I Was Forced into the Limelight After Pairing with a Top Star - Chapter 1

Soft, pale yellow light filled his vision. Floor-to-ceiling windows were draped with crimson curtains, where a sudden silhouette blocked a fraction of the light, leaving a blurred, ambiguous shape against the fabric.

Where is this?

Lin Wang shook his dizzy head and moved to step forward, only for his leg to hit the side of the bed with a dull thud.

The wine glass in his hand wobbled. His hazy gaze pierced through the deep red of the wine, landing on a black T-shirt tossed carelessly by his feet.

Had he not fallen off a waterfall while trying to save someone? From that height, he should have been dead as a doornail.

A flash of realization struck Lin Wang’s mind. A few seconds later, it dawned on him.

Did he transmigrate? Was he reborn?

What was his status?

The room was decorated like a hotel suite. Lin Wang looked down and saw himself dressed in a standard hotel waiter’s uniform.

Great. In this life, he was still a blue-collar worker.

Standing in someone’s bedroom in the middle of the night, he might even be a worker up to no good.

He needed to leave fast.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, the bathroom door nearby swung open with a soft click. The sound felt like a coin dropping right onto Lin Wang’s startled heart.

In the dim light, Lin Wang’s eyes first met a pair of scrutinizing ones. It was the look one gave a rat with nowhere to hide.

The man was a young man, likely in his early twenties, with an exceptionally striking physique and appearance, clad only in a bathrobe.

Knowing nothing about his surroundings, Lin Wang’s instinct was to hide, yet he could not help but steal another glance at the man.

“Hello, sir. I am room service.” Catching the man’s gaze, Lin Wang looked down, his eyes avoiding the scattered undergarments on the floor. He placed the wine glass on a side table and began making up nonsense as he scanned for the door: “If you do not need anything else, I will be going.”

Water was still dripping from the black fringe on Chi Yuan’s forehead. He leaned casually against the bathroom doorframe, looking as though he were used to being disturbed by uninvited guests in the middle of the night. Hearing this, he arched a well-shaped eyebrow ever so slightly and spoke.

“I do.”

His voice was deep and soaked with moisture. In the shroud of the dark night, it was so captivating it made Lin Wang’s Adam’s apple bob.

Lin Wang was pinned to the spot by those two words. He forced a professional smile: “Is there anything else you require?”

“Were you not pouring wine?” Chi Yuan lowered his gaze, glancing at Lin Wang’s fingers which were curled tight from tension. He looked up. “Continue.”

Lin Wang swallowed hard, unable to gauge the young man’s intentions.

Could it be that he really was just a regular waiter and not some villain who had broken into the bedroom with malicious intent?

Red wine poured from the bottle’s mouth, and a faint aroma diffused through the dim space. The sense of intoxication seemed to seep through the air, wordlessly squeezing Lin Wang’s thoughts.

He pursed his lips, pretending to be diligent while his mind raced for an exit strategy.

“It is full.”

The hand that stopped the wine bottle was long-fingered and pale, with only the knuckles showing a faint flush of pink. As the low, raspy voice came from behind Lin Wang’s ear, the temperature in the bedroom seemed to spike by several degrees.

“I am sorry, so sorry!” Lin Wang’s ears twitched. He took a slightly disorganized step to the side and handed the glass over. “Here you go.”

Chi Yuan did not take it. His eyes were cold as he looked down, his gaze fixed intently on Lin Wang’s face.

Two silver collarbone piercings were visible on his left side, reflecting a glint of white in the murky light.

Under that gaze, those few dozen seconds felt like an eternity to Lin Wang.

His arm grew sore from holding the glass, and a bead of cold sweat rolled down his temple.

Perhaps when people are in extremely tense and unfamiliar environments, they resort to inappropriate instinctive behaviors.

He took a light breath, grabbed the man’s handsome left hand, shoved the nearly overflowing glass into it, and folded the man’s fingers closed.

Looking up, he met Chi Yuan’s eyes sincerely: “How about you just make do with this?”

Lin Wang swore that, initially, he just did not want to keep holding the glass. But when he smelled the woody cologne on Chi Yuan and saw that face up close under the flickering light, everything started to go sideways.

