After Reuniting with My Aloof Movie Queen Childhood Friend - Chapter 5

The vehicle came to a steady halt beneath an office building in Central.

Ji Youyi took off her overcoat and was about to say her goodbyes when Fang Ruohan stopped her: “Why aren’t you wearing it?”

Ji Youyi said mysteriously, “The scene might get a bit bloody in a moment. I’m afraid of getting it dirty.”

This ‘battle armor’ was too expensive and didn’t fit the persona she was about to play. Besides, borrowed clothes definitely have to be returned.

“About how long will it take?” Meng Xingshu asked.

The person who had been making faces just a second ago immediately straightened her expression: “I’m not quite sure.”

“Then let us know when it’s over, we’ll come pick you up.”

“That’s too much trouble, no need,” Ji Youyi replied fluently. “I’m already very grateful that you could drop me off. After I’m done, I can just head back on my own.”

Meng Xingshu looked straight at Ji Youyi, her gaze probing: “Don’t you have no money for a taxi? How are you going back, walking?”

Ji Youyi choked.

A subtle atmosphere flowed through the air, though Fang Ruohan didn’t notice it.

Concerned about the work schedule, Fang Ruohan spoke up directly: “Don’t be polite, it’s settled. We have business and need to leave first. Just message me when you’re done, and let me know at any time if anything happens in between. Keep in touch.”

“Okay, okay! Don’t worry, I’ll send you the good news,” Ji Youyi closed the car door as if a weight had been lifted. She nodded politely to Meng Xingshu, “Goodbye, Sister Meng.”

Then she blew a kiss to Fang Ruohan, her voice sweet: “Goodbye to you too, FangFang! Love you!”

Fang Ruohan smiled and waved back. As the car window rolled up, she couldn’t wait to lower her voice toward the back seat: “Teacher Meng, Teacher Meng, did you guess it? She’s the one who…”

Fang Ruohan made a gesture of swallowing pills.

Meng Xingshu glanced at her and turned her gaze toward the window: “We won’t make the regular meeting.”

Fang Ruohan checked the time and was too startled to gossip further: “You’re right. Today’s traffic is terrible, it’s a nightmare. Should we push it back by half an hour?”

“No need.” Meng Xingshu stared out the window, watching the person scurry into the building like a rabbit. “I won’t be going over. Change it to an online meeting.”

“Understood, I’ll arrange it immediately.”

Fang Ruohan finished the work call. Just as she hung up, she suddenly heard her boss say: “She seems to like you quite a bit.”

“What?” Fang Ruohan didn’t understand, suspecting she had misheard.

“Nothing.” Meng Xingshu looked at the data she had just received on her phone without looking up. “I’ll need to trouble you to buy a few things, and also withdraw 20,000 in cash.”

22nd Floor, CEO’s Office of Wantao Entertainment

Ji Youyi met Li S… no, Li Niantao.

Li Niantao had the standard look of a middle-aged male CEO: round face, balding with a toupee, fleshy jowls, and small eyes. His bloated physique strained against a slightly wrinkled blue shirt. Although he was incredibly ugly, he would still be hard to distinguish in a vast crowd of greasy old men.

Wantao Entertainment often participated in the production of period dramas, and the boss’s taste leaned toward the traditional Chinese style. The desk was made of wood, and to its left stood a Malabar chestnut tree, kept lush and upright, clearly having received much care.

Li Niantao leaned back in his armchair, his posture relaxed as if he were certain Ji Youyi had no power to fight back.

He signaled for Ji Youyi to look at the contract on the desk and spoke leisurely. “Ji Youyi, you’ve seen the situation online. Everyone hates you, and Wantao is suffering because of it. Now that netizens are demanding the company fire ‘tainted artists,’ we can only terminate your contract. The liquidated damages are 18 million. Sign it.”

The entertainment industry is a great place to rake in money. Since someone is raking it in, someone else has to spit it out.

Stars are hot commodities, but 18th-tier nobodies aren’t necessarily without value.

Facing ignorant teenagers, one can paint a non-existent path to stardom and present an unfairly long term contract to turn them into the company’s ATMs for meager pay.

And when the “little leeks” finally wake up and want to leave, a certain “CEO X” will sit before them, shaking his fleshy face, and pluck a tiny clause from a small corner of the dizzyingly complex contract, gloating:

“Look, here. This is your personal promise.”

Without paying millions or tens of millions, how could you possibly make a clean break?

That passerby sister was right, taking it to court was the best choice.

But a lawsuit is a war of attrition.

As the battle lines stretch, the debt and interest increase month by month, and the snowball grows larger.

