The Villainess A Marked the Seductive Movie Queen - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Building a Bridge

At the mention of the title and Ruan Minxue’s name, the scar on Liu Yitong’s wrist—which had been painless for days—suddenly throbbed with a faint, stinging ache.

She lowered her head, turning her wrist over. Her spare fingers brushed against the scab; it felt uneven and hard. As the pad of her finger tugged at the shell of the scab, the flesh and nerves beneath seemed to cry out.

Sitting on the sofa in the flat’s living room, Liu Yitong looked up, meeting Shu Ran’s triumphant smile with a calm gaze. She asked softly:

“Did you use a personal favor to set this up?”

“Hmm?” Shu Ran’s smile faltered. “Not quite. It’s just that I’m well-informed; I knew there was a window for internal referrals in the production team.”

“How far has it progressed?”

“I only sent your resume two days ago. No reply yet.”

“How many people know about this?”

Sensing something subtle, Shu Ran turned serious. “If the director hasn’t opened the email yet, then it’s just you and me.”

“…” Liu Yitong let out a breath of relief. Then she said, “I’m not taking this script.”

“What?” Shu Ran’s face darkened. “I thought you were asking follow-up questions to see if it was a sure thing… but you were checking to see if it was convenient to refuse?”

“I’m not prepared to collaborate with Ruan Minxue yet.”

“Ms. Ruan? Because of Ms. Ruan?” Shu Ran was even more puzzled. “I thought you’d be thrilled to hear she was in the cast. Now you’re telling me you’re rejecting a script with a famous director and a Best Actress winner precisely because of Ruan Minxue? Don’t you like her?”

Like.

The word made Liu Yitong’s furrowed brows twitch. She picked up the coffee cup from the table, using the high-purity bitterness of the black coffee to suppress the sourness rising from the back of her throat.

Shu Ran had seen much of her habitual silence lately, but it was only at this moment that she realized Liu Yitong’s silence wasn’t resistance—it was an admission. It was a silence that occurs when one is so utterly at a loss for words that they can only use it to hide the churning emotions within.

“So,” Shu Ran took a sharp breath, “the ‘liking’ you mentioned and what I understood are actually…” She covered her mouth in shock, her eyes darting. “So that’s how it is…” She paused, then frowned. “Then I understand it even less. If it’s that kind of liking, shouldn’t you want to be in the cast even more?”

Upon hearing this, Liu Yitong’s lips curled into a smile. She placed the porcelain cup back onto the saucer. The sharp clink of the cup was followed by her cold, steady reply: “No.”

“You like her—don’t you want to pursue her?”

The response remained stable: “No.”

“…”

Shu Ran froze. The “soulmate” who had briefly brought her such intense resonance and a sense of “meeting too late” suddenly felt like a stranger. She didn’t understand Liu Yitong. She wondered if it was her own arrogance—having been pampered since childhood, she instinctively believed that if you liked something, you should have it; if you liked someone, you should pursue them.

However, Liu Yitong was a silent, stubborn breed. She neither compromised nor explained.

Liu Yitong simply replied calmly: “I’m sorry. I didn’t consider things thoroughly beforehand. In the future, you don’t need to go out of your way to build a bridge between me and Ruan Minxue.”

“…I can distinguish between my career and my fandom. I initially looked at this script for Director Zhang Lishen’s reputation. Ms. Ruan’s involvement was just the cherry on top for me.”

Shu Ran’s expression softened, but she maintained an objective tone: “Liu Yitong, I hope you really can keep your career and feelings separate. If you want to reach the top, you cannot avoid meeting Ruan Minxue.”

Liu Yitong listened with a calm expression, her fingers repeatedly rubbing the wound on her wrist until the skin beneath the scab turned slightly red.

She could distinguish them—she distinguished them all too clearly.

Precisely because she could tell them apart, she had never resolved to dial the number Ruan Minxue left. Due to the lingering effects of the first pheromone marking, Ruan Minxue’s body might not be ready to face her.

But while Ruan Minxue’s body wasn’t ready, Liu Yitong’s psyche wasn’t ready.

She knew she was mad, her face stained with blood, her body covered in scars. The only clean, soft place in her heart was a narrow, crowded corner, barely enough to hold a single three-character name. She knew the road to “the top” was likewise filled with filth, and she was psychologically prepared to turn into a vicious dog again.

If she failed to guard that last bit of softness in her heart while trying to look respectable… she wouldn’t go to see her.

“But the resume passed.”

The finger rubbing the scab froze at Shu Ran’s voice. Liu Yitong looked up to see Shu Ran holding her phone, her expression equally stunned.

