me together was because of a drama.

After that fluffy romance web series of mine aired, it barely made a ripple. Good scripts are hard to come by these days, and the idea of a script making an actor’s career has already become the kind of luxury you can only hope to stumble across.

But my agent was reliable. One day, she excitedly told me she’d secured an audition opportunity for me for the second female lead in a major IP adaptation. I’d read the original work myself, and the second female lead was a fantastic character. I spent more than half a month preparing for the audition. At one point in the middle of that, Tang Chen contacted me while I was going over the script with my agent. I excitedly shared the news with him, and he played along warmly, gently wishing that everything would go just the way I hoped.

I was still young then, fresh out of school, and full of all kinds of fantasies about the world. After telling Tang Chen about it, for some reason I suddenly asked, half wary and half stupid, “You wouldn’t pull strings behind the scenes and hand me this role, would you?”

Tang Chen laughed softly on the other end of the line. After a moment, he asked in return, “What exactly do you think about all day?”

His voice was low and gentle, as if he were right beside my ear when he said it. My ears quietly turned red, but I still shot back with complete confidence, “Isn’t that what people always say online and in novels? A business tycoon throws around absurd amounts of money just to make a beauty smile, showering her with film and TV resources.”

The moment I said it, I realized something was off. Tang Chen had only ever been kind to me; he’d never shown any other intentions. What I’d said carried a suggestive kind of ambiguity. But there was no undo button in real life. I was so embarrassed my toes practically curled into the floor, but after a pause, Tang Chen let out a slow “Oh,” his laughter bright with amusement, and asked, “This is the first time I’ve heard someone call herself a beauty with such confidence.”

I hung up on him in mortified anger and declared that I would never contact him again.

The audition that day went very well. Maybe it was because I’d spent so long studying the script, but the director was very satisfied with me too. At first I was still wondering whether Tang Chen had put in a word for me behind the scenes, and I even sent him a text to ask, but he didn’t reply. He was probably busy. Before long, though, I found out there really hadn’t been any strings pulled, because right before the contract was supposed to be signed, the production team told me I’d been replaced by a traffic star with investor backing and a very powerful support system.

Well, at least now I knew I had nailed the audition on my own merit.

The night I found out I’d been replaced, my stingy agent did something unprecedented and treated me to dinner. I drank a little. In the entertainment industry, this kind of thing was actually very common. All I could say was that I had bad luck. I understood all the logic, but when my agent awkwardly tried to comfort me, I still couldn’t stop myself from crying.

Because I had prepared so much for that role.

When that IP adaptation started filming, the production bought a trending topic and kept it on Weibo all day. To my surprise, Tang Chen had actually been paying attention to it. He didn’t see me in the opening-day photos, so he called to ask. I pretended to brush it off and said lightly, “Someone better than me got cast in the end.”

Everyone knew that was just an excuse, but thankfully he didn’t press the matter.

For the next week, I had no work, so I just stayed home and zoned out. Then one day my agent called me in high spirits, telling me to check the trending topics. She was practically celebrating that I’d been replaced back then, because no one knew who that IP project had offended. It was like the whole thing had been cursed by bad luck.

The fuse was lit when one of the investors suddenly had the funding chain collapse on a separate business project they were doing with someone else, and then they were reported for tax evasion. That ended up dragging this project into the mess too. Then it came out that the screenwriter was using drugs, the project filing hadn’t been done properly, and the content violated core values, so it needed major revisions and had to go back through the approval process. After that, scandal after scandal about the various leads started surfacing. Finally, just when netizens were gossiping about what kind of doomed production this was, they discovered that the IP itself was plagiarized.

After nearly half a month of fallout, this massively budgeted, money-making production that countless people in the industry had been optimistic about was completely and utterly dead.

The way things had developed felt surreal. I had my suspicions, but I had neither the standing nor the courage to ask directly. It wasn’t until half a month later, when I saw Tang Chen again, that I finally got my answer. I knew he’d been abroad during that time, and had probably just returned after finishing up whatever had kept him busy. As usual, he was waiting outside my door.

I stood in the hallway without moving, just looking at Tang Chen. The cool streetlight by the door spilled down over him, washing across his sharply defined brows and eyes. A restrained, subtle smile lingered at the corner of his lips, and he looked back at me with that same gentle smile as always.

With only a short distance between us, I opened my mouth and asked, “Was it you?”

The question came out of nowhere, but Tang Chen understood instantly. He still wore that refined, courteous smile, and said lightly, “I only terminated a partnership project. If there hadn’t been problems on their end, I wouldn’t have been able to find any fault with it even if I wanted to.”

That was as good as an admission.

So it really had been him.

A question I had agonized over for so long had suddenly been answered. He just stood there quietly, as if waiting to see whether I had anything else to ask. I parted my lips, but no sound came out. After a long while, I heard myself ask, “Why me?”

This man wasn’t some idle rich heir or sleazy real estate boss. He came from an old and powerful family, decisive and efficient, and yet he had still taken the time to pay attention to me, even helping me behind the scenes in so many ways. There were no philanthropists in this world who wanted nothing in return.

And I was already past the age of dreaming.

Especially when it came to him. I’d only had a role stolen from me, yet he had made the entire production vanish. The way he handled it was so clean and decisive that he could hardly be called softhearted.

Getting replaced was practically routine in the entertainment industry. There was no way he had stepped in just because he saw an injustice and felt like drawing his sword.

What did he want?

What was he after?

I looked at the man who made my heart lose control, and asked as calmly and coldly as I could, “Do you want to keep me? Because you think I’m pretty and want to have some fun with me?”

The smile at the corner of Tang Chen’s lips faded bit by bit. Then he stood there, looking at me deeply.

That was the first time Tang Chen had ever gotten angry in front of me. Even angry, this man stayed silent. After looking at me deeply for two long moments, he turned and left.

I looked ahead. Not far away was a black car. I had no idea where the bodyguards had come from; when we’d been talking just now, there clearly hadn’t been a single person around. Someone held an umbrella over him, and someone else in the distance had already opened the car door for him.

Surrounded by that crowd, he strode forward without hesitation. I don’t know why, but I had the faint, inexplicable feeling that this time, he was truly angry. He held immense power in his hands, yet he had patiently and gently played at deep devotion with an unknown little actor like me for so long, only for me to slap him in the face by failing to appreciate it. The fact that he hadn’t lashed out on the spot was probably just a testament to his self-control.

He was that proud, that arrogant. Once he walked away like this, it might be the last time we ever saw each other.

I don’t know where I found the courage, but I suddenly ran after him and called his name. A thin, misty rain had begun to fall soundlessly. He turned back to look at me from beneath a black umbrella in the crowd, his features deep and unreadable. I froze for a moment, then still asked, “Then what was it for?”

He paused, then said, “Because I like you.”