Damp moisture spread from Chi Yuan’s body. An unfamiliar warmth seeped through the small patch of touching skin like an unspeakable suggestion. The gloomy, cold sensation was as addictive as it was mesmerizing.

But pleasure is always fleeting.

Chi Yuan withdrew his hand. His fingertips brushed against Lin Wang’s burning fingers as if by accident, leaving without a hint of lingering.

Only those deep eyes continued to scrutinize Lin Wang from above. Between the blinks of his lashes, a trace of indefinable ambiguity flickered.

Lin Wang’s heart felt suspended and uncomfortably restless.

The intimacy of skin-to-skin contact had invisibly softened the tension. Lin Wang’s breathing slowed. Looking into Chi Yuan’s eyes, he seemed to lose his mind. He curled his finger and hooked it once against the back of the man’s hand.

In his past life, he had been someone who knew how to play. Having been teased in such a veiled manner, his words became suggestive.

“You should really let me out. Otherwise, in the middle of the night, two men alone, with your looks and body, it is not safe.”

Realizing the other party harbored no hostility, Lin Wang stopped worrying about his current identity. His tense body relaxed, and his reckless words did not feel out of place.

They did not know each other. In his thirty years of life, he knew the steps of mutual flirting between strangers better than anyone.

The moment their eyes met, Chi Yuan suddenly curled the corner of his lip.

“You can make me feel unsafe?”

The words sounded far too mocking. Lin Wang had been a “Top” his whole life. He had never faced such skepticism.

He let out a scoff, forgetting his current upward-looking angle, and pointed at himself: “Me? I cannot?”

Only upon closer inspection did he notice that Chi Yuan’s eyelashes trembled when he spoke, giving off a blurred sense of intimacy and abstinence. It contradicted his current sarcasm, yet it was exactly the type Lin Wang liked.

“Why do you not find out?” Lin Wang narrowed his eyes.

A long, powerful arm rose. The overflowing wine glass was pressed right against Lin Wang’s Adam’s apple. The cold, expensive red wine poured down his protruding throat, quickly soaking his waiter’s uniform and causing his skin to shiver uncontrollably.

Chi Yuan looked down. Just before Lin Wang could react, he raised the glass, which now contained only a dreg of wine, and pressed it against the corner of Lin Wang’s mouth.

“Are you angry?”

“What do you think?” Having been drenched by a man younger than himself as if he were being toyed with, Lin Wang turned his head, his face full of annoyance as he tried to dodge the glass.

The red wine was sticky and wet on his shirt. With every breath, the fabric repeatedly stuck to his chest and slowly pulled away. The slight discomfort made his senses hypersensitive. The smallest movement made his breathing ragged, as if he were suffocating.

The wine glass moved away from his lips. Cold fingers lightly grazed Lin Wang’s reddened earlobe. A second later, the glass fell. The remaining wine splashed onto the crimson carpet, leaving a stubborn stain.

Lin Wang’s heart skipped a beat. His gaze followed Chi Yuan’s every move, his spirit being pulled and controlled without him even realizing it.

Chi Yuan rubbed his burning cheek, slowly lifting a strand of his hair and meticulously rubbing his ear tip. He seemed more interested in these details than in Lin Wang as a whole person.

Lin Wang was not used to this silence, but he refused to back down. He knit his brows as tension and impulse washed over his logic. He began to grow restless, then gradually annoyed.

Just as he could not take it anymore and opened his mouth to speak, Chi Yuan pressed hard against his lips and spoke.

“Next time, remember not to pour it so full.”

Next time. This was a suggestion between adults that required no further words. Amidst the warm, intoxicating aroma of wine, it easily tore through Lin Wang’s strained restraint.

He grabbed Chi Yuan’s bathrobe collar, his fingers straining until the veins stood out. Lin Wang tilted his head back and kissed Chi Yuan’s lips.

The phone ringtone played through once, but it failed to fully wake Lin Wang, who was curled up in the soft duvet.

He reached out, grabbed the phone, and stuffed it under the pillow. The lightweight feel of the device and the ringing starting up again finally forced him to open his swollen eyes.

He was the only one in bed. The room was so quiet he could only hear his own breathing, all of which reminded him that the other man had left.

Lin Wang let out a tired yawn. He sat up, his bare upper body covered in hickeys, as he waited for his brain to wake up.