Shu Ran’s gaze moved slowly from the screen to Liu Yitong’s face. “It’s not even an automated reply. Director Zhang’s email says: ‘Come for an audition.'”

The person managing Zhang Lishen’s email might not be the man himself, but those three casual, handwritten-style words sent in his name represented a special attitude from the production team.

“Do you know what this means, Liu Yitong?” Shu Ran’s eyes lit up as she sat beside her. “It means that without any connections or interference, you caught Zhang Lishen’s eye purely on your own merit!”

Liu Yitong’s brows knitted as she looked down.

Seeing her waver, Shu Ran struck while the iron was hot. “You know Zhang Lishen, right? He’s notoriously harsh with casting. There was a top-tier male star with perfect looks and acting skills who got rejected because his line delivery was lacking—Zhang would rather not cast him than use a voice actor! And who are you? Your resume only has commercial shoots for acting experience!”

“…”

“Liu Yitong, this is a miracle you created yourself! Are you really going to give it up? Forget Ruan Minxue—think only of your own career. Even if you just go to see Zhang Lishen to make an impression, what if you get some guidance? And think of the worst-case scenario: you’ve never had acting training; maybe you won’t even pass the audition anyway?”

“Heh…”

Liu Yitong was amused by Shu Ran’s last sentence. To persuade her, Shu Ran had gone through a lot of trouble, using both sweet talk and harsh logic. Shu Ran also realized she was so anxious that she was speaking without filtering, so she laughed helplessly, shaking Liu Yitong’s hand gently. “Just go and try…”

Liu Yitong’s lips curled. “I’ll consider it.”

While the decision to join the cast was still in the air, the day to finalize her resignation arrived.

When Liu Yitong returned to the idol theater, her former teammates had just finished a performance. As she passed through the backstage corridor, they all greeted her. Among them, the Omega “visual” of the team, Wei An, looked exhausted and slumped, but her face lit up the moment she saw Liu Yitong.

Wei An trotted over. Her thin frame looked even more delicate next to the 175cm-tall Liu Yitong. She looked up at the girl with a trusting smile. Because Wei An was an Omega and beautiful, she had been cautious and distant from everyone since childhood. Even so, she was often harassed by extreme fans or members of the neighboring boy group.

Liu Yitong couldn’t stand it and would occasionally step in to protect her. Over time, she gained Wei An as a little “tail” in the group. Female group fans loved shipping, and given the Alpha-Omega tension and height difference between the two—plus their cold personalities that only made exceptions for each other—a large portion of their fan base were “shippers.”

In private, the two were clear-headed, but they were indeed the closest in the group. In difficult times, they had often taken care of each other to find joy in the bitterness.

“Are you here for the contract termination today, Yitong?” Wei An’s smile faltered as she remembered the date.

“Yes.”

“Wait for me. We have something to give you. I left it in the lounge. I’ll go get it.”

“Okay.”

While waiting, Liu Yitong wanted to pack her belongings, so she entered the Alpha lounge first. The theater had tried to save trouble in the early years by having non-segregated lounges, but after a major pheromone scandal, they were ordered to reform. Now, they only separated Alphas from Omegas, without a secondary split for gender.

Before entering, Liu Yitong put on her mask and took a deep breath. Yet, as she walked in, she still smelled an unacceptable stench: cheap tobacco tar, pungent low-quality perfume, mixed with the lingering, unrestrained pheromones of certain boy group members. She furrowed her brows in annoyance.

She bypassed several men smoking and laughing near the door and walked toward her old spot at the back of the lounge.

Liu Yitong had a fierce reputation; almost no one dared to provoke her. Those who harbored resentment only dared to vent it in private, saying things like: “There are two kinds of people you shouldn’t mess with: those with solid families, and those with nothing. Liu Yitong is the latter.”

“She has nothing and no attachments; she really would risk her life against you.”

“Reliable sources say she personally crippled her own father and sent him to prison. Why pick a fight with someone heartless?”

She had overheard these comments before; there were surely more curses she hadn’t heard. She didn’t care. She would simply walk past them under their awkward and fearful gazes, leaving them to huddle together and guess her thoughts.

They slandered her, but they also feared her. Alpha pheromones are mutually exclusive, and conflict between the same kind is a simple, brutal game of stats—high grade crushes low grade. These cowardly “idols” had learned to avoid her, or at least ensure she wasn’t around before making crude jokes about the girl group members.

Except today, when she entered unannounced, they were already deep in conversation. Because she didn’t intentionally announce her presence, they didn’t notice her.

“Wei An’s skirt was so short today! I stared for so long.”

“You only dared to look?” Sun Chaoxing raised a hand to slap the back of his teammate’s head. “I already touched her.”

“Whoa! Boss is brave! Where did you touch?”

