I Was Taken by the Female Lead After Transmigrating into a Book - Chapter 43

“Inserted a role?” Huo Wu paused when she heard this. She raised an eyebrow, looked at Ji Meng for a long time, and then suddenly smiled. “What role did Li Ke give him?”

Ji Meng’s expression shifted several times, finally settling into an unreadable, awkward look. Her face seemed to be strained as she said slowly, “…The role of Li Mingming.”

Huo Wu: “…”

She was silent for a few moments. The role of Li Mingming was one that, if played well, would make the character come alive. If not, both the character and the actor would be universally reviled.

Huo Wu reached for her phone, but Ji Meng held her hand down. Huo Wu looked up at her, confused. “What’s wrong?”

“…You’d better not call,” Ji Meng said, taking a deep breath and trying to sound as calm as possible. “That spoiled brat knows everything. Director Li laid it all out for him, and he said he agreed to everything, as long as he could join the crew. He said he’d even play a corpse.”

Playing a corpse is the most difficult role. A dedicated corpse actor can earn a thousand yuan a day for filming. That’s why most of the extras for this role are over forty or fifty years old, uneducated, and without any pre-existing medical conditions. After all, for the most realistic corpse scenes, especially with a demanding director, they might really have to find a cesspool and make the person soak in it.

To be so determined was something Huo Wu had never expected. She looked at her phone with the screen off and, after a while, asked in surprise, “Why on earth is he doing this?”

“He didn’t say,” Ji Meng said, spreading her hands helplessly. “He just said it was his birthday wish after graduating from university. For this, he even canceled his two-year plan to travel the country. Your older sister was so happy that she just went ahead and placed him. She even told Director Li to discipline him well, to throw all the dirty and exhausting work at him, as long as it doesn’t kill him. Just leave him with one breath.”

Huo Wu: “…”

Ji Meng looked at Huo Wu’s face and added, “Your sister also said…”

“Said what?”

Ji Meng picked up her bag, and her voice was filled with a mix of emphasis and disbelief. She still seemed unable to believe that a biological sister would do such a thing.

“She said that he listens to you the most, so if he joins, you shouldn’t go easy on him. Just listen to Li Ke about everything.”

Huo Wu finally showed a hint of a smile. She nodded and said, “Alright, I understand.”

When filming begins, Li Ke recognizes no one. He can be so intense that if the filming isn’t going well, no one within a hundred yards wants to be near him, for fear of being caught and verbally thrashed. But his only biological brother, a treasure who had been pampered by her older sister since childhood, wasn’t even a proper acting student. He had studied finance and was supposed to take over his older sister’s business and inherit a billion-dollar fortune.

Huo Wu let out a breath and pulled up the digital version of the script for the character Li Mingming to examine it carefully.

Li Mingming was not a special character. In fact, there might be a person like him in most classes. Li Mingming was tall but extremely thin, and though he was over six feet tall, he was a perpetually sickly person. He had a congenital heart condition and had been mocked by a group of people since he was a child. Children don’t care about your condition; they just know that this person “has a disease.” Just those two words were enough for all the conformist children to join in on bullying Li Mingming.

And Li Mingming really did seem like a sick person. In class, he would secretly saw wood under his desk. Even after class, he would look for ant holes and watch them all day. This would be fine if it were elementary school, but this storyline took place in high school. Because of his illness, Li Mingming’s lips were a dark purple, but his skin was as white as paper. From a distance, he looked like a ghost. He also had medium-length hair with a fashionable perm that he always wore down. At night, with his pale skin and purple lips, he looked very unsettling.

Besides these things that many people considered “sick,” Li Mingming was also very petty. He would pull girls’ pigtails, stick gum in people’s hair, draw turtles on their backs, and even put prank candies in people’s mouths while they were sleeping… He was so insufferable that even cats and dogs would despise him. People would get angry at him, but no one dared to report him to the teacher. The teacher knew they couldn’t scare him—the boy had a congenital heart condition so severe that he could faint at any moment after walking just a few steps. Not to mention scaring him, even saying a few harsh words would make him clutch his heart and start to turn pale. Who would dare to do that?

As a result, everyone avoided him. Those he pranked were angry but didn’t dare to speak up. Over time, Li Mingming became a very special person, one who was very active but completely transparent. But there was also a pitiful side to this hateful person. The question was whether an actor could play the underlying reasons well. Many actors would focus on the “annoying” part and easily overlook the underlying causes, making him nothing more than a simple villain who would resonate with countless people.

For Ling Xinghe to choose this role couldn’t have been an impulsive decision. Huo Wu tapped her fingers on the screen, then opened her chat. But she didn’t send a message and just exited the app. He hadn’t reached out to her, probably planning to give her a surprise tomorrow. Ji Meng had already given her a heads-up today, otherwise, she really would have been very surprised to see him tomorrow.

