I Transmigrated Into A Fanfiction And Got Pregnant With The Movie Star's Child - Chapter 9

Ji Xing felt his heart drop, a flurry of rapid thoughts flashing through his mind.

Why did He Chenchen want him to go to his room?

Was there really no way to discuss whatever it was outside?

It was already very late, and they had to get up early the next morning for filming. What on earth were they supposed to do in a private room at this hour?

The mere memory of that intoxicating night spent in He Chenchen’s room sent a rush of heat to Ji Xing’s ears, completely tangling his breathing.

“Teacher He, what are we going to do?” Ji Xing asked, wearing an expression of utter distress.

“What do you think?” He Chenchen countered without answering.

Ji Xing didn’t dare guess. At that point, his own overactive imagination had him nearly frightened to tears.

He Chenchen remained silent the entire walk back, leading Ji Xing straight to the hotel. As the two of them rode the elevator upward, Ji Xing kept stealing anxious glances at He Chenchen through the mirrored walls. By the time they reached the door of He Chenchen’s suite, his legs felt heavy and difficult to lift.

“Teacher He…”

“Inside.”

He Chenchen unlocked the door, stepped aside, and gestured for Ji Xing to enter first.

Ji Xing hesitated by the threshold for a long moment, finally stepping into He Chenchen’s room with an expression that screamed of a doomed soldier marching to his execution.

“Wait here while I go get things ready,” He Chenchen stated before slipping into a separate inner room. Left standing in place, Ji Xing stared at the half-closed door, his mind completely consumed by that single parting phrase.

Get what ready?

What on earth could possibly need preparation?

Peeking through the crack in the door, Ji Xing saw that the room inside was quite dim, casting faint, colorful lights that looked exceedingly strange. Why would a hotel suite have such a bizarre room? Had He Chenchen remodeled it himself?

With the interior so dark and those strange lights glowing…

Ji Xing’s brain was already spinning entirely out of control, conjuring up scenarios that would never pass broadcast censorship.

Memories of intimate details from the original novel surfaced continuously, scaring him until his knees felt weak.

Just as Ji Xing debated whether he should make a run for it, He Chenchen’s voice drifted out from the inner room: “Come in.”

Too terrified to enter yet lacking the courage to flee, Ji Xing had no choice but to approach the doorway with a stiff neck. At that exact moment, the door was pulled wide open, finally allowing him to see the reality inside.

It was an audiovisual screening room, and the large screen was playing footage from their training sessions in the studio earlier.

“I have some personal matters to take care of tomorrow and need to ask for leave, so you’ll get a day off too. Tonight, I’m going to take you through a review of your performance. Even though you aren’t participating in the stage presentation, you still need to learn what you’re supposed to learn,” He Chenchen explained.

Ji Xing:

For a split second, Ji Xing genuinely wished he could dig a hole in the floor and crawl inside.

Teacher He had kindly intended to help him review his performance, yet his own brain had cast the man in such a villainous light. It was completely unjustifiable.

Overwhelmed by guilt and shame, Ji Xing looked at He Chenchen with an entirely new perspective.

“What is it? Why is your face so red?” He Chenchen asked.

“I’m fine,” Ji Xing blurted out hastily.

Dropping the matter, He Chenchen handed him a canned beverage, pressed play on the remote, and began guiding Ji Xing through a detailed breakdown of his acting from that day.

“Your performance is relatively smooth overall, and you can catch most cues thrown your way. However, whenever a scene requires a high emotional peak, your delivery tends to fall a bit short,” He Chenchen observed.

Ji Xing had noticed that exact flaw in his own acting. Before transmigrating, when he was working on film sets, He Chenchen had mentioned the exact same issue to him, though time constraints back then meant the man had only touched upon it briefly without going into deep detail.

He never expected that in this world, He Chenchen would still pinpoint the exact same weakness with effortless ease.

“Something wrong?” He Chenchen asked, noticing him zone out.

“No, you’re entirely right. Another teacher I worked with in the past told me the exact same thing.”

Hearing this, He Chenchen froze. The hand holding the remote control trembled slightly, a flicker of strange emotion flashing across his eyes. Yet he adjusted his composure almost instantly. Completely oblivious to the shift, Ji Xing remained lost in his memories.

“Who was it?” He Chenchen asked.

“Just a teacher I collaborated with before. You probably… don’t know him,” Ji Xing fabricated a lie.

“I’m somewhat curious. What kind of person was he?”

“He…” Ji Xing pondered deeply on how to evaluate one He Chenchen right in front of another He Chenchen. “He looked very stern, but he was actually very patient and taught me a lot of things.”

“Were you afraid of him?” He Chenchen pressed.

“A little bit, yes.” Ji Xing didn’t deny it.

“Why? Was he very fierce with you?”

