Amid the crowd's teasing, Xu Chun's expression remained unchanged, a faint smile playing on his lips.
"Maybe we met in a past life."
Jiang Xiuyan froze for a moment and looked at him a little more seriously.
In his previous life, Xu Chun had hated dinner parties like this and avoided attending them whenever he could, offending quite a few powerful people in the process.
That was because the conversation at these dinners rarely strayed from "women" and "money," the things they liked to show off.
"Mr. Zhang, please don't. Can't we just have a nice meal?"
At some point, the fat-faced man had slipped his hand under the girl's skirt. She was so frightened she was on the verge of tears, and she looked around the room for help.
"You're selling yourself, so why pretend to be innocent? Is playing hard to get your idea of fun?"
The girl shook her head repeatedly. "No, my agent said all I had to do was eat with you and offer a few toasts."
As soon as she finished, laughter erupted around the room. "This little girl is interesting. Looks like she's still a virgin. Who wants her?"
Seeing the despair on the girl's face, Xu Chun frowned slightly and finally spoke up to change the subject. "Why didn't President Wen come today?"
Sure enough, the laughter stopped abruptly. Mr. Zhang sheepishly withdrew his hand. Why did Xu Chun have to bring that up? President Wen was notorious for his appetites. No matter which celebrity in the industry caught his eye, or how big a star they were, he made sure to get them.
This time, however, he had picked the wrong person. The actress had gone for broke and exposed him online, causing an immediate public uproar. Now the company's share price was falling, and no one knew how many hundreds of millions had been wiped off its market value.
Seeing that the people around her seemed to have lost interest, the girl finally breathed a sigh of relief. Then she caught sight of Xu Chun looking at her out of the corner of her eye. He winked at her, and her eyes immediately stung.
After the dinner, Xu Chun was leaving the hotel when he heard someone call his name from behind. He turned to see the girl from earlier. If he remembered correctly, her name was Chu Xi.
"Chu Xi?" he ventured, and sure enough, her face lit up with delight.
"Senior, you know my name?"
Xu Chun smiled, a hint of pity in his eyes. He didn't tell her that he knew her name because he had seen it in the news after her suicide.
"Thank you so much for earlier." Chu Xi bowed deeply to him. Senior really is kindhearted. With that thought, she raised her head and smiled again. "I knew you weren't the kind of person who makes things difficult for newcomers, Senior."
Something stirred in Xu Chun's heart, and he said half-jokingly, "What? Did someone say I make things difficult for newcomers?"
Realizing she had let something slip, Chu Xi hemmed and hawed, unwilling to name the person.
"Let me guess. It was Xie Jianyuan, wasn't it?" Xu Chun said gently, showing no sign of anger.
That emboldened Chu Xi. "He just misunderstood. He thought you didn't like him, Senior."
Xu Chun smiled. "He didn't misunderstand."
The smile froze on Chu Xi's face. Before she could react, Xu Chun had already turned and waved, then walked away without a backward glance.
After getting into the car, Xu Chun rubbed his throbbing temples. He had hurried away because he had seen Jiang Xiuyan coming out of the hotel.
But he didn't know why he had said that either. To be fair, Xie Jianyuan had done nothing wrong. He knew nothing about Xu Chun and Jiang Xiuyan, nor did he know Jiang Xiuyan liked him.
Reason told Xu Chun not to take it out on him, but whenever he saw him, his indifferent attitude toward acting made it hard for Xu Chun to calm down.
"Are you too tired today?" Su Li asked from the front passenger seat, glancing in the rearview mirror.
Xu Chun shook his head. "I'm fine."
Su Li murmured an acknowledgment, then fell silent for a moment before suddenly asking, "Xiao Chun, what did you think of President Jiang today?"
Xu Chun's head snapped up. He stared at Su Li in disbelief, the gentle smile vanishing from his face. "What do you mean?"
Su Li watched his expression without letting anything show. "You're not that young anymore. Although you're fairly popular, you're in an awkward position right now. People call you an A-lister, but strictly speaking, you're not quite one."
On top of that, he mostly acted in serious dramas rather than pursuing the path of a young heartthrob and traffic star. His fans were far fewer and less active than those of other entertainers, and he didn't have the well-developed traffic-generating system other traffic stars had. Businesspeople only ever cared about profit: they chose whichever entertainer had fans with the strongest purchasing power. That was why endorsement deals came to traffic stars even if they did nothing, while serious drama actors still had to fight for opportunities.
Su Li continued, "So what you need now is popularity, a lot more of it. That'll definitely take a great deal of financial backing to promote you. Xiao Chun, you're not that newly debuted actress from earlier. You don't have that kind of ill-timed innocence. You understand how this works, don't you?"
Xu Chun looked at her and smiled. "I understand, but I don't want to do that, Sister Su."
Su Li was taken aback by his outright refusal, but she didn't say much more. She left him with a single sentence—"Think it over carefully"—before telling the driver to stop and getting out early.
The car went all the way to the residential complex's garage. Before Xu Chun could get out, he heard his assistant say in a somewhat panicked voice, "Don't get out yet. Something's not right."
Xu Chun looked through the window and saw several young girls crouching in a corner of the garage, holding up several large signs bearing the character "Chun."
Are those the infamous stalker fans? They followed me all the way home. Xu Chun didn't know whether to laugh or cry as he watched them. He rarely encountered situations like this.
"What's going on with you?"
Ignoring his assistant's attempts to stop him, Xu Chun got out of the car. The girls' faces were still very young; they looked like students.
"Aaah! It's Xu Chun!!"
The moment the girls saw him, they burst into high-pitched screams, shaking one another.
"He's alive! I finally get to see him in person! It's my idol!"