After Being Dumped by the Film Empress, My Acting Skills Soared - Chapter 77

Chapter 77

Shao Niannian sat in her seat, not needing to think about what to eat at all, because Jiang Yan and Mina had already picked out all the delicious items for her and placed them on a single plate. They had even selected her desserts. From beginning to end, she only had to sit on her stool and wait to be fed.

Yunqing’s grass-field buffet was excellently managed; every guest could find something they wanted and liked. The production crew had originally wanted to spark some conflict or interaction during dinner, but seeing that the live stream’s engagement was already good, they scrapped the idea and let the guests follow their own lead.

Mina looked at the deductions from her bank account for Yunqing and silently turned her phone face down. Pretending she saw nothing, she quietly acted as an ATM, burying her head in her food and eating non-stop. After all, once she went abroad, she might not be able to find such appetizing meals.

Jiang Yan ate a little according to her usual habits. When Niannian finally put down her cream-stained fork, Jiang Yan spoke softly, “Want to take a slow walk to digest?”

“Sure,” Niannian nodded.

Mina waved them off, completely indifferent. “You two take your slow stroll; I’m going to stay here and keep eating.”

“Eat less. If you get gastritis, no one is going to take you to the hospital,” Jiang Yan looked at Mina with slight disdain. Seeing her still stuffing her face as they left, she reminded her, “Did you bring your stomach medicine? If not, stop eating.”

“I brought it, I brought it…” Mina showed no sign of stopping. “I know, I know, don’t worry. I have it under control. Who knows, maybe this is my last meal.”

Seeing that persuasion was useless, Jiang Yan didn’t waste more words. She turned and walked toward a less crowded path with Shao Niannian.

A cool night breeze blew across the wide boundary strip, dispersing the few remaining traces of summer tenderness.

Both Shao Niannian and Jiang Yan knew they were filming a show and needed to find topics to discuss, but they were in a silent, mutual understanding. They searched their minds for topics that were communicative but wouldn’t cause controversy, yet they hesitated because most topics they could think of would trigger various degrees of public opinion storms for the other person.

The audience in the live stream actually watched the two of them walk in silence for nearly ten minutes. Not a single sound was made.

—“Where is the planning teacher? Where is the scriptwriter? Come save these two idiots!”

—“Laughing so hard. I really want to know how the two of them will view this ten-minute silent walk segment during the post-interview for the edited version.”

—“I’m dying. Their walking gaits are almost perfectly synced, yet they don’t dare say a word to each other.”

—“If this weren’t live, I’d seriously suspect they were on a green screen. They aren’t outside; they’re actually on treadmills. Otherwise, I can’t imagine why two people can’t find a single topic…”

—“Ahhh, which user said ‘one mute and one fool’? We were doing fine, why are you attacking them in the chat? But I totally get the joke.”

The guests couldn’t find a topic, and continuing the silence clearly wasn’t an option, so the production crew finally stepped in.

“Actually, we’ve collected some questions from netizens, mainly about your views on love. Are you two interested in hearing them and then discussing them with each other?” the staff asked. “This will also allow you to get a deeper understanding of what the other is thinking.”

Shao Niannian nodded immediately. “Of course.” Why didn’t you bring out this good stuff earlier! I was about to start calculating old debts from ten years ago!

“No problem, anything works,” Jiang Yan said.

The staff member held the phone and read out the first question from Plan B.

“Many netizens are curious: if you exclude the special environment of a dating show, would you choose the other person as your lover in real life?”

Shao Niannian hadn’t expected such a direct question right off the bat. She even suspected that the person asking wasn’t a viewer at all, but the marketing team hired by their two managers. However, since the question was asked, a well-considered answer was required.

Niannian thought for a moment, and just as she was about to speak, she collided with Jiang Yan’s timing.

“You go first,” Jiang Yan glanced at Niannian nonchalantly and smiled. “Since everyone wants to know my answer, I’ll save mine for the finale.”