“Not really. He wasn’t actually fierce, but he just gave off a somewhat fierce vibe.”

Raising an eyebrow, He Chenchen asked, “Did he look terrifying?”

“No, no, he’s very good-looking.”

At that, the corners of He Chenchen’s lips twitched upward in a slight smile, his mood appearing quite agreeable.

“That’s a rather interesting description. Then what kind of animal do I resemble?”

“You…” Desperate to find a majestic animal to compare He Chenchen to, Ji Xing could only come up with one option: “An elephant.”

“Why an elephant? Am I that big?”

“You…” Weren’t you big?

Ji Xing nearly blurted out the words before realizing how strange the double entendre sounded, swallowing the second half of his sentence just in time.

That evening, He Chenchen spent nearly two hours taking Ji Xing through a meticulous review of the rehearsal footage.

By the time they finished the review and returned to their rooms, it was already past one in the morning.

Since He Chenchen would be absent from the production crew the next day, and Ji Xing, as his assistant, got a matching day off, there was no need to worry about a lack of sleep.

Expecting to enjoy a lazy day of rest, Ji Xing was surprised to learn around noon that the first episode of Actor Training Camp was scheduled to air at six o’clock that very evening.

Excited by the news, Xiao Lin ran out early to stock up on beer and a mountain of snacks, planning to watch the show alongside Ji Xing.

At six o’clock sharp, the two of them opened the streaming app. As the flagship program of the platform, Actor Training Camp occupied the primary splash-screen banner.

To show his full support, Xiao Lin even purchased a VIP membership.

The first episode covered the audition phase. Following the entrance of the five mentors, over thirty trainees made their appearances. Ji Xing’s audition had not been particularly standout, resulting in a montage featuring only a single shot of him without even a line of dialogue.

“Even if it’s just one shot, you still look great,” Xiao Lin comforted him.

“Whose shot is that?” Ji Xing looked genuinely blank.

Xiao Lin was momentarily left speechless. So much for pouring his heart out to comfort someone; the guy had only been looking for himself and completely missed his own appearance on screen.

Still, that kind of thick-skinned optimism had its perks.

“You forgot to turn on the comment feed,” Xiao Lin remarked, reaching over to enable the live chat stream.

Seconds later, the screen flooded with scrolling comments from various fanbases cheering for their respective idols. The most frequently appearing name across the board was He Chenchen, followed closely by Pei Yun alongside the various best-actress award winners. Ji Xing’s name flickered past briefly among the other minor trainees, nearly impossible to catch.

At that moment, a wave of poignant realization hit Xiao Lin.

No wonder everyone cursed the concept of internet traffic while desperately chasing after it.

He truly hoped his Brother Ji could reach that level someday, where his name wouldn’t vanish so easily into a sea of scrolling text.

The chronological order of the trainees’ performances in the episode had been rearranged by the editing team. Standout or high-topic auditions were retained in full, while ordinary or low-topic segments were largely mashed together into a fast-forwarded montage.

Ji Xing’s first audition retained roughly ten seconds of footage, infuriating Xiao Lin enough to curse the VIP pass as a waste of money fed directly to the network.

Fortunately, most of Ji Xing’s second performance segment was kept intact, though Xiao Lin grew increasingly uneasy the more he watched. The performance itself contained no flaws, and viewers in the comment section even praised Ji Xing’s snail-like acting as adorable.

However, immediately following Ji Xing’s performance and right before the mentor selection block, the production team inserted that overly candid interview clip of Ji Xing.

In the clip, Ji Xing stated his preference for joining Teacher Zhang’s team. The editing team immediately spliced in a response clip from Teacher Zhang: “Cherry-picking isn’t a good habit. Coming on a show isn’t like shopping for meat at a vegetable market.”

That remark had originally been a casual, joking aside directed at another mentor during idle chatter, but dropped right into this context, it carried heavy undertones and misdirected viewers into assuming Teacher Zhang was taking a subtle jab at Ji Xing.

Following that interview segment came Ji Xing’s remarks about how joining the best-actress group wouldn’t be bad either. The footage transitioned instantly to Pei Yun telling He Chenchen that they were both being rejected too.

In truth, Ji Xing’s original interview response had been answering a hypothetical question from the production crew about what he would do if he couldn’t get into Teacher Zhang’s group. Out of context, however, the heavy-handed editing made it look as though Ji Xing was arrogant and excessively picky toward the mentors.

While the earlier comment stream had remained relatively friendly, the tone shifted drastically at this point. Numerous viewers began launching vicious attacks on Ji Xing in the chat.

[Who is this guy?] [Seriously, why is he being so picky?] [Guessing neither the movie emperor nor the award-winning actresses are good enough to be his mentor, wow.] [Go look in a mirror before talking, seriously.]