“When she passed in front of me, I flicked her skirt up.” Sun Chaoxing flicked his fingers with lingering pleasure, shedding his “pure and high-quality” stage image to reveal the face of a rotten sewer rat. “She turned to look at me with such an innocent face, it was so cute! But she has no evidence, so she can’t do anything to me.”

“Legend—”

The men’s vulgar cheers thrummed against Liu Yitong’s nerves in the corner. The girl, who was packing jars and bottles into her backpack, looked up and caught her own eyes in the makeup mirror. Her expression had darkened further.

Thinking her expression in the mirror was too fierce, she tilted her chin up. The low angle made her “misanthropic eyes” look more composed—no longer violent, but like a confident hunter finding amusement in the desperate struggles of prey.

Taking her hand out of the backpack, Liu Yitong calmly unlocked her phone, turned on the recording function, placed it on a stand, and adjusted the angle. Then, she sat back in the folding leather chair, crossed her legs, and twirled an eyebrow pencil between her fingers.

She spun the pen lazily, listening as the men continued their tirade:

“That Liu Yitong has already quit the group, right?”

“Definitely! She hasn’t been here for days!”

“Fuck!” Sun Chaoxing grew restless, slamming his jacket onto the table. “I’ve craved Wei An for a long time! If I weren’t afraid of that mad dog biting me, I would have made a move long ago!”

“That’s right, Boss. Since Liu Yitong is gone and Wei An has no umbrella, you should just force it. Cook the rice until it’s done! You know, once an Omega is permanently marked, they can’t live without the Alpha. Wei An will be our sister-in-law from now on!”

“Yeah! Hahahaha!”

Good. Very good.

Through the footage captured on her phone screen, Liu Yitong participated in their revelry. Beneath her mask, she wore a dangerous smile, filled with bloodthirsty madness.

She thought: Keep talking. I love to hear it.

“Just talking about it gets me off.”

“You only dare to think about Wei An for talk?” Sun Chaoxing said. “Wei An is actually a possibility for a wife. If you just want a thrill, you should think about Ruan Minxue.”

The eyebrow pencil, which had been spinning into a blur, suddenly froze.

Clack. It fell onto the table.

“Fuck, what was that?”

In a gap between their laughter, the men heard the sound. Sun Chaoxing cursed and looked over. The moment his eyes locked onto Liu Yitong, his expression switched pathetically from rage to panic.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me she was here?! …What are you doing?!”

The last four words were directed at Liu Yitong because the girl was slowly walking toward him. Step by step, very slowly. It gave Sun Chaoxing plenty of time to accumulate fear.

“Which hand flicked the skirt?” Liu Yitong stopped in front of him and asked with a raised eyebrow.

Sun Chaoxing tried to act tough, but looking around, he saw his lackeys glancing at each other weakly; none of them were reliable. He cursed, putting up a front of bravado. “What does it have to do with you?”

“Second time,” Liu Yitong said softly. At the same time, the gland at the back of her neck slowly released pheromones. “Which hand flicked it?”

Following her words was a sudden, tsunami-like surge in pheromone concentration. The abrupt suffocation made every Alpha present feel as if their nose and mouth were blocked by a solid object. Some clutched their throats, gasping hoarsely; others scratched at their skin, trying to relieve the stinging pain in their bones and blood.

One Alpha tried to release his own pheromones to resist her, but he was crushed by the S-class purity, leaving him with no room to fight back.

Sun Chaoxing lost his strength and fell back into his seat. In his struggle, he swept bottles and jars off the table. He saw his agonizing lackeys looking at him with disdain, as if mocking his cowardice and incompetence.

Survival instinct and shame went to Sun Chaoxing’s head. He threw a punch directly at Liu Yitong.

Liu Yitong didn’t dodge.

Thud.

The fist hit her body with a muffled sound. It was a heavy blow. Liu Yitong took it full force, the punch hitting the corner of her mouth, making her stagger back.

The suffocating pheromones in the room paused. Every man in the room froze.

“Boss…” someone stammered. “You actually dared to hit her?”

Sun Chaoxing snapped out of it, looking at his fist in disbelief. He was the one who threw the punch, yet he was the one with the panicking, messy expression. “Who knew this maniac wouldn’t dodge—”

His shrill voice sounded like a scream.

Liu Yitong turned her head back from the blow. She removed her mask and wiped the corner of her mouth with her thumb, seeing blood on her pad. She pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek, touching a sour, broken wound.

Liu Yitong looked up at Sun Chaoxing with an innocent smile:

“You’re the one who started it.”

Blood stained the girl’s bare lips, giving her a ghostly, eerie, and glamorous makeup.

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