If she wanted to pay it back, she had to earn money. To earn money, she would have to take private gigs. Taking private gigs would leave a trail, making her the actual party in breach of contract.

Furthermore, she was a transmigrator and didn’t know how long she would stay. If she left, no one would be able to help “Little Ji.”

Imagine: Little Ji enduring a year of hardship and poverty, only for Ji Youyi to vanish right before the court date, leaving her to face the company’s siege alone, lose the case, and fall into despair.

Ji Youyi sat opposite Li Niantao, her eyes downcast, her voice low and slow: “I won’t terminate.”

Li Niantao had expected this answer and smiled inwardly with triumph, he hadn’t actually wanted to terminate Ji Youyi’s contract, he just wanted to use the high liquidated damages to force her into submission.

He shifted into a more comfortable position, victory in his grasp: “You’ve caused such a huge loss for the company, but considering you’ve served Wantao for five years, the company isn’t heartless. How about this: we won’t terminate. You’ll just pay a little less, 800,000 will be enough and then tonight, go see Manager Zhang…”

“I won’t terminate.” The raspy voice interrupted Li Niantao.

Li Niantao felt baffled and shouted, “I know! I said we won’t terminate, I’m telling you that tonight.”

“CEO Li, I won’t terminate! I don’t want to leave the company!” Ji Youyi’s slow voice suddenly became frantic. She stood up abruptly and the lashes she had kept lowered finally lifted.

Only then did Li Niantao realize that Ji Youyi’s eyes were bloodshot. Paired with an incredibly eerie expression, it made his mind go blank. He instinctively shrank back into his seat: “What are you doing! Don’t move!”

“I’m not doing anything.” Ji Youyi’s face was deathly pale, and she gave a weak, yet somewhat gruesome smile.

Her body swayed as she lunged forward, hands reaching out as if to grab Li Niantao’s hand, but she grasped empty air. “I just want to stay. CEO Li, you know how I joined Wantao… I have nowhere else to go.”

Dressed in hospital garb, she looked haggard with disheveled hair. To reach Li Niantao, her body kept leaning forward until she was practically crawling across the desk.

Her skeletal hands gripped the desk tightly, her nails making a screeching sound against the wood. She looked like a vengeful ghost who had died with a grievance, appearing incredibly ominous and scaring Li Niantao into backing away repeatedly.

Ji Youyi, however, refused to let him go. Her bloodshot eyes looked as if they might pop out of their sockets, and her tone became increasingly bizarre:

“I know the netizens want you to fire me. No, CEO Li, you have to tell them. I am Wantao’s person! When I woke up today, I realized, in life, I am a member of Wantao in death, I am Wantao’s ghost! As long as we don’t terminate, I can stay in the company even as a ghost! CEO Li, I have no home, the company is my home, so I won’t leave… I won’t leave…”

“Stay back! Get away from me!” Li Niantao grabbed the desk phone to call security, but as Ji Youyi continued to close in, he could only back away while holding the phone. His fingers trembled so much that he dialed the wrong number several times.

At this point, the performance was almost complete. The only flaw was that the large puddle of black blood from earlier had been vomited too soon.

Ji Youyi tried hard to recall the sensation of gagging. While acting out the scene, she built up the feeling until her stomach finally cramped, forcing blood into her mouth.

The amount was small, so she used it carefully, letting it slowly trickle from the corner of her mouth, but the visual impact was still lacking.

She had no choice but to add fuel to the fire in another way.

She aimed and lunged at Li Niantao, slapping the telephone out of his hand.

The phone accurately struck the Malabar chestnut tree beside the desk. The lush green leaves shook violently, and several branches at the top were snapped.

Li Niantao was both heartbroken over his precious tree and desperate to grab the phone, but his arm was caught by the telephone cord and pulled outward.

Unable to protect everything at once, his waist slammed hard against the sharp corner of the desk. He let out a pig like squeal of pain, lost his balance, and crashed into the tree. Then, both he and the potted plant tumbled to the ground.

The fleshy skin of his face was scratched by the branches. The pot tilted, and Li Niantao was covered in fresh fertilizer and soil.

However, Li Niantao could no longer focus on the dirt or the pain. His mind was filled only with the image of Ji Youyi, vomiting blood while closing in on him.

The heart raced with terror. Li Niantao scrambled clumsily off the ground, wiped his bleeding face, and stumbled toward the door, screaming at the top of his lungs: “Security! SECURITY!!!”

Li Niantao knew Ji Youyi’s situation all too well. It was precisely because he knew she was isolated and helpless that he had dared to manipulate her so shamelessly for the past five years. He never expected that Ji Youyi would actually go insane!