Thinking that was the end of it, Xiao Lin was stunned when the production team doubled down by appending footage from Ji Xing’s first-round audition where he asked if he could join Teacher Zhang’s team.

That clip was followed immediately by a shot of Teacher Zhang shrugging.

[Such thick skin.] [They practically threw shade at you right to your face, and you still have the nerve?] [Can we get him eliminated already? I don’t want to see him anymore.]

“Damn it, this is bullying!” Furious enough to throw his phone, Xiao Lin growled, “I’m done watching. I’m calling them out on this!”

As he moved to close the streaming app, Ji Xing stopped him. “I want to see how they edited the rest of it.”

With a heavy sigh, Xiao Lin forced himself to calm down and continued watching the broadcast with Ji Xing.

As the episode neared its end, the disrupted recording sequence meant Ji Xing was the very last trainee left unassigned to a mentor.

On screen, He Chenchen extended a team-joining card. Ji Xing stepped forward to accept the card without uttering a single word of thanks before turning away to leave.

Yet Ji Xing remembered clearly that while he had been momentarily dazed at the time, instinctual politeness had driven him to bow to He Chenchen. More than that, he had also bowed to the other mentors present before taking his leave.

Clearly, to manufacture the narrative that Ji Xing wanted nothing to do with He Chenchen’s team, the production crew had intentionally manipulated the footage, completely altering the context of He Chenchen handing him the card while framing Ji Xing as disrespectful and lacking basic manners toward his seniors.

Ji Xing missed the rest of the comment stream because Xiao Lin flew into a rage and uninstalled the app on the spot. Regretting it moments later, Xiao Lin downloaded it again, logged into his personal account, and left several comments chewing out the production crew for malicious editing.

His single comment vanished without a ripple amid the sea of abuse directed at Ji Xing, swallowed up instantly.

Ji Xing remained remarkably calm throughout. Before transmigrating, he had witnessed firsthand how He Chenchen suffered under negative public opinion for extended periods due to a misunderstanding. Back then, every time Ji Xing opened the trending search lists, those comments felt agonizingly cruel, yet He Chenchen had acted like an absolute stone wall, letting the backlash roll right off his back without a care.

If someone as prominent as He Chenchen could weather storms like that, how could a tiny nobody like him not?

“I’m calling Brother Wu. We can’t just swallow this loss,” Xiao Lin said, dialing their manager’s number. A few minutes later, he hung up, the anger on his face replaced by a complicated expression.

“What did he say?” Ji Xing asked.

“Brother Wu said the production crew informed him beforehand, and the edited cut was something he had already reviewed and approved,” Xiao Lin said, completely broken down. “I don’t get it. Why resort to this kind of tactic for clicks? Sure, notoriety is still publicity, but this lane clearly doesn’t suit you.”

Though slow-witted, Ji Xing caught the underlying meaning in Xiao Lin’s words. Using him as a talking point had been signed off by his own manager.

“Brother Wu said that once a few more episodes air, they’ll definitely help wash your image clean. Since audiences get fatigued watching people bash someone constantly, they’ll shift the target to manufacture drama elsewhere after a few weeks.” Xiao Lin offered the words as reassurance, though it was clear the explanation comforted nobody, least of all himself.

Ji Xing nodded, showing no outward emotional turbulence. Things had already reached this point; as a bottom-tier nobody, there was nothing he could change.

Unable to fall asleep that night, he lay in bed and opened Weibo. Actor Training Camp dominated several spots on the trending search list, every single hashtag filled with abuse directed at him.

[Turning his nose up at the movie emperor? What a joke.] [Thought playing a snail was cute at first, guess I was blind.] [Ji Xing get out of the training camp.] [Ji Xing get out of the training camp.] [Ji Xing get out of the training camp +1]

Closing his phone, Ji Xing pulled the blanket over his head, a chorus of voices ringing in his ears, screaming at him to get out of the training camp. Even knowing that the hatred stemmed from misunderstandings, and even keeping the manager’s promise of a future redemption arc in mind, the sheer weight of the hostility and insults felt suffocatingly real in that moment.

Ji Xing stayed awake all night, feeling thoroughly numb. When his alarm went off, he grabbed his phone and messaged Xiao Lin to ask for a day’s leave on his behalf.

Just as the message sent, a knock echoed at his door.

“I’m fine, just help me ask for sick leave,” Ji Xing mumbled, reluctant to face anyone with eyes as red as a rabbit’s.

The moment he spoke, however, the voice answering from the other side didn’t belong to Xiao Lin. It was He Chenchen.

“Need help taking leave?”

Startled, Ji Xing hurried to unlock and pull open the door.

Standing outside in the corridor was He Chenchen, tall and straight in a black suit, holding a pink stuffed rabbit in his hand.