Shao Niannian nodded firmly at the camera. “Of course I would. Even without the dating show. Who knows how many people list Jiang Yan as one of the female celebrities they most want to date? As an ordinary person, I’d definitely be willing!”

“I think our personalities complement each other quite well. In these few short days together, I can feel the chemistry between us. Moreover, Jiang Yan is an actress I have always liked and admired since I entered the industry. Being able to get close to an idol and date her is like a dream.”

“Even without the dating show, I would choose her,” Niannian said sincerely. “Even if that choice spanned many years. Love and dreams are the same—when fate is meant to come, it will. I’ve worked hard; the rest is up to destiny.”

Shao Niannian felt that, at least from the current perspective, her hard work was starting to show results, even if it was fake. It was just as Gao Hui said—”The process doesn’t matter, as long as the result matches the expectation. Just tell me, are you dating Jiang Yan or not? Even if you knew from the start it was all fake.”

So what if it was fake?

Shao Niannian smiled, her eyes curving slightly. “Even if everything is far from what I imagined, I am doing this willingly.”

Before Niannian had even started speaking, Jiang Yan had been nervously pinching the flesh of her own arm behind her back, trying to use pain to distract herself from Niannian’s answer. She hadn’t expected that her focus on Niannian’s words couldn’t be dispersed by such simple methods. The more she pretended to be indifferent, the more she was unconsciously drawn in.

Even when the staff called her name several times, she didn’t react. It wasn’t until Niannian lightly pinched her hand that Jiang Yan snapped out of it. Her gaze bypassed the staff and landed on Niannian. “What is it?”

“I’ve finished my answer. It’s your turn.”

Before Jiang Yan’s answer could even come out, many people had already copy-pasted her famous “breakup quotes” into the public chat. Most were variations of the same sentiment: “There are many flowers in the garden. Today the rose is beautiful, tomorrow the lily is beautiful, and the day after the gardenia is beautiful. Love is the same. Isn’t liking someone just about following your whims?”

Jiang Yan followed her whims through one girlfriend after another, so naturally, no one expected her to say anything about love being hard to part with. But they had miscalculated one thing.

People change. And so did Jiang Yan.

“I would,” Jiang Yan said, walking slowly. Her words seemed to turn gentle and lingering along with the soft night breeze. “The night is beautiful, and the wind is very gentle.”

“Whether two people are suited for love, or whether they can date, is just like the night wind blowing just right,” Jiang Yan said with a smile. “It’s hard for anyone to refuse a pleasant cool breeze on a summer night. Similarly, outside of the show, just in real life, it’s hard for someone like me to refuse someone like Niannian.”

As soon as these words came out, not only were the staff members stunned, but even Shao Niannian, who was standing beside her, froze in place. She had pondered and predicted Jiang Yan’s answer to this question in her heart, but she hadn’t guessed this one.

Those words were like cool seawater surging onto the beach, seeping into the gaps between the sand grains—existing but intangible, disappearing yet leaving a mark. For a moment, they occupied Niannian’s heart, brain, and spirit, only to be quickly withdrawn.

—“She is a Movie Queen; what she is best at is acting.”

Shao Niannian’s expression remained calm, but her gaze was glued to Jiang Yan’s face, terrified of missing any change in her expression.

The staff member was dazed for a moment but quickly took charge of the process again.

“Jiang Yan graduated from the National Film Academy, and Niannian also graduated from there, but because Niannian chose to repeat a year of high school, the two of you completely missed each other. If Niannian hadn’t repeated that year, do you think with your temperaments, you would have become close senior and junior sisters during university?”

Shao Niannian shook her head with a smile. “I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

Shao Niannian pointed at the production crew’s camera and said, “This is a dating show. If we had known each other in university, why would we consider being senior and junior sisters? Shouldn’t we just ask if we would have become lovers?”

“And the first time Jiang Yan and I met wasn’t at the academy; it was on the set of The Famous Courtesan of Jinling,” Niannian analyzed word by word. “Repeating a year wasn’t the main reason we missed each other.”

