After Cannon Fodder A Accidentally Marked the Cold Film Queen - Chapter 31

Zhu Songning’s face was stinging hotly.

Shen Qingyu’s palm, like the person herself, was cool to the touch. The moment the slap landed, the scent that rushed toward her like a gust of wind was the jasmine tea she smelled in her dreams.

And in her peripheral vision, the faintly pink knuckles.

Round fingernails.

Her first subconscious reaction was surprisingly not anger, but noticing how red Shen Qingyu’s palm was.

She wondered if it hurt her to strike the blow.

Zhu Songning felt genuine self-loathing for the thought that crossed her mind.

A person should at least not be so spineless.

Seeing Shen Qingyu slowly pull open her collar slightly, the mental preparation she had just made began to waver again, her burning gaze uncontrollably fixated on the Omega.

On the table in Shen Qingyu’s lounge, there was a copy of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The book was lying face down, suggesting that Shen Qingyu had been engrossed in reading before her arrival.

Long ago, before she became famous, Zhu Songning’s sole hobby was to practice magic, hug her plush toy, and read in the basement she rented.

The world in books was fantastical, bizarre, and full of ups and downs, allowing her a moment’s respite from the crushing weight of reality.

Many words in those books, perhaps not understood at the time, would eventually point the way in her future life.

She had also read this book on a late, stormy night.

“Was I tempting you?”

“I don’t even have to do anything; just by standing here, you will take the bait.”

“Did I ever speak kind words to you?”

“Do you think I was tempting you, forcing you onto my path?”

Shen Qingyu’s words overlapped with the furiously turning pages and soaring sentences in her mind, like a fateful intersection.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, how did Helena reply?

She said: “I am your dog, Demetrius; the more thou beat’st me, I will fawn on thee.”

In the midst of these humiliating words, Zhu Songning felt a strange, compelling desire to follow Helena’s response and accept the words Shen Qingyu had said to her.

Even the slap she had delivered didn’t create deep resentment in her heart.

She had experienced a physiological reaction because of Shen Qingyu, more than once.

And now, it had been brought up again with a mocking jest.

Zhu Songning was silent for a moment before saying, “Good.”

“Good what?” Shen Qingyu didn’t react immediately.

“To borrow your shower for a wash.”

She genuinely needed to calm down.

Her inner world was filled with too many complicated and disorderly emotions, tangled together like a messy ball of yarn.

It made it impossible for her to look through the threads and see the deeper layer of her own tightly wrapped heart.

She headed toward the bathroom, but then heard Shen Qingyu let out a low curse behind her.

A sudden force slammed into her.

Zhu Songning turned around, and the Omega crashed straight into her chest.

She felt her heartbeat quicken, and she looked down in alarm.

“You…”

She managed only one word before she felt a sharp pain on her lower lip.

It was Shen Qingyu’s sharp teeth biting her lip.

Excellent teeth, and good bite force, Zhu Songning deeply felt this.

She clenched her hands, neither struggling nor pushing her away.

After several seconds, Shen Qingyu finally eased up, her teeth releasing their grip.

Although Zhu Songning was the one who was bitten, she noticed that Shen Qingyu’s lips had become even more delicate and rosy, glistening with moisture.

Zhu Songning felt her mouth go dry. She glanced at it once and hurriedly looked away.

“What are you doing now?”

“I really hate you.”

Shen Qingyu tilted her head up, her dark eyes moist and watery as she looked at Zhu Songning, her cheeks flushed to a rose hue.

“I really hate the way you are—young and vigorous, unaware of the immensity of the world, treated unfairly by the world yet maintaining an upright character. I have never met anyone as pretentious as you.”

I wish you were bad, broken, or flawed.

Greedy for money or sex, greedy for anything she possessed, so that there would be a gap for her to penetrate and occupy Zhu Songning’s world.

But she was precisely not like that.

The current situation was a sweet and painful torment for someone like Shen Qingyu with a strong desire for control.

Zhu Songning didn’t know how to respond to her, so she just mirrored her, saying, “I hate you too.”

More than hating her, she hated her self-defeating nature—the part of her that knowingly walked into a trap she was already infatuated with.

It was like willingly putting a noose around her own neck and handing her the leash.

How absurd.

When the recording time started, the production team sent someone to call them.

Only after receiving a cold “Please come in” from the woman inside the room did the cameraman and staff dare to push open the door and enter Shen Qingyu’s lounge.

