After Being Dumped by the Film Empress, My Acting Skills Soared - Chapter 27

Chapter 27

The cheap cake was gone. It hadn’t looked like much, but it was surprisingly filling. As they were about to part ways, Jiang Yan suddenly called out to Niannian. She held her phone in one hand; with the other, she had pulled the metal dice from her pocket at some point and was spinning them incessantly.

The rhythmic clack-clack of metal friction was exceptionally loud in the silent corridor.

Niannian waited for a long while before Jiang Yan finally asked if she could have her private contact information.

“The WeChat I gave you before was for work,” Jiang Yan said. “I don’t check it often, so you might not be able to reach me.”

“If you need anything, you can tell me directly,” Jiang Yan added, trying to make the gesture seem more logical. “After all, I’m sharing a room with Mo Yu.”

“The director is the boss of the crew, after all.”

Niannian suppressed the corners of her mouth, which were fighting to curl upward. She bit her lip hard, the metallic taste of blood swirling on her tongue. She feigned indifference and said, “Aside from things related to the shoot, I don’t think I’ll have much reason to bother you.”

“After all, over all these years, we’ve only met a few times, and always on a film set.”

Niannian gently pushed away Jiang Yan’s extended phone. “Let’s stick to the work contact. Even though yours is for work, the one I gave you is my private account. If something comes up, you can find me. There’s no need to add another one.”

“We might only work together for a few months, and then not see each other for years,” Niannian said, her lips pursing slightly. She couldn’t help but ‘retaliate’ for the slight she felt she’d suffered back at the late-night snack stall. “Years from now, I’ll likely be a ‘no such person’ in your memory. Rather than sitting awkwardly on each other’s contact lists, it’s better to just let each other fade into the distance.”

“Don’t you think?”

“…” Jiang Yan was rendered speechless by her words. She parted her lips, but in the end, she could only let out a soft “mm” in agreement.

Jiang Yan, who usually navigated the entertainment industry like a fish in water, had never encountered such a setback. She stood there holding her phone, looking somewhat pitiful. Since the words had been said, she couldn’t exactly take them back.

Niannian pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek, turned, and began walking toward her room. But she looked back every three steps.

After several stops and starts, she finally couldn’t resist reminding her: “The one I gave you is my private account.”

With that, before the words even settled, Niannian steadied her resolve and hurried into her room. The only thing left in the hallway was the echoing sound of a closing door.

Left behind, Jiang Yan looked like a clockwork doll that had just been wound up. Her movements had been stiff before, but she quickly reacted, and the metal dice began to dance between her fingers with increasing speed.

It betrayed her current state of delight.

The gloom from earlier in the day was swept away. Jiang Yan bent down to grab her jacket from the floor and hummed a little tune as she headed back to her own room.

In the room, Wen Jing was already fast asleep. The main lights were off, leaving only the dim, ghostly glow of a bedside lamp.

Niannian felt her way along the wall and slowly returned to her bed. As she sat down carefully, she realized the cake had indeed left her quite full.

She picked up her phone. Sure enough, there was a new notification in her WeChat friend requests.

Even though her heart was doing backflips and wagging its tail like a happy puppy, and the smile on her face was about to fly into outer space, Niannian strictly controlled her hand. She switched the screen back to her chat list.

She entered the group chat with Su Chaoyue, sent a string of exclamation marks and happy emojis, then quickly exited and went back to the friend request list.

But she didn’t hit “Accept.”

Niannian tapped on the avatar of Jiang Yan’s private account and clicked her tongue. “Why should I add you back so quickly…”

She’d let her hang for a while first. After all, she had been left hanging for ten years.

Though part of that was due to Niannian’s own “salted fish” passive nature, those ten years of secret crush had been like a shard of ice lodged in her throat. Only Niannian knew the exact flavor of that pain. Now that she finally had the chance to let Jiang Yan feel a tiny bit of it—even if Jiang Yan didn’t mean it that way—Niannian wanted to stall.

If a beautiful dream happens too fast and too intensely, it’s usually a precursor to a nightmare. Niannian didn’t want to wake up, so she sought to artificially extend the duration of this dream. Even if a thousand-foot abyss lay ahead, she was fearless.

Filming proceeded smoothly.

Since joining the crew, Niannian had rarely complained to Gao Hui; she hadn’t even called her. Gao Hui had once described Niannian joining a set as “sending a kid to boarding school.” Once the filming was over, it would be time to pick her up. In the meantime, Niannian worked hard on her own. Gao Hui rarely visited, mostly because Niannian didn’t like it. She didn’t like change or having her daily routine disrupted once she had settled into a rhythm.

However, there was an exception to this dislike. The exception was Jiang Yan.

Niannian accepted anything related to Jiang Yan with complete naturalness.

After letting the request sit in the list all night, Niannian reached under her pillow the moment she woke up the next morning, before her eyes were even fully open. She pulled out her charged phone, skillfully entered her passcode, and accepted the friend request.

In her half-asleep state, she even unerringly found one of her usual “cute” emojis and sent it over.

“I fell asleep the second I hit the bed last night and forgot to accept. Sorry~”

After hitting send, Niannian collapsed back onto the bed like a doll with dead batteries. Her hair covered her face. If it weren’t for the slight rise and fall of her stomach, Wen Jing—who had just come out of the bathroom—would have thought she was dead.

All day, Niannian was in high spirits, looking like she’d just found money on the ground.

Wen Jing, who was being scolded by Mo Yu to the point of a mental breakdown, was baffled. “?”

Wait, how can someone be this happy to be at work? Something is wrong.

Before Wen Jing could find a chance to ask, Niannian was already humming a song, grabbing her water bottle and her worn-out script, and skipping toward Jiang Yan. Because of her character’s costume, she was wearing canvas sneakers, which made a tap-tap-tap sound against the hard concrete.

The echoing sound was exceptionally crisp. So crisp it made Wen Jing’s head ache.

The “Young Miss” Wen remembered the script she had written for herself before joining this crew; this wasn’t in it. Thinking of this made her even more annoyed—what kind of play was Jiang Yan putting on now?

If one had to say Jiang Yan was just acting for the sake of the scene, there was certainly some of that. But as for how much sincerity was mixed in, who knew?

However, being with Niannian did make Jiang Yan feel significantly more comfortable, both physically and mentally. Taking someone along for a meal wasn’t a chore; it was just adding another pair of chopsticks.

Every day, Niannian was so happy she forgot to be homesick. Aside from the pressure from the director during filming, she spent the rest of her time as if she were on a spring outing, much to Wen Jing’s envy.