Regarding the fact that his one-night stand had left the next morning without even saying goodbye, he did not feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. On the contrary, he felt that a relationship without strings was much more convenient.

It was just that the other man’s exceptional qualities left a faint, inexplicable sense of regret in Lin Wang’s heart.

His memories of the late night were blurred. After he had been held by the scruff of his neck and semi-forced to drink wine while he was already riding a high, he had been too dizzy to hold himself up. He could only hang onto Chi Yuan like a sloth.

Lin Wang realized something was off. With his tolerance, a few more glasses should not have made him that incoherent.

He habitually reached for a cigarette on the nightstand, but felt nothing. Instead, the motion of stretching his arm sent a wave of soreness through his lower back.

“Damn it.”

Lin Wang rubbed his waist, feeling a sudden urge to laugh.

Was he really some villain who came to drug the guy? Although he ended up drinking the spiked wine himself, judging by the way the other man had not touched a drop, he had likely figured it out.

Well, let him figure it out. He had already slept with the guy. They were even by any calculation.

Lin Wang fished the phone out from under the pillow. It showed three missed calls from a contact named “Shi Yu.”

The name felt strangely familiar, though he could not place why.

The phone rang persistently again. Since Lin Wang knew absolutely nothing about this world, he decided to answer.

“Hello? Who is it?”

His voice, a mix of the night’s absurdity and a hangover, was raspy and deep. It was worlds apart from the affected, youthful voice he used to put on, making it sound so sexy one might doubt it was the same person.

Shi Yu hesitated for a second: “Lin Wang?”

Lin Wang answered instinctively: “It is me.”

The other end of the line went eerily quiet.

Just as Lin Wang was about to ask who she was, a furious roar snapped him back to reality.

“Lin Wang! Where the hell are you now?”

“Did I not tell you to wait at the hotel for your new assistant? The new variety show deal fell through, and do you not want the new endorsement either? You are treating my words like wind in your ears again. Do you just not want to stay in the entertainment industry anymore? If not, pay the cancellation fee and get lost!”

Lin Wang covered his aching ear, stunned by the shouting: “Huh? What?”

Assistants, variety shows, endorsements. Was he a celebrity? And this was his manager?

Wait.

He was called Lin Wang, and his assistant was Shi Yu. This was exactly like a Huashi smut novel he had read a long time ago.

He had transmigrated into a book.

While Shi Yu was still berating his self-destructive behavior, Lin Wang had stopped listening. His mind was frantically recalling the blurred plot.

He could not remember the title, but he remembered the two male leads. One was a once-in-a-century musical genius, and the other was a rising star in acting. He could still recall their chaotic, stormy romance.

It was not just because the author wrote Chi Yuan with such a unique personality, but also because of Chi Yuan’s specific quirk: he only found creative inspiration by witnessing the suffering of others.

Outsiders only envied the bottom for being favored by the top, unaware of the top’s madness. He had imprisoned the bottom, torturing him until the man tried to escape several times only to be caught, finally leading to a total breakdown and a forced Happy Ending.

Lin Wang, the supporting character with the same name, was also quite a stupid highlight. To get famous, he drugged Chi Yuan’s wine, hoping to sleep with him and make headlines. The ending? He did not succeed, and as revenge, he was pushed down a flight of stairs and ended up a permanent quadriplegic.

At the time, because this moronic character shared his name, Lin Wang had mocked how embarrassing it was while reading. Now, he had transmigrated into the role himself.

But things were not all bad. Having been worn down by life for thirty years, Lin Wang was an optimist. He figured this character at least had a good family background and no shortage of food or clothes. As long as he did not try to sleep with Chi Yuan.

Shi Yu: “Hello? Say something! I am warning you, do not get any crooked ideas. Chi Yuan is not someone you can mess with. If you provoke him, no one can protect you!”

Lin Wang nodded with a smile: “You are right.”

Luckily, he had arrived just in time. He had not slept with him yet.

Catching a glimpse of a black business card on the nightstand, he picked it up casually. While agreeing with Shi Yu, he looked at it: “Sister Shi Yu, I am sorry for causing you so much trouble.”

He suddenly froze. Lin Wang stared with wide eyes at the two words clearly printed on the card:

Chi Yuan.