After Being Dumped by the Film Empress, My Acting Skills Soared - Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Jiang Yan had a premonition that very night: Shao Niannian was probably angry again.

Getting upset, ignoring people, staying silent—where did she inherit these bad habits from?

Perhaps she hadn’t kept her thoughts reined in, because she accidentally asked the question out loud. Mo Yu, who was not far from her, gave a soft “tsk.” “Then you can just ignore her. You two aren’t exactly in a ‘lifelong bond’ kind of relationship; is it really necessary to talk every single day?”

“We are dinner partners,” Jiang Yan said earnestly.

“The crew’s catering has improved; there’s no reason Niannian has to go out to eat anymore.” Mo Yu’s face was written with the expression: Using that excuse makes you look as stupid as asking a three-year-old if they’re in the first grade.

Mo Yu sighed, giving Jiang Yan a graceful way out. “I’ll give you a chance to rephrase that.”

The implication was: Tell the truth, and I might be kind enough to help you brainstorm a rescue plan.

Jiang Yan was silent for a moment before saying, “What other relationship could there be?”

Mo Yu let out a cold snort and threw a pillow at her, hitting Jiang Yan squarely in the face. Pointing a finger at her in frustration, she said, “When will that mouth of yours ever say something honest for people to hear?”

“On the day I weep at your grave, I might consider it,” Jiang Yan suggested sincerely.

Mo Yu pressed her hands together, praying with more piety than ever before. “This humble believer is willing to maintain a balanced diet for life if you just ensure Shao Niannian never speaks to you again. Otherwise, another poor, innocent young girl is going to fall into the abyss.”

“Get out!” Jiang Yan was brief, not bothering to argue further.

Mo Yu didn’t want to stay in the room anyway; there was no benefit to being a punching bag. She’d rather spend the time discussing the final plot points and how to wrap up the shoot with the screenwriter. After all, Jiang Yan seemed to fall into a different “romantic crisis” every year. Mo Yu only wanted to experience that kind of trouble once in her life; any more would be too much.

The crew didn’t work that day. Jiang Yan waited in her room until seven in the evening, but she never received a WeChat message from Niannian about going out for dinner.

Jiang Yan opened the chat window, exited, waited a few seconds, and entered again. Still no new messages.

“…”

The feeling was more than a little frustrating. But knowing she was in the wrong made Jiang Yan feel a bit guilty. Since she couldn’t bring herself to approach Niannian directly, she tried a flanking maneuver: contacting Wen Jing, who shared a room with her.

Before sending the message, Jiang Yan realized a problem: there were only two people in that room, and she currently had a conflict with both of them. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if the room itself was cursed or if she truly was terrible at human relations.

The reply from Wen Jing took over twenty minutes to arrive.

Wen Jing: “Can’t you ask her yourself? Why bother me with this?”

Wen Jing: “Oh, weren’t you quite sharp-tongued with me yesterday? What are you acting like now? Do you actually care?”

Wen Jing seemed to be retaliating for being left helpless by Jiang Yan the day before, emboldened by the fact that they were separated by screens rather than face-to-face pressure.

After being bombarded by several long paragraphs of text, Jiang Yan asked back: “You might not love me much, but you certainly hate me plenty. I wonder if a certain ‘little mute’ also hates you to the bone.”

Wen Jing: “…”

The previously hyper-verbal Wen Jing suddenly went silent like a damp firework. After a long pause, she replied: “I don’t know how her mood is. Anyway, she didn’t eat dinner.”

“Mm.” Jiang Yan hesitated for a moment before sending a “thank you” to Wen Jing, though it wasn’t particularly sincere.

Very few people moved through the corridor. When the crew wasn’t working, everyone stayed in their rooms; the small county lacked entertainment beyond a few budget milk tea chains. Consequently, the sound of doors opening and closing echoed loudly.

Jiang Yan lay on her bed with her hair down, chatting half-heartedly with her manager while her attention was fixed on the hallway. Every time there was a sound outside, she stopped typing to judge its location. Once she determined it wasn’t Niannian’s door, she sighed and checked the time: 8:00 PM.

