Slacker Performance

After the show ended, Li Wenchuan left the venue directly. He Meng looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end, she obediently went to get the nanny van.

He had only taken a few steps when someone called out to him from behind.

Jin Yue looked at the slender figure ahead of him, his feelings complicated. From the moment they had met until now, Li Wenchuan had never properly looked at him. Even when he did, his gaze had been utterly unfamiliar.

People were like that. What they couldn't have was always what stirred them most.

If Li Wenchuan had clung to him like before the moment they met, he would have found it disgustingly annoying.

But now that the other man no longer cared about him, seeing the man shine so brilliantly onstage left him deeply unsettled.

If his previous actions had all been calculated attempts to stir up publicity, Jin Yue now genuinely wanted to get back together.

What could make a timid, shrinking man change himself? Was a relationship doomed to end badly enough?

Jin Yue thought it was. He believed Li Wenchuan had changed after being hurt, and that he had changed because of him.

"Are you still angry with me?" Jin Yue asked. The lights stretched their shadows long, but the different streetlamps and diverging directions seemed to draw an invisible boundary between them. "You knew I had no choice back then."

Li Wenchuan merely looked at him, listening quietly without reacting, his expression as indifferent as usual.

"Your career was on the rise, and so was mine. If what happened between us got exposed, it wouldn't have been good for either of us. I wasn't doing that well at the time, so it didn't matter if I got dragged down—but what if I had implicated you?"

It was as if he were not the one whose career had soared over the past few years, as though every plan he had made had been for Li Wenchuan's sake.

"Let's start over."

Li Wenchuan frowned, a little impatient. "Are you done? Then I'm leaving."

"You..."

"You two are still here? What, does the smog smell especially nice today?" Jiang Hansheng's voice suddenly cut in. "The forecast said it's going to rain tonight, too. If you want to debate, go do it in a debate hall."

"Senior Jiang." Jin Yue reined in his earlier expression, as though nothing had happened.

Jiang Hansheng gave a slight nod, walked past him, and headed toward Li Wenchuan. "You're going to the underground garage too? Let's go together."

Jin Yue was simply ignored by the two of them. Anger surged in him, but he did not dare snap at Jiang Hansheng.

Neither of them spoke as they walked side by side. They were no different from two strangers who happened to be heading the same way. After meeting their respective assistants in the underground garage, they went their separate ways.

Yang Xuan drove, catching Jiang Hansheng's silent gaze out the window in the rearview mirror. He could not understand that look. He never understood why his young artist always carried such an air of twilight.

"You seem to like that Li Wenchuan quite a bit." Yang Xuan stopped at a red light, sounding casual as he tried to break the strange atmosphere.

"Do you believe there are gods in this world?" To his surprise, his artist's thoughts took such a sharp turn that he did not respond at all.

"Huh?" The car continued forward. Yang Xuan honked at a vehicle changing lanes ahead of them. "I got a ninety-eight in Marxist philosophy at university. Are you joking with me?"

"I got a ninety-eight too, and you still wanted to use grades to put me down. As expected of the top agent in the business."

"...It's gold medal, thank you."

Back in the shabby rental apartment, Li Wenchuan grabbed himself a can of Sprite.

He took a huge gulp, letting the fizz erupt across his tongue and throat. He had not been used to this kind of drink when he first encountered it, but later, whenever he felt frustrated, drinking it always made him feel refreshed.

"What's your relationship with Jin Yue?" He Meng asked, looking up at him. Her baby face paired with that serious expression made her look like a child playing house and pretending to be an adult.

"My ex," Li Wenchuan replied succinctly.

"Don't tell me you used to act so terribly just to boost him?" He Meng truly could not think of any other reason.

"No." That person really had not known how to act back then, yet he had still wanted to chase his entertainment industry dream.

"Then are you still thinking about him? There's obviously something wrong with that guy, okay? Think about it—ever since news of your falling-out started spreading, your career began going downhill. But what about him? He ditched you and shot straight to the top!"

He Meng felt that her artist was an idiot. Others might wildly speculate because they did not know about this relationship, but Li Wenchuan had actually let Jin Yue get away with it for all these years.

"Don't you think it's creepy?" Ignoring his manager, who had descended into a mental storm, Li Wenchuan set down his Sprite and suddenly asked.

There was no air conditioning in the room, only an electric fan humming as it blew. Every now and then, it lifted the hem of his shirt, bringing the faintest trace of coolness. With a rustle, papers on the table were blown to the floor.

He Meng hurriedly bent down to pick them up. She did not notice that something was off about the atmosphere, and her mouth did not stop moving. "Why don't you ever clean up properly? Creepy? Why would it be creepy? Honestly, I think you were blind. How blind did you have to be to fall for such a piece of work?"

Who had not been young and foolish, misjudged someone, and made mistakes? Falling into a pit was not the scary part. The scary part was knowing it was a pit and still jumping in and out of it over and over again.

Li Wenchuan fell silent for a moment. Taking the stack of papers from her, he said slowly, "It's all in the past. It doesn't matter anymore."

"It better be." He Meng sounded annoyed despite herself.

Before the two of them could relax, Li Wenchuan was trending again.

Li Wenchuan was not surprised. Ever since he had transmigrated on the first day, he had constantly been getting cursed online. The original owner had left behind too many problems, and many deeply ingrained opinions could not be changed overnight.

Even though he still hoped he could stop working tomorrow and go home to inherit the family fortune.

"No, this time it's a good trend." He Meng was practically dazed. She truly had not expected this kind of news to get pushed up by organic traffic.

At number eight on the trending list was #LiWenchuanDoesTaiChiInTheSquare#, followed by the tag "explosive." It was a video of him doing tai chi with the elderly men on the day He Meng had come to find him.

Thanks to that tai chi session, Li Wenchuan had formed a good friendship with the tai chi uncles in the neighborhood. Many of them beamed whenever they saw him and asked when he would come again, saying their tai chi no longer felt the same without him.

"This is exactly like a pretty young lady sneaking into a group square dance [doge]."

"Not gonna lie, he actually looks pretty convincing. About on par with my PE elective."

"Quit bragging upstairs. Knowing a few poses means you know tai chi? Then I know how to type on a keyboard, so rounding up, I'm a programmer."

"Some artists buying trending searches every day is seriously annoying."

"+1. I don't want to know what he does every day :)"

This showed that Li Wenchuan's Weibo followers were still mainly his haters.

But that was not all. The topic gradually started getting weird—"Is that little girl Li Wenchuan's daughter?"

He Meng was so furious she nearly smashed her phone.

He Meng: Screw your mother, screw your mother! Did you hear me? Screw your mother!

That kind of comment was only a minor interruption. These days, everyone liked absurdly funny news, and after a lively burst of discussion, the heat would fade. But in an industry like entertainment, where exposure and discussion mattered, this was far from enough.

Her artist had indeed shone brilliantly on this show, but what came next?

If he could not get any events, no one would remember him, and all this buzz would go to waste. He Meng stared at the Weibo trending list, growing more worried the longer she looked.

Just then, a new trending topic suddenly dropped onto the rankings—#JiangHanshengAndLiWenchuanMeetSecretlyAtNight#.

He Meng: ???