Surprisingly, she was not the only one in the room.

There was also a trainee, Zhu Songning.

Shen Qingyu’s lounge was large, with a long sofa placed opposite the door.

She and Zhu Songning were sitting at the two extreme ends of the sofa.

One had white hair cascading like a waterfall, and the other’s black hair was casually tied into a low ponytail over her shoulder, covering most of her face.

Zhu Songning slowly put down her crossed leg and sat up straighter when she saw the camera.

In the frame, both the Omega and the Alpha were stunningly beautiful. Shen Qingyu was more cold and reserved, while Zhu Songning exuded a stronger sense of defiance. Everyone felt as if they had mistakenly walked onto the set of some gangster film.

【???】

【????!】

【Please throw me in; don’t save me.】

【Dream on, how can all the good things happen to you?】

【I’ll gladly accept this beautiful Yu Yu, and I’ll gladly accept this Ningning too, okay?】

“T-Teacher Shen!” The staff member dared not breathe, seeing the scene. “What is this?”

How could a trainee be in the mentor’s lounge!

“Student Zhu has some questions she wanted to ask me privately.”

Shen Qingyu explained impatiently.

Zhu Songning echoed, “That’s right, Teacher Shen helped me a lot.”

The two were seated far apart, the atmosphere around them was strangely like an apparent estrangement, yet it made it difficult for outsiders to interfere.

“Oh, oh.”

The staff member nodded stiffly.

They wondered what kind of question needed to be asked of Film Empress Shen privately.

This trainee was incredibly bold!

“Then, has Student Zhu’s problem been solved?”

She asked subconsciously.

“No, Student Zhu’s problem is quite complicated.”

Shen Qingyu glanced at Zhu Songning.

“She needs to come here every day, and I will give her one-on-one tutoring.”

【God, I know they must be talking about serious stuff, but my dirty mind… sigh! I won’t say it!】

【Actually, I also feel a bit… doesn’t anyone find this very ambiguous? This kind of talk.】

【Isn’t it perfectly normal for a mentor to teach their student? Lu Conghuan next door is giving Xu Zhe private lessons every day, and I haven’t heard you say anything like this.】

【Girlfriend, this is really different. The one next door is too artificially sweet; I prefer the atmosphere of this Ning Yu pair. Can I say it? I feel like they are about to hook up every time they make eye contact…】

When Zhu Songning heard Shen Qingyu’s words, she felt the slap mark on her cheek, which was covered by her hair, starting to hurt again.

It was also a bit itchy.

Shen Qingyu: “Am I right, Student Zhu?”

Her finger lightly tapped the armrest of the sofa.

Zhu Songning ground her back teeth: “That’s right, Teacher Shen.”

“I still have many things I don’t understand, and I need to ask for more of your private guidance.”

Her tone sounded quite like she was gritting her teeth.

Following the staff member to the recording site, the two brushed past each other on the stage, each heading to the mentor’s seats and the trainees’ seats, respectively. The director was already smiling, waiting in the center of the stage.

“Just now, many people have expressed doubts to our production team about the vote counts. Next, we will conduct a special segment and reveal the specific details of our vote counts.”

Zhu Songning, sitting at the top of the pyramid, turned her head to look at the large screen.

It was a video.

The person recording the video seemed very serious about it; they were wearing formal attire and had light makeup on.

“Hello everyone, I am Bai Xuzhi, the heir of the White family in North City.”

Zhu Songning looked at the face, pondered for a long time with a frown, and finally remembered that she was the customer she had met at the bar that day, the one whose girlfriend had cheated on her.

“Once, when I was heartbroken, someone told me that I was a girl who deserved all the beautiful things.”

When Bai Xuzhi recalled it, her eyes still flickered with faint tears and beautiful anticipation.

“To this day, thinking about it still makes me feel warm and touched.”

“I didn’t get a chance to finish what I wanted to say last time, but today, I want to take this rare opportunity to say it to her.”

“Zhu Songning, thank you.”

She picked up her phone next to her and aimed it at the recording camera.

On the phone were the records of her daily voting for Zhu Songning during this period.

“In addition to this, I also purchased one million boxes of Crispy Milk under the White family’s name, which will be sent to girls in various impoverished mountainous areas, along with a large number of books and school supplies, all in the name of Student Zhu Songning.”