She was mad! They had driven her to madness, and now she had come to claim their lives! She had even dared to attempt suicide by overdose, what else was she capable of!

Termination! He had to terminate the contract! Whether by coaxing or deception, he had to get her to sign those papers! Right now! Immediately!

As long as the contract was severed and she was barred from ever stepping foot in Wantao again, she could die in a thousand different ways outside for all the company cared!

An hour later, Ji Youyi walked out of the building feeling refreshed, deeply impressed by her own acting skills.

She stood by the roadside tidying her hair. Having just sent a message to Fang Ruohan to report that she was safe, she saw a car pull up in front of her.

The window rolled down, and Fang Ruohan waved at her: “How was it so fast? Did the talk not go well?”

Ji Youyi’s eyes lit up instantly. Brimming with a smile, she opened the back door and hopped in.

“It went well, very well.” Once seated, she flashed the termination agreement in front of her face, her giggling voice still a bit raspy. “They didn’t make me pay a single cent.”

Through the thin sheets of paper, Meng Xingshu’s voice drifted over: “What happened to your eyes?”

Uh-oh, caught.

Ji Youyi put the contract down and sat up straight: “I accidentally bumped into something.”

In reality, to achieve the right dramatic effect, she had punched herself twice.

Meng Xingshu looked at her for a moment, her fingers turning her phone over: “Why are your clothes dirty?”

“Oh, are they? I probably accidentally brushed against some dust.” Intentionally accidentally.

“And your hand?”

Ji Youyi touched her bruised left hand, her expression remaining unchanged: “Accidentally took a tumble.”

Fang Ruohan clicked her tongue in wonder: “You didn’t go in there to pick a fight, did you?”

“How is that possible? I’m a civilized person!” Like a delinquent student caught and questioned by the dean, Ji Youyi finally found a breakthrough with Fang Ruohan and immediately began sharing with a grin. “It was just a little argument. You should have seen it, that Wantao CEO was so mad his toupee went crooked, revealing half a Mediterranean bald spot, and not a single soul around him dared to tell him.”

Fang Ruohan was amused. She glanced at Meng Xingshu’s expression through the rearview mirror.

After leaving the hospital, Meng Xingshu had her secretary look up Ji Youyi’s profile, and during the meeting just now, she had paid extra attention to the artist management sector.

Fang Ruohan suspected that she was considering signing her. As an assistant, it was only right to scout the situation. She asked, “So, now that you’ve terminated the contract, what are your plans for the future?”

“I’m not entirely a free agent yet. The company gave me a script last night. I have to go film it.”

Ji Youyi stuck her tongue out innocently, acting pitiful. “According to the old contract, it’s another drama where I’m working for the company for zero pay.”

In truth, that had been Wantao’s original plan.

After today’s scene, Wantao didn’t want to give her this role at all. Ji Youyi had only secured it by refusing to let go and using her “madness” to snatch it away during the signing of the termination papers.

It didn’t matter if she didn’t get a salary. She had her eyes on the film studio city where the drama was being shot.

Wantao was stingy to the core and wouldn’t cough up a penny. With this script, she could at least demand travel expenses to the studio city and have Wantao help her process the actor’s certificate she needed to find work there.

Even a mosquito’s leg is meat, she wasn’t picky.

“That trash company is truly disgusting!” Fang Ruohan spat, feeling sorry for Ji Youyi being exploited like this. She asked, “What’s the drama called?”

“I think it’s called Life if it were Only Like the First Meeting. I’m playing a supporting role, it’s probably not a very good project.”

“Never heard of it.”

Meng Xingshu listened quietly and typed the title into a search bar.

From the production company to the producers to the creative team, everything was unfamiliar. It was indeed not a good project.

Fang Ruohan continued chatting.

“Is there a company you want to sign with?”

“No more signing,” Ji Youyi declined flatly.

“Then on your own, it’ll be hard to get good roles. How will you develop in the future?”

“It’s fine,” Ji Youyi replied in her usual relaxed tone. “I have a way.”

The midday sunlight was warm, quietly draping over her and illuminating her confident smile.

Meng Xingshu’s gaze shifted back, spotting a pharmacy sign outside the window.

“Pull over for a moment,” she said to Fang Ruohan. “Go buy something.”

Fang Ruohan acknowledged, parked the car, and hopped out nimbly.

Only the two of them remained in the car.

Breathing.

Ji Youyi was breathing.

Under normal circumstances, a person has a steady breathing rhythm, natural and unnoticeable.

But today, Ji Youyi had noticed the fact that she was breathing several times. She didn’t understand why; she only felt it must be because it was too quiet.