“Looking back, every step taken was actually a preparation for today,” Niannian said with certainty. “Time is fluid, and people change. Tracing current thoughts back to a past time and space is imprecise. I can’t imagine what the me back then would have done.”

“At least the me now should be considered mature.”

As Niannian spoke the last part, she lost some confidence. She reached out to tug at Jiang Yan’s sleeve and whispered, “I count as mature now, right? Can I describe myself that way?”

Hearing this, Jiang Yan kept her face neutral and nodded with feigned sincerity. “Very mature.”

She said nothing about how Niannian, on the set of The Mute, had played with children’s toys with Xixi; she didn’t remind her that a mature person, after forcibly kissing someone, should take the initiative to take responsibility instead of letting the other person process it alone; and she certainly didn’t mention being in love for over ten years but not even having the courage to strike up a conversation.

Very mature. This maturity was at least ten years late.

Jiang Yan found it truly difficult to match that word with the lively and vivid Shao Niannian, but she knew very well that if she didn’t say it, she’d probably return to the room tonight to see a pouting “lump” hiding under the covers.

By the time the five questions from the production crew were mostly answered, the audience in the live stream was completely flabbergasted. The trending list was filled with keywords related to this pair. The most classic was a high-upvote comment:

—“Before watching this show, you thought Jiang Yan and Shao Niannian were one after fame and the other after profit. During the show, you saw one little fool and one big mute. After watching today’s walk and questions, you see one little ‘love-brain’ and one big ‘love-brain’… Combined with the background info dug up on Niannian’s school history and her switch from traditional painting to acting training, I can only say… if they actually break up, Jiang Yan’s sin will be great! Niannian, there is a place for you in the ‘Love-Brain Hall of Fame’!”

Fortunately, the two people filming the show couldn’t see the various jokes, comments, and doubts on the internet. Whether the world said their relationship was real or fake didn’t matter. Because they themselves couldn’t tell the difference anymore—they even subconsciously wanted to blur the consciousness and the boundaries.

The consequence of accepting too much explosive information was that their brains had no room for a third person—where Mina was, what she was doing, or how she was—they simply couldn’t remember her.

Returning from the grass field to the hotel room, sitting across from each other felt awkward again. Their brains and ears were still constantly replaying the events of the walk. If the lights were any brighter, the audience would worry that Shao Niannian would burn up from her crimson embarrassment.

With half an hour left until the end of the shift, it happened that the suite’s balcony had its own private pool with a hot spring bubble machine. Sitting in the water, the waves could relieve muscle fatigue.

In the second they locked eyes, neither Jiang Yan nor Shao Niannian said a word. In a silent pact, they rose from the edge of the bed, took two sets of unopened swimwear from the wardrobe, and each occupied a room to change.

The follow-up filming switched to automatic tracking cameras, which kept changing directions on the sliding rails as the people moved. For a time, the large room was filled only with the sound of the machines sliding on the rails and the splash of Jiang Yan entering the water.

Shao Niannian sat on the steps at the edge of the pool, only an arm’s length away from Jiang Yan. The only sounds echoing in their ears were the operation of the pool’s bubble machine and the howling wind around the high-rise building at midnight. No one spoke first.

“I wasn’t originally a performance student, did you know?” Shao Niannian made a small hand gesture and whispered, “Today’s filming is almost over. It should be okay to go slightly OOC (out of character) for the role I drew from the card, right?”

“It shouldn’t count. Who says my character card can’t reminisce about the past?”

Jiang Yan’s curiosity was piqued. She looked at the lit-up camera and suggested, “If you’re worried, we could ‘accidentally’ unplug the machine. Anyway, there are only twenty minutes left until we’re off the clock.”

Who hasn’t left work early before?

The audience: “???”

—“Thanks a lot, what a terrible idea.”

—“Please, let the audience hear a little too! Waaaa, do the viewers not deserve to hear free gossip before you clock out?”

