After The Top Actress Was Smeared And Trended On Social Media - Chapter 1

Wen Xi was awakened by the sound of knocking on the door.

She opened her eyes in confusion. Her chestnut-brown long hair was tied up with a hairband and wasn’t too messy.

Wancheng was situated further north, so the June morning sunlight was not particularly intense. It scattered warmly through the window onto Wen Xi, coating her in a faint layer of golden light.

As she got up, she felt a wave of soreness in her back and waist, only then remembering that last night she had fallen asleep sitting on the rug with her back leaning against the sofa.

The knocking continued to resound.

Wen Xi raised her arm to rub her head, a trace of annoyance surfacing on her face. However, without time for second thoughts, she put on her slippers and walked over to open the door.

The person at the door was wearing a white shirt, looking mature and steady, with a suit jacket draped over her arm. Her refined and defined mixed-race facial features were set as she looked at Wen Xi with a slight frown.

“Why are you here so early in the morning?” Wen Xi looked at the female CEO who was ditching work on a weekday to find her, her voice raspy from having just woken up.

“You…” Seeing that she was fine, Yu Qiao tried her best to calm her anxious mood and kept her tone as gentle as possible. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“Ah,” Wen Xi lowered her head to recall, stepping aside to let Yu Qiao in. “I don’t have work today, so I muted my phone yesterday.”

Yu Qiao: “…”

Yu Qiao didn’t know what to say. Outside, she had been anxious to death, almost thinking something terrible had happened to her.

However, upon entering, Yu Qiao caught the scent of alcohol in the air. Seeing a few empty wine bottles on the coffee table, her brows furrowed even deeper. “You drank again? And this much? Were you drunk last night?”

Wen Xi said nothing, yawning as she walked over to sit on the sofa.

She casually grabbed a throw pillow and held it in her arms, a slight glint of tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

A computer was still set on the coffee table, and another throw pillow was lying on the floor. Yu Qiao continued, “Did you sleep on the floor last night? Do you have any idea…”

Helpless, Wen Xi interrupted her softly, “CEO Yu, it’s June now, so sitting on the floor isn’t cold. I was just too tired last night and fell asleep. I’ll be careful in the future.”

“If you saved me some peace of mind, I wouldn’t have to scold you,” Yu Qiao placed the jacket in her hand to the side and sat down on the sofa as well. “If you keep doing this, I don’t mind contacting your landlord to buy this apartment directly and make you move in with me.”

Through her interactions with Wen Xi over the past few years, Yu Qiao had come to realize that Wen Xi appeared obedient on the surface; in reality, whatever was said to her went in one ear and out the other.

Wen Xi kept her head down, remaining silent again.

“Your phone.” Yu Qiao let out a silent sigh and tilted her chin, gesturing for Wen Xi to pick up the phone on the coffee table.

“What’s wrong with the phone?” Wen Xi stood up to get it. Before she even unlocked it, she saw a barrage of missed calls, a few of which were from her assistant. “Why did they make so many calls to me?”

“…You’ll know once you open Weibo,” Yu Qiao sneered lightly. “You know best what you posted.”

At the mention of the word Weibo, Wen Xi’s expression became somewhat abnormal.

She felt a slight pang of guilt.

Because her Weibo account had a decent following, she had always muted all notifications from the app. Before opening Weibo, she knew nothing about what was happening.

Hearing Yu Qiao’s words at this moment, the apprehension and anxiety in her heart grew even stronger, to the point where she barely dared to tap on the app.

Wen Xi still pretended to be confused, asking, “What is it?”

“Remember to check the hot searches,” Yu Qiao didn’t spell it out directly, merely reminding her.

Wen Xi had no choice but to exhale softly. When she opened Weibo, her phone even lagged for a moment. As soon as she logged in, she received countless likes, comments, and retweets, and her direct messages suddenly spiked exponentially.

With Yu Qiao beside her, Wen Xi didn’t dare look too closely, as it would be lying to say she wasn’t feeling guilty.

However, the moment she saw the Weibo hot searches, her guilt vanished abruptly, and her mind went blank for a second.

#Shen Yu Cold-Faced at Event, Congratulations on Ditching the Fake Smile#

#Shen Yu Refuses to Put on Business Face#

#Shen Yu Caught Acting Like a Diva#

Several hot topics related to Shen Yu in a row were pinned on the trending list, followed by the tag “Explosive.”

Wen Xi’s heart couldn’t help but leap, her pupils contracting slightly.

With slight panic in her fingertips, she clicked on the topic with the highest heat. At the very top of the public feed was her own post.

Twilight: Thank you to Starburst Entertainment for the invitation to the annual gala. Super happy today! (9 photos attached)

And the very last photo of the nine-grid was Shen Yu looking at the camera with a cold face.