Zhu Songning’s pupils slightly widened.

As soon as one video ended, another immediately followed.

“Hello everyone, I’m Yam Ball! Since I don’t want to reveal my real name, I’ll just use my online nickname, okay?”

It was a playful girl whose face was covered by a large sticker.

“I was maliciously spiked at a bar before, and Zhu Songning saved me. She even got into a fight and was injured for me and another Alpha.”

“I am truly grateful to her. Without her, I wouldn’t be the cheerful and unrestrained person I am today.”

The girl held out a box of milk from behind her.

“You said I didn’t need to repay you anything, but I just heard that Crispy Milk is nutritious, made with clean ingredients, and uses milk from cows raised in New Zealand, which is why I bought several extra boxes for my grandma to drink. I didn’t waste any, really…”

Behind her, her grandmother looked distressed: “I’ve been drinking only plain milk for a month…”

“Yam Ball” looked back at her grandmother: “Grandma, I’ll go change the flavor for you today. Do you want matcha-flavored milk or taro-flavored milk?”

The grandmother immediately ran away.

“Yam Ball” turned back: “Really, not a drop of milk was wasted.”

…

After several such videos were played, the chief director finally pressed the pause button.

Zhu Songning was rarely sentimental; she hadn’t thought much about the future when she did those things before.

001 said she just loved to pretend and loved to show off.

“It was just something I did along the way.”

Zhu Songning always explained it to 001 this way.

In her original world, there was no distinction between Alpha and Omega; the world was divided into two genders: male and female.

Women, due to their naturally weaker physical strength compared to men, coupled with different love education they received from a young age, were always too easily harmed emotionally or physically.

Romantic love stories only appeared in fairy tales about princesses and princes.

Girls hoped for a tangible love; they wanted their partner to love their vivid expressions and movements, to love the tears that flowed from her eyes after every movie showing, to understand why she loved a book, fell in love with a certain scenery, and to learn to love the beautiful world through her eyes.

However, in reality, all men saw was a pretty, innocent face, a good figure, preferring large breasts while wanting a slender waist, and a pair of legs that weren’t lacking in flesh.

Zhu Songning might have been born to only like women.

She never felt admiration when she heard boys her age talking loudly, proudly, and complacently; she only felt disgusted.

Compared to the smell of them not showering or washing their hair after gym class, she felt happier when she was close to women.

And now, she had come to a world without males.

Sometimes she wondered why people of the same gender couldn’t help each other.

Was it because the distinction between A and O created another difference?

The director, a very emotional woman, was already quietly sobbing, tugging at the associate director’s sleeve.

The associate director struggled to hold himself up and not be dragged down by the director.

“Alright, because many people have raised questions about our voting results, our production team has internally discussed and decided to make all voting details public.”

On the screen, all the data details of the voting were displayed.

Zhu Songning’s vote count was genuinely legitimate. In contrast, the votes under Xu Zhe’s name were detected by the system as having several anomalies, and the director manually purged them.

All the processes and data were thoroughly placed under the sun, leaving no room for falsehood.

Xu Zhe’s face instantly turned pale, and she looked in disbelief at another core staff member standing behind the director.

That person avoided her gaze.

Shen Qingyu stood up from the mentor’s seat.

She raised her hand and led the applause.

“As an idol, when you stand on the stage, you represent not just yourself, but the thousands of fans who follow and learn from you.”

Shen Qingyu’s gaze fell upon Zhu Songning.

It carried a brightness that even she hadn’t noticed.

Zhu Songning, however, stared at the data on the screen, feeling a bit stunned.

She actually had that many fans.

So much support in this new world.

She took the microphone, lowered her eyes, and bowed deeply to the camera:

“…Thank you, everyone.”

In addition to this, Zhu Songning also noticed that there was genuinely no input from Shen Qingyu in her vote count.

Only Shen Qingmu, under the guise of an employee benefit from a small company under the Shen conglomerate, had contributed a considerable amount of Milk Tickets, second only to Bai Xuzhi’s votes.

Was everything Shen Qingyu said true?

Had she possibly wronged her?

Zhu Songning’s heart was filled with confusion and helplessness.

Before going on stage, at the moment she brushed past Shen Qingyu, Shen Qingyu had quietly asked her a question.

“Is our hatred the same?”

“My hatred for you was once love. Is yours too?”

Zhu Songning, in your heart, is it also—

Do you like me?

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