—“The viewers are your parents! We suggest you say your little secrets out loud! OOC is fine; I still haven’t figured out what character cards you two drew anyway.”

Fortunately, Jiang Yan’s proposal was immediately rejected by Shao Niannian, which saved the curiosity of the live-stream audience.

“I used to study traditional Chinese painting. I was pulled into a film set by a friend of my parents to ‘experience life’ by chance. They told me that if I acted, I could earn money for paints, and I could observe different people’s features, behaviors, and expressions up close, which would give me a deeper experience when painting people.”

Shao Niannian pulled the conversation back ten years.

“I agreed, and that decision changed my life.”

“I agreed to do a cameo as a Republic-era ‘Young Mistress.’ Very few lines, very little screen time. From beginning to end, she was just a beautiful background plate for that movie.”

“The Young Mistress came from a wealthy family. Influenced by her elders, she loved listening to opera. Later, influenced by her brother who returned from overseas, she fell in love with a courtesan in a dance hall who sang folk tunes.”

“She attended every show, listened to every song, gave generous tips, but she only sat below and listened—she never had any interaction with the person she liked on stage. As the plot progressed to a time of national crisis, the Mistress’s father and brother threw their fortunes into the resistance against the Japanese. She stopped going to the dance hall. Silk and satin turned to plain cotton; her gold and silver jewelry were all traded for the country’s war funds. The sudden change made her grow up fast.”

“Every night she couldn’t sleep soundly, she would always think of that girl shining on stage. The songs sung, the beautiful posture, the accidental charming smile—even if those eyes never stayed on her, she missed them dearly, yet was pulled back to reality by the loud artillery fire and the cries of the victimized outside.”

Shao Niannian had watched The Famous Courtesan of Jinling countless times, yet she could rarely finish watching the “Young Mistress” she played. It wasn’t bad acting; it was because as she watched, the emotions that should have left her body long ago would unconsciously resurface.

She was still that Republic-era lady whose family had died until she was the only one left; she was still that communist who traded silks for the rivers and mountains. She was the wanderer whose family went unnamed in the flames of war, protected through a night by the courtesan hidden in her heart, surviving the winter only to die of illness in early spring—just before the dawn of the nation’s light.

“I don’t know what the Mistress’s true feelings for the courtesan were. It should have been love. She loved her appearance, her songs. At first, it might have just been a plaything to pass the time, but as time passed, the courtesan unknowingly became part of the Mistress’s most prosperous, peaceful, and joyful years.”

“When the courtesan saved her in the chaotic world, their identities unknowingly swapped. It was more like an entanglement of fate.”

As Shao Niannian spoke, she suddenly laughed, breaking the silence of the room. “They were entangled in the play, and outside of it too. At eighteen, you were too dazzling on set. Your acting was natural, you were young and beautiful—you attracted all my attention instantly.”

“I hadn’t had any acting training back then, but the director said I played it as if it were real. I simply projected all my admiration and love for the eighteen-year-old you into the character.”

“The Mistress liked the courtesan. The fifteen-year-old Shao Niannian gave up traditional painting for acting because she liked Jiang Yan. Even if it wasn’t understood or recognized, when I close my eyes, I still go back to that first film set.”

Perhaps due to unease and shyness, as Shao Niannian spoke, her hands unconsciously twisted in the water. “From the very beginning, my goal for university was only the National Film Academy.”

“So when the topic of repeating a year came up, I still have the same answer.” Shao Niannian’s breathing grew heavy, and her gaze began to flicker as she started blinking rapidly.

“That’s why I said I have never been lost,” Niannian said. “I am very certain about following behind you, always watching your back, and taking you as the goal I strive for.”

The succession of “bombshells” throughout the night was clearly more than the audience could handle. The dense layer of comments almost completely covered Jiang Yan and Shao Niannian on the screen. Everyone simultaneously turned off the comments, holding their breath as they waited for Jiang Yan’s response.