Still hasn’t asked me for dinner. It seems my only dinner partner is truly angry.

After tossing and turning, Jiang Yan finally climbed out of bed, threw on a jacket, and walked to Niannian’s room. She knocked. The sound of a variety show playing inside vanished instantly. The room became as quiet as if it were uninhabited.

Jiang Yan looked down. The light spilling from the gap under the door made the person pretending to be out have nowhere to hide.

She knocked again. “Niannian, aren’t you hungry?”

A voice came from inside. “I’m not hungry. I’m too tired and don’t want to go for a walk. Let’s talk tomorrow; I’m going to sleep.”

When Shao Niannian didn’t want to deal with someone, she would directly dismantle every “bridge” the other person tried to build, leaving nothing. Left with no way forward, Jiang Yan scratched her head. Her beautiful black hair twisted around her fingers before sliding away.

After a long while, Jiang Yan simply said, “Okay.”

Once the footsteps faded, Niannian felt an inexplicable wave of sadness. Gu Yizhi’s manic laughter came through her headphones as a funny foreign reality show played on her laptop. A happy scene accentuates a sad heart; the more she thought, the more miserable she felt.

Sorrow welled up, and tears began to flow uncontrollably. She was furious, but she wasn’t entirely sure what she was angry about, so she just huddled under the covers, consumed by internal conflict.

“What’s wrong? Why are you suddenly crying?” Gu Yizhi, keenly catching the sob, paused the shared video room and comforted her patiently. “Tell me what’s up. Maybe I’m the only one who can solve it for you. Su Chaoyue is an emotional wreck too; otherwise, she wouldn’t be like you, miserably pining for someone for years.”

Gu Yizhi’s careless words struck a nerve. The quiet sobbing turned into a full-on wail.

Gu Yizhi: “?” I didn’t say anything untrue, how did I puncture your fragile soul?

In their three-person group, Su Chaoyue understood Niannian best, Niannian could handle Gu Yizhi, and Gu Yizhi—while seemingly distant—was the key figure who brought them together. As a “Young Miss” who had been pursued by admirers since childhood, she couldn’t understand the behavior of “hanging oneself from a single tree” like Su and Shao did.

Gu Yizhi had often wondered: “How do you manage to like one person year after year? My relationships have a three-month shelf life. No promises, no talk of the future, no breaking boundaries. I know myself too well; the word ‘novelty’ is the biggest component of my life until I get bored of it.”

In plain terms: dating is like clothes; she wanted a new outfit every day. She liked every piece of clothing, but not that much; when the mall got new stock, she went shopping.

“I can understand dating someone. But this thing you and Su Chaoyue have—treating feelings like nameless seeds, this spirit of selfless secret pining—which book taught you that? Which teacher? It’s ridiculous.”

Niannian cried while grabbing tissues to wipe her face, complaining, “You’ve never had a crush, you don’t understand.”

Gu Yizhi said sincerely, “True, I don’t. Because everyone else crushes on me.”

Niannian continued, “I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s like you suddenly see something and are drawn to it. By the time you come to, you’re hopelessly immersed. Time doesn’t erase a crush; it only makes it grow. That love is like a tree taking root—deeper and more vigorous every year. If I really ripped it out by the roots, wouldn’t my heart be empty?”

Gu Yizhi nodded halfway before she couldn’t help but roast her: “Can I please invest money to have your manager stop giving you these flowery romance scripts? Can we be a bit more materialistic? A heart is a heart; you won’t get ’empty heart disease’ just because you stop loving someone.”

“If you really like her, confess! Crushing on her day and night—do you think the longer you wait, the more likely it becomes a mutual ‘thousand-year wait’ like the Moon and the Goddess?” Gu Yizhi said, exasperated. “The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl were a legal couple who met once a year. You’re like the White Snake waiting for her lover’s reincarnation for a thousand years—and it’s not even legal.”