She wore a dark dress, her exquisite and defined makeup paired with an indifferent expression making her appear exceptionally distant and unapproachable.

The cold-faced Shen Yu in the ninth picture formed a stark contrast with the other eight pictures of celebrities putting on their best professional smiles.

Shen Yu, an emerging top-tier star in the entertainment industry, had graduated from the acting department of a renowned university and had recently won the Best Actress award.

Even though she came from a professional acting background, her fundamentals in singing and stage performance were also very solid. Anti-fans rarely found anything to bash her for, so even an ordinary photo from an event like this could be pushed onto the hot search list in an instant.

After all, in the entertainment industry, tiny matters could be magnified endlessly. Taking things out of context was all too normal; people didn’t care about the actual process, only about what they saw with their own eyes.

Apart from anti-fans hating for the sake of hating, another reason was that every time Shen Yu did business, her expression was extraordinarily uniform; it was always that timeless, unchanging smile.

In fact, because her professional smile never showed any variation, some anti-fans with too much time on their hands had taken several photos of Shen Yu from different events to compare them. They discovered that except for a few mismatched pixels, the degree of overlap in her expression was terrifyingly high.

From then on, Shen Yu was labeled with tags like “Eerie” and “Fake Person.”

Because of this, the event photo shot by Wen Xi appeared exceptionally “rare.”

The public feed and the comment section under her post had already erupted into a fierce argument.

[Shen Yu is finally not smiling! Before, every time she showed up for business, her expression never changed. It was way too ridiculous!]

[Did her expression management fail this time? The other eight people shot by the blogger look completely normal; only Shen Yu is putting on a cold face. Who is she showing that to?]

[Is she being this rude today?]

[Truly worth celebrating! Your idol is finally going to get rid of the “timeless fake smile” title!]

[I’m laughing my head off. I knew that this Shen Yu would ruin her image sooner or later.]

Of course, besides the haters, there were other kinds of replies.

[The blogger shoots so well! This blogger is super famous! I’ve always regretted that she never took photos of my sister, and she finally did this time, making her look so cool! I’m totally swooning!]

[Oh my goodness, that gaze, she’s killing it!! I’m fainting on the spot!]

[T-Big has posted food again! A full nine-grid! Everyone, come eat!]

[T-Teacher captured my sister so beautifully! Can those nasty marketing accounts stop spouting nonsense? Everyone should focus more on my sister’s new drama instead!]

[? Wait, is T-Teacher in the wrong for taking good photos? Some fans and anti-fans in the comments shouldn’t go too far, or be careful she might never shoot for your fandom again, and you won’t get a single bite of content here.]

Yet no matter how far she scrolled through the comments, negative reviews still accounted for the majority.

Unconsciously, the corners of Wen Xi’s eyes turned slightly red.

“Can… can we get the hot search taken down?” After a long while, Wen Xi finally managed to speak with difficulty. “Or maybe I should just delete the Weibo post.”

Wen Xi regretted it immensely.

This was clearly their first reunion in ten years; how had she managed to get Shen Yu dragged into a hot search scandal where she was being chewed out?

…She really couldn’t do anything right.

“Deleting the Weibo post won’t solve the problem. Deleting it now will only make people think you were pressured by Shen Yu’s team,” Yu Qiao looked at her slightly red eyes, her hand resting on the side tightening slightly. “Do you think I didn’t want to pull down the hot search? It was blocked by her side.”

Wen Xi froze, temporarily failing to react, “Blocked by whom?”

“Who else could it be?” Yu Qiao continued, “It was blocked by Shen Yu’s side. She doesn’t want to take down the hot search.”

Wen Xi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her eyes trembled slightly as she asked, “She doesn’t want to take it down? Why?”

Yu Qiao sneered, but the laugh was laced with a meaningful implication, “Why else? Nothing more than the fact that she noticed you.”

Wen Xi’s phone screen had automatically turned off, reflecting her somewhat pale face.

She tried her best to explain, “I didn’t intend to see her. I didn’t know she saw me. The event organizer said there was a secret guest, but didn’t tell me who it was. I didn’t know… it was her.”

Yu Qiao said helplessly, “Then you still shouldn’t have posted her photo. Weren’t you trying to avoid her?”

And on top of that, what she posted was a photo of Shen Yu pulling a dark face.

Wen Xi knitted her brows in deep annoyance, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it through.”

At that moment, she had simply felt that this photo was the first picture she had ever taken of Shen Yu, so the meaning was a bit special, and it was also shot quite well.

When editing the photo, Wen Xi had also constantly felt that Shen Yu in the scene was making eye contact with her lens.

,

Yesterday.

Wen Xi had two assistants, one male and one female.