Warming up a room was something she was very good at. She was adept at reading people’s expressions and then proactively bringing up topics they liked to bridge the distance, thus blending in with strangers.

But she didn’t know what to say to Meng Xingshu.

Ask about her work? Praise her looks? Or thank her for her kind help?

Breathing.

There was a faint fragrance in the air, elegant, soft, with a subtle sweetness mixed with a slightly cold, soapy scent. Smelling it for too long made one wonder if the tip of the tongue was turning slightly bitter.

Maybe… ask her what perfume she used?

Before Ji Youyi could decide, the other woman spoke first.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Meng Xingshu waved her phone screen at her. “The doctor is asking about the symptoms.”

So she had sent Fang Ruohan to buy medicine just now.

Ji Youyi took a beat to respond: “I just bumped them. They’ll be fine in a few days, it’s nothing.”

Meng Xingshu gave a soft “Mm” but was still looking at her eyes.

Ji Youyi simply slid a large step to the left, braced her hands on the seat, and leaned forward, bringing her face right up to Meng Xingshu’s for her to see: “Look, really, it’s nothing.”

The left window was cracked open a sliver. A clever breeze slipped through the gap, gently fluttering the stray hairs on Ji Youyi’s forehead.

A shallow smile hung on the corner of her lips, her eyelashes fluttering naturally every now and then. On her fair face, the red mole on the tip of her nose was vivid and enchanting.

The light was ample. Meng Xingshu could clearly see the redness in the whites of her eyes and the pair of amber-bright pupils in the center.

After a long while, Meng Xingshu spoke, her voice very soft: “Does it hurt?”

Ji Youyi shook her head: “It’s just a bit itchy.”

“Did they hit you?”

Ji Youyi shook her head vigorously again: “No.”

“With their hands?”

“Uh, no.” It wasn’t their hands.

But Meng Xingshu had already reached a conclusion in her heart. She didn’t press further and lowered her head to type.

Ji Youyi looked down and saw that she was replying to Fang Ruohan’s message, so her gaze looped back up from below, landing on Meng Xingshu’s face.

Receiving a direct hit of beauty from such a close range, the topic she had been weighing naturally came to her lips: “Sister Meng, you are truly beautiful.”

Meng Xingshu lifted her eyes to glance at her before dropping them again, her raven feather lashes silently stirring a few ripples.

“Really!” Fearing Meng Xingshu wouldn’t believe her, Ji Youyi leaned back with a serious face. “Extraordinarily beautiful. More beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen. You know, I’m in the industry. Although my track record isn’t great, I have a professional eye that can see you have a real talent for being an actress!”

“Is that so?” Meng Xingshu closed her phone. “I think I can’t compare to you.”

“Well, I’ve been in the industry for a few years, after all,” Ji Youyi encouraged. “If you’re interested, you should try acting if you get the chance. You’d definitely be a star.”

Meng Xingshu remained noncommittal: “How should I try?”

Ji Youyi thought about it and agreed.

The entertainment industry was a muddy mess, there was no need for a girl from a wealthy family to get stained by it. If she ran into a garbage crew, it would just be a terrible memory.

“How about this: others might not be reliable, but I definitely am.” Ji Youyi sat upright, her expression incredibly solemn. “I, Ji Youyi, repay my debts of gratitude. I promise you, if I become a director in the future, I will definitely cast you in my films. I won’t stop until I’ve turned you into a ‘Triple Gold’ Best Actress!”

Her words were spoken with such force that Fang Ruohan, who had just opened the car door, was dazed by the impact.

Ji Youyi’s attitude was so earnest that it even made her start to doubt, uh, maybe Meng Xingshu wasn’t that famous? She just happened to have an entire wall of awards… it’s… it’s normal for someone in the industry not to recognize her…?

She didn’t say a word, carefully closed the door, and started the car slowly, fearing that the slightest bump would break this heavy awkwardness.

Ji Youyi’s tone had been too passionate. After she finished speaking, she couldn’t help but cough lightly, her thin shoulders hunching slightly.

She had swallowed pills in the early hours, had her stomach pumped in the morning, vomited blood in the forenoon, ran, been shoved around, acted out three scenes, and spoken a great deal, her throat had been uncomfortable for a while.

But she simply gave her nose a quick rub and adjusted her state. She was still smiling, her pupils shining brightly, as if a exuberant vitality was growing wildly under the sun.

Meng Xingshu looked away toward the window, all the information she had browsed earlier flashing through her mind.

The vehicle was driving steadily across the cross-river bridge. In the distance, the river’s surface rippled slightly, floating light dancing like gold.

A faint voice fell into the threads of the breeze, making it impossible to discern its temperature.

“Then I’ll look forward to it.”