Niannian was both annoyed and amused. She patted the duvet. “I’m being serious with you. You’re good at dating, so I want your opinion.”

Gu Yizhi gave a “tsk.” “Then tell me why you suddenly started crying. Didn’t she just come to find you for dinner? Why didn’t you go? A while ago, you were happily telling the group chat that you were dinner partners and went out every night.”

The intervening events were too convoluted to explain easily, but Niannian felt that if she didn’t provide the full context, any advice would be useless. While crying, she gave an objective account of everything.

Though, to a third party like Gu Yizhi, it wasn’t very objective—Niannian automatically rationalized Jiang Yan’s actions as she spoke. Gu Yizhi didn’t even have to interject.

Her only thought was: This would be explosive on a relationship forum. The title alone would be ‘Top Thread of the Year,’ you wouldn’t even need to read the content.

But Gu Yizhi listened seriously. When Niannian finished, she asked: “Since you’ve guessed that she prefers to make her own decisions and keep control in her hands, why are you angry? If you really want a long-term relationship with her, you should tell her face-to-face. If you realize you don’t love her that much, walking away is the fastest solution. There’s no need to be heartbroken over this.”

Niannian wiped her face with a wet wipe and hummed. “I don’t ‘not like’ her. I just feel like she’s different from what I imagined.”

“Exactly—the ‘Jiang Yan’ you imagined,” Gu Yizhi sighed. “How can you be sure you aren’t just projecting your own adolescent innocence and your desire for a partner onto her, creating a deep love? Is it possible you don’t love Jiang Yan, but the person you fantasized about?”

Niannian immediately rejected the possibility. “No, I just like her. I like her as a person!” She said awkwardly, “I’m a big fan in her second official fan group! I know her very well! My love isn’t a projection…” She weighed her words. “It’s just that after close contact, the things I like are all there. But there are moments where I feel like she isn’t Jiang Yan. She’s… many people.”

Niannian explained: “I am very close to her, but there’s always a layer of gauze, a layer of mist. It’s hard to put into words. The kindness she shows me is sometimes light, sometimes heavy. Sometimes I see the shadows of many people through her. But before I can ponder it, my brain tells me: she is Jiang Yan.”

“Does she like you?” Gu Yizhi, who had no talent for literary analysis, scratched her head. She felt this flowery emotional situation required Su Chaoyue as a translator. As someone whose feelings changed faster than the weather, she truly couldn’t empathize.

“I don’t know…” Niannian had stopped crying, but her voice was low. Especially regarding that question, she had no confidence at all.

“You don’t know?” Gu Yizhi laughed in frustration. “You don’t know, yet you’re sitting here analyzing for half a day? Regarding the Xixi situation: from your perspective, she wasn’t considerate enough and didn’t notify you, causing you fear. But from another perspective, to make the plan more feasible, the fewer people who knew, the better. And you? You stutter when facing a serious situation and can’t lie to save your life. If she told you and the police came to ask questions, wouldn’t you be the first to crack? Besides, she didn’t just keep it from you; according to you, no one knew except the adoptive parents. That means she wasn’t targeting you with the secret. But it also doesn’t prove you aren’t in her heart.”

Gu Yizhi encouraged Niannian to go find out one thing first: how Jiang Yan actually felt about her. “Go on! I’ll wait for the good news!”

Niannian was in her pajamas, her hair was a mess, and her eyes were red from crying. Her fair skin flushed easily, and her face now looked as if she were drunk.

The “da-da-da” of her slippers rang loudly in the corridor.

Jiang Yan, who was lying in bed in a state of persistent malaise, sat up as if an emergency switch had been flipped. She listened to the movement in the hallway like a predator waiting in the grass for the right moment.

The prey was running toward her clumsily.

Jiang Yan instinctively gripped her phone, her breathing slowing down. Only when the “da-da-da” stopped right in front of her door did she dare to confirm it. Her heart was in her throat; she almost forgot how to swallow.

Is she hungry? Jiang Yan wondered. Or is she coming for revenge?