Her right hand had been injured before, so she couldn’t lift heavy objects. Usually, heavy equipment was packed and carried by the male assistant, Feng Lexian, while the female assistant, Pu Tao, was generally responsible for her itinerary schedule and some personal matters.

The annual gala of Starburst Entertainment wasn’t considered an official corporate collaboration, but since she was invited as a photographer, she would still take a few photos out of routine. However, there were no strict requirements regarding the photo output quality, so she only brought a lightweight mirrorless camera and had only Pu Tao accompany her.

Starburst Entertainment was a media production company that had produced several hit TV series. She had previously taken promotional costume photos for some of their artists, and she got along very pleasantly with the person in charge.

The person in charge was a typical elite female executive who possessed a natural fondness for younger girls like Wen Xi. Knowing that Wen Xi had arrived at the venue, she specifically arranged for someone to pick her up.

The person who picked her up brought her to one side of the red carpet first, where the view was quite good. “Hearing Manager Tan say that T-Teacher wants to take a few shots, T-Teacher can just stay here. The red carpet won’t start for another half an hour.”

Wen Xi wore a crossbody bag and a floral dress, her hair loosely tied into a high bun. She said softly, “Thank you, sorry to trouble you. But could you send me a copy of the red carpet attendee list? I still need to match the photos I take with the people. Manager Tan showed me once before, but later said a few more people were added and hadn’t sent me the complete version yet.”

She usually checked the event list in advance whenever she attended an activity. In the earlier years, it was fine, but in recent years, as Shen Yu became immensely popular, she had to check the list first to see if Shen Yu was on it before deciding whether to attend the event.

Of course, directly asking others if Shen Yu was on the list would be too strange, so she took a roundabout way to say she needed to match the names on the list with the actual people.

Anyway, newcomers were constantly entering the entertainment industry, so she couldn’t recognize every single one of them.

Counting it up, she had been avoiding Shen Yu for almost ten years.

In the very beginning, during those first few years, to hide from her, she didn’t even dare to ask for a single piece of news about Shen Yu.

Now, however, with Shen Yu being a massive star, related news flooded everywhere. Wen Xi’s alt account had even joined the fan group, allowing her to stay updated on Shen Yu at every moment.

This was already enough; Wen Xi was not greedy.

Shen Yu was an encounter during the first awakening of her youth, and also her only one.

The breakup, however, hadn’t been peaceful; she was the one who proposed it, after which she abandoned her responsibilities and walked away completely.

She felt that Shen Yu probably hated her to death.

Let her hate then; sometimes Wen Xi would absurdly indulge in foolish thoughts, hating was always better than Shen Yu forgetting about her entirely.

The person who picked her up nodded and said, “Small matter. Then T-Teacher, let’s add each other’s contact info, and I’ll send you a copy.”

Wen Xi nodded and provided her work WeChat account, waiting for the person to transfer the file.

“However,” the person dropped a hint of mystery, “there is still a secret guest who hasn’t been announced, and I don’t know who it is right now either.”

Wen Xi suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of uneasiness in her heart, though she didn’t show it on her face, merely thanking the person.

Once the person had left, the assistant Pu Tao asked in confusion, “Is the secrecy work being done this well? The red carpet is about to start, and even the staff don’t know who the secret guest is?”

Wen Xi’s pretty eyebrows also knitted together slightly as she joked lightheartedly, “Presumably they want to give us a surprise.”

“That’s possible too,” Pu Tao pondered and nodded. “They usually have to sign some non-disclosure agreement or something, unable to tell outsiders. But with things like this, I’m even more curious about who this secret guest is!”

“Curious about what?” A helpless expression surfaced on Wen Xi’s face. “Following me around, haven’t you seen enough big celebrities?”

“Hehe,” Pu Tao laughed sheepishly. “Following the boss naturally means eating well and drinking well! But there are still a few that I’ve never seen before!”

Wen Xi smiled silently. She had brought Pu Tao along to meet most of the artists in the circle, except for a few special exceptions.

Just like… Shen Yu.

Except for Yu Qiao, no one around her knew about her past with Shen Yu, so Pu Tao didn’t know she was actively avoiding Shen Yu, assuming it was simply that they hadn’t had the chance to collaborate.

After all, Wen Xi still had an alt Weibo account that was active in Shen Yu’s fan group. Sometimes when Wen Xi was too busy, Pu Tao was even the one helping her do the daily fan check-ins.

So Pu Tao had always known that Wen Xi was following Shen Yu, but only in the sense of chasing a star.

As Pu Tao thought about it, she began to make a bold guess, “Boss, if that secret guest turns out to be Shen Yu, I will definitely act super social and get an autograph for you!”

Hearing this, Wen Xi gave a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “Then I’ll thank you in advance.”

Who could have guessed that Pu Tao would turn out to be such a jinx?