Huo Wu turned off her phone and got up to turn off the lights. Little White, sensing that the room had gone dark, waited quietly on the bay window for a while, then quietly jumped to the floor and expertly walked into the bedroom, as if it had been there a hundred times before.

Huo Wu slipped under the covers. Before she fell asleep, her phone vibrated softly. She opened it and saw the message preview: Bai Feifei had sent her the two words, “Good night.”

Huo Wu’s lips curved into a smile. In the silent, empty night, she uttered two words that only she and Little White could hear.

“Good night.”

The next day, filming began directly. Everyone had to be on standby early in the morning. It wasn’t exactly a rushed start, but no matter how perfect the preparations were, there were always some minor issues after filming began, just like now.

“Li Ran’s fans?” Li Ke’s face was starting to get red with anger because of the filming delays. He walked over to the cordon the crew had set up and looked at the crowd of young girls gathered at the main entrance. His face was dark. “Who brought all these people here? Li Ran’s filming schedule is only for two weeks, right? Why are they all gathered here?”

“They’re not all Li Ran’s fans,” the assistant next to him said, fanning himself. He was so hot that sweat was pouring down his back, instantly soaking his shirt. “They’re Li Ran and Ling Xinghe’s ship fans…”

When he mentioned the ship fans, Li Ke’s head started buzzing, and his voice even started to tremble. Ship fans have always been the most fanatical; this was an unchangeable rule. Although these people were dedicated, they could also be terrifying.

“Li Ran hasn’t even been in a danmei drama. Where did he get so many ship fans?” Li Ke was bewildered.

“He hasn’t, but he likes to show things off on Weibo,” the assistant said, also exasperated. He took out his phone, which was a little hot from the sun, and searched for Li Ran’s Weibo. He handed it to Li Ke and said, “Look, there’s a huge group. His data has been exceptionally high these past few days. I don’t know what it was that resonated with these young fans. I heard that they had to transfer a dozen security guards from other places at the airport in Luoshui City to maintain order…”

Li Ke scrolled through it and saw that the data for the past few days was indeed absurdly high. There was a Weibo post from Li Ran’s birthday not long ago, and the first hot comment was from Ling Xinghe, with over forty thousand likes. The popularity was obvious. Below it was supposed to be the fans’ rankings, but it was now overwhelmed by a large number of new comments with high likes and a lot of weight, which must have happened in the past couple of days.

Li Ke’s intuition led him to click on the trending topics. Sure enough, the first trending topic had a “hot” tag.

#LingXingheJoinsTheCrewForLove#

His eyelid twitched. He turned his head expressionlessly and said to his assistant, who was a mess, “I just remembered something.”

“What?” The assistant wiped the sweat from his forehead. He thought that he would probably have to give the security guards outside a pay raise and buy them some cooling drinks and fruit. They could have been in the security booth with a fan and some juice, but now they were all sticking together in the sun. What kind of scene was this? It was a real pain.

Li Ke handed the phone back to him, leisurely put his hands behind his back, and turned to leave. The assistant quickly followed him, asking in a daze, “Director? You’re not going to do anything? What if confidential information is leaked?”

“Let it leak,” Li Ke said calmly, looking back. “Push back the scenes for those two for a couple of days. Film something else first—yes, let’s film Bai Feifei’s and Huo Wu’s scenes first. Go and tell Li Ran and Ling Xinghe.”

“Is that appropriate?” the assistant asked. “What about the Ling family? Wouldn’t it be bad to give him the cold shoulder for two days right after he just joined?”

“That’s easy to handle,” Li Ke laughed. “Ling Xingchen personally called me and told me to whip her brother into shape… That kid wants to be an action star, but he doesn’t want to lose his pale skin. It’s a good thing for him to come and get some sun, don’t you think?”

The assistant finally understood. So Li Ke wasn’t worried and didn’t start scolding them like he usually did because of these crazy fans. It was because he himself was behind this whole thing. Since he had personally agreed to let him join the crew, he couldn’t blame others for spreading the news. Besides, there was no such thing as a waterproof wall. This matter couldn’t be hidden forever. The contract had to go through many people. Even if the contract had been finalized ten minutes ago, it could still be leaked now.

The assistant could only nod in resignation. “Which scene should we film?”

“I haven’t decided,” Li Ke said, looking up. As he walked closer, he saw Bai Feifei waiting for her scene. The stage manager hadn’t given them today’s schedule yet because today’s plans hadn’t been set. It was only a little past 8 a.m., and most people were either sleepy or drowsy, so there weren’t many who were in high spirits. Li Ke pointed at Bai Feifei, but then his finger changed direction, his eyes rolled around, and his target landed on Huo Wu.

He was finally satisfied and gestured to his assistant. “Go and ask Huo Wu what scene she wants to film today. Let her choose. She can also help Feifei get some practice.”

The assistant was taken aback, but he didn’t say anything. After he came to his senses, he headed straight for Huo Wu.