The impact on Jiang Yan, sitting opposite Shao Niannian, was not small. The data she had collected only said that Niannian took her as a goal and an idol, and that she had stated many times in public that she loved watching Jiang Yan’s work. But those things didn’t mean much. In the entertainment industry, out of ten polite phrases, eight are empty. If you took every one seriously, the industry wouldn’t be what it is today.

Jiang Yan had seen the data with half-belief. But when she truly heard these things from the person herself, it was undoubtedly like being thrown into ice-cold water—she was clear-headed from head to toe. Her right pinky, which she didn’t usually use much, trembled slightly. If she hadn’t been able to control the shaking of her hand, she suspected she would need to visit a hospital after tonight.

She was clearly too excited—so excited that some subtle emotions flashed through her heart, though she didn’t catch them.

Is this liking? It should be liking, right?

Jiang Yan had been in many forms of romance, but none were like this—her legs felt weak starting from the calves. If she weren’t sitting in the water, she suspected she would have fallen directly to the floor. She would have made a fool of herself in front of the camera.

Shao Niannian had spoken the words in her heart. Once the courage was drained from her body and her awareness returned, she became terrified of every sentence she had just uttered. It was a live stream; she didn’t even know how to give herself a graceful exit.

Niannian lowered her eyes. Out of the corner of her vision, she watched Jiang Yan stand up from the pool—she just stood there steadily, like a pool-version of a scarecrow. No sound, no movement.

Shao Niannian even began to panic. The more anxious she became, the more aggrieved she felt. It was as if since the day she played the Mistress dying tragically in the spring ten years ago, her grievances had snowballed until they were right in front of her. Heartache, sadness, and an unspeakable grievance choked her throat.

Before the tears she was brewing could fall from her eyes, the pool water rippled, slicing through the surface.

Ten years ago, Huo Xiaoyun pulled the bruised Mistress who was wandering the streets into a car; regardless of whether she was clean or dirty, she held her in her coat as she was nearly freezing to death. Ten years later, water droplets still clung to Jiang Yan’s face, her tied-up hair was half-wet, yet she was still beautiful.

Jiang Yan’s fingertips brushed against Niannian’s cheek, taking away the tears that had fallen at some unknown moment, wiping them patiently, over and over again. Yet the person in front of her didn’t appreciate the gesture; the tears flowed as if they cost nothing, threatening to fill the entire pool.

Beautiful eyes were filled with tears, shimmering and vivid. It was hard not to be moved.

Jiang Yan thought about kissing her, so she did.

When their lips met and she felt that soft, warm touch from her memory, Jiang Yan’s half-squatting posture changed. Her knees knelt on the pool steps, her hands braced against the edge, like a succubus who could never be satisfied. She was tempting someone into a trap in the dark of night.

Even though the person with teary eyes didn’t need tempting—she was more than willing to fall for it.

The first time is awkward, the second time is familiar.

Shao Niannian clumsily followed Jiang Yan in exploring the edges of intimacy. Her hands moved from having nowhere to go, to the shoulders, and now they rested at the neck. She slowly closed her eyes as the active partner deepened the kiss.

Courage that ignored everything else had landed on Shao Niannian ten years ago.

The live stream plunged into darkness with a click, showing only the final second of Jiang Yan’s kiss. No one had ever wished that the time between 9:59:59 PM and 10:00:00 PM could be a little bit longer.

—“Why won’t you let me see the kissing? I’m an adult! Director, turn the stream back on! I’m going crazy!”

—“Good lord, this pair has the fastest pace in the whole show… I’m afraid they’ll do the full set in two weeks and announce their marriage as soon as the show ends.”

—[Meme: Fainted by lesbians.jpg]

—“Waaaaa, so sweet, so sweet. Anyone who says this pair is hard to ship really has no taste.”

—“Say no more, family. Does anyone have recommendations for GL novels with ‘spicy’ scenes? Tonight, I hate every sister with a lover equally.”